The first monstration was held in Vilnius on May 28th, 2009. The idea to held monstrations came into head to Russian artists in Novosibirsk. The monstrators are gathering into strange, noisy and crazy street action and rising their impertinent , absurd and usually incoherent slogans. The main task of the monstration is to show up inefficiency of the official political demonstrations, which are obsolete because the authorities established complete control on them.

(The Flyer is available here)

It is a situgraphic (non oriented - you can approach it from different angles)

An attempt to name some painful points dancing in my head when contemplating the role of an artist in the society while writing the ATU constitution in the form of a theatre play written for Redas, Mihnea, few more friends and undefined unplanned casual witnesses:

(an extension of Alytus Art Strike Biennial) 

SHARP WHILE AMORPHOUS IS THE SHIELD OF ARTIST!  

INTRODUCTION:

Founding the ARTISTS’ TRADE UNION or REVOLUTIONARY ARTISTS’ TRADE UNION or ARTISTS’ REVOLUTIONARY TRADE UNION or ARTISTS’ TRADE REVOLUTIONARY UNION is a step I have tried to avoid for a long time for my hatred towards the institutionalization changing by its quintessence natural into structural. Now, at the end of the first decade of the 21st century this step appears to be inevitable. The situation is so unsustainable that artists need to unite or at least pretend to be united to face the social atrocities in culture spheres as well as inner self destructive antagonisms and create an effective representative of this brand of extremely egocentric people who in general hate even the scent of idea of being represented.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

My brother gave me the note on your website.
I can imagine that you are interested in the art strike my father did with 3 other painters on Neil Island, Andamans India, 1951. My Father Gan Mei Mondal studied miniature paintings at the Academy of Fine Arts in Calcutta from 1933-38. In 1939 he moved to Port Blair, Andaman Islands. It was Charles Francis Waterfall who hired him as a portrait painter. He moved to Ross Island, Andamans, the Paris of the East. 11 years he was forced to paint officers and their women. On 1st February 1951, he started an art strike for 3 weeks with 3 other painters on Neil Island.

The Dead Revolutionaries Club herewith announces its participation in the Alytus Art Strike Biennial in August. We will plan, conceptualize, develop and organize a chapter of the AASB from a location here in Johannesburg which is unknown. We are going to present the total absence of artistic production for five days. Each day we will write a report about the absence of documentation, affirmation, and materialization. Thus only handing over to you our immediate stream of thoughts in written form, but not as text. These reports will not be transparent, explainable or translatable but totally immediate and local, radically self-centered and intransigent. At the same time we will not enter any commitment to deliver anything, and while silence is a delivery already we will refuse to announce neither a silence nor a noise, neither a structure nor anything else. Even this announcement is unsubstantial. At the same time you will need to take what you will get.

1. Anybody who attends Alytus Art Strike Biennial is an artist. Right after approaching Alytus everybody must decide if to take part in the strike or blindly continue in her/his artistic activities (both needed, first ones to be petted and supported for the merciless showing down with the strikebreakers – the second ones.)

2. Strikers will act in the social space without schedule and warning, no documentation is required. On the contrary an attempt to make any recording of current art strike activities will be considered and treated as a scab gesture.

R.D. That was very good probably first time to meet with your professional writing (Lotman, Vernadsky...) - read thoroughly and decided not to answer (in the same text), because I really like this kind of open-to-discussion form with your intervention...

V.V. Dear Redas, I wouldn’t call my scribbles a professional writing; it’s only a response to a dear friend. As we go on with our talk

R.D. What’s due to the question - what might be considered a possible condition for common action - yes Vernadsky's noosphere is one of the cases, but all that transcendence story of spiritualism actually was substituted with the vulgarity of cyberspace what is not an adequate one. If to talk on transcendence - that branch of thinking remained in the same scholastic logic but because of increasing mysticism it simply reduced ability for action. I cannot agree that increasing number of thoughts improves physicality - that's from materialistic point of view of course. Even worse - I think thoughts leads to further thinking, but action leads to further action - that is why I am trying to deal with artists (instead of just theoreticians) - the point is balance between action and thought...

[Comments by Vassya Vassileva (Bulgaria) included]

My thoughts were major influenced from an e-mail discussions with a Situationist Worker and particularly from the Asger Jorn’s text from 1964 “Mind and Sense - On the Principle of Ambivalence in Nordic Husdrapa and Mind Singing”  (http://www.infopool.org.uk/6403.html).

