Utopias and Revolts
Composing Strategies from the Collective
Utopias and Revolts. Composing Strategies from the Collective is a series of encounters which, from a public round table and different work sessions, reflects upon strategies to deal with present-day challenges related to eco-social crises and sustaining life. Therefore, collectives and associations involved in social movements that include transfeminism, rights (domestic workers, housing, care, sexual rights), the struggles of migrant people, and other movements, are brought together here.
In November 2022, a space of exchange was opened between different state collectives and organisations from the research process developed by the territorial nodes of the Foundation of the Commons, resulting in the course The Future Is Unwritten. Organisation in the Capitalocene Crisis, followed by the encounter Capitalocene Utopias. Eco-Social Crisis: Definition, Challenges and Strategic Proposals, organised jointly with the Museo Reina Sofía. Their conclusions give rise to the following reflection: the current eco-social crisis cannot be reduced to environmental factors and must encompass financial, geopolitical, social and energy causes which run in parallel.
Some of the questions raised during this new encounter are: Which new commons can be generated (or are already being created) to oppose new forms of enclosure? How can food, housing, health, training and social security needs be resolved outside the wage system? What does it mean to defend the social reproduction of life amid renewed dynamics of dispossession, devastation and reorganisation of life?
To respond collectively, through a transversal prism, to these and other questions, the encounter has been designed as a working space shared between different nodes of the Foundation of the Commons — La Hidra Cooperativa, Katakrak, Synusia and Traficantes de Sueños — alongside fellow workers from collectives and organised spaces in different spheres of struggle and in collaboration with the Museo Reina Sofía.
Participants
Red Artea - Artea Sarea is a self-managed project that was set up in 2016 in the municipality of Artea (Bizkaia-Vizcaya) as a space of asylum and solidarity, and as a place to welcome migrant families and people in order to defend food sovereignty and rights for working migrant people.
Rojava Azadi is a Madrid-based collective of people with an interest in making visible and supporting emancipatory struggles being carried out in Kurdistan, particularly the process in the Rojava social revolution and the model of democratic self-governance they put forward. Their aim is to foster debate and collective reflection, as well as strengthening communication and international solidarity, weaving support networks to facilitate fellowship between peoples and social mobilisation.
Seminario de Entramados Comunitarios y Formas de lo Político (The Seminar of Community Frameworks and Forms of the Political) is a permanent research space based in the “Alfonso Vélez Pliego” Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) in Mexico. The seminar serves to put forward reflections around the notion of the commons, the deployment of social antagonisms from the anti-patriarchal vein of the anti-capitalist struggle and the reading of new flows of struggles that women are driving forward from Latin America and Europe.
Programa
— With the participation of the collectives Red Artea - Artea Sarea, Rojava Azadi and Seminario de Entramados Comunitarios y Formas de lo Político (BUAP)
This conversation is centred around three main objectives: the relationship between the eco-social crisis, the crisis of the reproduction of life and territory struggles. It links these issues with the need to build independent frameworks which uphold social reproduction collectively, and delves deeper into the transversality of different forms of violence and the need to think about our projects from an anti-punitive feminist perspective.
Ateneo La Maliciosa (calle de las Peñuelas 12, Madrid)
Free, until full capacity is reached
The first part of this day set up for collectives and organisations gets under way with groups formed to reflect upon four points: social reproduction, spaces of self-management and communities, conflicts and self-management and income, employment and popular institutions. In the afternoon, a plenary discussion will be held, revolving around the ideas developed throughout the day during the work-table sessions, with the goal of generating a space of continuity in the process carried out and with the networks that have arisen.
Museo Reina Sofía, Nouvel Building, Auditoriums, Lobby
270 people
Free, until full capacity is reached, with prior registration via email by writing to museoenred@museoreinasofia.es, until 30 April, stating personal details (name, surname(s) and the collective or organisation you belong to) and reasons for participating
This final encounter, in the form of a plenary assembly between participants, gathers the conclusions and specific work proposals to think jointly about the next steps to keep on making these structured strategic spaces for struggles and sustaining life possible.
Ateneo La Maliciosa (calle de las Peñuelas 12, Madrid)
Aimed at people signed up for the session on Saturday, 6 May