Black Box East: Post-Communist Laboratories of Globalization · BG°2021 PROJECT

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, “the East” was intended to quickly become a functioning part of Germany’s national economy. Shock therapies were prescribed, including the largest ad hoc privatization of state-owned enterprises in the world. Meanwhile, the dispossessed were called on to make particular use of certain body parts, especially their elbows: these were to be conspicuously extended, as a sign of a successful appropriation of the individualism by which the free market economy swears. What might be referred to as the elbow principle was supposed to come into play everywhere, be it in job centers or in basements that had been turned into undercover stores. Following this call, some succeeded, others failed. The theater-makers Johanna-Yasirra Kluhs and Tanja Krone give these people their say: many-voiced narratives of the economic realities in the post-unification period emerge, running counter to the official historiography written by capitalists (from the West and the East) as a success story of liberalism.

Historic images of jubilant people in view of “German unity” are often juxtaposed in Western media discourses with images of war in Yugoslavia during the process of its disintegration. Used to illustrate that nationalism can mean the fulfillment of longings for “us,” and death and ruin for “others,” this juxtaposition advances the notion of “good” and “bad” nationalism reserved for “good” and “bad” nation states respectively. In the course of this, the common denominator of these image-based memories is suppressed: after the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc, the expansion of neoliberalism – be it in neo-Germany or ex-Yugoslavia – was only possible as folk narratives appropriated by commemoration. In the course of this, identitarian gifts were supposed to make us forget economic robbery. Political theorist and organizer Gal Kirn shows that “the enemy” of emancipatory politics knows no borders, although it is continuously busy marking (identitarian) borders.

On paper, Eastern Europeans from, e.g., Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, and Romania are considered EU citizens. In reality, they are systematically degraded. In a perfidious interplay among authorities, employers and placement agencies, a bureaucratic bordering is staged that makes a dignified life practically impossible. At the same time, the degraded migrants are indispensable for the labor market, especially in Germany. Social theorist and activist Polina Manolova reports from an EU that celebrates freedom of movement but where, above all, precarization and injustice rule. Exploring how during the Covid-19 pandemic these deadly contradictions are coming to a crisis, she urges us to understand that mobile laborers from Bulgaria, for instance, cannot simply be depicted as victims of an exploitative and dehumanizing regime. Instead, it is key to see how they are managing to organize themselves in loose networks of solidarity and care, without which survival would not be possible.

Large and small online platforms have become “essential,” especially in Western societies. These platforms are kept in operation – as are large parts of the digital, seemingly fully automated world – by crowdworkers, who are systematically rendered invisible. Bringing light into this shadow world, research has brought “ghost workers” to the fore who are located in countries of the Global South such as India. Less attention is paid to the growing number of crowdworkers in Eastern Europe, and the relationship between the European “center” and the “periphery” in the global digital economy. This is despite the fact that a World Bank study in 2015, for instance, ranked Romania and Serbia as the world’s leading online outsourcing countries – defined as the proportion of crowdworkers in relation to the countries’ total population. Social scientist and ethnologist Mira Wallis takes stock of the increasingly exploitative platform labor dynamics between Romania and Germany.

Huge infrastructure projects were undertaken in the former Soviet Union under the heading of “reconstruction,” holding a territory together that stretched across Eastern Europe and the Caucasus to Central and all of Northern Asia. Today, decades after the downfall of the centrally governed, federal one-party state, the infrastructure network is in the process of disintegrating. What is actually more alarming: Rather than being halted or diverted in a more sustainable direction, the disintegration process is accelerated by privatization – even, or perhaps especially, privatization under the banner of “green” solutions imported from the West. Here, as elsewhere, the interests of the private sector are foregrounded, while the common good is neglected. Citing debates about infrastructure projects (e.g. public transport), critical geographers Lela Rekhviashvili and Vladimir Sgibnev show how images of the past and future are activated to defend a compromised present.

Starting to destroy the state economy of the GDR in 1989 and making room for runaway capitalist nation (re)building, East Germany’s transformation managers created perfect examples of ideologies such as “creative destruction” and “disruption.” In doing so, they provided the ideal situation for capitalist players including, most recently, Tesla, Amazon, Google, and Red Bull. However, hailing disruptive conditions as the necessary basis for seminal innovation, they are in fact ignoring legal frameworks, bureaucratic procedures, workers’ rights, etc. This radicalization of excessive and exploitative economies in “the East” is possible last but not least because the media discourse suspends the region between “backwardness” and “avantgarde” – the stigma of a dark past and the promise of a bright future. Political scientist and curator Stefan Kausch shows: by constructing “the East” as such an ambivalent normality class, the interests of capital can be served quasi at will.

