Consider the whole of your life, what you already do, all your doings. Now please exclude everything which is naturally physiologically necessary (or harmful), such as breathing and sleeping (or breaking an arm). For what remains, exclude everything which is for the satisfaction of a social demand, a very large area which includes foremost your job, but also care of children, being polite, voting, your haircut, and much else. From what remains, exclude everything which is an agency, a "means" -- another very large area which overlaps with others to be excluded. From what remains, exclude everything which involves competition. In what remains, concentrate on everything done entirely because you just like it as you do it. (Henry Flynt „Against „Participation“: Total Critique of Culture“)




The union of DAta Miners/ Travailleurs Psychique has emerged from the involvement of IWW workers in the Alytus Art Strike in 2009. It is currently in formation, non dues paying, and experimental forum for the united action of different workers around the world on the basis of industrial production that affects the psychic makeup of us and our world as workers - ie through dimensions of space, time and meaning.

Alytus Psychic Strike Biennial is yielding a ground for counter-eurocentrist manifestation, denouncing the structural core of racist issues in serious (white) culture of biennalization, rising the decolonization of mind including Black Power experience and subversion of "normalization" processes into abnormalization fiest where every two years psychic workers and data miners are joyfully celebrating the death of art.

We aim at worldwide unionising on the proletarianist basis.

We distanced ourselves from the role of the art workers because the basis of art workers solidarity is a basis of the imperialism of art and the wholly anti-working class basis of art. The question is can we as workers unionise in order to build working class power. Our answer has been to reject, resist and attack art itself just as revolutionary workers unionisation is against work itself.

We aim at new possibility of interpersonal relationship practices of (non)humans without capitalist specialization and alienation resulted by bourgeois culture.

The upcoming event is planned for August 10-31 as psycho peregrination round southern hemisphere of the Black Sea.


Prehistory




Alytus Biennial is a (il)logic continuation of numerous international experimental art festivals and events held in southern Lithuanian town Alytus since 1993. So far the essential element for the town is an absence of any artistic infrastructure (neither galleries, art museums, nor even some exhibition hall in the city hosting 60 000 inhabitants – sic!  the events were held directly in the streets and other urban common places. The essential element for any of those activities was political-artistic behavior and problematic.


As a clearly defined under the name of Alytus Biennial the event (re)appeared in 2005. The basic idea for it was to continue experimental art tradition directly in the urban spaces of the town. So far it took the name “Beware!Politics!” it really stood somewhere in-between of arts and politics. The biennial also claimed for debienalization of arts and society so to respond to increasing number of various biennials appeared as cultural capitalism in itself. The communal approach of the artists’ community was taken as a highest value of the event to continue the development further.


The biennial of 2007 was given to youth with a task simply to demystify it’s importance an so to trap the sacred name of it. So far they did not succeed to destroy the biennial as the symbol of “serious culture” – next step was Art Strike Biennial: to cease any artistic activity related to mimicking of Vilnius European Cultural Capital and/or any establishment in Lithuania in 2009. Establishment got pierced and Biennial turned into an activity to not produce arts every second the year. This year DAMTP has emerged.


Alytus [Art Strike] Biennial of 2011 yielded a ground for the First Congress of DAta Miners and Travailleurs Psychique (DAMTP). That happen on August 22-28th in Alytus. It aimed at gathering of world wide radical antiautoritaric post-neoist-out of Dadaists, surrealists or offsprings of fluxus and situationists, post artists (those who ceased their participation in capitalist spectacle), prophets, sages and seers, cultural, political and social workers, dead and alive, made-up and non-existant, reproductive workers and lovers – everybody who are active in space, time and meaning under the umbrella of DAta Miners and Travailleurs Psychique to discuss, share and spread around our experiences and good will to destroy bourgeois culture and outlive capitalist specializations. So far we found art strike biennial very relevant form to abolish imperialist format of cultural biennial format, also to liberate some funds from them on that occasion and that was very pleasant form to outlive the death of art (and serious culture) in a place were it never was settled (yet).

The DAMTP meeting to discuss on decolonization and particularly on its visual and linguistic issues was held on September 21-23, 2012 in Alytus and there was rised an issue of identity. So far discussions did not lead to any resolution there was a need to address the question to elaborate practically. And during the Art Strike Biennial of 2013 the question of identity was elaborated practically by adopting the instrument of DesaKalaPatraGraph (DKP-graph). The issue of the year 2015 started with formularies of Revolutionary Animism and was marked by developments of situochemistry (revolutionary clay therapy and smoking of lichens in old tatar's cemetary) and Quantum 3 Sided Football.

Since 2015 none Alytus biennial event was organized physically in Alytus. The biggest development of Aytus biennial got in the format of continuosly variating transformative morphology of 3 Sided Football and continuous suspending & realizing of so called 3 Sided Football World Cups. The events were held in London (FQFFEF - First Quantum Festum Footballum Equinox Festival) in 2016, 8th Alytus Biennial in Kassel in 2017, and 3 Sided Football off-event in Madrid in 2018.

There was an attempt of rivival of déjà vu revival of Alytus biennial event in Alytus in 2017, but it failed due to lack of self-organization. It resulted the failing of DAMTP into factions.

The format of the psychic strike biennial generated following collective practices:

-          Collective painting and animist ceramics with body-psychics healing capacities

-           Morning exercises

-           DKP-graphics

-           Déjà vu day and night public preemptive anti-capitalist and counter-bourgeois pickets/demonstrations - dead workers of all nations and times, organic and non-organic were included;
-          growing up distrust to eurocentrist Cartesian assumption on language as representative (i.e. assumption that the world exists objectively and that language represents, symbolizes, stands for and/or mirrors reality that is independent of human agency, except in terms of use value) and applying of generative language (non-european to asemic) which emerges from human and/or non-human intentionality and interaction.

