Social movements/Organising in the Social Factory/RUDI/Interview

RUDI Self interview

• why did you decide to participate?

1st in order to move the event away from just academic/ art event - and towards lived socialist organisatoin. linked to this is to move event away from valorisation of white male european "revolutionary".

- hence I pushed for student MFJ involvement in particular. Movement for Justice is a student group organised in solidarity with refuigees self organising against detention and deportation. 

the thematic links with student organising, deportation are clear.

• What did you want to acheive with the website?

with the website again i wanted to practically critique on the above concerns. so rather than a textual academic or artistic framework - i wanted to posit one of self organisation - and revolutionary movement hence the reference to situationist methods and the wikiversity resource.

• We had some negative responses from some artists. whats your response?

i don;t see it as positive/ negatice. for me any engagement is worth persuing and taking up. the points about left/right hijacking that were made by the critical response i think are very inportant. i think i replied to them and it would have been good to build a dialogue on this ground. unfortunately the artists chose not to develop this line of thinking.

• Do you have a clear picture of what was going on?

i see it as a situation with various different parties/ institutions, individuals, nations etc coming together in a particular space time class. given that the event will be developed int he future - i am concerned about how this will happen particularly in reference to the 50th anniversary of 68. again my concerns are as stated above. in other words the event can be seen as recuperational in nature - my intervention was on those grounds ie to counteract this.

• how can we make it different?

my real intention and invitation was to make a group and intervention into the university. i suggested a situnion and a monstration. I still think that this is the way to proceed - but of course on the grounds of including decolonial student groups and invdividuals

my purpose to create a dialogue and solidarity between different classes - institutions, i wanted to talk about different ways to try and make social change. as a group you need to collaborate with different institutions and groups in order to find bridges by which to help each other. i was trying to put activists individuals and academics on the same level in order to show that there is a common ground.

my main suggestion was to form an organised group around the symposium/exhibition and make a monstration - as a basis for interaction with the institution - in particular with the university - without that we are atomised workers creating cultural capital for the institution - no amount tof critical content can substitute structural change