Amador Fernández-Savater

• Translated by Stacco Troncoso, edited by Jane Loes Lipton– Guerrilla Translation!
  
• Main Image by Colectivo Enmedio
• Original article at eldiario.es
  

The Spanish government’s latest round of anti-protest laws are as worrying as they are laughably predictable. On top of criminalizing passive resistance, the new regulation considers actions such as uploading images of police violence to YouTube, or even Tweeting about a protest, to be punishable by fines as high a 600,000€, if you decide to protest in front of any so-called “Democratic Institutions”. As George Orwell argued, “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial”.

Given that this trend is growing internationally, and rather than play a cat and mouse game where normal people have the losing hand, we can turn the tables and ridicule these sorts of reactionary, short sighted, desperate measures with our greatest assets: imagination, humor and the fact that we’re the good guys. The following article, written by Spanish art-ivists Amador Fernández-Savater and Leónidas Martín, offers 12 examples drawn from the last five decades poised to inspire and provoke. And check this out: so many people are eager to learn more about the how-to and history of this approach, that this has been the single most widely Facebook-shared article in eldiario.es’s history! We’ve also included some English hyperlinks to follow up on some of these leads and subtitled the one video in Spanish. Although written in reaction to the passage of the new law in Spain, we believe that their application and appeal is universal. Read on…

The objective of Spain’s new Citizen Security Law is very simple: to proscribe politics by criminalizing it, and withdrawing anything other than politics by politicians from circulation. This stunted, meager concept of democracy declares that decision-making is the exclusive right of political parties, public opinion the monopoly of experts, and that the sole role of the citizenry is to vote every four years.

The law was immediately dubbed the “Anti 15-M” law in social networks. In effect, these measures don’t hold up to the general and abstract character of a proper “law”. Instead, they’re very specifically directed against the new forms of on-the-ground citizen politics we’ve seen emerge in these last two and a half years: 15-M, Mareas (Citizen’s Tides), PAH, for example ¹. While critics of the 15-M movement dismissed it as something meek and inoffensive, it’s now evident that its open, creative, and inclusive modes of action have posed a challenge to the powers that be.

It is certainly not the first time in the history of politics – and by this we mean, the surging increase of debate and decision-making by the people on issues of common life  – that politics have come under threat: dictatorships, authoritative regimes and repressive laws, police management of public space, and so on. What then can we do when open, frontal confrontation is neither possible, nor the best of all options (because it’s useless, because it makes us feel despondent and crushes our voices, because it only leads to a trail of wounded, imprisoned protesters, etc.)?

In other, infinitely harsher situations than ours, the people managed to come up with subtle, intelligent and imaginative strategies to bypass repressive situations and laws. Below we present 12 stories of actions that can inspire us today to disobey the new law with humor, beauty, mobility, and a bit of camouflage.

Humour (or How to say it without saying it)

1: Fuck Communism in the USA

In the United States in the 60s, two words were absolutely forbidden. One, literally, was the word “fuck”. Writing it or saying it aloud could carry fines, or even prison sentences. The other was, both culturally and symbolically, “communism”. It was the great taboo, the evil spirit which the House Committee on Un-American Activities had decided to eradicate (and magnify, in considering anyone and everyone to be a suspect).

The Yippies, which was the creative activist group led by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, decided to take matters into their own hands by organizing a citywide sticker and billboard campaign with the following slogan: “fuck communism”. There was a poster designed by Paul Krassner.

They were saying the forbidden (sometimes as a feint or while saying it without saying it), dodging censorship and criminalization, seeking complicity with intelligent observers able read between the lines and appreciate the genius of this operation.

For further investigation: Read Kurt Vonnegut’s thoughts on this poster.

2: The Orange Alternative in Poland

In the 80s, you needed guts and killer smarts if you wanted to go up against the Communist regime of Poland. Without them, you’d almost surely end up in prison for the rest of your life – or worse. Members of Pomaranczowa Alternatywa (Orange Alternative) stood out for their whimsical approach to protest and their creative use of the absurd.

They kicked off their career by painting dwarves over the regime’s attempts to whitewash all antigovernment graffiti away. These omnipresent dwarves soon took on lives of their own as symbols of Polish dissent. Hundreds of people dressed up as orange dwarves started to protest in the streets, demanding things such as the overthrow of Gargamel (!)

By using metaphor and allegory, saying without saying, they carried out dozens of protests without running the risk of being arrested  – that is, without those arrests making the authorities look pretty ridiculous in the process. Really, how can anyone take a police officer seriously after seeing him arrest a protester for “participating in an illegal gathering of dwarves”?

For further investigation: Join “The Orange Alternative Revolution of Dwarves”

3: The Tighty-whitey Block in New York City

A few days before the protests against the World Economic Forum in February 2002, the Major of New York City digs up an old law (drafted in 1847, no less!) prohibiting the use of masks in the course of any public event. The restoration of the law has a very clear objective: to allow the police to compile a thorough photo archive of protesters.

The New Kids on the Black Block, a group of anti-globalization activists wise in the ways of guerrilla communication, scrutinize the law with the utmost attention. What the law literally says is that the “use of any kind of mask” is strictly prohibited. But, with a bit of creativity, many things can be pressed into service…and thus, the Tighty-whitey Block is born.

“Tighty-whities” is US slang for old school underpants. In a matter of hours, the New Kids acquired a truckload of more than a thousand of these underpants, had them printed with subversive messages and distributed among the protesters. What’s more, they produced a gigantic underpants-shaped banner as a rallying point for all who wanted – or needed – to protest in anonymity, even if it was with a pair of underpants covering their mugs.

Tighty-whities: underpants though they may be, masks they most definitely are not. So, the police are left impotent as hundreds of protesters march by with underpants over their faces. They can’t make arrests, much less build that photo archive – certainly not the kind of mugshots they were expecting!

Camouflage (or, how to break the rules of the game from inside) 

4: Argentina’s 501 Movement

Voting is compulsory in Argentina, but the National Electoral Code exempts anyone who’s 500 kilometers or more away from their home. On election day 1999 a group of young people invited anyone feeling dissatisfied with the electoral routine to make their way to a location 501 km away from their place of residence, as a way of expressing that the true meaning of democracy can’t be reduced to choosing from among what are, essentially, identical options every four years.

