Matze Schmidt on Tue, 12 Oct 2010 18:49:30 +0200 (CEST)


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<nettime> Bologna Process Curriculum Vitae


Hello,

as is often the case false representations do apply to those who are not 
present. The following bold and simple text does not prove this wrong. 
Nevertheless a sexy migrant background may result from efforts of 
academics or off-intellectuals who can not really cope with the situations 
of inner and outer borders as well as with their own limitated options of 
symbolic forms. In between two shows about Migration and Mobility[1] 
I have re-edited points, very sketchy though, which may brought up the 
the theme called Migration which some would euphemistically label a 
discourse -- a debate at issue.

As a matter of fact toxic sludge with mining waste in Hungary causing death 
and spreading over Europe's river Danube is something else than a no border 
campaign (www.noborder.org) with demonstrations in Brussels. Anyhow the 
context is the same inasmuch as the borders a marked here as artificial 
limitations but defended by a Regime. The Film "Grossstadtzigeuner" 
("Big City Gypsies") from László Moholy-Nagy was screened in the Collegium 
Hungaricum in Berlin last month, showing the big Roma Community in Berlin 
in 1932, few years before the catastrophe. There are no pictures to be found 
like these today I guess. But there is no need for fancy theory to realise 
that not only France is expelling them again, the people and with them 
the pictures.

I would like to thank Mindaugas Gapsevicius for encouraging me to write 
this article below and his lecturer within a EU-Project for checking the 
writing (some errors may be left). The article was supposed to be published 
within a book but -- to overwork -- it now migrates to mailing lists and 
handouts.
_________________________
[1] "The Tourist Syndrome" (www.transientspaces.org) ended last Sunday and 
    "Migrating Art Academies" (www.migaa.eu) holds a conference next Friday 
    and Saturday in Berlin. 

Matze Schmidt, 12.10.2010






Bologna Process

Curriculum Vitae



< 1814 -1826     A Non-Euclidean geometry (Nikolai Lobachevsky, Carl 
                 Friedrich Gauss) questions which geometrical space best 
                 fits physical space.

1825             Begin of the periodic economic crises in the most 
                 developed country at that time: Great Britain. The amount 
                 of exports falls below the total of 1824.

1843             May 5th, opening of the rail lines Paris – Orleans and Paris 
                 – Rouen. The Parisian migrant Heinrich Heine says while 
                 overemphasising the loss of real space in a pretended 
                 Hyperspace of industrial media: "Space is killed by the 
                 railways, and we are left with time alone." At the end of 
                 the same year Heine visits Germany. This land is, at the 
                 time, a kind of confederation of countries (Deutscher Bund) 
                 but not yet a united nation before the Franco-Prussian War.

1848             The _Manifesto of the Communist Party_ as issued by Karl 
                 Marx and Friedrich Engels states that there is a World 
                 Market "for which the discovery of America paved the way".

1863             United States President Abraham Lincoln issues the 
                 _Emancipation Proclamation_ during the American Civil War 
                 declaring the freedom of all slaves in any state of the 
                 Confederate States of America as a war measure of the 
                 industrialised north against the agricultural south.

~ 1870 - 1900    Blues emerges, the music and reflection method in the spare 
                 time of black workers and 'post-slaves' within 
                 African-American communities in the Deep South of the 
                 United States.

1914 - 1918      The so-called First World War reshapes Europe and more than 
                 15 Million 'migrate' into graves.

1922             El Lissitzky makes the collage and drawing "Vladimir Tatlin 
                 working on his Monument to the Third International". The 
                 Monument is also kown as "Tatlin's Tower" for Petrograd. The 
                 Third International aka "Commintern" was founded March 2-6, 
                 1919 at a congress in Moscow.

