Peter Bouscheljong | Die Verweigerung oder Anmerkungen zu “communismus der geister/dokumente #1 – #3”

1 A Lass die Welt zugrunde gehen [M. Duras // press kit, Les Films Molière, 1977, fonds Jean-Pierre Joncolas, archives de la Section d’histoire et esthétique du cinéma, Université de Lausanne]. Man muss die Kraft zur totalen Kritik, zur Verweigerung, zur verzweifelt sinnlosen Anklage aufbringen. Es gibt keine politische Lösung, die uns wesentlich berücksichtigen würde. 1 B Zwecklos noch an ein planetarisches, ökologisches Gleichgewicht zu glauben. Weil uns ein falsches Denken und Verständnis im Wege steht. 1 C Machen wir uns nichts vor. Man muss den Mut besitzen, an nichts zu glauben. Sich frei machen von jeder Form von…

Peter Bouscheljong | dreaming of one thing [subversive chronicle]

2022-12-022025-06-07 Categories: Philosophy & Politics · Poetry & Poetics · WorksTags: Anna Mendelssohn · Arthur Rimbaud · AUTONOMIA · Bertolt Brecht · Carla Lonzi · Colectivo Situaciones · Collectif Révoltes Logiques · Danielle Collobert · Donatella Di Cesare · Dziga Vertov · Dziga Vertov Group · Franz Kafka · Fred Moten · Gilles Deleuze · Groupe Medvedkine · Gruppo Gramsci · Jacques Rancière · Jean-Luc Godard · José Revueltas · Juan Gelman · Karen Brodine · Karl Marx · Kristin Ross · Lautréamont · LEF · Leslie Kaplan · Louis Althusser · Manuel Joseph · Marcello Tarì · Nanni Balestrini · Nathalie Quintane · Peter Watkins · Pier Paolo Pasolini · Pierre Guyotat · Political Committee of Workers from Porto Marghera · Primo Moroni · Rivolta Femminile · Rodolfo Walsh · Sergei Eisenstein · Sergei Tretyakov · Simone Weil · The Invisible Committee · Velimir Khlebnikov · Vladimir Mayakovsky1 Comment

i said endurance has its limits people are made of flesh and bone / i spoke about the stalinists and the method of executing the very best as traitors / who died screaming long live the party! / sifis said / the statement is only the beginning. then they will ask who are your friends. / then where do they live. katerina gogou i believe at heart that one must not be an accomplice to lies and compromise, the contemporary artist must scream out their revolt and make understood that we live in an unbearable, cruel, and…

Peter Bouscheljong | ACTION #5 [THE POET AS PRODUCER] & ACTION #6 [THE BUSINESS OF MR JULIUS CAESAR AFTER BRECHT OR THE MIGRANTS OF REGGIO CALABRIA]

2022-05-182025-06-07 Categories: Poetry & Poetics · WorksTags: Arthur Rimbaud · Bertolt Brecht · Sergei Tretyakov · Walter BenjaminLeave a comment

“Poetry has to be made by everyone, not just one.” [Lautréamont] The “interruption” is a process of shaping, i.e. the political function of separating causalities [certainties of everyday life / political life] from one another. Like Brecht’s theory of the alienation effect, which is used in epic theatre [non-Aristotelian, because empathy is a suggestion]. How assembly in the Arcades Project is not only used as a turning point, but also as a construction principle. In 1934 Benjamin wrote the essay “The Author as Producer” for the anti-fascist writers’ conference at the “Institut pour l’étude du fascisme” [the text…

Sean Bonney | Anna Mendelssohn—”Minds do exist to agitate and provoke / this is the reason I do not conform”

2020-07-042020-07-04 Categories: Poetry & PoeticsTags: Anna Mendelssohn · Bertolt Brecht · Karl Marx · Sean Bonney · The Angry BrigadeLeave a comment

If you want to find good poetry written in Britain, you have to go looking for it: with very few exceptions, it is hidden away behind a poetry of more or less genteel self-expression, metrical sentimentalities and easily digested liberal homilies that are essentially reports on police reality. But there is a vast seem of artistically and politically complex poetry also being written here, and Anna Mendelssohn, who sometimes also published under the name Grace Lake, wrote some of the best. It is chaotic, at times manic and compulsive, by turns mocking and playful, hurt and exasperated, and always…

