Young People’s Participation. Группа авторов
following the eviction of Làbas from the occupied barracks in August 2017.
The absence of a physical space in which to follow up on the work already done with the library represented, even more than an obstacle, an opportunity to rethink and further reflect on the role of culture in our political activism. We started thus a reflection on the forms that our project could adopt in order to promote a cultural transformation of society while facing the lack of a fixed venue for hosting our events. The imaginative effort that the resolution of these difficulties required led a small group of eight people previously involved in the library to gathered around a table and found a new artistic-literary and editorial project. While maintaining our connection with Làbas, we wanted this new project to engage more with the city and to become a recognised actor in the local environment. In these circumstances the project of Quaderni Urbani (Urban Notebooks) took flight.
Theoretical assumptions, purposes and methodologies of the project
To speak of culture was always contrary to culture. Culture as a common denominator already contains in embryo that schematisation and process of cataloguing and classification which bring culture within the sphere of administration. (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1947, p 104)
From the start, Quaderni Urbani had the ambition to combine cultural commitment with social conflict. This seemingly belligerent goal, however, was not conditioned by ideological prejudices, but simply emerged from the experience of the obvious distortions of our surrounding social environment. The theoretical assumptions guiding our project were never explicitly discussed in the group, probably because they are considered a common and taken-for-granted cultural heritage for anyone who practises political activism. However, if asked to identify the most direct influences on our project, I would certainly find them in the Frankfurt School’s critique of the ‘cultural industry’ and in the theories on socio-cultural reproduction of inequalities elaborated – within the Marxist tradition – by the French sociologists Bourdieu and Passeron.
In the first half of the 20th century, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School understood that the reproduction of artworks made possible by new technologies (film and photography) (see also Benjamin, 1935) would place culture in a relationship of dependence on the newly emerging ‘cultural industry’ and the economic interests that drove it. The reifying logic of the factory, now applied to cultural products, would transform these latter into proper ‘goods’. The concept of cultural industry was coined to describe a process of mass production of cultural products, which after being ‘banalised’ by advertising communication, would be ‘administered’ to an audience no longer composed of passionate lovers of the arts, but of consumers. The dependence of the cultural work on the mass production system would have as a logical consequence, the emptying of that cultural work from any content that might be hostile to the interests of that system. Mass-produced cultural products would tend to be basic uniformity; they are ‘invariable entities’ (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1947, p 131) that have no creative subjectivity and that encourage the acritical adoption of the consumeristic lifestyle. The power of control over consumers is exercised through entertainment, the quintessence of industrially reproduced culture: the fun and frivolity of the content sold by the cultural industry aim to dull the critical conscience of users in order to socially disengage them and to imprison them in indifference. The alienation from one’s own critical consciousness and the cultural homogenisation imposed by the cultural industry foster in individuals the conviction that the existing social order is ‘natural’ and ‘unmodifiable’. The removal of any resistance against a cultural system that reduces the work of art to a good of consumption and the removal of any claim against a social system based on class privilege that idolises profit are the ultimate goals of the cultural industry (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1947, p 164).
The reflections of the Frankfurt School dialogue harmoniously with the study of the mechanisms of social and cultural reproduction conducted by Bourdieu and Passeron in the 1970s. Although the authors focused their analysis on the reproduction of inequalities within the context of formal education, their study (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1970) shed light on broader social processes. Bourdieu and Passeron stressed how the logic of action of both the educational institutions and the cultural industry entails a tendency towards acculturation that reproduces and crystallises the existing social order, while maintaining the inequalities that are structural to it. This reproduction of inequalities is achieved also with the help of devices of selection and censorships (advertisements, funding agencies, large editorial cartels) that are able to decide what is ‘culture’ and what is not. The culture that emerges from this process of selection has thus an arbitrary and partial character and mirrors the ideas of the ruling classes. It is a culture that legitimates only certain meanings, conceals the relationships of strength imposed by the system, acts as a symbolic and violent reinforcement of those relationships (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1970) and crystallises their alleged inevitability.
Although aware of the schematic synthesis of these reconstructions, I believe that for the activists of Quaderni Urbani, these theoretical assumptions maintain an indisputable validity in relation to cultural activism. From them we draw an historical and sociological lesson: that a considerable part of the cultural production of a society has always pursued the aim of reflecting the established order, then of reproducing and perpetuating in the arts, literature and in movies, a given model of society along with all its injustice and lack of equality. This awareness implies the recognition of culture as a label behind which there is often an ideological opportunism that is concerned with the preservation of the existing social order. The intention to enhance the ability of art and culture to be means through which to foster social change and question hegemonic thinking became the main purpose of Quaderni Urbani. In an historical period in which populist forces started to openly call for inhumanity, and closure of ports and borders, we worked towards a politicisation of culture. In so doing, we aimed to dismantle the alleged neutrality of dominant discourses, and to reveal their emptiness and their complicity with a system of structural inequalities. In this scenario, it became clear that the key element of our commitment should be the promotion of a counterculture and the support to those engagé cultural actors who intended to question and change the existing social order through their art. We turned our attention to independent publishers and artists, collectives of writers, and autonomous theatre companies, with whom we engaged in cooperation and mutual training, so as to create networks and extend in breadth and scope our cultural activism.
Decisions concerning the practices were crucial too. We wanted our political principles to show in the contents of our activities, but also in the practices and forms adopted by our project. We sought to avoid those organisational models in which cultural contents are merely unilaterally ‘transmitted’ from the artist to a passively receiving audience, as is mostly the case in school or academic contexts. Instead, we opted for activities where culture is collectively constructed, debated and resignified. This decision brought us to the organisation of open workshops ending in moments of final restitution in the form of collective exhibitions, readings or performances.
Our cultural activities were usually focused on a given topic (for example, the right to the city, migration policy) chosen from among those of greatest impact on the city and its residents or suggested by specific collaborations with artists or other cultural groups. Every decision on the work to be carried out is collectively taken, through weekly assemblies. The assemblies of Quaderni Urbani are self-managed and horizontal: this approach seeks to facilitate interaction and allows activists of heterogeneous cultural formation to ‘contaminate’ and enrich each other. Finally, we strive to avoid the elitist ultra-specialism that often distinguishes academic cultural events and we seek to maintain our activities free of charge so to ensure an immediate and extensive access to the cultural contents we create and share. In order to meet the necessary costs, we self-finance our activities by selling self-produced goods (such as hand-made notebooks) and by organising dinners based on a ‘pay-as-you-wish/can’ principle.
Since 2017, Quaderni Urbani has organised dozens of cultural events. Often, they have taken place in our spaces, but sometimes they have been organised elsewhere, even outside of Bologna. The horizontal structure of these events has encouraged the development of a critical and