All the participants certified before police that, on election day, they would be 501 km away from their place of residence. Free, collective travel arrangements were provided from Buenos Aires to Sierra de la Ventana, where a festival was held. Unsurprisingly, they were accused of being “anti-political”, “anti-democratic”, and blah, blah, blah. But they countered, in their “Open Letter to Voters”, that right there at kilometer 501 they had reclaimed the true meaning of democracy, not as a perfunctory formality of the Necessary and Inevitable, but rather as a transformation of the extant, by everyone and for everyone.

For further investigation: “El movimiento 501, la “Carta a los votantes” y la spanish revolution” (in Spanish).

5: The Sex Pistols on the Thames

It’s mid-1977, Queen Elizabeth’s Jubilee is drawing near and the Government and the Royal House are desperate to avoid any critical actions. Following this logic, the Sex Pistols, authors of the song “God Save the Queen”, are expressly forbidden from playing on the British mainland.

The Pistols’ reaction to the ban is legendary. Instead of throwing in the towel, the band rent a boat for the occasion (aptly named the “Queen Elizabeth”), and on the 7^th of June, the same day as the Royal March, they play a gig smack in the middle of the River Thames. Lest we forget, while the official order expressly prohibits them from playing on British mainland, it doesn’t say anything about rivers and waterways.

The stunt was so successful that it sent shockwaves through the media. That same week, their single “God Save the Queen” reached number one in the British charts. But, given that the song was banned, their chart-topping success could neither be announced on television, nor played on the radio. It was the only time in history that there has been no number one song.

6: Belarus’ Revolution Through Social Networks

Belarus, July 2011. Frustration over the economic crisis reaches its peak. President Alezander Lukashenko’s authoritative regime forbids all types of protest, while police repress all dissent. In response, the “Revolution Through Social Networks” appeared, a public call to gather in the streets to applaud, or to synch all mobile phones and make them ring at the same time. In this (apparently inoffensive) manner, thousands of people managed to turn a handful of everyday gestures into powerful expressions of dissent.

Mobility (or how to not become a target for your adversaries)

7. Lavapiés 15, Madrid

Located at its namesake address in the Lavapies district of Madrid, Lavapies 15 was a squat back in 1996. An official eviction order was drawn up within six months of its existence. The dwellers of Lavapies 15 sealed the door and pretended to hole up inside, the standard procedure for squats at that time (very heroic perhaps, but both useless and frustrating in the end).

So, as a hundred police agents and a helicopter searched the house, the squatters made their escape over rooftops, making obvious the disproportionate, unjustified and repressive deployment. It’s even rumored that some squatters actually stood by the door, mingling with the rest of the onlookers, to witness their own eviction.

“Resistance doesn’t have to equal suffering, taking the piss is another form of struggle”, they explained in regards to their action.

For further investigation: Read a short excerpt from “The Exteriority Crisis: From the City Limits and Beyond” on “The Ghosts” of Lavapies 15.

8: Chile’s National day of Protest

Chile, July 1983. Pinochet’s dictatorship is 10 years old, and the copper mine workers celebrate the anniversary by holding a national strike. The copper mines were the backbone of the country’s economy at the time, so the dictator’s response was swift. Hundreds of troops and various police forces surround the mines, with orders to shoot anyone supporting the strike. Bloodshed seems inevitable. However, it didn’t turn out that way.

Barely a day before the beginning of the strike, the leaders and spokespersons of the worker’s movement decide to change strategies. Rather than having the miners work stoppage be the only means of protest, they called for the first National Day of Protest, with many decentralized actions throughout the country. For example, people were encouraged to drive their cars at a snail´s pace through the main highways and thoroughfares of Chile, creating epic traffic jams all over the country; or to turn the lights on and off in their houses; or to incessantly bang pans and pots at nightfall. This was the birth of the cacerolazo, a mode of protest still very much in use nowadays.

9: The (non) Battle of Puerta del Sol, Madrid

Tuesday, August 2nd 2011, the police unceremoniously clear out the remains of the recent occupation of Puerta del Sol, Madrid’s famous main square. Specifically, the info booth left there by the 15-M Movement. They tear down the beautiful plaque that read “We slept, we awoke. The square is taken”, and dump it in the trashbin. Thousands of citizens, feeling suddenly erased from the map, spontaneously gather to reconquer the square.

Lines of police blocked all entry points, while armored police vans stood guard over an empty square. Suddenly someone shouts, “Ciao, ciao, ciao, nos vamos a Callao” (“Ciao, ciao, we’re moving to Callao” – one of the neighboring squares). The slogan is quickly picked up. Rather than confront the police, protesters decide to turn their backs on them. Change of perspective, change of scenery, change in the dialogue, change of interlocutors, and change of emotions. Instead of uselessly screaming in the face of impassive policemen, 15-M decides to branch out all over the city. A seemingly helpless situation turns into one of empowerment. A joyous evasion.

The police garrison at Sol remains entrenched in position, protecting nothing. A day goes by, then two, three…such a level of police presence is unwarranted, and on the fourth day, they are told to stand down. Then, on the night of August 5^th, the people happily re-enter the now liberated square in a great march.

For further investigation: a text Amador wrote describing the events (translation not ours)

The (Non) Battle of Sol as seen by Enrique Flores. The bubble reads “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Admission”

Beauty (or how art disarms brute force)

10: The pianist at Gezi Park (Istanbul)

During the June 2013 protests and prior to the final eviction of Gezi Park in Istanbul, president Erdogan had given an ultimatum to the demonstrators.

7 P.M. on the 12^th of June was the chosen hour. Everything was primed for a police charge: emergency crews, gas masks, media, barricades…but just as the clashes began and the teargas exploded, there came a sound – neither war cry nor firearms, but music: The Beatles’ “Let It Be”.  A piano had appeared from nowhere, and a hooked-nosed skinny kid with a hat was playing “Imagine” by John Lennon and “Bella Ciao”. Just then, everyone stopped what they were doing and gathered: they sat, applauded and sang together.

The pianist was a German of Italian origin, who’d been travelling throughout Europe carrying a message of peace. He had made the piano himself, asserting that his music calmed the police and, somehow, protected the demonstrators. Erdogan didn’t dare crush this community sprung around music. It would have been too brutal an image to expose to the world.

