ASSEMBLY 26.07

Agenda:

1) Planning a schedule of lectures, meetings, and reading groups for the next six months:
—- Monthly conversations with Keith Hart (Steve Bachler).
—- Christian Walter’s new reading group, “The Collapse of Antiquity Reading Group” or “The Origins of Modern Debt Politics in Greece and Rome.” To be determined.
—- Continuation of the series “David Graeber and His Philosophers:” Roy Bashkar and John M’ Reading Group
— Our regular reading group and other groups that we have at the Museum but do independently. Maybe it’s even better this way?
— Collective Room Conversation with Victor Misiano
at 8pm London time
—- Corina Lotz and Kirill Potapov – discussion panels (working title – “State and Democracy”)
—– Brain Trust – only one lecture, but lots of plans
—– Pirate Pannels – Vera Mey
—– Apt Art – Carnival&War with fanzine and more
2) Questions about updating the halls and calendar on the museum website (we would very much like to structure technical assistance and support for the halls by their organizers).
3) New museum projects:
– September 16 “Pirate Party”: film screening, exhibition, fanzine, carnival and assembly – not all at once! Need to spread out over the following months!
Suggestions are welcome!

Summary of the housekeeping committee on July 26: 

It tools us 45 minutes to discuss the

In terms of house skipping, we mainly focused on discussing the plan of events until January 1, 2023. 

We started our Assembly by discussing the joint project with the Museum of Care (Collective Rooms), DGI and the Friends of Ilyenkov society. 

Thank you to Mark Fuller for the inroduction of the Ilyenkov socitiety and MoC. Mark mentioned at the Housekeeping meeting that “the article Ilyenkov wrote on personality seemed to have echos of David’s and Maurice Bloch’s work on the extended self: it takes other(s) to develop a self.”

Other points in common were interest in Spinoza and a rebel stance…

I am very grateful to the Friends of Ilyenkov for this conversation because I think it sparked a fascinating dialog about the overall development of the MoC. 

This is how I have remembered the ideas that the participants expressed, but please, add here if I forgot something, or send me an email and will include if you got other ideas latter on:

– we should precede the zoom event with a video, audio or other form of introduction on which to record study materials, preliminary video discussions, video interviews with participants, and so on. 

– it would be great, in the spirit of salons, to participate in or create off-line events where discussions can take place face-to-face without the need for any formal setting. 

Perhaps these off-line forms could be resources for preliminary materials for on-line events? 

In part, our AptArt was invented as such a form linked to on-line but also existing primerely as an offline format. 

– There was a suggestion to use the option in zoom and other software, to divide into rooms, and to experiment more with the online format to keep it from turning into talking heads and cheap TV broadcasting.

– We continue to talk about how to move to Mastadon and plan for each room in the Museum of Care to come up with a way to host collective on line communication. 

– We talked about how to cross-pollinate each other by sharing friends, initiatives, inviting people to each other’s groups.

In a follow-up email correspondence. Michael and Corina will agree on a description of the Ilyenkov Group project at the Museum of Care and select participants from both projects to be invited to the discussion.

In terms of housekeeping, we mainly focused on discussing the plan for events until January 1, 2023 and then following up the discussion about the next year. 

John, Stephen and Michael and I agreed to set up on the timeline calendar of museum events that we talked about at the end of the Assembly. 

Among them: 

– Reading group BullshitsJobs (Steve)

– the Magic-related group (John)

– Pirates (John)

– the Values Theory Reading Group (Michael as follow up with Steve).

We will start with the Mastodon Assembly, at which we, unfortunately, don’t have much news. Everyone has been on vacation, and nothing particularly new has happened. But maybe someone will have some ideas about Mastodon, social media in general and how it makes sense to develop democratic technologies.

Our plans:

1) Planning a schedule of lectures, meetings, and reading groups for the next six months:

—- Monthly conversations with Keith Hart (Steve Bachler).

—- Christian Walter’s new reading group, “The Collapse of Antiquity Reading Group” or “The Origins of Modern Debt Politics in Greece and Rome.” To be determined.

—- Continuation of the series “David Graeber and His Philosophers:” Roy Bashkar and John M’ Reading Group

— Our regular reading group and other groups that we have at the Museum but do independently. Maybe it’s even better this way?

— Collective Room Conversation with Victor Misiano

at 8pm London time

—- Corina Lotz and Kirill Potapov – discussion panels (working title – “State and Democracy”)\The state we’re in

So what is the state?

The state and capitalism

Does law simply mirror class relations? 

Transforming our place within nature: the state as a barrier 

Self-determination – learning from history 

Assemblies in history – from Russia to Grenada, from Tahrir Square to Madrid, New York and Chile 

The struggles for a new constitution (Chile, Iceland…) 

Constitutions, power and revolution 

Making democracy a thing for us 

Beyond the state 

Strategies for transformation

How can the state “wither away”?

Towards assembly democracy

This is the proposed structure

—– Brain Trust – only one lecture, but lots of plans

—– Pirate Pannels – Vera Mey

—– Apt Art – Carnival&War with fanzine and more

2) Questions about updating the halls and calendar on the museum website (we would very much like to structure technical assistance and support for the halls by their organizers).

3) New museum projects:

– September 16 “Pirate Party”: film screening, exhibition, fanzine, carnival and assembly – not all at once! Need to spread out over the following months!

Suggestions are welcome!

Here is a link to the current version of next year’s calendar.