Whose Heritage? Art of Rhizomatic Solidarity

Description

The paper offers a multi-layered narrative on an old icon of alternative organizing, the Solidarity movement in Poland, focusing on the initial years of the 1980s when it was set up, and its revived tradition materialized through contemporary art activism scene associated with the on-going regeneration processes of the former Gdansk Shipyard, Poland and its heritage futures. These interventions, formed at the nexus of art, activism and urbanism, facilitated by self-directed artists, question the established structures concerning how social relations are organized and spatialities of the urban everyday shaped. We argue that such practices are not only developing new social relations, but also become the new arenas for prototyping alternative forms of urbanism.

Drawing on a tradition of solidarity, rooted in class-based identities at the heart of industrial milieus, we engage Polish political philosophy as well as political theory of Paul Virno, Antonio Hardt and Michael Negri to engage with theorization of processual dynamics of multitude, contributing to ongoing debates on alternative organizing in the context of post-industrial urban development. In particular, we mobilize a notion of a rhizomatic solidarity which resonates with Hardt and Negri’s (2000; 2009) concept of the multitude - a construct inherently multiple and composed of countless internal differences, which cannot be reduced to a unity or a single identity. We argue that a rhizomatic solidarity can be understood as a time-bound organizational cohesion, that is, a temporal and spatially-bound cohesion mediating between individual and collective interests.

Period	9 Nov 2021 → 13 Nov 2021
Event title	IUAES 2021 Congress, Yucatan, Mexico. Heritage, Global Interconnections in a Possible World
Event type	Conference
Location	Merida, MexicoShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International