1929 ...         The "Great Depression" takes place. This and the Dust Bowl in 
                 the American and Canadian prairie lands precipitates a high 
                 unemployment rate in the US (exceeding 20%) and a wave of 
                 national migration described in John Steinbeck's _The Grapes 
                 of Wrath_. The ensuing worldwide economic downturn in the 
                 1930s may be seen as the trigger for developments which lead 
                 to the aggression of of Nazi Germany and the Second World War.

1933 ...         Jewish and other Diaspora is caused by the Shoah and progroms.

1950s            The German "Wirtschaftswunder" ("economic miracle") happens. 
                 The Volkswagen "Beetle", a car model from the Nazi Regime era, 
                 is the icon of West German reconstruction.

1957             First postwar economical crisis (industrial output in 
                 developed capitalist countries declines 4 percent). Founding 
                 of the Situationist International (SI), not only "famous" for 
                 Psychogeography, Dérive and the critique against the Spectacle 
                 as the contemporary (20th century) form of capitalism.

1950s/60s        Profit Rates are all in all high. In Marx' Critique of 
                 Political Economy (Capital), the rate of profit (r) are 
                 measured as

                            r = surplus-value / capital invested

                 where surplus-value corresponds to unpaid labor in the 
                 production process or to profits, interest, and rent 
                 (property income). First mainly in the US and then in Great 
                 Britain and later global phenomenons like Pop and Pop Art 
                 affirm and subvert this conjuncture, NO!Art opposes.

1962             Computer scientist J. C. R. Licklider discusses his concept 
                 for a "Intergalactic Computer Network" with other colleagues 
                 of the BBN Technologies company, a supplier of arms.

1967             Negative rates of economic growth for the first time in 
                 Germany after the Second World War: -0,3 % (1967) and 
                 -1,3% (1975) growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

1970             The band Led Zeppelin records the "Immigrant Song" built on 
                 nordic myths in the lyrics and on a quasi-variant of Blues 
                 called Hard Rock. It was written during a tour of Iceland, 
                 Britain and Germany.

1972             The concept of "deterritorialisation" is subsumed by Gilles 
                 Deleuze and Félix Guattari in _Anti-Oedipus_, a critique of 
                 capitalism as the super power and a turning away from the 
                 critique of political economy towards a non-linear sort of 
                 sub-and-super-structure of labor and libido. 
                 Deterritorialisation, the weakening of the ties of space and 
                 culture and economy is always accompanied by 
                 reterritorialization. There are missing links between 
                 deterritorialisation and Post-Fordism (which is however 
                 communicated as a kind of »De-Taylorisation« in the sector 
                 of production) and the terminology around the "Symbolic 
                 Worker", which is complexly put together and 
                 economically/politically speaking nothing more than an 
                 update of the mode of production based on new productive 
                 forces called the computer plus internet. Within intranets 
                 corporations tunnel outcomes of symbolic work. Universities 
                 maintain their own High Speed Computer Networks ever since 
                 the days of the ARPANET in the 1960s, the proto-internet as 
                 a synthesis of business, science and a monopoly on the use 
                 of force.

1976             Drafts of the reduction of real wages by holding a reserve 
                 army of labor (unemployed) according to the OECD's "A Growth 
                 Scenario to 1980", a "Special Supplement to the Economic 
                 Outlook" from July 19, 1976 in consideration of declining 
                 rates of profit. Profit is the must for every single capital 
                 in competition with other capital. Competition means that 
                 firms have to invest in variable capital (wages etc. for 
                 workers) and constant capital (new machines, new material) 
                 progressively so as to not fall behind other competitors. 
                 This may result in the tendency for the rate of profit to fall 
                 because investments tend increase on the basis of new 
                 technologies and competition. This is not a vicious circle of 
                 logic but a step ladder. The OECD is the Organisation for 
                 Economic Co-operation and Development and is acting by reviews 
                 and forecasts, and through "soft law" for the market economy 
                 of all its member states, here: from welfare to workfare. 
                 Time of the Punk (Music) Explosion with referencies to the 
                 Situationists. According to legend Jimmy Page and Robert 
                 Plant (Led Zeppelin) are puzzled when visiting a Punk concert.