(Here you can see the Solfónica, Madrid’s own protest-march classical ensemble and choir, producing the same effect during the Spanish general strike of November 14, 2012)

What you have just read is a fragment of a chronicle of those days in Istanbul written by our friend José Fernández-Layos. You can read the full account here in Spanish

11: “Standing Man” in Istanbul

When Erdogan finally – without warning – attacked Gezi Park and evicted the occupiers, he issued a threat: anyone trying to enter Taksim Square (adjacent to the park) would be accused of terrorism. Thousands of people tried to enter forcibly or via the barricades, but it was all in vain. Until one man waltzed through, posing as any other tourist, with no gasmask or bandanna covering his face, and simply stood in front of the Atatürk building, just standing there quietly for hours. It soon became a trending topic on Twitter and the police arrested him, but it was too late: many other “standing men” or “still persons” like him replicated the action in an incessant dribble on squares throughout the country. Bit by bit, Taksim was reclaimed. It was practically impossible to steer public opinion that these people were terrorists, when it was plain to see that they were simply people standing there…although, in fact, everyone knew that they were defying the government.

What you have just read is a fragment of another chronicle written by our friend José Fernández-Layos about those days in Istanbul. You can read the full account here in Spanish

12: The Reflectors in Barcelona

Around the time of the first anniversary of the 15-M protests, the powers that be had flipped the switch on their repressive countermeasures to criminalize street protest. Playing into this dynamic robs the streets of plurality, “de-democratizing” protest and reducing it to small groups, very homogenous and easy to identify and codify. Enter The Reflectors with the slogan, “We won’t play that game, let’s break the codes”.

The Reflectors look like superheroes out of a Marvel comic book, but they are in fact normal people with two or three very un-normal characteristics: their brilliant costumes made out of aluminum foil, the Reflecto-Ray and the Reflecto-Cube.

Used correctly, the Reflecto-Ray reflects sunlight over police cameras recording protesters. The Reflecto-Cube can be used in two different ways: as a festive prop when any protest starts getting boring, and as an antidote to police charges.

This second application of the Reflecto-Cube was put to the test for the first time in Barcelona, during the last general strike on November 14^th, 2012. The populist protests of the morning had finished, and police entered the Plaza de Cataluña square in full force, striking everyone in their path with their batons. People panicked. Terrified protesters started running towards neighboring Paseo de Gracia and, at that exact moment, the Reflecto-Cube erupted onto the scene. After a good while trying to get to grips with it, the riot police decided to dispose of it by pushing it back towards The Reflectors, who proceeded to send it back to the police, starting a game of absurd beach volleyball that radically transformed the atmosphere in the square from sheer panic to all-out party in less than a minute.

For further investigation: Find out more about The Reflectors’ adventures here.

Do you know of any other similar actions? Tell us your story in the comments, and we will try and update this article with them.

This first compilation was written by Leónidas Martín Saura (Enmedio Collective) and Amador Fernández-Savater, with the indispensable help of Sabino Ormazábal and his horseflies, Juan Gutiérrez, Frauke Schultz, Lawrence of Arabia, Nuria Campabadal, Beautiful Trouble, José Fernández-Layos, Margarita Padilla and Franco Ingrassia.

The principles of the Guerrilla Movement are, ultimately, two: mobility as the best defensive weapon; and thought, as the best kind of attack. Neutralizing the enemy’s targets and the conversion of each individual into a sympathizer and friend are the keys to victory.

BONUS! Here’s a coda of sorts to this compilation, written by the co-author Leónidas Martín and published in our Metablog: A call for the World Record of people shouting, “You’ll never own a house in your whole fucking life”

Guerrilla Translation/Related:Overcoming the Shock Doctrine/Soy PúblicaStrength and Power: Reimagining Revolution/ Amador Fernández-SavaterThe Interruption of the Dominant Narrative, an interview with Colectivo Enmedio/ Amador Fernández-Savater interviews colectivo Enmedio

^{1. [These are all groups and collectives enmeshed within the 15 -M network. Briefly]:}

• Las Mareas or “Citizen Tides” are Spain’s post-syndical defense network for Education, Public Health, Feminism, Labour rights and more.
• PAH (Plataformas de los Afectados por la Hipoteca) is Spain’s anti-foreclosure network.

To read about these, and many other, initiatives taking place in Spain right now, read our translation of Bernardo Guitérrez’s “Spain’s Micro-Utopias: The 15M Movement and its Prototypes”]↩

Amador Fernández-Savater

Translated by Stacco Troncoso, edited by Jane Loes Lipton – Guerrilla Translation!

Original text in Spanish

How is it possible that fifty people can stop a forced eviction? Not just once, but over and over again (as many as six hundred times). This question has been on my mind for a while. During the 25-S protests in Madrid ¹, we saw for ourselves that the police can evict any number of protestors from anywhere. So, exactly what sort of strength allows those fifty people to stop a foreclosure eviction? What does it mean to have strength, if it’s not quite the same as having power (physical, quantitative, economic, institutional, etc.)? The following is my attempt at an answer that, by no means, fully exhausts the question. That is to say, there’s room for more answers and, above all, to keep asking the question – this, I believe, is the most important thing.

War of Position and War of Maneuver

I’m veering offroad for a bit before heading back to the highway, that being the question of how a handful of people have the strength to defend a home. Let´s look at the debate on the meaning of revolution carried out in Marxism between the two World Wars, where we’ll focus on the approach favoured by the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci. At first it may seem like an odd jump, but it concerns a debate that is markedly contemporary, that the past doesn’t quite “pass”; it’s a rich deposit of images and knowledge, prone to updates and renewed sense-making from the perspective of our present problems and necessities.

Gramsci enters the debate making a distinction between a “war of maneuver” and a “war of position”. The concept of class struggle as war, described in military strategy terms, was prevalent in the Marxism of the time. What’s more, Gramsci was writing from Mussolini’s prison, and continually obliged to come up with new metaphors to evade censorship. Paradoxically, his use of cryptic and elusive language, rather than classical Marxist vocabulary, made Gramsci’s work a thousand times more useful as a source of inspiration for future readers.

