dreaming of one thing [subversive chronicle]

2022-12-022022-12-13 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…

riots and/or poetics [6/2022]

2022-06-20 Categories: Philosophy & Politics · Poetry & PoeticsTags: Aditya Bahl · Carla Lonzi · Jazra Khaleed · Juliana Spahr · Karl Marx · Marius Loris Rodionoff · Michel Foucault · Nanni Balestrini · Nathalie Quintane · Pier Paolo Pasolini · Stacy Szymaszek · Steve WrightLeave a comment

Nathalie Quintane | TOMATOES + Why doesn’t the far left read literature? (Kenning Editions) a poetic of montage + détournements. the piecing together of heterogeneous elements to arrive at new connections. to destabilise habits. to blur the boundaries of different genres. illuminating public discussions from remote, radical angles. the attention to new forms of coexistence. of social uprisings + a linguistic dissent. collective voices. the words + banners of political movements, the pamphlets. the minorities [who are constantly in the majority]. the restless revenants. an apparent continuity of uprisings. l’affair de tarnac, la ‘jungle’ de calais + notre-dame-des-landes. instead…

der traum von einer sache [subversive chronik]

2022-01-262022-01-27 Categories: Philosophy & Politics · Poetry & PoeticsTags: Anna Mendelssohn · Arthur Rimbaud · Colectivo Situaciones · Collectif Révoltes Logiques · Danielle Collobert · Fred Moten · Groupe Medvedkine · Gruppo Gramsci · José Revueltas · Juan Gelman · Karen Brodine · Leslie Kaplan · Manuel Joseph · Nanni Balestrini · Nathalie Quintane · Pier Paolo Pasolini · Pierre Guyotat · Rodolfo Walsh · Vladimir MayakovskyLeave a comment

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Best Books of 2021

2021-12-062021-12-06 Categories: Reading ListTags: Andreas Malm · Anna Mendelssohn · Arthur Rimbaud · Diane di Prima · Donatella Di Cesare · Gail Scott · Kay Gabriel · Marcello Tarì · Maurizio Lazzarato · Nanni Balestrini · Primo Moroni · Rob Halpern · The Zetkin CollectiveLeave a comment

Nanni Balestrini, Primo Moroni | The Golden Horde. Revolutionary Italy, 1960-1977 Translated by Richard Braude [Seagull Books] The Golden Horde is a definitive work on the Italian revolutionary movements of the 1960s and ’70s. An anthology of texts and fragments woven together with an original commentary, the volume widens our understanding of the full complexity and richness of this period of radical thought and practice. The book covers the generational turbulence of Italy’s postwar period, the transformations of Italian capitalism, the new analyses by worker-focused intellectuals, the student movement of 1968, the Hot Autumn of 1969, the extra-parliamentary groups…

AFTER THE DEATH OF NANNI BALESTRINI [by Raúl Sánchez Cedillo]

2021-09-152021-09-30 Categories: Poetry & PoeticsTags: AUTONOMIA · Nanni Balestrini · Potere Operaio · Raúl Sánchez Cedillo · RossoLeave a comment

Nanni Balestrini passed away on 20 May 2019, at the age of almost 84. Writer and poet, revolutionary activist, visual artist, publisher. Now the necessary task begins of collecting and publishing a vast and varied body of work, hardly known to the wide majority of people who follow literature, poetry, design and performance art. More than simply being Italian, Balestrini was a Milanese character. It will be difficult for us to understand his trajectory if we do not take into consideration the importance of Milan during the republican postwar period, the city we see in Antonioni’s The Night, industrial…

