----- io_dencies - constructing public spheres (venice) -----

project initialisation

collaborative interface

exhibition

The recent project, IO_lavoro immateriale, moves away from the concrete, urban context and targets some of the central discussion topics of the public sphere: work, subjectivity and social production. In contrast to the other IO_dencies project phases, it builds on an already existing local discussion about 'immaterial labour'*. This debate has been conducted in Italy since the 1970s and later during the Paris exile by circles around Toni Negri, Maurizio Lazzarato and others. IO_lavoro immateriale is a collaborative database on the Internet, generated during the time of the Venice Biennale '99 by Maurizio Lazzarato (political theorist), Luther Blisset (collective of media activists), Michael Hardt (philosopher), Hans Ulrich Reck (media theorist), Enzo Rullani (economist) and Iaia Vantaggiato (journalist). The database serves as an open discursive machine to question the current conditions of creative action and production in society. Starting from the analysis of 'immaterial labour' (all forms of creative, intellectual and affective labour are fully integrated and essential factors in the dominant economical production), the group collaboratively searches for contemporary political forms and concepts of creative actions in the public sphere of Italy today.

The project IO_lavoro immateriale is developed during the Biennale and offers the participants a technologically supported organisational and operational platform for their interdiscursive processes. Supported by machinic self-organisation processes, the developments and investigations of the participants become visible in time and space. Visibilities can be tackled more easily. They release energies, create relevance and potential effectiveness.

*'Immaterial labour' refers to actions which preceed the production of goods and which allow for the evolvement of social relations, forms of life and modes of subjectivation. It is not a category determined by 'work', but an autonomous and independent field of agency which anticipates contractual and paid labour and which overrules their conception. (Maurizio Lazzarato)

collaborative environment

1999

Knowbotic Research in collaboration with Maurizio Lazzarato, Luther Blisset, Michael Hardt, Hans Ulrich Reck, Enzo Rullani, Iaia Vantaggiato. Exhibition: Peter Sandbichler