After the Assembly
Author(s)
Jonas Staal, Kate Shea Baird, Havin Güneşer, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, KUCHENGA
The gathering Third Assembly: After the Assembly took place as part of the daylong program Propositions #2: Assemblism, convened by BAK and artist Jonas Staal on 27 November 2017.
Bridging the tactics, goals, and challenges of autonomous and activist movements in Northern and Western Kurdistan, Catalonia and Spain, Iceland, and across several borders within the African diasporic struggle, this deeply engaging discussion responded to the prompt, “How is power taken and practiced differently after the moment of assembly?”
After the Assembly brought together Kate Shea Baird of Barcelona En Comú, Havin Güneşer of Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan—Peace in Kurdistan, Birgitta Jónsdóttir of the Icelandic Pirate Party, and KUCHENGA of Black Lives Matter UK to debate long-term strategies and struggles of autonomous organizing, from dealing with consensus and collectivized motivations to articulating intersectional and pluralist demands and addressing concerns about institutionalization and government intervention. As a retroactive response to the question of the focus “How to Assemble Now,” the conversation offers a set of critical strategies and observations on how to move from assembly to lasting change.
More in this edition
“Schooling Assembly” by Nora N. Khan traverses a year of pandemic teaching, in which faculty and students have witnessed widening cracks in the university system and its human opportunity cost calculations, and have faced new challenges in asserting creative and collective autonomies.
Extinction Rebellion (XR) entered the spotlight in late 2018 with a call for mass disruptions, followed by a first wave of actions which saw thousands come together to block major bridges in London.
This diagram by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk depicts the story of Freehouse Radicalizing the Local, a project focusing on the struggle for the right to live well in the Afrikaanderwijk neighborhood of Rotterdam.
The gathering Third Assembly: After the Assembly took place as part of the daylong program Propositions #2: Assemblism, convened by BAK and artist Jonas Staal on 27 November 2017.
From: Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent, Maria Hlavajova and Wietske Maas, eds. (Utrecht: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019), pp. 165-179
From: FORMER WEST: Art and the Contemporary After 1989, Maria Hlavajova and Simon Sheikh, eds. (Utrecht: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), pp. 559-569
"We were in the streets for the Feminist Night March on 8 March, exactly three days before the first Covid-19 case was officially declared in Turkey..." Read the translation of an essay originally published in Turkish on 1+1 Forum, 30.04.2020.