Okay, so, the key features of the “war of maneuver” are: speed, limited appeal, and frontal attack. Gramsci makes his arguments via Trotsky’s “permanent revolution”, George Sorels’ general strike, Rosa Luxembourg´s worker insurrection and, particularly, the Leninist power grab. These images of revolutionary change clash, time and again, with European and Western reality: the bloody repression of the Spartacist movement in Germany (1918), the disbanding of worker’s councils in Italy during the Bienno Rosso (1919-20), and so on. To avert a predictable sense of frustration and to keep actively aspiring to social change, we have to reimagine revolution.

Writing behind bars, Gramsci reflects that the war of maneuver can only succeed where society is relatively independent from the State, and civil society (ie., institutions interrelated with State power: justice, media, etc.) is basic and unstructured, as was the case in Russia. By contradiction, Western Europe’s civil society was extremely solid, and acted as an “entrenchment and fortification to protect social order. It seems as if economic catastrophe has decisively breached the enemy position, but this remains a superficial effect, for behind it lies an efficient line of defense”.

Gramsci critiques the “historical mysticism” (revolution as a miraculous enlightenment) and economic determinism (the supposition that economic collapse will trigger the revolutionary process) and posits a new strategy, an alternate image for social transformation: the “war of position”. The defining feature of the war of position is the affirmation and development of a new vision of the world. Each of our daily actions, according to Gramsci, holds an implicit vision (or philosophy) of the world. Revolution disseminates a new vision – along with other expressions – of the world that slowly leaks power away from the old vision to, finally, displace it. This process is described by Gramsci as the “construction of hegemony”. No power will last long without hegemony, without control of the expressions of everyday life. It’d be domination sans legitimacy, power reduced to pure repression and fear. The taking of power must, therefore, be preceded by a “taking” of civil society.

Christianity and the Enlightenment

To illustrate his argument for another idea of revolution, Gramsci offers two examples: Christianity and the Enlightenment.  It’s quite curious: he utilizes a religious reform and an intellectual overhaul as models to conceptualise the political revolution he longs for. In both examples, the determining catalyst of change is a new definition of reality.

In the case of Christianity, it’s the idea that Christ has resurrected and there is life after death. Christianity coalesces around this “good news” that filters through every crack left behind by the old pagan world. The interesting feature is that the first Christians avoided power. Instead, their actions ultimately led power to come to them, as exemplified by the conversion of Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century A.D. The lesson of the first Christians would be: don’t fight directly for power, be the message-bearer of a new concept of the world, and, finally, the power shall fall (into your hands).

In the case of the Enlightenment, it’s the idea that all persons are of equal worth, as beings gifted with reason. The Enlightenment was the movement that spread this idea, in salons, clubs or encyclopediae. In the end, remarks Gramsci, once the French Revolution actually took place, it had already be won. Domination has no legitimacy because this new concept of the world has silently displaced the old, overtaking the powers of the Old Regime without them even noticing. The lesson from the Enlightened would be: the revolution is won before the revolution takes place, through the elaboration and expansion of a new image of the world.

These are the examples mentioned by Gramsci, who died in prison in 1937. But the 20th century has surely offered us other examples much closer to our own experience. Take, for example, the Gay Rights Movement. A movement both seen and unseen, formal and informal, political and cultural, that completely transforms the common perception regarding affective and sexual differences and goes on to effect legislative change. Or the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King Jr. explained that the irresistible strength of the movement resided in overcoming the deeply internalised feelings of inferiority by confronting the opponents as equals (in civil disobedience campaigns, for example). An uprising in dignity that spurred modifications in the laws of the land.

Thus, the war of position, unlike the war of maneuver, is more an infiltration than an assault. A slow displacement, rather than an accumulation of forces. A collective and anonymous movement, rather than a minority and centralised operation. A form of indirect, everyday and diffuse pressure, rather than a concentrated and simultaneous insurrection (but, make no mistake, Gramsci doesn’t exclude insurrection at any stage, but subordinates it to the construction of hegemony). And, above all, based on the building and development of a new definition of reality. This, as explained in the words of the philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis as “what counts and what doesn’t count, what makes sense and what doesn’t, a definition not inscribed in books, but on the very being of things: the actions of human beings, their relations, their organization, their perception of what is, their affirmation and search for what counts, the materiality of the objects they produce, use and consume”.

15-M as cultural revolution

Let’s return to our first scene, keeping this detour to Gramsci in mind. I think that if fifty people are capable of stopping a foreclosure eviction, it’s because, in some way, it had already been stopped.  That is, 15-M, when taken as a new social climate rather than an organization or structure, has redefined reality. What before was unseen (the very fact of foreclosure evictions happening) is now seen. What before was seen (in fact, normalized) as a “routine foreclosure of an outstanding mortgage”, now feels like something intolerable. What once was presented as inevitable, now appears as something contingent. The 15-M climate, using Gramsci’s analysis, has led the institutions of civil society to a state of crisis: policemen who disobey orders and won’t take part in evictions, judges taking advantage of any crack in the legal code to favour the foreclosed, journalists and media who empathise and amplify their messages, etc. Ultimately, fifty people in direct connection with the climate of 15-M, both in regards to the what (what they’re fighting for) as to the how (the way they fight) are not just fifty people. They are accompanied by millions, unseen. It’s what the philosopher Alain Badiou calls “a majority minority”. An agent of change: capable of infecting because it is itself a carrier.

So, going back to our initial question, we can define strength as the capacity to redefine reality: what’s worthy and unworthy, possible and impossible, seen and unseen. 15-M’s climate probably hasn’t got much power (physical, quantitative, institutional or economic), but strength, definitely. It isn’t just a social or political change, but also – above all – a cultural (or even aesthetic) transformation, an adjustment in perception (the threshold of what is seen and what is unseen), in sensibility (what we consider compatible or intolerable in our existence), and in the idea of what’s possible (“yes, we can”) ².

The import of all this hasn’t been well understood by those who are critical of 15-M’s excessively “emotional” slant, starting with Zygmunt Bauman, the famous sociologist. What we loosely label affective or emotional – or, the unconscious base of our communal living – is precisely what moves us to consider a person who doesn’t live nearby as our neighbour anyway, and to then show up at their door to protect them from a forced eviction. The feeling that each of our lives doesn’t result in a single, isolated self, but rather, is interconnected with many other unknown lives (“we are the 99%”).