Jacques Rancière & Philippe Lafosse | Politics and Aesthetics in the Straubs’ Films

2020-07-022020-07-02 Categories: Jacques Rancière · Philosophy & PoliticsTags: Bertolt Brecht · Communism · Friedrich Hölderlin · Jacques Rancière · Jean-Luc Godard · Jean-Marie Straub / Danièle Huillet · Marxism · Medvedkin Group · Philippe Lafosse · RevolutionLeave a comment

Jacques Rancière, Philippe Lafosse and the public in conversation about Straub-Huillet after a screening of From the Clouds to the Resistance and Workers, Peasants Monday, February 16, 2004, Jean Vigo Cinema, Nice, France PHILIPPE LAFOSSE: It seemed interesting to us, after having seen twelve films by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet and talked about them together, to ask another viewer, a philosopher and cinephile, to talk to us about these filmmakers. Jacques Rancière is with us this evening to tackle a subject that we’ve entitled “Politics and Aesthetics in the Straubs’ Films,” knowing that we could then look into other…

Georges Didi-Huberman | Light against Light

2020-06-282020-06-28 Categories: Philosophy & PoliticsTags: Antonio Gramsci · Bertolt Brecht · Federico Garcia Lorca · Friedrich Nietzsche · Georg Simmel · Georges Didi-Huberman · Hannah Arendt · Jacques Rancière · Karl Marx · Maurice Merleau-Ponty · Michel Foucault · Miguel Abensour · Nathalie Heinich · Pier Paolo Pasolini · Rosalind Krauss · Theodor W. Adorno · Walter BenjaminLeave a comment

The disappearance of the fireflies—when the blinding glare of spotlights crushes the weak glimmer of glowworms in the night—is an excellent poetic allegory, a lovely “speaking image” on which to build something like a general poetics of light. This allegory has become familiar to us through the intervention of a great poet, Pier Paolo Pasolini.1 So we cannot be surprised that artists and thinkers have elevated this allegory in the field of aesthetics, and that it may lend itself as the title of an art exhibit. And yet its sole purpose is to ask, stubbornly, over and over…

Peter Bouscheljong | [ACTION #1] HEINER MÜLLERS INSZENIERUNG DES ‘DER UNTERGANG DES EGOISTEN JOHANN FATZER’ VON BRECHT

2020-03-192025-06-07 Categories: Poetry & Poetics · WorksTags: Bertolt Brecht · Heiner MüllerLeave a comment

Ich mache keinen Krieg mehr, sondern ich gehe jetzt heim gradewegs, ich scheiße auf die Ordnung der Welt. Schwarmstrategien [Smart Mobs] unterhalb des Radars. Die Geschichte von vier Deserteuren im Jahr 1918 [der abgerissene Sehnerv der in seinem Versteck von Revolution träumt]. Etwas das sich innerhalb der Mauern ansammelt, sprechende Wände im »Toten Trakt« / ein diffuses Glühen. Projektion: Liebknecht Luxemburg Meinhof. Jetzt kehrt sich das Leben gegen die alten Gewohnheiten. Niemand sieht jetzt / niemand kehrt zurück / als wäre der Sinn nie entfernt worden / das Gefühl die Schädeldecke müßte eigentlich zerreissen. Die bösartige Leugnung eines Virus…

Bertolt Brecht | A lesson in sabotage

2020-03-152020-03-15 Categories: Poetry & PoeticsTags: Bertolt Brecht · Communism · Sabotage · Vladimir LeninLeave a comment

A lesson in sabotage Modifying a machine After the machine so that it won’t work without you So far improve it that you alone are good enough for it Give it a secret fault that you alone can repair Yes, alter it so that any other man will destroy it If the works it without you That’s what we call: modifying a machine. Modify your machine, saboteur! A lesson in sabotage Sabotage, mother of the factory Just as a mother knows what she has given birth to Wakes in the night at the baby’s slightest…

The Power of Political, Militant, ‘Leftist’ Cinema. Interview with Jacques Rancière

2020-03-092020-03-09 Categories: Jacques Rancière · Philosophy & PoliticsTags: Bertolt Brecht · Communism · Dziga Vertov · Dziga Vertov Group · Film · Gilles Deleuze · Jacques Rancière · Javier Bassas Vila · Jean-Luc Godard · Jean-Marie Straub / Danièle Huillet · Jean-Pierre Gorin · Marxism · Medvedkin Group · Pedro Costa · Revolution · Serge Daney · Sergei EisensteinLeave a comment