Early 1980s      Recession – Negative GDP growth in the USA. States begin to 
                 "pump" money into circulation.

1980s & 1990s    Exacerbated competition on the world market of single capital 
                 and national capital does not precipitate a big general 
                 economical crisis but has certain downscaling showing a 
                 capped economic crisis cycle. According to the International 
                 Labour Organisation growth rates of the World GDP in the early 
                 1980s occasionally fell below 1%, in the mid-1980s and below 
                 the 3% mark at the beginning of the 21st Century.

~ 1991           For the first time the author about a "Hypermobile Class" 
                 which is naturally not a 'classical class' in terms of 
                 economics but a social class, a social stratification, a part 
                 of the class of workers or employees that is highly educated. 
                 In fact this group may be described as a sub-group or form of 
                 the working class enjoying a sort of cosmopolitan status, a 
                 group of privileged subjects, freelancers who are able to 
                 switch nations (the formal formation of national capital) and 
                 shift cultures (the habitual room of meanings inside a nation 
                 or a region). This circumstance causes a drift in identities.

1992             _Diversi, ma insieme_ [Different but together] from Milan 
                 write: "Inside the Fortress Europe a double function is 
                 intended for immigrants: an 'economical' role within the 
                 framework of the projects of the enterprisers for a 
                 deregulation of the labor market – here they have to fill the 
                 gaps of the shadow economy and a 'political-social' function 
                 as 'outer enemy', against whom a future european people's 
                 community is to form and to mobilise."

1999 ...         Signing of the _Bologna Declaration_ by Ministers of Education 
                 from 29 European (and beyond) countries creating a "European 
                 Higher Education Area" (EHEA) to enhance the competitiveness 
                 of a realm inclusive Island, Turkey and Russia and other states 
                 by cutting down costs. The EHEA envisages among other things 
                 "to facilitate mobility of students" and "prepare students for 
                 their future careers and for life as active citizens in 
                 democratic societies". The label "Bologna Process" for this 
                 undertaking is quite a symbolic one since Bologna is home to 
                 the oldest university in the Western world founded in 1088. 
                 Thus it adresses a historic layer as well as the discourse of 
                 a European centralisation on the superstructure that seeks to 
                 avoid Brain Drain. It appears as a reaction to the Human 
                 Capital Flight or emigration of an elite-to-be (including a 
                 sub-elite formed by the separating education system with 
                 bachelor and/or master degrees). The concept of 
                 deterritorialization does not seem to fit here. Article 14 
                 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union 
                 guarantees the right to education. Of course the wage shares 
                 in the Euro Area and the USA as a percentage of GDP have 
                 decreased since the early 1990s, especially in Europe – from 
                 nearly 62% (1991) to about 57% (2005) with a continual 
                 downward trend. This, along with the general profit squeeze 
                 and progressively falling GDPs, raises costs for the social 
                 systems across the European Union (EU) occuring in 
                 unemployment and cutting welfare and social-security payments 
                 and seems to affect the educational system in the EU as a 
                 whole and fundamental rights and duties of citizens.

2000 - 2009      The EU de facto reintroduces the death penalty according to 
                 the Explanation 3. aka "'negative’ definitions" of "Article 2: 
                 Right to Life" of the _Charter of Fundamental Rights of the 
                 European Union_ regarding sentence 2 ("No one shall be 
                 condemned to the death penalty, or executed.") referring to 
                 the European Convention on Human Rights from 1953 ("The death 
                 penalty shall be abolished. No one shall be condemned to such 
                 penalty or executed."):
               
                 "Deprivation of life shall not be regarded as inflicted in 
                 contravention of this article [Art. 2] when it results from 
                 the use of force which is no more than absolutely necessary:
               
                 [...]
                 * in action lawfully taken for the purpose of quelling a riot 
                 or insurrection."
               
