Franco Berardi – Bifo

Cognitarians and Semiocapital

Thursday, 24 November 2016, 1 p.m.

Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Maistrova 3, Ljubljana

You are kindly invited to the press conference and presentation of the new publication by Franco  Berardi - Bifo on Thursday, 24 November 2016 at 1 p.m. at the seminar room of the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova.

The origins of the book Cognitarians and Semiocapital, published by MASKA, Institute for Publishing, Production and Education, were conceived on a two-day seminar entitled Semiocapitalism that Franco Berardi Bifo held at the seminar of the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova in May 2014.

The speakers at the press conference will be author of the book Franco Berardi Bifo, writer of the afterword Nikolai Jeffs iand the editor Amelia Kraigher.

After the presentation the publication will be on sale in the Moderna galerija's Bookstores.

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In this book, Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi outlines the key technological, cultural and social transformations that have led, over the past 50 years, to new modes of production (post-Fordism), the precarisation of labour and the fractalisation of financial capital, and he shows their consequences for the social body and its movements. Through a redefinition of the meaning of political action in the age of precarity and an analysis of the contemporary composition of labour with an emphasis on cognitive labour, Berardi elaborates on the famous Marxist notion of the general intellect as an analytical concept and the general form of contemporary subjectivity. He develops his thought in relation to selected historical events, through which he traces the conditions for thinking and understanding the transition from modern industrial labour to cognitive labour, which derives from the new technological possibilities.

                                                                                               — Amelia Kraigher

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One hundred years having passed since the Soviet Revolution, the modern promise of progress and democracy is sinking, and the European Union is being destroyed by the converging assaults of Financial Absolutism, resurgent Nationalism and war. As a reaction to the dissolution of the colonial legacy and to the inability of democratic politics to stop financial predation, the majority of the populations of the West are resorting to racism and nationalism in a desperate attempt to save their dwindling supremacy. Democracy has been reduced to impotence on every continent on the planet, and political resistance has proven futile. Consequently, Modern History is giving way to an epoch of barbarian darkness and unremitting violence.

Now is the moment to fully deploy the content inscribed in the movement that started in the 60s, reclaiming the autonomy of knowledge from capitalist exploitation and war. Now is the moment to shift from the field of political action to the field of self-organization of cognitive labor.

                                                                                               — Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, Cognitarians and Semiocapital

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Franco Berardi – Bifo, born in Bologna in 1949, is an Italian writer, media-theorist, and media-activist. As a young militant he took part in the experience of Potere operaio in the years 1967-1973, then he founded the magazine A/traverso (1975–81) and was part of the staff of Radio Alice, the first free pirate radio station in Italy (1976–78). Involved in the political movement of Autonomia in Italy during the 1970s, he fled to Paris, where he worked with Félix Guattari in the field of schizoanalysis. He has been involved in many media-projects, like Telestreet, and Recombinant.org. Bifo published the books The Uprising (1912) After the future (2011) The Soul at Work (2010), Felix (2001), Cibernauti (1994), Mutazione e Cyberpunk (1993). He contributed to the magazines Semiotext(e), Chimères, Metropoli, and Musica 80. and is currently collaborating to e-flux.journal. Coordinator of the European School for Social Imagination (SCEPSI) he has been teaching at Ashkal Alwan in Beirouth, PEI-Macba in Barcelona, Accademia di Brera in Milano, and has been lecturing in social centers and Universities worldwide.