The BLACK BOX EAST online workshops are undoubtedly the heart of the Berliner Gazette’s annual conference 2021 edition. Bringing activists, researchers, and cultural workers from over 20 countries together, the five workshops will take place in parallel fashion on September 23, 24, and 25, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Call for Registration
The workshops will feature a selected number of guests invited by the organizers (* = to be confirmed). Additional participants are able to join via a call for registration. This open call targets researchers, activists, artists, journalists, and producers of subjugated knowledge at large. Register by Sept. 1 for one of the five tracks at info(at)berlinergazette.de! The registration fee is 15 Euro.

Tracks
Taking different thematic approaches to tackling post-communist laboratories of globalization, the workshop titles are:
New Cold War, The Wretched of “the East,” Post-Covid-19 States, Shouldering the West, and Politics of Liberty. Read the descriptions in the columns to the right and below.



Process and Goals
Using Big Blue Button, an open source alternative to corporate data extractivism tools like Zoom, participants will be invited to join a hackathon-style cooperation process. The goal is to come up with collective projects, ranging from multimedia stories to utopian scenarios. The resulting resources will be made available online. For reference and inspiration, please take a look at two projects from online workshops at Berliner Gazette’s 2020 SILENT WORKS conference: CAPTCHA Factory and Dull, Dangerous + Dirty.

In one way or another we all participated in the Cold War – a 44-year long battle over geo-political, economic, and ideological influence, whose main legitimation (for the West) was the specter of “the East” and “the red threat,” read: “communism.” Those born after a victory over “communism” and an end of the Cold War were declared in 1991, grew up in a world of continuous and reinforced Othering of “the East” serving as a catalyst of capitalist expansion. While the Cold War continued to cast its shadow, “the East” was remade into “the New East,” and a New Cold War was launched. This is suggested by the propaganda that defines public debate around growing tensions with Russia and China or, even inside the EU, with Hungary and Poland. Propaganda that has severe consequences, not the least of which is legitimizing an intensification of economic warfare and a peak in an accelerated arms race unprecedented in 30 years, engendering worldwide market growth for nuclear weapons, cyber weapons, drones, and more. In this tense situation, “the East” appears to be the inscrutable Other worthy of worry – but not worthy of engagement at eye level. With the terms of engagement dictated by the West, this Other is expected to be left exclusively to specialists who know how to deal with “hazardous material.”

Against this backdrop, the workshop wishes to explore the following questions: What if we don’t accept this logic of exclusion and instead analyze and challenge it? What are the real and virtual obstacles that Western propaganda (and Eastern counter-propaganda) create to unlocking and exploring the BLACK BOX EAST? What imaginaries of the Other are intended to hinder “us,” whoever we are, from discussing something that affects and implicates all of us on this planet? What does it mean to avoid the trap of binary bloc thinking and revitalize, for instance, the legacies of the Non-Aligned Movement?

Moderation: Ela Kagel + Max Haiven. Guests: Aleksei Borisionak, Lara Luna Bartley, Magdalena Buchczyk, Régine Debatty, Andrea Liu, Greg McLaughlin, Kevin Rittberger, Oliver Lerone Schultz, Olia Sosnovskaya, Niloufar Vadiati.

After “winning” the Cold War, the West advanced a transition from “communism” to capitalism in “the East.” To this day, this transition entails a large-scale privatization of state-owned enterprises: an enormous sellout to foreign capital, mostly from the West. The neoliberal privatization process perfidiously reconciles the advancement of “anarchic disruption” with the renaissance of authoritarian, patriarchal structures. Besides foreign investors, this type of “godfather capitalism” benefits local elites. Meanwhile, the majority of the population is brutally neglected and left in despair – its struggles rendered invisible and forgotten. Giving voice to this particular dimension of the marginalized means, last but not least, launching an inquiry into the far-reaching but widely neglected social, political, economic, and cultural consequences of privatization. These consequences unfold their productive energy in the multiplicity of social movements, both historical and contemporary ones. Moving (in) these movements are commoners, socialists, and feminists, anti-deportation, climate, and labor activists, as well as anti-fascists, anti-racists, and anti-anti-Semitism activists – and the wretched of “the East” at large. As the regional patriarchy’s complicity with Western capital casts its ruinous shadow, women’s struggles in particular provide glimpses of a better future.