Politics isn’t, first and foremost, a matter of making allegations and raising awareness; there is no one straw that breaks the camel’s back, and what’s bad can be tolerated indefinitely. Instead, it is a sort of shedding of the skin, by which we become sensitive to this or allergic to that. Nor has it much to do with convincing (discourse), or seducing (marketing), but rather with opening all sorts of spaces to experience another way of living, another definition of reality, another vision of the world. In the struggle for hegemony, the skin – yours, mine, everyone’s – is the battlefield.

Some references:

• The basic ideas for this text, as always, arose from conversations with friends, in this case, specially with Juan, Leo and Ema. I presented them for the first time at the 15MP2P conference.
• If you enjoyed this text, you may be interested in these others: “Waves and Foam” or “Seeing the Invisible: On Unicorns and the 15-M Movement”
• Guerre de mouvement et guerre de position, Antonio Gramsci & Razmig Keucheyan, La Fabrique (2012).
• The “Antonio Gramsci’s Commitment” chapter from the book The Company Of Critics: Social Criticism And Political Commitment In The Twentieth Century by Michael Walzer, (Basic Books, 1988)
• I think that John Beasley Murray’s arguments against the idea of hegemony being reduced to a question of ideological discourse are essential. They can be found in his book Posthegemony Political Theory and Latin America, (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2011). See here for more information.
• The Introduction to L’Expérience du mouvement ouvrier by Cornelius Castoriadis (Union Générale d’Éditions, 1973)
• On Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement, I found the “The Spiritual Discipline Against Resentment “ chapter from Christopher Lasch’s “The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics” (1991)  to be a very inspiring read.

<sup>1. [ “25-S” refers to the Occupy/Surround Congress protests of September 25 2012.]↩
2. [“Sí se puede” was originally used as the motto of the United Farm Workers and, notably, during  Cesar Chavez’s 24 day fast in Phoenix, Arizona (see here for more details). It was then taken, in its English version, by the Obama “Yes, we can!” 2008 campaign. Finally, the 15-M movement has reclaimed the phrase, back in its original Spanish form as a rallying cry to celebrate its successes. See this video, for example..]↩</sup>

Amador Fernández-Savater interviews colectivo EnmedioMembers and collaborators of Enmedio, taking part on the “Paro Monumental” (Monumental Unemployment” action. The text on the balloon reads: “Spain, champions in unemployment”

Amador Fernández-Savater/Colectivo Enmedio

Translated by Stacco Troncoso, edited by Jane Loes Lipton -Guerrilla Translation!

Frustrated by the lack of connection between art and political action, Campa, Leo, Mario y Oriana created, among others, the colectivo Enmedio (“InBetween collective”) (Barcelona)  to explore the transformative potential of images and tales. They recently hacked the statue of Columbus in Barcelona and, amongst many other initiatives, they are also responsible for the striking visual campaign used by Spain’s anti-foreclosure movement, the PAH, to highlight and publicly shame corrupt politicians responsible for maintaining Spain’s draconian foreclosure laws. We talk to them about art’s power to politically intervene, both practically and potentially, in the crisis.

A space in Barcelona, an art collective, an action group, what exactly is Enmedio?

Leo: The name says a lot about us. Enmedio is born of heartbreak. We’re all image professionals (designers, filmmakers, artists, etc.) who’ve left our usual work behind. We found no meaning in the spaces we were assigned: the art academy, the advertising agency, the production company. So we got out of that and came up with a new space where can do what we want, a bit of an uncomfortable and difficult space in a no-man’s-land.

Campa: There’s no politics in the established spaces for art (though there’s no lack of politicking!) nor will you find a whole lot of concern about aesthetics in political spaces. This is what pushed us to create a third space, to be in-between art and politics.

Mario: Visual work can be very powerful and that’s something that we want to keep exploring. It’s our thing, it’s what we do best and the way we relate to the world. But we need to take that to other places and mix it up with other things. “Enmedio” makes reference to that unknown space we want to occupy, that has something to do with photography or vídeo, but it isn’t just that, although it has that too, I don’t know if I’ve made myself clear….

Oriana: We’ve been exploring this edge for some ten or twelve years. Some of us come from collectives like Las Agencias, Yomango, V de Vivienda, etc. There are  people who’ve been involved in squats, or the anti-globalization protests, or Latin American movements, like Zapatismo, and people with no political history, or otherwise informed by today’s movements: V de Vivienda, 15-M, etc. This mix of different creative and political backgrounds breaks our individual roles when working together and produces some surprising effects; that may be our strongest suit.

Does symbolic political intervention make a difference during a crisis like this, which touches and affects the most material and real sides of our lives (housing, salaries, etc.)?

Campa: Capitalism drives us to this sort of misery, to these foreclosures and this suffering, through images and tales. It’s a master storyteller with an impressive capacity to fascinate. Lots of people got mortgaged because they bought the story, built on words and images, that we got from banks and advertising on a daily basis. Advertising creates images of desirable worlds, and that collective image generates economic paradigms and social situations.

Leo: It’s not like on the one hand we have this fiction, and on the other, reality. Fiction is the hard nucleus of reality. From a protest (an act of street-theatre) to the writing of a political speech (which deals with images and popular imagery), it’s all fiction. What’s important is the effect of these fictions, whether we can re-appropriate them or not, whether we believe in them or not, whether they generate confidence or impotence in ourselves. The basis for social change is cultural: the stories through which we make sense of our lives and the world we live in.

Mario. That’s the reason why we work in two directions. First, to interfere with the dominant narrative, the official explanation for the world, through guerrilla communication, with signs, catchphrases, messages, etc. Second, contributing to the production of an autonomous imagery. Not as much breaking down a narrative as bringing in a new one. This is what’s most important and most difficult: to represent ourselves, create our own story, our own explanation of what’s happening. A narrative we can inhabit.

Let’s explore all this in more detail, by way of your own actions. If you want, we can start with the party at the unemployment agency INEM [1] that you organised in 2009

Fiesta en INEM. Press the close-caption button to activate English subtitles.

Oriana: Maybe the most interesting thing was the moment: the crisis erupts, but there’s no reaction in the street. There’s fear and paralysis. Our idea was to find a place that condensed and represented that fear. We chose the unemployment office, and what better solution to fear than throwing a party?