-          workshops on collective hypergraphics, metagraphics and situographics.

-          3-sided footballing variations: quantum 3SF; moving or 3 sided goalposts game, quantum cyclotron, 3SF games intruded into the formats of serios cultural manifestations, entanglement, blindfold etc.

-          DIY music jam, URS mubarak, animist sound and mind singing

-          cloudbusting – the extraction of cosmic sexual energy extracted by cloud engineering busters (according to invention by Wilhelm Reich) and/or human/non-human psychic will… and sharing will all people of good will around.



And traditionally: no individual show-ups, no organized [visual] documentation ...and trying to avoid any... 


So,

-          there are  invited everybody who ceased playing the role of artists, or are planning to do it soon – and we expect for not doing arts during the festival, but sharing your artistic experience and fantasies in more useful activities we’ll decide right at place

-         there are  invited theoreticians not to give the lectures and clever advices, neither addressing big names, but rather to look for latent possibilities not hidden under the shiny professionalism

-          there are  invited activists who instead of addressing global capitalist problems would face the misery of everyday life what is actual cause for it.

-          there are invited dead workers

-          there are  invited everybody to deal with the radical consequences of global capitalist cultural colonialism and to look forward for common acts in all levels of space, time and meaning.









“If the end is the taking of power by the people themselves then the means must be the revolutionary organs of the people – worker councils, community councils, communes etc.

If the end is the freeing of man culturally as well socially and economically then the means exist in the destruction of “culture”.

If the end is the liberation of natural man then the means must be sexual as well as social.

If the end is the “totality” then the means must be “total” – all or nothing.”

Ben Morea. Black Mask No. 7, August/September 1967.


 

 

http://www.psychogeography.org/ - notes on (hyper/meta/psychogeo/situo)graphy accompanied with sporadic links and archive materials from DAMTP, NXTPA, POLARIS, NA, EVOL and LPA.

https://strategicoptimismfootball.wordpress.com/
-
unoffical fan page for the three-sided football team Strategic Optimism Football (SOF).

http://d3fc.wordpress.com/ -
site of Deptford Three Sided Football Club (D3FC). D3FC was formed in 2012 with the aim of undertaking a rigourous testing of the dynamics of three sided football – through the critical practise of active participation – in order to prove (or disprove) its founding father’s hypotheses regarding quality of play and outcome.

http://salvage.zone/ -
  Salvage is a quarterly of revolutionary arts and letters. Salvage is edited and written by and for the desolated Left, by and for those committed to radical change, sick of capitalism and its sadisms, and sick too of the Left’s bad faith and bullshit.

http://www.irational.org -
enjoying freedom, disregarding clasifications.

http://kritische-kunst.org
- is an artist run medial platform for cultural activism balancing on the edge of art and activism and based in Berlin, Germany.

http://stewarthomesociety.org - the website run by Stewart Home, writer, the ideologist of the assault on "serious culture", theoretician of art strike and collaborator for art strike biennial.

http://www.refrat.de/amo - Amo Books Botschaft - a critical human rights organization for the African critical Dispora and critical people in Germany.

http://www.classwargames.net/- Class Wargames is an avant-garde movement of artists, activists, and theoreticians engaged in the production of works of ludic subversion in the bureaucratic society of controlled consumption.

 

e-blast.squarespace.com - blog by extreme poet of life - Ben Morea - the one of founders of Black Mask, also he was a guy from UAW/MF in NYC in countercultural late 60-ies.


http://surrealistgruppen.org/ -
The site of surrealists group in Szczecin inluding our comrades Tippy (previously known as Nano) and Johannes Bergmark who partook 1st Alytus Biennial and since then are in psychic union with us. The site also contains list of links to major worldwide surrealists' sites.

 

http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org - The Radical Anthropology Group is about anthropology - the ways in which we are, and the ways in which we came to be, human. Anthropology is the study of what it means to be human. To be radical is to get to the roots of things. It therefore seemed natural to identify ourselves by linking these two words. The Radical Anthropology Group has never defined itself as a political organisation. But the implications of some forms of science are intrinsically radical, and this applies in particular to the theory that humanity was born in a social revolution.

 

https://datacide-magazine.com/ - the magazine for noise and politics appearing since 1997. To be used as a communication tool of the trans-european Undo*round, it is intended to give the a deserved coverage to those who do things, not for the kudos, prestige and cash it might bring in but for the buzz of inter-activity and mutual respect. Heterogenous theory for the invisible insurrection of a million minds.

 

http://scepsis.net/ - Scepsis's goal - as the title suggests - consists in counterbalancing all sorts of dogmas pervading the society.


 

Web resources:

http://www.notbored.org/- Archives of texts from and about the Situationist International

http://www.henryflynt.org/ - Henry Flynt's "Philosophy": theorethical passages from cognitive nihilism and concept art towards metatechnology and personhood theory. Though never considering himself beeing proper FLUXUS member he formulated theory which is basic to understand genuine FLUXUS countercultural intentions.

www.yawn.detritus.net - Sporadic Critique of Culture - the materials of Neoists Art Strike 1989 — 1993.

http://www.antisystemic.org/ - DAMTP publications archive

situationnisteblog.wordpress.com - the archive of material around the Internationale Situationniste and its aftermath – DAMTP papers are to be found among lots of rare stuff.