Authoritarianism can be defied and defeated.

Around the world, countless people, collectives and movements develop powerful and creative strategies to oppose nationalist, racist, classist and anti-feminist forces. And there's much to learn from each other. Over the last three years, the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counterstrategies and kollektiv orangotango brought together 50 first-hand accounts of such anti-authoritarian movements and resistance strategies, resulting in “Beyond Molotovs - A Visual Handbook of Anti-Authoritarian Counterstrategies.


Based on this work, we want to explore paths by which we can radically reclaim the future and build real, lived utopias.

 

Join us for a day on affective counterstrategies and new understandings of antifascism, full of workshops, an exhibition, a panel discussion and a night with AL.Berlin Crew.

 

 

Beyond Molotovs

Program:


Exhibition and book launch:


“Beyond Molotovs – A Visual Handbook & Exhibition of Anti-Authoritarian Strategies”
from 3 pm | German, English


Authoritarianism operates at a visceral level rather than relying on arguments. How can we counter authoritarian affects?
"Beyond Molotovs" brings together 50 first-hand accounts from anti-authoritarian movements, activists, artists, and scholars from around the world, focusing on the sensuous dimension of their strategies. From the collective art of feminist movements in India, Iran, Mexico, and Poland, to sewing collectives, subversive internet aesthetics in Hong Kong, and anti-authoritarian board games, the contributions open up new perspectives on moments of resistance, subversion, and creation.
There will be an exhibition opening with a guided tour and a short book presentation in English at 3 pm and 7 pm.

 

 

 

Workshops:


Maps Against Authoritarianism

5 - 6.30 pm | German, English | On registration

Please register in advance via this email: workshop.beyondmolotovs@gmail.com  


In Maps Against Authoritarianism, Moses März introduces participants to experimental cartography as an artistic research method that combines elements of the visual arts, social science, activism and storytelling to share knowledge in an intuitively accessible and inclusionary manner. To actively experiment with this alternative way of writing, participants are invited to map their self-perceived positions or movements in the field of (authoritarian) forces in which they are operating. Moses will also show his map "Majority Minority Machines", which traces the long history of the nation-state and the transfer of racist legislation between the US, Germany, Israel/Palestine and South Africa.


AntifaFuturesTarots
3.30 - 7:30 pm | English, German, Italian, Spanish, French | Open to join


Ecologías del Futuro are inviting to their workshop AntifaFuturesTarots, a collection of tarots about anti-authoritarian strategies, collectively produced in an open workshop. Throughout the centuries and all around the world there have been thousands of ways of resisting oppressions and building other ways of being and organizing together. Which are the most meaningful to us, that we want to keep in our toolbox and take with us into the future? The endless tarots collect anti-authoritarian practices, keywords, objects, songs, exercises, tips, strategies in the form of images. Pass by and create your tarot. Tarots not to read, but to build the future!


Activist Banner Sewing Workshop
3.30 pm 7:30 pm | English | Open to join


Ton Melnyk and Masha Ravlyk, artists, queer-feminist activists, seamstresses from Kyiv, participants of the Ukrainian-Russian art-activist group Sewing Cooperative Shvemy and ReSew sewing cooperative, are inviting participants to their Activist Banner Sewing Workshop, to create a collective action banner, and other textile banners on topics you are concerned with.


Dream Counter
3.30 pm 7:30 pm | English, Turkish | Open to join

With the Dream Counter Aylin Kuryel will provide a place where nightmares of the past and present resonate, and dreams dreamt under different forms of authoritarianism talk to each other. Between 1933-39, Charlotte Beradt, a Berlin-based journalist, secretly recorded people’s dreams under the Nazi regime, which resulted in the book, The Third Reich of Dreams: The Nightmares of a Nation 1933-1939 (1966). In the Dream Counter, you can find stickers on which nightmares from Charlotte Beradt’s book appear. One side of the stickers is left empty to write down dreams. Take the stickers; put them up on the city walls; invite passersby to read your dreams and share theirs.

 

Reclaim your antifascist future
3.30 pm - 7:30 pm | German, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese | Open to join

Kollektiv orangotango, mujer gallina, nico baumgarten and friends invite you to design, print and put up your own antifa stickers. Create your own antifa! With the kind support of the Antifa Logo Archive.

 

Panel:


Beyond Authoritarianism: Antifascist Futures! with Asef Bayat , Emily Dische-Becker und Verónica Gago
7:30 - 9 pm | German, English with simultaneous translation


We are witnessing a global expansion of nationalist, militarist, racist, colonial, and antifeminist ideologies and politics, and increasingly violent mechanisms of repression and exploitation. This authoritarian transformation is not confined to autocratic contexts — the "liberal centre" itself is increasingly shifting towards authoritarian governing mechanisms. This constellation requires us to rethink antifascist strategies and alliances. How do we explain authoritarianism's emotional appeal? How can we counter authoritarian affects? What potentiality lies in antifascism as a shared political horizon for reclaiming the present and the future against authoritarian neoliberal normality? How to regain utopian energy for social revolution?

Discussion with Q&A

 

 

Party:


Music with AL.Berlin, Dimitra Zina and Hassandra
from 9 pm


Let's celebrate and end the evening with music together.

 

 

The whole program is accessible for wheel chairs.

The 2020 Feminist Night March, Istanbul.
Ateş Alpar
Hongkong Protest Art, Kwai Fong Lennon wall
Studio Incendo
Feminist activists painted the names of victims of feminicide on a metal fence in front of the National Palace (...)
Ana Álvarez
An elderly woman picking up an eggplant from the ground during a verdurazo action, where producers give away vegetables (...)
Bernardino Avila
The painting by Fearless Collective shows two women holding each other (...)
Philippe Calia
Drafts for passport and flag for the Bishan Commune by Xiaoma and Chengzi. Courtesy of Ou Ning and the Bishan Commune.
Ou Ning and the Bishan Commune
A tapestry of Cordillera region, Philippines. (...)
Cian Dayrit
’Migration’, 50x70 cm, tracing paper mixed media
Ercan Altuntaş
To counter an anti-abortion boat-trip through the centre of Saint Petersburg by ultra-conservatives, feminist activists (...)
David Frenkel
The Gaviota de Plata (Silver Seagull) is the award given by the Viña del Mar music festival in Chile. (...)
montoneras.org; OPA Kolektiva; Taller Fábrika

The International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies (IRGAC) is an initiative of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung that brings together scholar-activists from across the Global South to research authoritarian capitalism, the far right, and strategic responses from the left.  

 

 

kollektiv orangotango is a circle of critical geographers and friends who have been in co-evolution since the 2000s. As popular educators, they strive for a collective horizontal production of knowledge; as militant scholars, they link practical interventions and theoretical reflection. They place their work at the service of emancipatory processes in youth clubs and community gardens, in schools and autonomous social centres, on park benches and in lecture halls, in favelas and in rural communities.  

 

 

Supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation with funds from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.