Against this backdrop, the workshop wishes to explore the following questions: What does it mean to tell, share, and listen to stories from within historical and current social movements in former Yugoslavia (e.g., the Balkan Route), the former Soviet Union, and other parts of the former Eastern Bloc (Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, etc.)? Are these struggles linked among each other? What are the gaps where interventions have the best hopes of creating impact? How is it possible to pave ways for new common grounds and create bridges between struggles?

Moderation: Gosia Jagiello + Cristina Pombo. Guests: Sylvain Alias, Mika Buljevic, Kalina Drenska, Alina Floroi, Natalie Gravenor, hvale, Lela Rekhviashvili, Juliane Rettschlag, Karolina Sobel, Martina Staneva, Elena Veljanovska.

The fall-out of the Covid-19 pandemic is manifold: besides a massive death toll (still growing), damaged health (e.g., Long Covid), and psychological trauma, there are, in the politico-economic realm, for instance, evictions, debt, and unemployment on the rise. This man-made disaster is hitting all states on this planet, but not all are equally well-equipped to deal with it. Especially societies in the “Third World” are being momentously hit, losing the benefits of progress they made in the past decades: mass poverty, gradually overcome, is quickly returning, to give just one example. In societies of the “First World,” the impact of the pandemic-related disaster also registers at many levels. For instance, the life of the so-called 99% is now becoming even more precarious and harshly instrumentalized according to the requirements of capital. This fact is collectively digested in mass media discourse according to a familiar pattern: The distress is whitewashed by evoking (often at the subtext level) the bottom of the world system, along the lines of we can be happy that we are better off than they are and we can be grateful that borders are being policed, since they are after our wealth. It is noteworthy that the “Second World” – “post-communist” space designated as “the East” – does not feature in such discursive rituals. Seemingly, it is not needed to assure one’s First World membership status. Accordingly, Western mass media is little concerned with creating “awareness” about the impact of said disaster in the “Second World.”

Against this backdrop, the workshop wishes to explore the following questions: What is the fall-out of the Covid-19 pandemic-related multiple crises in the post-Soviet Union, post-Communist Eastern Europe, post-Yugoslavia? What kind of information is available? What are the criteria to measure the consequences? Moreover, who in the West and “the East” benefits from the pandemic-related disaster in the “Second World”? What are the political and economic dynamics in “the East” that in the course of the pandemic further aggravate structural problems?

Moderation: Jose M. Calatayud, Adriana Homolova + Sotiris Sideris. Guests: Mark Cinkevich, Géraldine Delacroix, Anna Engelhardt, Andrada Fiscutean, Martina Freyja Kartelo, Monisha Martins, Julia Molin, Lira Ramadani, Sasha Shestakova, Dzina Zhuk.

The socio-economic and political realities of “the East” are paradigmatically reflected in workers’ struggles in post-Soviet Union, post-Yugoslavia, and post-communist Eastern Europe at large. For instance, the post-1989 influx of foreign capital in Eastern Europe, coming primarily from Western Europe (particularly from Germany), has been attracted by low corporate taxes, proximity, and low institutional risk due to the EU integration. What is often neglected is that capital influx was also, and perhaps most importantly, attracted by the promise of relatively low-wage labor. Be it in the meat industry, healthcare, or logistics, virtually all sectors of the economy hinge on “Eastern” workers. This system only functions when their labor and struggles are successfully silenced. Thus, while EU funds have been supporting the much-touted transition from “communism” to capitalism, a silent restructuring of labor was kicked off. In the past as in the present, a large share of European funds benefits only the local elite and large foreign companies, whose profits are returning to their home countries, or go offshore. Meanwhile, the workers are neglected and left suffering from inhuman living and working conditions. Thus, the profits and revenues from property leaving the countries of the Eastern European region – unsurprisingly bigger than the input of EU funds – should remind us on whose shoulders said transition is being borne. Ultimately, tackling “the East” means, not least of all, tackling the political economy of mobile labor.

Against this backdrop, the workshop wishes to explore the following questions: Who are the Eastern workers shouldering the profits of the West? What are current struggles inside and outside the labor union context? What are the differences and commonalities between labor struggles in East Germany and Eastern Europe at large? What role does the rise of platform labor play here? And, last but not least, since “Eastern” workers are in demand at home and abroad (hence doubly needed and doubly exploited), what does it mean for mobile workers to struggle at home and abroad?