Campa: Enmedio functions through self-representation. What I mean is, it wasn’t a party for the unemployed. We’re also unemployed, we live precariously, etc. We’re not lecturing anybody. We start by looking at ourselves, and then we invite everyone else to join. In the vid you can see people smiling, participating, cheering or telling us “you’ve cheered up my day”. We look for that empathy by starting with our own worries, problems and woes.

Leo: That video got an amazing amount of views. I think we touched on something that vibed with a shared feeling: if you start with what’s bothering you personally, you can communicate it to others. What’s most intimate is, at the same time, most common.

Mario: We want our actions to be inspiring and contagious. We plan and design them as seeds that can take root elsewhere. Once the 15-M movement got started, we saw parties thrown at an INEM office in the Canary Islands, and other similar actions.

Tell us about the Reflectors.

The Reflectors, ready for action.

Leo: The Reflectantes (Reflectors) is an action group that sprang from a series of creative activism workshops we called “Como acabar con el Mal” (How to end Evil) where we tried to pass on creative activism experiences and practices to younger people who got into politics after 15-M and whatnot. It’s linked to a long tradition of character creation which acts in protest spaces, from Prêt a Revolter to the New Kids on the Black Block, proposing new ways of taking to the street, filled with joy, colour and creativity.

Mario: The Reflectors have a lot to do with the moment they came out, around the first anniversary of 15-M. The powers that be had, by then, gone full thrust with acts of repression and criminalization, in order to end street protest. Bringing in that kind of dynamic leeches the natural plurality from the street, “de-democritising” protest until only small and very homogenous groups remain, easily identified and codified. That’s where the Reflectors come in, saying, “We’re not gonna play this game, let’s break the rules”.

Campa: The Reflectors play with the imagery of superheroes and fan culture. They’re normal people, but armed with a set of tools which allows them to combat Evil: inflatable cubes to deflect the police if they decide to charge, mirrors to blind surveillance ‘copters, disguises to break the codification, etc. They both dramatise and de-dramatise protest by using humour and generating new feelings, making street presence desirable again, while, at the same time, putting elements into play that help to channel moments of tension and violence.

Oriana: A lot of people joined the Reflective Block on the 15-M anniversary march. We also met people we didn’t know who had seen the costumes on the Internet. Nowadays, the Reflectors are an autonomous group, very close to Enmedio, but independent. That’s quite interesting too.

What can you tell me about the Party at Bankia? [2]

Fiesta en Bankia. Press the close-caption button to activate English subtitles.

Mario: The same week the government announced cuts of 20 billion Euros in healthcare and education, we found out that they were going to bail out Bankia with 23 billion Euros in public funds. Like most people, we were furious, so we decided to do something about it.

Leo: We got together with like-minded people and started thinking about what we could do to damage Bankia’s image. We thought that the only way we could affect a bank, and show our rejection of the bailout, was by encouraging people to close their accounts. And the best way to do that would be…throwing a party (as you can see, we just love to throw parties).

Campa: So, one day, a group of people went to a Bankia office, and patiently crouched and waited for a client to close her account. Then we went in and threw a party for her. She couldn’t believe it. We were in there for four minutes at the most, that’s how long the song lasted. We lifted her up and carried her out over our heads, and got out of there the same way we came in. We then cut a video out of all this and it got more than 100.000 visits in 24 hours and hasn’t stopped since. The YouTube page is full of comments. The vid was shown on various TV channels, and other “Cierra Bankia” parties took place in cities all across Spain.

Oriana: The idea was to show that something as intimate and private as your bank account can be used as a political statement; that closing an account can be a public act, and, above all, a lot of fun!

What was the Discongreso (De-congress)?

Photocall 25-S

Mario: Enmedio joined the 25-S campaign: “Ocupa el congreso” (Occupy Congress). It was a call to action that coincided with our own internal debates: We felt that 15-M had fallen into some repetitive inertias and that 25-S could be a good occasion to break out of them. The problem was that it was a very insular call to action, both exclusive and codified. Our work there was to use communication as a way of opening it up. WIth the posters, a graphic campaign and a proposal to occupy the space in a different way, we wanted to come up with a different story, reappropriate the event, and make it both open and desirable.

Oriana: Design-wise, it was a very simple campaign. We replaced “Occupy Congress” for “Surround Congress”, because for us it was never about taking power but a removal of power. Then we added. “On 25-S we’ll surround Congress until they resign. Period”. In the poster we had a series of different coloured dots, representing a plural society, surrounding a centre.

Campa: Those dots actually become pictures later on. We put out a photocall inviting people to take pics showing their own reasons for going to an event like 25-S. We took the photocall out to the street, and we put the word out on social media so people could take their own pics and add their reasons. We wanted to highlight diversity and open up an event that, at first, had felt very exclusive.

Leo: And finally, the dots were turned into frisbees on which people wrote their demands. We then sent these on to Congress, flying over police barricades during the actual protest on September 25th. Since, by land, there was no way to get into Congress so they’d listen to us, the only option we had was by air!

Tell me about the “We are Not Numbers” Action Photography Workshop.

Pasting bills at Caixa Catalunya

Oriana: Working with photographs and, in collaboration with PAH, we wanted to reverse the dehumanised and victim-like portrayals of people affected by foreclosure that the media puts out. We portrayed people about to be foreclosed, or who had already been kicked out, and we pasted those portraits, all blown up, on the banks that had led to their situations, showing that the foreclosed have faces and eyes, that they’re not just statistics. And from those pictures, we’ve also designed a series of postcards where we tell these people’s stories. These were directed, first of all, to the banks, and later (during the escraches), to politicians.

Campa: These photographic interventions work in two ways. On the one hand, they empower the affected. They come to the workshop, they pose, see their photographs, then they’re pasted up on the banks, and like this we break the wall of shame, they create a presence in public space. On the other, it’s guerrilla imagery in the struggle between different depictions of the crisis, the day-to-day battle held on the walls of the cites, associating a face with the organization responsible for the foreclosure (foreclosures are often talked about in the media, but they never mention the names of the banks).  The interruption of the dominant narrative to create our own is the sort of politics we’re interested in.

