through europe

On Italian television in 1991, immediately after the news broadcast of Mikhail Gorbachev declaring that the Soviet Union was finished a small independent film directed by Renato de Maria was screened called ‘Il Trasloco’. It depicted the moving out of a house in Bologna that acted as the headquarters or central point of left-wing activist groups and individuals that would be referred to as Autonomia.

SCEPSI
European School of Social Imagination San Marino

Last year’s student protests saw a new generation take to the streets. Much was made of the vandalism and disruption that occurred, with some arguing it eclipsed the protests’ intentions—but were the students’ demands ever clearly articulated? Did the protestors know what they were struggling for? From pamphlets and theses to journals and zines—the relationship between protest and print goes back a long way and has helped galvanise and articulate dissent, but do radical publishers and radical thinkers still matter today and how do they relate to contemporary protest?

Theatre, ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), The Mall, SW1Y 5AH, London
19 March 2011

Theo Turpin, Weight of the World

Update: videos of the conference are now available here.

      Questo è il testo dell'intervento "From Tute Bianche to the Book Bloc: the Italian movement and the coming European insurrection". [english version]
by Francesco Raparelli*

Dalla stagione politica delle Tute bianche sembra trascorso un secolo, eppure si tratta di poco più di dieci anni. Dieci anni in cui moltissime cose sono cambiate. Nonostante le fratture epocali che hanno segnato quest'ultimo decennio, però, gli studenti rivoltosi di Roma e di Londra hanno deciso di fare propria (lo scorso autunno) la pratica di conflitto inventata dalle Tute bianche: scudi e caschi a protezione dei propri corpi; violazione delle zone rosse, del potere politico asserragliato nei palazzi e privo di rapporto democratico con la società.