                 This information can be found via deeplink (a hyperlink that 
                 points to a specific page or file) to a PDF file named 
                 "Explanations relating to the complete text [...]" within 
                 the webpage containing the Article 2 of the Charter of 
                 Fundamental Rights of the EU. This negative definition 
                 entered formally as part of the law (!) into force on 
                 December 1, 2009 after the Treaty of Lisbon. It is an 
                 expression of the fear of social frictions.

2002             "Alpha 3.4", the webwalking project is presented by 
                 tsunamii.net at the Documenta 11 in Kassel (Germany) in 2002. 
                 Tien Wei Woon, Charles Lim Yi Young and others from Singapore 
                 extrapolate by means of an online GPS-mapping the relations of 
                 the physical geographic space order to the order of the 
                 switching of IPs (Internet Protocol), the adresses in the 
                 locating system for dispatching within the WWW.

2003             Heath Bunting and others in 2003 offer "tour de fence" 
                 trainings in the "real world" related to the utopia of a 
                 virtuality demarcated internet or media space without 
                 borders. Remember that Singaporean studends may easily get 
                 a (state) grant but they have to returm to their home state.

2004             About 14 billion US-Dollars are retransfered to Mexiko by 
                 migrant workers.

2006             Le Monde publishes photos by Juan Medina (Reuters) on the 
                 10th of May showing an African refugee crawling through the 
                 rows of holiday makers on the beach of Fuerteventura, one of 
                 the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, off the west coast 
                 of Africa.

2008             A crisis of overproduction, which began in the construction and 
                 real estate sector, leads to unsold goods and is concealed by a 
                 "Financial Crisis" (banks deny credits to banks). It is 
                 followed by huge State Debts in most developed countries as a 
                 result of the turnover of the credit system into the monetary 
                 system (Business-to-business transaction invoices have to be 
                 settled with cash not credit). This results i giant state 
                 credits for the financial sector: according to the 
                 International Monetary Fund (2009) up to over 80% in France, 
                 over 100% in Italy and to over 220% in Japan of GDP for the 
                 year of 2010.

2010 - now       The author Matze Schmidt outlines a simple but sophisticated 
                 list of historical data, dates and terms within a range of 
                 subjects from economics to migration in western perspective 
                 entitled the _Curriculum Vitae of Bologna Process_, as if it 
                 were the CV of a subject or persona but lacking a comprehensive 
                 listing of personal history or any real personal information. 
                 The author is a 'post-heroic' factor, it is a non-dead fact. 
                 An acquaintance of the author says, that nobody is interested 
                 in _Second Life_ as a setting for a global non-national 
                 territory anymore except a friend of a friend, known to the 
                 author as well, who still believes in 3D. Beliefs in a 
                 technology driven intergalactic "Social Galaxy" seem to 
                 collapse because of contradictions with restraints. Whereas 
                 for instance with Google's technologies there is evidence to 
                 presume that sociation is happening. Export surplusses seem to 
                 be dearly bought with budget cuts though and even Google has 
                 dismissed staff. Prof Gundolf S. Freyermuth, a self-described 
                 "digital immigrant" (person born before ca. 1980) as opposed 
                 to a "digital native" (person born after ca. 1980) suggested 
                 during an interview on the 'old' medium of radio on August 19 
                 that cultures in nations which are open to what he calls the 
                 "digital future" will be more competitive. The phrase "digital 
                 immigrant" reproduces an ethnogical terminology and thinking. 
                 As a consequence of this a radical immigrant from the 
                 pre-personal-computer time-space who immigrated into the 
                 current 'digital' time-space had to settle in the most 
                 competitive territories of today – just as the digital 
                 native. One can call this the integrated but inter-national 
                 area. The SI called it the spectacle. Freyermuth has a ranch 
                 in Arizona.


(c) 2010 n0name



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