March 2014

Open! publishes Keeping the Peace

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Introspection is a chronic pathological condition of the Occupy movement. Everyone is constantly preoccupied with how much of their past to give up in return for a future that hasn’t arrived yet. What if we fail? Or worse, what if we’re successful? What if we do manage to change the world? What will it look like? Will it still need us? We share the restless anxiety of the revolutionary who knows one must become obsolete in order for the revolution to succeed.

Open! has published Keeping the Peace, our text on our experiences in Occupy Amsterdam. Read the complete essay here. Open! is an Amsterdam-based publication platform that fosters and disseminates experimental knowledge on art, culture and the public domain. It works with theorists, artists and designers who contribute to the creation of an experimental and critical body of thought.

Work in progress

Work in Progress (2013) immerses itself in the manufacturing industry of Markina-Xemein, the rural Basque village where Jaio comes from. A video documents the mass-production of rubber car parts, following the pieces from the assembly line in a worker-owned factory to subcontracted workshops where informal workers finish them by hand. Several of these workers are employed by the artists to cast hundreds of replicas of small modernist sculptures. These are displayed on mass-produced shelving to evoke the "Chalk Laboratory" of Basque sculptor Jorge Oteiza, a fierce critic of the commodification of art.