Already starting from the Art Strike Conference (which was arranged in 2008 to prepare the intellectual platform for the even this year to happen) it was evident that Eastern and Western notions on the subject disagree as well as free lance artists’ position confronted “non-free lance’ artists’. No one joint statement was done.

[V.V.] True and appreciated. I’ve also acknowledged some flickering lines of understanding, maybe conformity. Remember moments when the clustered voices carried a sense of wholeness. (Another reason to be pleased with your selection of people). 

Stephanie

-I think reviewing the activities which are connected to strikes in general (the picket line is one of them, but also marches with megaphones and music, stands with food, banners, distribution of flyers) could provide an interesting framework for thinking about the materialization of the biennial. One thing though: it's clear that duplicating all these strategies is dangerous because it would limit the artistic (I'm tempter to say organic) developments of the biennial. Still, it can be some reference to be turned to for structuring the event. 

Redas

Grootveld preparing his craft for the odyssey to Sweden in 1972.

"First," he prudently noted, "I must learn to sail." 

Robert Jasper Grootveld, one of the most emblematic figures of the 60s PROVO  movement, has died in a nursing home at the age of 76 on the February 26. 2009 in Amsterdam. Grootveld was famous for the ‘happenings’ he organised on the Spui, then Amsterdam’s ‘magic centre’. The anti-smoking guru would dance around in a cloud of his own cigarette smoke chanting ugh, ugh, ugh - which became one of his mantras. 

Grootveld started out as a window cleaner, then turned to journalism and finally found his feet as an artist in the creative atmosphere of the 1960s. He came up with the famous white bicycle plan which has since been adopted by many cities around the world.

While Capitalism crumbles as international labour continues its historical subordination of land and capital under its power, the bourgeois ruling class in London is defending imperial time via the Centenary of the proto-Fascist Futurist manifesto in another attempt to unify against Communism – from the government’s propaganda machine, through to avant-gardists, artists and of course, the so-called revolutionaries from the left and right of Capital.

(check out the flyer)

While thinking and once again rethinking all the heritage of artists rebellion against falsity and brainwashing of so called “machine of serious culture” one cannot avoid the brilliant futurist explosion happen exactly 100 years ago. The century passed and we are coming to the same necessity of rebellion – just the means clearly to be revised and adjusted to contemporary situation. Especially was pleasant to find it already done by Italians themselves – accidentally on the Webb we found just written post-futurist manifesto by Italian writer, critic, activist-autonomist and media theorist Franco Berardi aka Bifo. The intention to write a counter-manifesto he explains in a following way: 

"One hundred years ago Marinetti published the Manifesto of Futurism. It inaugurated a
century that believed in the future - initiating a process where the collective organism
became machine-like. This becoming-machine has reached its finale with the concatenations
of the global web and is now being overturned by the collapse of a financial system
founded on the futurisation of the economy, debt and economic promise. That promise is
over. The era of post-future has begun." 

Teachers's strike in Alytus. 2008

The writing of the commentary was directly influenced by the text written by Stephanie Benzaquen – “The Picket Line Clothing” and particularly the quotation found in it on the drastic changes in the clothing of the female strikers since 1909 through 1930. That is how I got to the idea of the clothing as cultural phenomenon, or let’s say fashion.  Of course the identity stated through the clothing is an important factor while formulating the main issues of the protest, argumentation, demands etc. But I was rather more interested in pre-cultural formations and its role in the resistant fights. Then the fashion role I would prefer to treat as forced element from the hegemony’s side with the task to have one more clearly specialized (i.e. alienated) group in the society.

In consequence of a law enacting the eternal preservation of the works of art to the end of the …eth century there had been gathered together such a large heap from paintings, sculptures and applied art objects all over the world, that strict measures should be taken to restrict production. The symptoms of the crisis first appeared at the surroundings of the museums: the depots became too small and the works had to be stored in the streets and they made obstacles against the traffic. Then these districts were to be reached only by air-liner or in tunnels pushed through the hills of “nudes”, “landscapes” and “busts”. Some people moved to the country, who could do it. Soon the quays and the suburbs became full of works of art which slowly began to cover half of the country. It was a strange and intolerable situation.