Experimental Politics and the Making of Worlds

Creative strategies have been central to global social movements. From the theatrics of the 1999 Seattle protests, to the rebel clowns at the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles and the antics of the Yes Men, the crossovers between art and politics have increasingly become more visible and prolific. This book explores an innovative form of creative and communicative politics: the 'performative encounter', as a strategy for facilitating new ways of being, relating and making worlds. Unlike existing scholarship that frames such encounters in artistic or cultural terms, this book analyzes performative encounters through an organizational lens to accentuate their social-political potential, engaging a wealth of material from autonomist philosophy, political science, performance studies, geography and social movement texts. Intertwining conceptual and ethnographic research, it uniquely maps out one narrative of the encounter, tracing a line through the twentieth century from the Berlin Dadaists, to the Situationist International, to several contemporary German collectives and campaigns, showing how performative encounters intervene in global and local issues such as the privatization of public space and resources, human mobility and the corporatization of education.

Anja Kanngieser

Prologue, Anja Kanngieser; Introduction Performative Encounters, Transformative Worlds - Pirates, Pools and Politics, Anja Kanngieser; Chapter 1 'Revolution is not "showing" life to people, but making them live': The Performative Encounter of Berlin Dada and the Situationist International, Anja Kanngieser; Chapter 2 Toward New Creative Politics: Transversal Activism and the Performative Encounter, Anja Kanngieser; Chapter 3 Everything for Everyone and for Free! Reclaiming Commons with Berlin and Hamburg Umsonst, Anja Kanngieser; Chapter 4 Movements for Human Mobility: The Transnational Republic and the Bundesverband Schleppen und Schleusen, Anja Kanngieser; conclusion Conclusion, Anja Kanngieser;