Leo: For us, the real key isn’t the quality of the portraits or videos, but their coordination with social processes as powerful as PAH. But we’re also quite careful and exacting about form. We don’t share the sloppiness of those that think that “the content” of the picture or poster is the only worthwhile thing. We’re concerned about aesthetics, not out a love for aestheticism itself, but because of the very politics of aesthetics: the “how” of relating these things, the “what” we’re given to see, the “what” we’re led to feel”. Lacking form, there’s only naked rage and no communication.

You’ve also designed the popular red and green signs used by the PAH in their escraches[3]. A friend, after being in a escrache, told me “Those simple signs are so important; without them we’d just seem to be a furious mass, and little else”

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PAH’s colours read: Green: “Yes, we can” (Stop foreclosures. retroactive nonrecourse debt, social rent). Red: “But no, they don’t want to”.

Leo: The problem with housing has always been central to us. Some of us took part in the graphic commission of V de Vivienda-Barcelona [4], where we came up with the famous slogan: “You’ll never own a house in your whole fucking life.” So, during the “No somos números” (We’re not numbers) workshop we formed a direct relationship with the PAH, and they asked us to take care of the visual side of the escraches. It was a very important proposal for us and, at the same time, a very delicate one.

Mario: The idea was to lay out the conflict with a very simple visual statement. On one side we have the “Yes we can” from the PAH (the million signatures, the social support, etc). On the other side, the “But they don’t want to”, coming from the political elite, totally deaf to society. Green and red: walk and stop. A lot of green signs against a lone red one: 99% and 1%. The signs and stickers weren’t so much designed to point to any specific politicians but, more than anything, to gather and serve the outpouring of social support the PAH has had.

Oriana: In the original Argentinian escraches, the neighborhood played a crucial role. In this case, it was very much the same idea. being able to surround your representative with green buttons on your own neighborhood. That shopkeepers (the baker, the hardware guy, the newspaper vendor) could put the sticker up on their shops. In other words, so that the whole neighborhood would be denouncing the representative, inviting him or her to push the green button. The important thing about the escraches is to pile on people, people from the neighborhood, people who walk by, so that anyone can be part of the “green tide” as represented by the PAH. That’s the effect we wanted to have with the signs.

Campa: Again, the production side of this has been very important, how you put this to work. The materials are simple and cheap, the design is up for grabs in PAH’s website, so anyone with a printer, some paper and a bit of cellotape can go and make their own signs. We’re just as concerned with the concept (the “what”) as with the production (the “how”).

How about wrapping up by going through some of the main influences or reference points for your work, between images and social concerns, between art and politics?

Oriana: Zapatismo, due to having lived though it myself and because of its meaning. To come from the frivolity and disenchantment of the 90s, to suddenly finding a new way of doing politics and communication. The importance of words and symbols, in the harshest living conditions. Working within and working from the true imagination of the people you work with and the people you want to reach. How central processes, not just results, are.

Mario: Pop music. I see my work as being very related to that, pop culture, what’s popular. This desire to get in touch with the whole of society, the will to push emotions and desires, the yearning to come up with juicy representations where you see yourself reflected, wherever you want to participate, so you can get moving…

Leo: The Yippies, a group created and active in the midst of 60s American counterculture, whose aim was to politically radicalise the hippie movement. Yippies understood social change as a struggle between symbols, and flexed most of their activist muscle creating myths, rumours and fictions to shortcircuit the dominant narrative, and to put in circulation autonomous images. Coming from a very different context, I pretty much think the same way.

Campa: Regarding what I’m concerned with, and given that Zapatismo has already been mentioned, I’d say punk. Not so much in a musical or aesthetic sense, but having to do with sheer attitude, that nerve, freshness, immediacy, nonconformity, DIY culture, the intensity of a 3-minute song. I think that ties in rather well with what we do at Enmedio.

• All you ever wanted to know about Enmedio’s actions.

[1] INEM: “Instituto Nacional de Empleo” is Spain’s National Institute for Employment: “Administrative body coming under the Ministry of Labour , set up in 1978 to develop and follow up employment policy , to co-ordinate and run public employment offices and to administer the unemployment benefit system.”

[2] Bankia is Spain´s own big-bank-bailout debacle, going from public bank to private entity, subsequently bankrupting itself and then controversially being rescued with public funds, concurrent with the imposition of austerity measures.

[3] “Escrache”, an Argentinian term, describes a mode of protest wherein people go take their concerns directly to their representative’s homes and neighborhoods to condemn and publicly humiliate decision makers on their unethical choices. Read more here.

[4] Or “H is for Housing” a wordplay on V for Vendetta. Read more here

This translation has been republished on:

• Shareable

In Spain, May is school exam month, and the 15-M movement is no exception. The celebration of its 2nd anniversary is an auspicious occasion for a bit of media judgement: Is 15-M still alive? Have they withered or grown? And what have they achieved? Their eyes see what they’re used to seeing:  the event, not the process, identity, not metamorphosis, the spectacular, not the everyday, macro, not micro, quantity versus quality, results, rather than effects. The clinical view, the outside view, the paternal view; and the biggest problem is that we internalize these views, and conform to their standards. That’s why, the the other day, a friend protested by saying, “Screw the anniversary, we fight everyday, we could just as well celebrate on the 3rd of February or the 11th of June. If the media has pronounced us dead, fine, now we’ll be able to work in peace!”

A unicorn is not quite a horse. Likewise, neither are 15-M, the Mareas (Citizen Tides), the Plataforma Afectados por la Hipotéca or PAH (Spain’s game-changing anti-foreclosure movement) the familiar social movements, but names and masks endowing the users with a truly unprecedented process of social politicization. At once constant and in flux, a metamorphosis. The challenge isn’t in how to respond to the media’s endless lies and cilchés, but in learning to see ourselves, and tell our story differently. To learn to name, give value and communicate all that’s extraordinary about how we live, and what we do.