Nanni Balestrini | No Tears for the Roses

2021-06-10 Categories: Poetry & PoeticsTags: Nanni Balestrini1 Comment

1. halfway in the dark i n the dense fores the tree pre fers the cal m but the wind doesn’t let up the struggle of the revolutionary is to eliminate the of the class system it’s an ob jective fact it’s in dependent of the will of mankin overthrown the ideo logical power of the bourgeoisie the situation is peace ful in Turin after the sixteen h ours of guerilla warfare yes terday today everything must be subordinate to the trees make a lot of noise at the definition o f a strateg fiat did not invent a…

riots and/or poetics [5/2021]

2021-05-032021-11-11 Categories: Philosophy & Politics · Poetry & PoeticsTags: Arthur Rimbaud · AUTONOMIA · Felix Klopotek · Lida Yusopova · Marcello Tarì · Maurizio Lazzarato · N.H. Pritchard · Nanni Balestrini · Natacha Michel · Primo Moroni · Rätekommunismus · Verónica GagoLeave a comment

Thus ’77 saw a flaring up, a quotidian generalization of a political and cultural conflict with ramifications for every part of society, exemplifying a conflict that had taken place throughout the 1970s, a fierce conflict both between classes and within the class, perhaps the fiercest seen since the Unification of Italy. Forty thousand criminal charges, 15,000 arrests, 4,000 people sentenced to a thousand years of prison—and then there were the deaths and the hundreds of wounded on both sides. There is no doubt that these figures cannot be considered merely the result of some risky, crazy plan dreamt up by…

Claire Fontaine | 1977:The Year That Is Never Commemorated

2021-03-30 Categories: WorksTags: A/traverso · AUTONOMIA · Carla Lonzi · Claire Fontaine · Franco "bifo" Berardi · Franco Piperno · Lea Melandri · Nanni Balestrini · Primo Moroni · Umberto Eco · Vladimir Mayakovsky2 Comments

“It’s not enough to denounce the lies of the power, we need to denounce and break also the truths of the power. When the power tells the truth and it pretends that it’s something natural, we must denounce what is inhuman and absurd in this order of reality, which is reproduced, reflected and consolidated by the order of speech. We must unveil the delirious aspect of the power. Let’s pretend to be in the place of the power, let’s speak with its voice, let’s emit signals as if we were the power with its tone of voice. But…

Nanni Balestrini | “I write to you opposite the balcony from whence I contemplate the eternal light whose radiant fire slowly fades on the distant horizon”

2020-05-272020-07-07 Categories: Philosophy & Politics · Poetry & PoeticsTags: AUTONOMIA · Communism · Nanni Balestrini · Potere Operaio · Revolution · SabotageLeave a comment

At one point in ‘Blackout’, Balestrini writes, “This poem should not be published because it is a political manifesto.” The historical events with which ‘Blackout’ is concerned and toward which it is critical began with the wave of conflicts in 1968 at the universities and factories and eventually spread throughout the West. The protests culminated in the “troubled autumn” of 1969, eventually involving the entire Italian working class in strikes, demonstrations, and acts of sabotage.

riots and/or poetics [5/2020]

2020-05-142020-05-31 Categories: Reading ListTags: Anna Mendelssohn · Audre Lord · Brendan Joyce · Carla Lonzi · Chris Nealon · Dziga Vertov Group · Endnotes · Heiner Müller · Jean-Luc Godard · Karl Marx · M. NourbeSe Philip · Mustapha Khayati · Nanni Balestrini · Sam Rivers · TiqqunLeave a comment

the high degree of social danger inherent in the choice of implements and the method of execution / expropriations and searches proletarian fires and corruption of the public good kidnappings and sequestering of persons beatings wounds / sufficient evidence of guilt can be inferred from the laws as formulated in the index books / carried out in houses and adjacent rooms in the middle of the night / 1) the copious documentation seized or acquired above all those parts that celebrate and program the violence and the armed struggle / the final goal being the general overthrow of the existing…

Nanni Balestrini | Wer das hier liest, braucht sich vor nichts mehr zu fürchten (Interview)

2019-12-172021-06-10 Categories: Poetry & PoeticsTags: AUTONOMIA · Nanni Balestrini · Potere Operaio · Red BrigadesLeave a comment

