Errasmus Mundus. The Desire of Error in Revolutionary Times

NO-WORK / NO-SHOP
The errorist laboratory will be focused on researching and experimenting the diverse uses of artistic actions and social imagination strategies regarding common problematics, through "trial and error”, with the intention of creating collective public interventions around the specific context of Cittadellarte and the city of Biella.

The NO-WORK / NO-SHOP will seek to create “non-consumption” space for the development of artistic experience. It will be built from a collective initiative, starting from the interests – or conflicts – that participants bring to the module, contextualizing and choosing the main errors, mistakes and failures to discuss, re-think, and eventually solve specific problems. It will be developed from the exchange of knowledge and experiences, showing different anti-productive experiences as a result, such as ephemeral actions, interventions, manifestos, erratic drifts inside-outside the city, institution or machine.

It will be an "extra-disciplinary” experience using different languages and strategies depending on the participants’ knowledge and desires as well as the specific context of Cittadellarte and Biella, in which the intervention will take place.

The module will incorporate tools such as storytelling, performance, video and other techniques in order to imagine and develop together a mix, or an accumulation, of the ideas and proposals that emerge during the daily meetings. Inviting everyone involved in the experience to live a de-educational experience as result of the NO-WORK/ NO-SHOP.

The module will focus on the subjects of “Revolution” and “Desire”, using them as a starting question: “What happens after the end?” During the week, Etcetera will show examples related to this question and other concepts close to their research, such as crisis (Of representation, economical, and of imagination); migration (Diaspora and racism); state of emergency (State of exception), and financial hell (Financial capitalism, “neo extractivism” and “cognitarian precariat”).

In order to accompany the results of the errorist laboratory, the last day of the module Etcetera will invite the Italian philosopher Franco “Bifo” Berardi to give a public lecture on the issues which appear in AND: Phenomenology of the End (2015), one of his last books.

SCHEDULE

April 24th - #ERROR 01
morning
ERRORIST BREAKFAST.
Guided tour to Cittadellarte (Curated by Elena Rosina), including the Pistoletto, Arte Povera collections and temporary exhibitions.
Introduction to the Theorem of Trinamics, the symbol of the Third Paradise and the concept of Demopraxy.
afternoon
Short introduction about the laboratory, methodology and schedule. Presentation of each participant: a short introduction about their experiences, backgrounds and desires.
NO-WORK / NO-SHOP: GENEALOGY OF ERRORS.
Review of the history of the Etcetera’s actions. Videos, registers and archives about direct action, agit-prop, public interventions and performances related to different communities, political contexts and spaces of conflict.
Discussion about the material presented.
pre dinner
TO EAT, TO CREATE.
Bohemian Aperitivo. Preparation of the materials, tasks for next day.

April 25th - #ERROR 02
morning
ERRORIST BREAKFAST.
The group will be divided into subgroups that will brainstorm regarding the main topics discussed, common desires, and the possible collective actions.
Why? Motivation, ideologies and context. Where? Defining those territories or contexts to intervene. How? Methodologies, languages, medium. What? Formats and structures for the action or intervention. For whom? Audience, protagonists or participants? With whom? Mediation between people, social organizations, communities and institutions.
afternoon
NO-WORK / NO-SHOP: TO ERR TOGETHER.
This second session of the laboratory will be focused on discussing those possible ideas which appear within the group, based on the concepts that emerged from the exchange between the mentor and participants. In order to put together ideas, tools and common needs for living a collective experience, this session will be divided in three moments:
SOCIAL IMAGINATION: Two subgroups will prepare a collective investigation on the resources and elements to be used (e.g. scripts, costumes, cameras, flyers, internet, public spaces, etc.).
COLLECTIVE PRESENTATION: The subgroups will choose the way of presenting the proposals and questions that emerged in the collective discussion of each group (issues, politics, contexts and goals to be developed in a collective action). This presentation can be a classic technique (lectures, power-point) or a performative presentation, depending on the desire of the participants.
PLENARY: Debate about the proposals with all participants and decision session.
pre dinner
TO EAT, TO CREATE.
Bohemian Aperitivo. Preparation of the materials, tasks for next day.

April 26th - #ERROR 02
morning
ERRORIST BREAKFAST.
To-do-list: distribution of roles and tasks for the action-intervention.
NO-WORK / NO-SHOP: TO ERR TOGETHER.
The two subgroups of participants together will prepare and produce all the needed materials (e.g. scripts, cameras, flyers, Internet, printings, registers). Rehearsal. 
afternoon
Lecture held by the Italian media-activist and theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi.
pre dinner
TO EAT, TO CREATE. 
Bohemian Aperitivo. Preparation of the materials, tasks for next day: action-intervention.

April 27th - #ERROR 04
morning
Action-intervention’s pre-production.
afternoon
FAILURE AS PERFECTION, ERROR AS A SUCCESS.
ACTION-INTERVENTION
Realization of the collective action-intervention (performance, website, declaration, manifesto, video and/or other possible experiment that emerged from the laboratory).
Memory: documentation and registration of the experience using video recordings, audio, photography and writing as statement for the presentation of the results the day after during breakfast.
evening
RE-EVOLUTION: Party of Collective Mistakes.
Each participant will bring some of his-her favorite music to dance. Drinks and food to share all together.

