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Revolutionary history

1871: The Paris Commune
For 72 days the inhabitants of Paris experiment politically, economically and socially with  revolutionary self-rule, instituting a number of far-reaching socialist laws, for example enabling education for girls and making it legal for employees to acquire the company they work for. The political experiment of the Commune was brutally suppressed by the French army and 30,000 Parisians were killed.

1917: The Russian Revolution
In February 1917, extensive strikes break out among workers in Petrograd and the Czar is forced to abdicate. Many workers form Soviets which take over production and serve as an important political force. In October the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin and Trotsky takes power in a coup. After a short time the anarchists and non-Bolshevik communists are excluded and the derailment of the revolution accelerates.

1965: Watts
After yet another example of racist police behaviour widespread unrest breaks out in the Watts district of Los Angeles. For six days people express their anger fighting with the police and looting widely. More than 600 stores are destroyed, and it takes 10,000 soldiers of the National Guard to calm the unrest. As a direct consequence of the Watts riots, in which blacks confronted racism and political-economic oppression, the Black Panther Party emerges as a black liberation movement.

1968: May '68
From May-June 1968 students and workers put the French government under enormous pressure through street rioting and widespread strikes. The workers leave their factories, and the students went to the streets blocking the all aspects of functional Fordist society. All the existing hierarchies are challenged. Over the next 45 years this brief explosion is transformed into neoliberal restructuring and the radical ideas of autonomy and self-management are transformed into managerial innovation and career development.

1978: Iran
Residents of a slum area in Tehran facing eviction attack the police. The events trigger a wave of demonstrations, strikes and sabotage actions. The regime’s retaliation is brutal and the army shoots thousands of demonstrators. The poor and unemployed join students, workers and women in enormous demonstrations in the streets of Tehran. The Shah is forced to flee, and in January 1979 Khomeini and the Marxist Fedai guerrillas share power. After a short time Khomeini eliminates the social and political experiments and establishes a dictatorial theocracy.

2001: Genoa
In July 2001 about 200,000 people are involved in protests against the G8 summit being held in Genoa under an immense police presence. Street battles take place outside the eight-meter high fence where the world's eight richest countries are making plans for further global neo-liberalisation. The Italian State smashes the demonstrations beating up demonstrators and journalists, one protester is shot and run over by a police car. The repression initiates the anti-rebellion regime of the ‘war on terror’ that makes possible the destruction of the anti-globalization movement through criminalization and terroristic counter-terrorism.


Revolutionary ideas

The Critique of the spectacle
In the society of the spectacle a divided capitalist community is held together through the dominance of images which colonize everyday life and our ability to understand life. Everyday life is reduced to survival and human desire is perverted by false commodity needs: Coca Cola equals thirst.

The Lost Children
The great revolutionary projects no longer exist. Modernism is over and today class struggle takes place as scattered protests where the lost children of the revolution smash a Tesco Express or throw stones at the traffic warden.

The Artistic Revolution
In the spectacular commodity society art carries a promise of happiness that can not be redeemed. Therefore, art has to be realised transgressing the separation between art and everyday. An aesthetic transformation of society in its totality must take place through direct and total democracy.

Play
The false needs of capitalist society are challenged through experimental and playful activities. In the spectacular commodity society all needs are mediated through the commodity form and life is reduced to a postcard with no depth. Play is incompatible with the fragmented dead life of false needs.

The Liberated City
The city has become a place of work and consumption and nothing else. Unconsciously we move through the geography of the city in the same repetitive patterns without sensing the surroundings or each other. Home-tube-work-tube-home. The dead city should be filled with orgies and instigate other forms of life such as those we saw briefly in Hyskenstræde.

Self-organization
The paralysing effects of the spectacle have to be rejected in favour of the active and conscious production of life. The separation between everyday life and political action, between art and theory, has to be abolished. We reject the spectacle and take power of our lives. There are no leaders and no party – there is no program to be realized.