Der 1935 in Mailand geborene Schriftsteller Nanni Balestrini gehört zu den wenigen, die, obwohl sie im normalen Literaturbetrieb anerkannt sind, weiterhin über die revolutionäre Bewegung der 60er und 70er schreiben. Selbst Aktivist der sozialen und Klassenkämpfe der Jahre 1968-80 in Italien, hat Balestrini alle seine Romane über die Geschichte der radikalen Linken geschrieben. Seine Bücher handeln von den Arbeiterkämpfen bei FIAT, von den Ursprüngen des bewaffneten Kampfs oder von der Jugendbewegung (Autonomia) Mitte der 70er. Sein Standpunkt bleibt dabei klar, an der subjektiven Sicht der Rebellierenden rüttelt Balestrini nicht. Ihm geht es, auch wenn er nach eigenem Bekunden, „keine…

DIE PROZESSE — Ein faktographisches Poem

2019-06-112020-09-30 Categories: WorksTags: Anna Mendelssohn · Arthur Rimbaud · César Vallejo · George Jackson · Gilets Jaunes · Julien Coupat · Leo Trotsky · Nanni Balestrini · Paul Verlaine · Pawlenski (Pavlensky) · Pier Paolo Pasolini · Roque Dalton · Rosa Luxemburg · Sergei TretyakovLeave a comment

ENGLISH TRANSLATION (part 1) BY DAVID VICHNAR & TIM KÖNIG ALIENIST 5 “Mehr als 1000 Menschen wurden bereits willkürlich verurteilt und inhaftiert. Und jetzt soll das neue so genannte “Anti-Randalierer- Gesetz” uns auch noch darin hindern zu demonstrieren. Wir verurteilen jede Gewalt gegen Demonstranten durch die Polizei. Nichts wird uns aufhalten! Demonstrieren ist ein Grundrecht. Schluss mit der Straflosigkeit für die Ordnungskräfte! Amnestie für alle Opfer der Unterdrückung!” Aufruf der ersten Generalversammlung der Gilets Jaunes “Ich werde ein Arbeiter sein: Diese Idee hält mich zurück, wenn die wahnsinnige Wut mich hin zur Schlacht von Paris drängt, — wo doch so…

Nanni Balestrini | “I close my eyes and start to sing”

2019-05-212022-09-14 Categories: Poetry & PoeticsTags: AUTONOMIA · Blackout · Class Struggle · Communism · Lotta Continua · Mariarosa Dalla Costa · Nanni Balestrini · Potere Operaio · Revolution · Riots · Sabotage · The Golden Horde · The Strategy of Refusal · Vogliamo TuttoLeave a comment

NANNI BALESTRINI (1935-2019) I close my eyes and start to sing threads are entangled and transformed into spots whose dance moves ever more slowly I sang my repertoire then I started monologues with my eyes closed I walked back and forth in the cell four steps forward four steps back I invented dialogues for two characters that spoke different languages like at the cinema when the film ends there are those who make love who smoke there are those who merely exist Nanni Balestrini, the radical Italian experimental visual artist, poet, and novelist known for recombinatory, revolutionary…

Italy 1977-8: Living with an earthquake – Red Notes

2018-10-232018-10-23 Categories: Philosophy & PoliticsTags: AUTONOMIA · Class Struggle · Communism · Félix Guattari · Lotta Continua · Marxism · Nanni Balestrini · Red Notes · RevolutionLeave a comment

Italy 1977-8: Living with an earthquake – Red Notes A pamphlet from a time when a very high level of class struggle dominated Italian society. Despite their differences – the state, church, fascists, Communist Party and unions were all united in opposition to the the radical social movement. A. Preface We have called our pamphlet “Living With An Earthquake”. This earthquake is not just the crisis at Government level – it is a quite new political upheaval affecting the whole of Italian society. We have produced this pamphlet because it is vitally important that the outside world should…

