Attempting to create alternatives where there are none... M
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Alex Foti Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 1:16 AM To: [email protected] Subject: <nettime> Skyscraper Squatted: the Precarized Cognitariat Rises in Milano Last Saturday a momentous event occured in Milan: hundreds of young people working with art, theater, video, cinema, design, publishing, education and the like took over the Galfa Tower, an abandoned 33-floor skyscraper, strategically located close to Milano Central Station, next to the Hilton and the Sheraton, symbolically positioned in between the Pirelli Tower, hq of regional government, and the newly built Lombardy Palace, monument to the arrogance and corruption of the Lombard governor, a reactionary catholic who has been ruling Italy's most populous and wealthiest region since 1995, by privatizing medicine and striking dubious real estate deals (most of his junta is now behind bars or being investigated for embezzlement). As the night progressed, thousands of people of all ages and classes flocked to the skyscraper, which was soon alighted in blue, a beautiful spectacle you could see from far away - it was like a lighthouse saying: come here o impoverished creative worker, o alienated youngster, o writer and musician in search of your people no matter the kind of celebrity you have. Everybody who matters in Milano felt compelled to come to MACAO, this the name of the new occupation, including the current city alderman for culture, the archistar Stefano Boeri, who expressed praise for what is after all an illegal occupation of private property, while assorted popstars and novelists mingled with the crowd. Everybody danced 'til the crack of dawn.. What's noteworthy about MACAO is its magmatic creativity, its mushrooming teams and committees, its crowded assemblies, and the many concerts and theater performances (e.g. Motus) that has managed to stage in its first four days of existence. Every day and night it's packed with people (so far the first two floors have been colonized, while the third is a sleeping space). The skyscraper has been abandoned since 1996 and its interiors were scrapped (to remove asbesto). It's property of Ligresti, a Sicilian real estate mogul who pretty much had his way in the 1980s and 1990s and reshaped the whole city, before running into financial trouble when the asset bubble burst in 2008. His financial holding is currently undergoing bankruptcy proceedings. Finally the spirit of the 99% is hovering over Milano, thanks to the mobilization of the creative precariat impoverished and made unemployed by the crisis. What didn't seem possible before the Great Recession, i.e. the generational unity of all precarized workers, and especially the radicalization of the creative class, is now apparent for all to see. Consequently. MACAO has become the talk of the town. Bifo's cognitariat is finally coming into being in the spaghetti city that hosts the country's most important universities and creative industries. Its activation depends only in small part on the contribution of movement activists: most of the faces are new and politically inexperienced. ZAM, MilanoX, San Precario are among those active, but the dynamic of the place is not determined by them, but by an Occupy-style mobilization of hitherto passive people, a horizontal chaos generating new radical democratic forms. As the good news from France and Greece are finally cracking the armor of Merkel's austerity, let's hope many of those who squatted the skyscraper will join next week's Blockupy ECB protests in Frankfurt. The epicenter of austerity and neoliberal policies is there. It's time to show Europe and the world how unpopular the bank of bankers and its gospel of cuts to services and jobs has become. They are gravediggers of society and enemies of European democracy. It's time to stop zombie neoliberalism and its financial oligarchy from inflicting yet more harm. In Milano, the creative class has finally realized what is at stake. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected] !DSPAM:2676,4faa7d0e120931614717629! _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
