[echo] springerin/working poor

[Ulrike Bergermann]

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Springerin 3/2006
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The latest issue of "Springerin" deals with the relevance of the 
concept of the "working poor" in the context of cultural 
representation. The themes of poverty and social exlusion are only 
marginal parts of contemporary art. Nevertheless, in the last ten years 
there has been an increase in socially committed approaches; these have 
created a "welfare" kind of art, rather than one that questions social 
conditions, write the editors in their introduction.

Beyond state and capital: Paulo Virno, an Italian theoretician and 
former member of the autonomous Left, talks with Klaus Ronneberger 
about intangible labour, pay as an independent variable, and 
post-fordism. What happens when we change from labour based-capitalism 
to knowledge-based capitalism? Virno tries to give an answer in his 
book "Grammar of the Multitude" by specifying Negri's concept of 
"multitude".

In action: "Angry sandwich people" perform Brechts poem "Lob auf die 
Dialektik" in celebration of the anniversary of the first Russian 
Revolution of 1905. The result of this staged action was as a slide 
show published by "Springerin". The sandwich people convene and slide 
apart, with their body as the medium of text. The happening was 
organized by the Russian art group "Chto delat", who define themselves 
as a "collective platform that opens a space between theory, art, and 
activism with the goal of politicizing all three types of praxis."

Refering to Foucault's concept of "parrhesia", Turkish writer Sürreyyya 
Evren expounds art's relation to the problem of poverty. He searches 
for the parameters of an art capable of dealing with the term "working 
poor".

And in the net section: Vera Tollmann on the Internet in China; 
Alessandro Ludovico on current net-projects about cartography; 
Christina Nemec on the Viennese electronic label MOSZ; and Christian 
Fricke on the archive project "40Jahrevideokunst.de".

For the full table of contents of "Springerin" 3/2006:
 >>www.eurozine.com/journals/springerin.html

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