Tiqqun | This Is Not a Program

2018-09-202019-03-02 Categories: Dérive · Philosophy & PoliticsTags: Antonio Negri · AUTONOMIA · Communism · Deleuze & Guattari · Democracy · Félix Guattari · Giorgio Agamben · Guy Debord · Mario Tronti · Marxism · May '68 · Nanni Balestrini · Revolution · Riots · Situationist International · The Coming Insurrection · TiqqunLeave a comment

“’77 wasn’t like ’68. ’68 was anti-establishment, ’77 was radically alternative. This is why the ‘official’ version portrays ’68 as good and ’77 as bad; in fact, ’68 was co-opted whereas ’77 was annihilated. This is why, unlike ’68, ’77 could never make for an easy object of celebration.”
— Nanni Balestrini, Primo Moroni, L’orda d’oro

riots and/or poetics [8/2018]

2018-08-172019-09-24 Categories: Reading ListTags: Albert Ayler · Cecil Taylor · Chris Marker · David Buuck · Ed Dorn · Jean-Luc Godard · Maggie O'Sullivan · May '68 · Militant Poetics · Nanni Balestrini · Nikolas Asimos · Revolution · Riots · Sean Bonney · The Strategy of Refusal · Victor SergeLeave a comment

“he is as a neighborhood beauty queen / lauded with ribbons and canes / and with his lapdogs / who lick at the rottenness / seated at the right side / of mama democracy / he dialogues long / with the mouth of a murderer. / he raises his hand in that sustained and easy style / wiggles his fat ass / and with the boyish brilliance of an ephebe / he shits in the country / with all his soul“ Roberto Jorge Santoro | POETRY IN GENERAL (II) Manson & Mendoza; Windsuckers & Onsetters: Sonnots for Griffiths Andrea…

Nanni Balestrini; »If you read this, you must no longer fear anything«

2018-03-222020-02-26 Categories: Philosophy & Politics · Poetry & PoeticsTags: AUTONOMIA · Communism · Nanni Balestrini · Resistance · Revolution · Riots · The Strategy of Refusal1 Comment

• We Want Everything • Nanni Balestrini and the Poetry of the Italian Autonomia • Blackout • Carbonia (We Were All Communists) • On Nanni Balestrini, the Most Radically Poet of the Italian Scene WE WANT EVERYTHING THE STRUGGLE These guys I’d talked to about the struggle couldn’t accept it, they didn’t know what the fuck to do. They didn’t understand what I was proposing. They felt somehow that what I was proposing was right, but they didn’t know how to act on it. They didn’t understand that the important thing was to stir things up all…

Best books of 2017

2017-11-302018-07-12 Categories: Reading ListTags: Aimé Césaire · Deleuze & Guattari · Georges Didi-Huberman · Harun Farocki · Louis Auguste Blanqui · Mark Fisher · Nanni Balestrini · Pierre Guyotat · Sean BonneyLeave a comment

Nanni Balestrini; Blackout / Commune Editions Heriberto Yépez; Transnational Battle Field / Commune Editions Attila József; Liste freier Ideen / roughbooks Ursula Andkjaer Olsen; Third-Millennium Heart / Action Books / Broken Dimanche Press Sean Bonney; Ghosts / Materials Georges Didi-Huberman; Die Namenlosen zwischen Licht und Schatten / Fink Pierre Guyotat; In der Tiefe / diaphanes Aimé Césaire; The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire / Wesleyan University Press The Invisible Committee; Now / Semiotext(e) Mark Fisher; The Weird and the Eerie / Repeater François Dosse; Gilles Deleuze Félix Guattari / Turia + Kant Harun Farocki; Zehn, zwanzig, dreißig, vierzig. Fragment einer Autobiografie /…

BLACKOUT ((poetry & politics))

Tag: Nanni Balestrini