Moderation: Stefan Candea + Holger Kral. Guests: Sana Ahmad, Rutvica Andrijasevic, Miglè Bareikytè, Anna Calori, Slobodan Golušin, Adela Hincu, Nelli Kambouri, Noémi Katona, Dunja Kučinac, Rena Raedle.

To some with a Western-centric imagination, Russia represents an “evil power,” last but not least, because in recent years the country has slowly been growing its territory by absorbing-by-force pieces of its neighbors, while creating a string of strategic forward-operating bases to increase a sphere of influence reminiscent of the USSR’s power projection. This provides a rich source of both fear and fascination and, above all, a legitimation for the West’s “ethical imperialism”. The double standards underlying the West’s “ethical imperialism” materialize strikingly when it comes to “liberty.” It is something that is upheld by the West, more of a property than a principle, and a rallying cry for a series of foreign interventions under names such “Operation Enduring Freedom” or “Operation Iraqi Freedom” (the latter resulting in the political disintegration of Iraq and the death of half a million of its citizens). Thus, it seems that “liberty” is a tool for state-sanctioned violence that simultaneously must be defended against enemies of the free world of (Western) capital. At the same time a motive and a motivation, an abstract ideal and a rationale for pulling triggers, “liberty” in the West is a privilege for some and a death sentence for others. Unsurprisingly, “liberty” is propagated as starkly lacking in “the East” – while commentators rarely reflect the same critical eye back on the systematic inequality that plagues the “West” and emanates violence from its military industrial complexes.

Against this backdrop, the workshop wishes to explore the following questions: What notions of “liberty” manifest outside of an East vs West ideological divide? What does it mean to disarm Western propaganda of “liberty” as an imperial weapon of capitalist expansion without replacing it with yet another oppressive system? And what does it mean to work in the shadow of imperialism from both “the East” and West while creating transnational solidarity for a more just and inclusive world?

Moderation: Mathana + Nina Pohler. Guests: Susanne Braun, Laura Burtan, Abiol Lual Deng, Aslı Dinç, Katrin Kämpf, Luise Meier, Shintaro Miyazaki, Nicolay Spesivtsev, Cagri Taskin.

The Eastbloc Antifascist Sound Alliance (@eastblocsound) is a community initiative created around the desire to connect an eclectic group of people working with sound in Eastern Europe, post-Soviet space, and Eastern European diaspora. In this geo-cultural context resistance against the rise of right-wing populism and the resurgence of fascism at large is very important. “Building an antifascist alliance around listening, based around sound and music, does not erase our specific experiences, shaped through pacts and ideologies and geopolitical conditions, or even ‘how we survived communism and even laughed,’ (Slavenka Draculic) it does not stand for nations or even forming a power alliance, it stands for this specific diaspora standing up.” The Eastbloc Antifascist Sound Alliance’s first cooperative product is the mixtape “Diasporian Dissonances.” It features more than 30 artists from from the former Eastbloc and the Eastern European diaspora and has been mixed by AGF @poemproducer.

Facing the EU’s increasingly militarized migration regime, the Zagreb-based collectives WHW and Kurziv (publisher of Kulturpunkt.hr) have created a beautifully designed publication entitled “Gastarbeiters & Migrants.” The publication looks at the history of migration, specifically in relation to worker migration. The main parallel, or rather opposition, established is between the historical figure of the gastarbajter (guest worker) of the 1960s and the contemporary migrant worker. What were the conditions that gave rise to and also defined the gastarbajters, workers from ex-Yugoslav countries, in comparison to contemporary migrants, who are worker migrants but also refugees? What is the image of the contemporary Western state today, and what are its structural deficiencies in dealing with the influx of people from different countries? You can download the publication in English and in Croatian. You can download the publication in English and in Croatian.

The Workers’ Museum Trudbenik was established at the workers’ colony of “KMG Trudbenik,” one of the biggest construction companies in socialist Yugoslavia. As depicted in the video produced by Radnički muzej Trudbenik Collective, the museum documents the tradition of workers’ self-management and represents the struggle against the cruel and cynical relation towards the lifework of the workers, who built thousands of housing complexes and institutions serving the society and who – since privatization has progressed – live under the constant threat of being evicted from their homes. (Click at the CC button in the play bar below to choose the subtitle language you’d like to see.)