April 28th - #ERROR 05
morning
ERRORIST BREAKFAST
The group will share and show the documentation, pictures, videos as results of the action-intervention.
afternoon
The group will share and show the documentation, pictures, videos as results of the action-intervention.
evening
Dinner.

The module will be held in English (with some irruptions in Spanish and Italian).

REFERENCES

The mentors will prepare a reader for the participants with key texts, some of which will be discussed during the week.

• Errorist Manifesto, International Errorist, 2005

• Jennifer Flores Sternad, “The Rhythm of Capital and the Theatre of Terror: The Errorist International Errorist, Etcetera…”, in Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization, Rotterdam: Nai Publishers, 2011, pag. 214.

• Gerald Raunig, “Theater Machine”, in Thousand Machines, Semiotext (E), 2010, pag. 35.

• Gerald Raunig, “War Machines”, in Thousand Machines, Semiotext (E), 2010, pag. 72.

• Brian Holmes, “Remember the Present: Representation of Crisis in Argentina”, in Escape the OverCode: Activist Art in the Control Society, Zagreb: WHW; Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum, 2009, pag. 172.

• Brian Holmes, “Continental Drift: From Geopolitics to Geopolitics”, in Escape the OverCode: Activist Art in the Control Society, Zagreb: WHW; Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum, 2009, pag. 194.

• Franco “Bifo” Berardi, “(T)error and Poetry”, in Precarious Rhapsody, 2010, pag. 124.

BIOGRAPHY

Formed in 1997 in Buenos Aires, Etcetera is a multidisciplinary collective composed of visual artists, poets, actors and performers. They all shared the intention of bringing art to the site of immediate social conflict – the streets – and of bringing this social conflict into arenas of cultural production, including media and art institutions.
In 1998, they moved into the squatted house-printing shop of the surrealist artist Juan Andralis, who in the 50s and 60s played an active role in the Paris group led by Breton. At the same time, Etcetera worked closely with the Human Rights organization H.I.J.O.S. (Children for Identity and Justice Against Forgetting and Silence) in developing and popularizing “escraches,” acts of public denunciation that seek a form of social justice not beholden to the state’s legal and judicial institutions.
Beyond their participation in museums’ exhibitions, cultural centers and other spaces, they often work with street-art, public interventions, actions and performances that are by nature contextual, ephemeral and circumstantial. They form part of the urban scene as a statement of protest, denunciation or signaling; and as a result it pertains to a specific time and place.
In their practice, Etcetera employ irony, great sense of humor, poetic discovery and all the deconstructive potential they possess to forge a new kind of committed art: free of hackneyed rhetoric and often quite sarcastic and “incorrect”.
In 2005, they were part of the foundation of the movement INTERNATIONAL ERRORIST, an international organization that claims error as a philosophy of life. Today the group continues to develop its activities collaboratively with other collectives and individuals, inside and outside the art institutions, and on the educational field.
In 2013, Etcetera won the second edition of the “International Award For Participatory Art” in Bologna, Italy, for their project C.R.I.S.I. (Commune of Research for Inclusive Social Imagination).
In 2015, they were laureate with the “Prince Claus Award” at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.
Who coordinate the archive, exhibitions, educational activities and other initiatives today are Loreto Garín Guzmán (Chile) & Federico Zukerfeld (Argentina) co-founders of the collective.

• www.erroristas.org
• www.crisiproject.wordpress.com
• www.princeclausfund.org/en/network/grupo-etcetera.html

GUEST

Franco “Bifo” Berardi is a contemporary writer, media-theorist, and media-activist. He founded the magazine A/traverso (1975–81) and was part of the staff of “Radio Alice”, the first free pirate radio station in Italy (1976–78). Like other intellectuals involved in the political movement of Autonomia in Italy during the 1970s, he fled to Paris, where he worked with Felix Guattari in the field of schizoanalysis. He has been a contributor to Semiotext(e), Chimerees, Metropoli, Musica 80, and Archipielago, and he is currently writing for the monthly LINUS.
Berardi’s publications include Le ciel est enfin tombé sur la terre (Paris, 1978), Mutazione e Ciberpunk (Genoa, 1993), Cibernauti (Rome, 1994), Felix (Rome, 2001, and London, 2009), Generacion Postalfa (Buenos Aires, 2007), Skizomedia (Rome, 2005), La fabrica de la infelicidad (Rome, 2000, and Madrid, 2004), El sabio el guerrero el mercader (Madrid: Aquarela, 2006), The Soul at Work (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009), After the future (Oakland: AK Press, 2012), The Uprising (Semiotext(e), 2012), the recent books HEROES (London: Verso Futures) and AND: Phenomenology of the end (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e)), both published in 2015. Berardi teaches Media Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, and has lectured in many universities around the globe.

The residency fee includes accomodation, half-board and Arci's Annual Pass Membership.