Figures of Fascism and Antifascist Solidarities

In the wake of late fascist globalization, cultural workers, activists and militants across a wide geography of organized and informal struggles for liberation recognise each other's causes as common. Antifascism re-emerges as a shared horizon that pierces through the everyday noise of our differences, projecting the necessity of solidarity and a broad alliance together with those targeted and affected by the rise of the far-right. 

It is not so mind-boggling to relate anti-immigration policy and racial police violence to the defunding of art, the humanities, art education, independent media, fundamental scientific research, or critical thinking; or to connect the imperial war machine and the impunity of genocides with the ways in which solidarity and even compassion are criminalized, while the wealth of billionaires is exponentially multiplied on the basis of continued colonial extractivism and the destruction of lives and territories. 

Solidarity looms from below and in closeness: in the world-making of collectives, in the way that they share knowledge and wealth, distribute risks and listen to each other's lives, resisting individualist fragmentation. How can we become better at being useful to one another and using one another to make ourselves unusable for fascism now? 

For the second chapter of this program, we will gather at P.A.R.T.S. with their students and staff, school for contemporary dance as a fitting host for probing coalitions of bodies. The three-day program of performance, films, lectures and debates will feature La Candidate by undocumented women from Brussels-based political organizations (with Anna Rispoli and other allies), researchers and activists Valeria Graziano and Tomislav Medak from Pirate Care, artist Dora García, writer and queer activist Sarah Schulman and a line-up of militants across two generations.  

Figures of Fascism and Antifascist Solidarities is a public program of the research project Choreographing Fascism (KhIO Oslo) conducted by Bojana Cvejić and collaborators.  

Thursday, September 17 - P.A.R.T.S. Rosas Performance Space

16h-17.30 

Tout contact laisse une trace / Every Contact Leaves A Trace 

After talk with authors of the collective

17.30-18.30 - P.A.R.T.S.

Drinks and soup

19h-21.30 - Commune de Forest (Rue du Curé 2, 1190 Forest)

La Candidate Sans-Papiers: With Love Not For Love 

Talk with Henriette Essami-Khaullot, Anna Rispoli, Nina Ferrante and Bojana Cvejić Performance (45’)+ talk (30’)

20.30 Drinks at Commune de Forest (Rue du Curé 2, 1190 Forest)

Friday, September 18

16-18.30 

P.A.R.T.S. Rosas Performance Space

(Revolution, Fulfil Your Promise) Red Love 

Film by Dora García

Talk with Dora García and Bojana Cvejić

Screening (95’)+talk (30’)

18.30 

P.A.R.T.S.

Drinks and soup

19.30-22h 

P.A.R.T.S. Rosas Performance Space

Pirate Care 

lecture by Valeria Graziano and Tomislav Medak 

22h 

P.A.R.T.S.

Drinks

Saturday, September 19 

16-17h

P.A.R.T.S. Rosas Performance Space

The Deviant Majority (From Basaglia to Brazil) 

Film by Dora García (30’)

17-18.30 

P.A.R.T.S. Rosas Performance Space

Across Generations: Fractures and Alignments

Panel on Brussels activism

18.30-19.30

P.A.R.T.S.

Drinks and soup

19.30-22h

P.A.R.T.S. Rosas Performance Space

The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity

A talk by Sarah Schulman with Bojana Cvejić and others 

Image: Still from The Deviant Majority, Dora García, Academia della Follia (Trieste), 2010.

Echoing this programme, on 24-26 September, the festival Feral will continue the exploration of art and pirate (care) as tactics against the rise of oppressions through talks, artistic encounters, workshops, walks and fun. So, what are our levers for mutiny? Full programme on cifas.be.