Miracles

The current political situation, the personal impact brought to actions, protests and organization – today´s social malaise is shared not only among friends in bars, but among strangers in the street. They are spurred into action. This isn’t mechanical, automatic, or necessary, it shouldn’t be this way. In fact, this isn’t happening in other European countries affected by the crisis/scam. More usual is the widespread sense of fear, resignation, guilt and individuation. That’s the process of neutralization achieved by spreading the official line, “we’ve lived beyond our means”: we’re sinners with no right to protest, we can only find atonement through punishment. Thus we welcome with open arms the cuts of Rajoy and Merkel (allowing them the role of the punishing father). But that narrative has failed to emerge as the new hegemony. What was once private is now common and shared. Depression is politicised. While the belief system that fueled our existence (property, success, consumption) sinks into oblivion, we strive, together, to create a new one. We set out from the spaces we inhabit to take charge of this collective situation. Accountability versus guilt (in fact, and likely thanks to this, the assumption that suicide rates are on the rise due to the crisis doesn’t quite hold up to statistical analysis).

Hippies, public workers, firemen, police, medical staff, judges, teachers, ordinary people…the participants in 15-M, PAH and the Mareas are the 99%. These struggles aren’t collectives of like kind, but rather inclusive of various elements, and all for the common good. First, they unite people of diverse ideologies around common values and concrete objectives. This effectively neutralizes the contrived clash between the “two Spains“, so useful to the powers that be. Secondly, they break the traditional split between political actors and spectators: the backbone of the education-focused Marea Verde (Green Tide) includes parents, teachers and pupils. Marea Blanca (White Tide), which protests against fiscal cuts and the privatization of Spain’s public health system, includes doctors, medical staff and users. Meanwhile, the PAH unites foreclosure victims with activists of varying backgrounds and everyday people. The list goes on. Finally, they share mutual moments of public protest (like the last 23rd of February), modes of action (assemblies, traffic stoppages, lock-downs) and a common narrative on the present situation in Spain: “We are not commodities in the hands of politicians and bankers”.

This isn’t mechanical, automatic, or necessary, it shouldn’t be this way. What’s expected is self-referencing, and material or ideological fragmentation. Struggles that go about their business, never aligning with others, lacking a common concern about our world; never coming up with viral possibilities for collective action, never going beyond the strictest of definitions for any problem. That’s what’s to be expected. Recently, a Greek activist passing through Madrid remarked that Syntagma square has always been divided amongst groups: anarchists, communists, etc. He was surprised when told that in the 15-M squares, we create an open and inclusive community where differences are both recognised and transcended.

And, isn’t the 99% vs. the 1% narrative, this resymbolization of the commons from the ground up, what may have squashed the possibility of a Spanish version of Greece´s Golden Dawn, with its scapegoats and street violence, from ever being born? The Greek activist explained that the neo-Nazi group is very much sponsored by the police. He was flabbergasted when we listed the some of the unheard-of gestures we’ve seen coming from some agents of the law: protests, criticism against politicians and higher-ups, acts of disobedience, the refusal to carry out foreclosures, etc. You find your enemy above (1%), not by your side.

What is expected, as mass media keeps reminding us, is for a “social explosion” to take place. We’re not quite sure what they mean by this, but lets hypothesise: looting and pillaging, an uncontrollable rise in delinquency and all out war. Consequently, the state’s authority as the necessary arbiter of society would once again be legitimized. It isn’t happening. On the one hand, a new network of formal and informal social solidarity has been created, dealing with material concerns such as precariousness and poverty (everything from economic solidarity networks, to networks of everyday family and friends). On the other hand, what those on high usually call the “anti-political” (I’m thinking here of PAH) can work social malaise into collectivity, creativity and dignity, reviving happiness even in the midst of desperation.

The impossible

In “The Shock Doctrine”, Naomi Klein explains how “disaster capitalism” takes advantage of social panic and depression to catalyse a leap towards the neoliberal transformation of society. In Pinochet’s Chile, in Post-Soviet Poland, in Katrina-devastated New Orleans, a melting pot of repressive and economic shocks left whole populations knocked out, wrecked social solidarity, spread paralysis, resignation and fear of others, all of which fostered dependence on a protective father figure. The main objective of the Shock Doctrine, as explained by Klein, is to sweep away autonomous narratives, and the ways and customs by which common people make sense of their world. Advantage is then taken of the ensuing confusion, to push “every man for himself” as the dominant definition of reality

The Shock Doctrine hasn’t quite triumphed in Spain as it should. We can see it in the inherent irritation evident in neoliberal economists’ analysis of Spanish society and the crisis. Their problem with us is our persistent refusal to see ourselves as isolated atoms, with neither collective rights nor close ties among people or places, motivated only by notions of success and individual self-realization (using terms like “normative rigidity”, “insufficient geographical mobility”, “limited entrepreneurial spirit”, “parental financial cushion”, etc.)

There’s no shock because there’s politics. According to French philosopher Jacques Rancière, politics makes three moves. First, it interrupts what’s perceived as inevitable (this-is-the-way-things-are, it’s-the-economic-crisis, there’s-no-money, we’ve-lived-beyond-our-means…). Second, it creates an alternate map of what’s possible: things we can possibly feel, do or think. For example, taking notice of a foreclosure and forced eviction where, otherwise, we wouldn’t have seen anything but the “routine execution due to lack of mortgage payment”. Being able to feel that foreclosures are intolerable, incorrect, unnecessary and not inevitable, and they concern us all. Goading us to band together and stop them. Third, it invents new political subjects: redefining who is able to see, feel, do or think. Politics is not the expression of those subjected to earlier or preconstituted constructs (whether ideological or sociological), but the creation of subjective spaces where none existed before, where the supposedly “incapable and ignorant” speak up and take action, turning from victims to actors.

Politics allows us to map a new set of connections. The fact that there are many groups doing many things in Spain isn’t as profoundly relevant as the fact that a climate of politicization that transcends social divisions has been created. At once it is a highly charged, conductive space where words, actions and affections circulate; an ecosystem that’s more than the sum of its parts; a field of forces and resonances; and a common sense-building tale of what’s going on (with us). The air is charged with electricity.

We can only see what we’ve been habituated to see. The normal, never the impossible. But, since the 15th of May of 2011, we’ve been living the impossible. Contemptuous of all probability, inevitability, destiny. Therefore we need a “belief in the impossible”. A school of thought to break us of seeing what’s habitual to our eyes, so we can see (and value) what’s happening and what should not be happening, what isn’t happening and (by logic) should be happening. A de-naturalizing school of thought, the ability to see creation where before there was repetition, action rather than social or causal determinism. To feel the power of our actions, to make it persist and grow in unpredictable ways.