The Gastarbeiter: In Search
of an Afterlife
transversal web journal
It didn’t take long for the so-called "migrant crisis" to fully
manifest its political impact on Europe. Not only are the forces
of the status quo – which guaranteed the stability of the old
continent for decades – rapidly losing popular support as they are
seriously being challenged by growing right-wing movements today,
the very survival of the EU is now at stake. And again, the issue
of migration appears at the very heart of all this political
turmoil – not because it is the cause of a crisis, which the
political elites must resolve to save Europe, but because it is
used by these same elites to conceal their own inability to cope
with the historical crisis of neoliberal globalization which is
demolishing the European dream today.
Therefore, what is euphemistically called a “migrant crisis” today
is in fact a means of historical forgetting. Moreover, it is, at
the same time, itself the result of a forgotten history; for
migrants are by no means newcomers to Europe. There is no better
reminder of that fact than the old figure of the gastarbeiter –
the so-called "guest worker" from the South who moved and worked
throughout the spaces of North/Western Europe at the historical
peak of industrial modernity.
The texts in this issue attempt to reawaken the memories of
gastarbeiters in order to historicize the current experience of
migration and its dangerous political appropriations. They aim at
revealing a hidden genealogy of domination, exploitation, and
manipulation, as well as a struggle for justice and emancipation.
Those who cannot historicize the conditions in which they live
will never be able to politicize them.
http://transversal.at/transversal/1017
Contents
Sandro Mezzadra / Davor Konjikušić: Humanitarianism
Destroys Politicality
Serhat Karakayali: Lotta Continua in Frankfurt, Terror
of Turks in Cologne
Jana Dolečki: “Home, Foreign Home” – commemorating the
50-year anniversary of the signing of the Agreement on Labor
Migration between Austria and Yugoslavia
Margareta Kern: How to Speak Precarious Histories from a
Precarious Position?
Katja Kobolt: How to Speak Precarious Histories from a
Precarious Position?
Amir Hodžić: Fragments of Queer Mobility
They'll Never Walk Alone:
Remembering Gastarbeiters in the Neoliberal Age
Conference
6-7 October 2017
Depot, Breitegasse 3, 1070
Vienna
http://eipcp.net/projects/kos/about
Programme
Day 1: Friday, 6 October
10.00 – 10.30 Introduction and welcome
Boris Buden, Lina Dokuzović
Panel I: 10.30 – 13.30 An avant-garde figure or a role
model? The relevance of Gastarbeiters today.
Boris Buden, Jana Dolečki, Jon Solomon, Manuela Bojadžijev
13.30 – 14.30 Lunch break
14.30 – 15.00 Screening GUESTures (GOSTIkulacije) 2011
(two-channel HD video, 33min) by Margareta Kern
Panel II: 15.00 – 17.30 Marginalized and invisible experiences –
women Gastarbeiters and queer flight.
Katja Kobolt, Margareta Kern, Ana Hoffner, Amir Hodžić
17.30 – 17.45 Short break
17.45 – 18.30 Discussion
Day 2: Saturday, 7 October
Panel III: 14.00 – 16.30 Rethinking "guests" and
"workers" in post-Fordist forms of labor mobility.
Lina Dokuzović, Monika Mokre, Stefan Nowotny, Keti Chukhrov
16.30 – 16.45 Short break
16.45 – 17.30 Discussion
17.30 – 19.30 Multilingual discussion and exchange of experiences,
challenges, and knowledges of migration. Open to everyone.
19.30 Closing statement and performance by the choir HOR 29.
Novembar, singing Gastarbeiter songs.
Join us for drinks and continue an informal discussion.
"The Gastarbeiter: In Search of an Afterlife" and
"They'll Never Walk Alone: Remembering Gastarbeiters in the
Neoliberal Age" are part of They were, those people, a kind
of solution, a co-operation project by What, How &
for Whom/WHW (Zagreb), Tensta konsthall (Stockholm), Centre for
Peace Studies/CMS (Zagreb) and eipcp (Vienna).
They were, those people, a kind of solution is co-funded
by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. The
eipcp's participation in this project is also supported by the
Arts and Culture Division of the Federal Chancellery of Austria.
http://eipcp.net/projects/kos/about#supportedby
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