mezomian community?

Revolution in Christiania - day 2

The revolutionary event is a matter of four components, interlaced and intertwined - there is no chronology here, but a simultaneous precsence of components of the revolutionary event.

The first is the intuitive component. For revolutions to take place, rather than just riots, revolts or mass suicides, intuition is called for, in the philosophical meaning of the word, as coined and held from Spinoza to Bergson. A truth that poises itself as a clear, but often wordless distinction – a point de mire, the bull’s eye ahead of the mind that draws thought, action, and order forwards. Though historical reconstruction is always brought to us through the angle of causes and effects, they mostly fail to catch the intuitive component that comes from the vestige of no-sense, of a place inside history in its constantly living and multiple of virtuality. If revolution is immanence coming forth, there must be active forces within it in the present, or maybe active from the point of a future already inside the present, a non-transcendance of the emanence of a future exploding from the inside of actuality. Or the past actively decomposing itself. Such a past in decomposition would be similar to an intuition of society reinventing itself in its own decomposition, as a constant re-opening of the impossible.
 

Christiania in the Virtual?

 

Arrhhh, in this country nothing ever statrs in the rain, at least not revolutions. And for the past three days it has been raining, so there are only tourists here, nice Italians with their cameras and laid back attitudes, but no revolutionaries active in the rain.

When the picture was taken, the grand project of Forny Christiania or renewing Christiania was still young, and the sun was still beating brightly on this 'fristad', home of one of the longest lasting social, political, and economic experiments in the world, probably, to be still alive, now, after 30 years of fighting and playing, of internal struggle and external doubt and curiosity and fascination with a place insisting upon their own rules, even when these started to be infected by the rules from the world that they has denounced. For so many years, the sign saying "You are now entering the European Union" swayed over the exit to Copenhagen, upon leaving this old naval and military zone, squatted and habitated illegally by the Christianites-to-be - reminding every visitor of the insistence upon illegality and autonomy when necessary.

A lot of these years have also been dominated by the non-legalisation of hash distribution, wars between drug dealers and the other habitants, or between fractions of drug dealers with one another. And fights with the police, again and again, today, they patrol the area permanently, 20-30 cops wait just on the outside, always ready to move in on anything remotely similar to trouble. The winds have turned, the political majority tipped some five years ago, and Christiania's move towards normalisation started once again, this time apparently for good. In two weeks, the official plan for the continuation of Christiania will be published, a plan that is the result of 3 years of negociations with the locals here, but it will not be met with happy faces all the same. The plan is not a detail regulation of the place, it's an archtiectural and city planning initiative, presenting mainly how to normalise the conditions of living and building in Christiania, where so many self-made houses have shot up in the past decades.

But the plan is still a turning point, like the harder police strategies have been since last year. So it has to be met by a counter-plan, a revolution from the inside, showing that Christiania is not only the frightened island of a few hundred people in exile from society, but also a source of change and experimentation, a place to begin the new and try out possibilities that could show the rest of society that the new is here, that other worlds are here, that history has not stopped or become a duel between fundamentalists on either sides of the religious divide.

So this is what it's all about, 100 days in Christiania under the title *Renew Christiania* - but will it? Will it be new? Some of the locals are optimists already, saying things have already started moving; that the very fact of inviting people in from outside the freetown to help create development from the inside, is already proof that nothing will be like it was before. Others say that it will be noting but 100 days of fun under the tent and in the old Grey Hall, fun, but no changem no revolution. Revolution will only happen if the Christianites want it, they say, and they don't want it. They want to be left alone, and they have been against the world for so long they don't know how to be for anything anymore.

Thus, for now, the revolution of Christiania is in the virtual. It is here, but it is not actual, it's in the sparks of joy and experimentation that show something else behind the smiles, a belief at least, that something else is possible, that it is still essential to be trying to move society beyond the stupidity of making moeny for buying bricks and tires and petrol and for keeping the enenmy outside. The next weeks will give a sign of the virtual unfolding or dying away here, under the tent and in the house, but also inside all the houses of the free town trying to wake up once again. And I will be here every now and then, palying along, trying to give them a small slice of revolution, and trying to bring some of the results to the outside world.

So far, revolution is virtual, and Renew Christiania is mostly food, drinks, lounging, dancing, music, and words. On Friday, the political salons will start, and the real talks of what the people want will start with them. Then, we'll see.

Revolutions revisited

Sent another text for reviewing recently, it carries the heavy title of "Explosio Revolutio - Four Components in the Revolutionary Event", and suggests the first steps to an eventology of the revolutionary event, mainly in encounter with Deleuze and Zizek (reading Deleuze), Henri Michaux, and Alain Badiou. The Michaux part is drwan from his fascinating book on the effects of doing mescaline - yes, I know, I should not find dangerous drugs fascinating, but he is quite serious about it, lots of great descriptions and small stories about his experiments, very philosophical, and besides, wht would Michaux be without the drugs? Sorry, but it's a part of the package.. so the discussion is, of course, also a matter of: what is a revolution wihtout a goal? If revolutions are not bound up by the final goal, what will they become? Is that just pop-art and commercialisation, or is it simply the drug-thing again: suspensions and no results to show for the world?

Will be working some on the renewal of Christiania, the "Free City" created in the middle of Copenhagen some 30 years ago, and in the middle of another crisis now, with the political majority heading for normalisation of this out-of-bounds place. Needless to say, I am not exactly for the normalisation thing, but it has made them realise that they have to open up and invite people inside to help define what this place could be: the more they serve the communities outside, the more people have a share or a stake in the place, and the more it will be difficult to change the place without asking. Lots of fear and anxiety going on, but lots of interesting moves and sizzles, too. Try googling Christiania, or go to the Danish website for the project, Renewing Christiania (think it has some English stuff as well, at least in links). And come see the place, feel the ambience of a slight suspension, a minor revolution (those are often the most succesful ones, not minor by the affects that they create, but by their size) - and spend the night in the legendary Grey Hall (where I saw and heard old Nick Cave ten years ago) or even at our nearby ship..

Popping up between texts and other babies

Just got a comment published in "Art'ishake" journal for art and global development - check out the text at the gravitations site. It's called "Intuitive Politics, Art and Devleopment" and is easily or at least quickly read.

Funny thing is, I have no idea how many people actaully read this journal, but if the subject is of any interest to you, go have a look at the organisation publishing it, Arts for Global Development.

Philosophy is begin to take another step these days, into the wicked and tricky land of actually going active - to a certain extent, it's a matter of what interventions the world will let you carry out. But of course, there are many ways - becoming a vortex that places enough weird, attracting points of disappearance in the quasi-public landscape may be a useful way of intervening as well?

Otherwise, the presencing of 3 weeks old Mai is rather imposing, she's not the first one, but I guess I'm older and less preoccupied with myself, so there is more space for true contemplation and meeting somewhere out there between not-yet-language and becoming-many that she's in. Yeah, my older boys always laugh at the fact their dad is a philosopher - "Is that philosophy, dad?" they say, when a particularly strange sounding sentence crosses my lips. She'll get the hang of it, too, now she's got two coaches to help her, the teenage philosophy crew..