By Javier Bassa Vila Jacques Rancière’s thought is undisciplined, at least in two different but interlinked senses. On the one hand, in the 1970s Rancière suggested a reading of Marxism that broke with the dominant interpretations of the time, specially with the scientifist Marxism imposed by Althusser (see La leçon d’Althusser, originally published in 1976 and re-published in 2012 by La Fabrique – and due to come out soon in Spanish). On the other hand, the broad interest that his thought has triggered at an international level seems to be also the consequence of another in-discipline: his reflections are…

Walter Benjamin | The Author as Producer

2019-12-052019-12-26 Categories: Philosophy & Politics · Poetry & PoeticsTags: Bertolt Brecht · Communism · Marxism · Sergei Tretyakov (Tretiakov) · Walter BenjaminLeave a comment

II s’agit de gagner les intellectuels “la classe ouvriere, en leur faisant prendre conscience de l’identité de leurs de-marches spirituelles et de leurs conditions de producteur. – Ramon Fernandez You recall how Plato treats the poets in his projected State. In the interest of the community, he does not allow them to live there. He had a high idea of the power of poetry. But he considered it destructive, superfluous – in a perfect community, needless to say. Since then, the question of the poet’s right to exist has not often been stated with the same insistence;…

Peter Bouscheljong | NON CONSUMIAMO MARX

2019-07-172025-06-07 Categories: WorksTags: Bertolt Brecht · Karl Marx · Luigi NonoLeave a comment

[…] die fixen Arrangements (die das Leben erleichtern) :: Termingeschäfte & Hungerkrisen während die inzestuösen Kreisläufe des Geldes sich kurzschliessen / und schliesslich jene, die in die Grammatik scheissen und für immer vom Rest abgeschnitten sind / […]

Sergio Raimondi | Poems

2019-06-112019-06-14 Categories: Poetry & PoeticsTags: Bertolt Brecht · Sergei Tretyakov · Sergio RaimondiLeave a comment

When the world changes, literature must as well. This is the credo motivating the thinking and writing of Argentine poet Sergio Raimondi, born in 1968 in Bahia Blanca. A somewhat gruff genius loci inhabits this place: the nearby port of Ingeniero White is one of Argentina’s main seaports; the nation’s most important petrochemical complexes is also located here. But Sergio Raimondi draws his very inspiration from this genius loci: even in his early work Poesía civil (published in German as Zivilpoesie in 2005), Raimondi—who teaches contemporary literature at the Universidad del Sur in Bahia Blanca—examines in depth Argentina’s changing…

Peter Bouscheljong | DIE AFFÄRE LEBOVICI | PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIE [ACTE XVIII]

2019-03-272025-06-07 Categories: WorksTags: Bertolt Brecht · Gérard Lebovici · Guy Debord · Situationist International · Walter BenjaminLeave a comment

Zum Umsturz aller bestehenden Ordnung aufzurufen / Scheint furchtbar. / Aber das Bestehende ist keine Ordnung. // Zur Gewalt seine Zuflucht zu nehmen / Scheint böse. Aber da, was ständig geübt wird, Gewalt ist / Ist es nichts Besonderes. Bertolt Brecht Die ganze Affäre [wie auch der modus operandi] ist geprägt von einem Klima persönlichen Verrats und politischen Hinterhalts: Gérard Lebovici [Herausgeber der Editions Champ Libre, Produzent und Freund Guy Debords] in einer Tiefgarage in der Avenue Foch, Chaillot. Porte Dauphine mit vier Kugeln im Hinterkopf auf dem Vordersitz seines Wagens; Polizei, D.S.T. & Renseignements généraux zeichnen eine…

Bertolt Brecht | The Reader for City Dwellers

2019-03-242019-03-25 Categories: Poetry & PoeticsTags: Bertolt BrechtLeave a comment

1 Cover your tracks Split from your mate at the train station Go into town in the morning with your coat buttoned up Find a place And when your mate knocks, Don’t, oh, don’t open the door Instead Cover your tracks! If you bump into your parents in the city of Hamburg Or anywhere else (for that matter) Pass them like strangers, turn the corner, don’t acknowledge them Pull the hat, which they gave you, over your face Don’t, oh, don’t show your face Instead Cover your tracks! Eat the meat that’s there! Don’t save anything! Enter any…

