Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, AULA, Schillerplatz 3

25.11.09 14:00 - 17:00 Frantz Fanon reading 17:00 - 19:00 Lecture by Lina Dokuzovic

in context of:

Project “SEMINAR Decolonizing Knowledge and Life through Theory and Art” In charge: Ivana Marjanovic, PhD candidate, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Format: reading group, discussions, conceiving art works based on art and theory connection

Intro:

Based on Frantz Fanon analysis of historical colonialism and struggles for decolonization we want to develop strategies to dismantle present neoliberal colonial appropriation of knowledge, education and life, in order to develop different knowledge and subjectivity productions that will connect our present studies with students’ protest in Austria and internationally.

14:00 - 17:00 Frantz Fanon reading

Reading and discussion: Frantz Fanon "The Wretched of the Earth", Grove Weidenfeld, New York, 1961 DOWNLOAD TEXT: m1.antville.org

Chapter “Concerning Violence” Students presenting parts of the chapter: Aleksandra Aleksic, Sarah Binder, Miltiadis Gerothanasis, Majda Turkic

FRANTZ FANON (1925-1961)

Algerian political theorist Frantz Fanon analyzed the nature of racism and colonialism and developed a theory of violent anti-colonial struggle. In his first book, Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Fanon examined the social and psychological processes by which the white colonizers alienated the black natives from any indigenous black culture; he showed that blacks were made to feel inferior because of their color and thus strove to emulate white culture and society. Fanon hoped that the old myths of superiority would be abandoned so that a real equality and integration could be achieved. Alienated from the dominant French culture, (except of connection with Sartre and some others), Fanon deeply identified with Algeria's revolutionary struggle for independence. He had secretly aided the rebels from 1954 to 1956, when he resigned from the hospital post to openly work for the Algerian revolutionaries' National Liberation Front (FLN) in Tunis. He worked on the revolutionaries' newspaper, becoming one of the leading ideologists of the revolution, and developed a theory of anti-colonial struggle in the "third world."

Using Marxist, psychoanalytic, and sociological analysis, Fanon summed up his views in The Wretched of the Earth (1961), arguing that only a thorough, truly socialist revolution carried out by the oppressed peasantry (the wretched of the earth) could bring justice to the colonized. He believed that the revolution could only be carried out by violent armed conflict; only revolutionary violence could completely break the psychological and physical shackles of a racist colonialism. Violence would regenerate and unite the population by a "collective catharsis;" out of this violence a new, humane man would arise and create a new culture. Through all this Fanon stressed the need to reject Europe and its culture and accomplish the revolution alone.

17:00 - 19:00 Guest lecture by Lina Dokuzovic

“Art under re-construction? Reflecting half a century of educational reforms in the context of occupation”

This talk will reflect the previous research, presentation and discussion on the educational reform processes over the last 50 years within the new context of the occupied university space(s). What originally reflected a process of development will now approach how this history can support growing international resistance against it, in order to discuss how these models of protest and occupation can make a lasting change not only relevant to education but a wider context of commodified modes of life.

Lina Dokuzovic is an artist and PhD student at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

ABOUT PROJECT

The project “Seminar Decolonizing Knowledge and Life through Theory and Art” is conceptualized as a continuation of the theory reading group that was organized in the past summer semester in 2009 in the Post-conceptual Art Practices class by Marina Gržinić and Ivana Marjanović. The theory reading group has proved that there is a growing interest by students for reading theory and discussing it in the format of reading group and thus the idea of organizing a special seminar appeared.

Schedule will be updated every month on m1.antville.org. Students are invited to join at any point.