Jean-Luc Godard | What is to be done? // British Sounds, by J.-L. Godard [DVG]

2018-10-212019-05-29 Categories: Philosophy & PoliticsTags: Bertolt Brecht · British Sounds · Communism · Dziga Vertov Group · Film · Jean-Luc Godard · Jean-Pierre Gorin · Marxism · Resistance · RevolutionLeave a comment

Written in January 1970 at the request of Simon Field and Peter Sainsbury for the magazine Afterimage, produced by Peter Whitehead. Published in Afterimage n°1, April 1970. Translated from French by Mo Teitelbaum. We must make political films. We must make films politically. 1 and 2 are antagonist to each other and belong to two opposing conceptions of the world. 1 belongs to the idealistic and metaphysical conception of the world. 2 belongs to the Marxist and dialectical conception of the world. Marxism struggles against idealism and the dialectical against the metaphysical. This struggle is the struggle between the…

riots and/or poetics [6/2018]

2018-05-302018-07-12 Categories: Poetry & Poetics · Reading ListTags: Anne Boyer · Arthur Rimbaud · artiCHOKE · Bertolt Brecht · Communism · Francis Ponge · Galina Rymbu · Jackie Wang · Katerina Gogou · Laszlo Moholy-Nagy · Leslie Kaplan · Lisa Jeschke · Nat Raha · Nathalie Quintane · Revolution · Riots · Roque Dalton · Sean Bonney · Stephanie Young · Tripwire1 Comment

“[…] But here: distillation, composition, narrow-mindedness; and the oppressive summers: the heat isn’t without respite, but given that good weather is in everyone’s interests, and that everyone is a pig, I hate how summer kills me when it appears even briefly. […] The worst is that all of this will bother you as much as it will. It seems for the best that you read and walk as much as possible. Reason enough not to remain confined to offices and homes. Mindlessnesses must be given free reign, far from confinement. I am not about to be selling balm, but I imagine…

Jacques Rancière; Politics and Aesthetics

2018-01-042018-07-12 Categories: Philosophy & PoliticsTags: Antonin Artaud · Bertolt Brecht · Democracy · Jacques RancièreLeave a comment

Peter Hallward: Sometimes you present political practice as a sort of ex nihilo innovation, almost like the constitution of a new world, even if the world in question is extremely fragile, uncertain, ephemeral. Don’t you need to consider political innovation alongside the development of its conditions of possibility? I mean, for instance, on the political side of things, the role played by civic institutions and state organisations, the public space opened up, in Athens, in France, by the invention of democratic institutions (that is, the sort of factors you generally relegate to the sphere of the police, as opposed to…

Jacques Rancière; The Emancipated Spectator (5th International Summer Academy)

2018-01-042018-07-12 Categories: Philosophy & PoliticsTags: Antonin Artaud · Bertolt Brecht · Democracy · Guy Debord · Jacques RancièreLeave a comment

I gave to this talk the title: « The Emancipated Spectator » . As I understand it, a title is always a challenge. It sets forth the presupposition that an expression makes sense, that there is a link between separate terms, which also means between concepts , problems and theories which seem at first sight to bear no direct relation on each other. In a sense, this title expresses the perplexity that was mine when Marten Spangberg invited me to deliver what is supposed to be the “keynote” lecture of this academy. He told me that he wanted me…

READING LIST [08/2017]

2017-08-232018-07-12 Categories: Poetry & Poetics · Reading ListTags: Bertolt Brecht · Deleuze & Guattari · Pier Paolo Pasolini · Sean BonneyLeave a comment

Atlantic Drift; An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics Francois Dosse; Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari Maurizio Lazzarato; Marcel Duchamp and The Refusal of Work Bertolt Brecht; Arbeitsjournal Étienne Balibar; The Philosophy Of Marx Pier Paolo Pasolini; The Selected Poetry Of Pier Paolo Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini; Unter freiem Himmel Collected Works of Velimir Khlebnikov Sean Bonney; Letter Against the Firmament MÜTZE # 16 URS ENGELER (Robert Kelly, Jerome Rothenberg, et al.) Georg Baselitz, Alexander Kluge; Weltverändernder Zorn Ellen Meiksins Wood; Das Imperium des Kapitals

BLACKOUT ((poetry & politics))

Tag: Bertolt Brecht