Eagerly supported by ‘united’ Germany, the 1999 NATO campaign against FR Yugoslavia was the first in history using exclusively air strikes. Accordingly, it was based on the “ethical” premise that this was a clean humanitarian intervention without any collateral damage – and certainly not a war. Found inside a plane that was shot during the air strikes, the video was processed by the art activism collective Kuda.org for public access. It documents the plane’s cockpit electronics: the basic graphical interface and the voice communication between pilots. After each impact, the pilot is calm, and the only thing that indicates his personal drama is his breathing – a sign of the mission’s false (“ethical”) premise.

This sound piece is based on a rereading of classics of anarchist and ecological literature, by authors such as Thoreau, Goldman, and others. Many of the lyrics, though they are over 100 years old, take listeners to still emerging grey undercurrents in the BLACK BOX EAST. Under the collective name Looking For, Gosia M. Jagiello, Agata Chwola, and Jarek Wasilewski, all from Poland but nowadays living abroad, meditate on the problems in their home country, since these have a huge impact on their lives. The artists state: “Creating our identities especially online gives us a false sense of control over ourselves. […] We forget to recognize the dissonance that our disconnection from the environment creates within and beyond us. The choice of music is based on a disagreement with capitalism that asks us for more and makes us want more.”

How is the BLACK BOX EAST constructed? What interests does it serve?

With invited contributions by historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk about the (un)friendly take over of East-Germany (GER | EN); sociologist Yana Milev about the politics of blackboxed devastations in East-Germany (GER); political theorist Stefan Kausch and discourse analyst Jürgen Link about East German normality between deviance and avant-garde (GER); historian George Bodie about decolonisation and the German Democratic Republic (1960-1989); culture theoretician Marco Abel about the role of “the East” for the birth of Germany as a neoliberal nation-state (GER); activist and researcher Christoph Marischka about technological landscapes in “the East” (GER); culture theoretician Neda Genova about knowledge production and the politics of transparency/opacity (GER | EN); curator Aleksei Borisionok and artist Olia Sosnovskaya about the concept of “the New East” as a paradigm of reinforced Othering; researcher and activist Inga Lindarenka about representations of post-Soviet space in UK media; conflict and media researcher/writer Greg McLaughlin about how Western media narratives of the “Fall of the Berlin Wall” and “Brexit” cater to capitalism and nationalism (GER | EN); social anthropologist Florin Poenaru about how the Orientalization of Romania is propelling unequal power relations in the EU (GER | EN); the photographer Petrut Calinescu about Western images of Romania, precarious archives, and the politics of documentary photography (GER | EN); cultural anthropologist Olga Reznikova about Anti-Slavic racism; digital thinker and artist Darija Medic about the construction of the computer user in Yugoslavia; researcher Ana Vilenica about historical revisionism in urban transformations in Belgrade and London and how to read Western urbanism with the vocabulary of “the East”; artist Marina Gržinić about the EU’s turbo-politics in ex-Yugoslavia (GER); sociologist Sanja Milivojevic about the black-boxed mobility infrastructure in the Western Balkans (GER | EN).

What economic and political realities does the BLACK BOX EAST conceal and favor?

With invited contributions by scholar-activist Sabrina Apicella about how Amazon’s logistical network connects “the East” with Europe at large; urban researcher Jochen Becker about Amazon’s logistical chains between Berlin and Poznań; researcher Mira Wallis about Germany’s digital ghost workers in Romania (GER | EN | RU); urban transformation researcher Ina Valkanova about labor and automation in Bulgaria’s shrinking economy (GER | EN); digital media researcher Miglè Bareikytè about the incommensurability of labor politics and AI strategies in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia (GER); architects Kateřina Frejlachová and Tadeáš Říha about the politics of logistics centers in Czech Bohemia (GER | EN); geographers Lela Rekhviashvili and Wladimir Sgibnev about struggles over infrastructure that holds post-Soviet space together (GER | EN); investigative journalist Stefan Candea about the political economy of cross-border journalism in “the East” (GER | EN); anthropologist Sabina Stan about outsourcing healthcare labor in Romania within the EU’s new economic governance regime; scholar-activist Christine Braunersreuther about global care chains and Balkanism as a special form of racism; sociologist and activist Polina Manolova about the bureaucratic bordering of Bulgarian migrants in Germany (GER | EN); anthropologist Dace Dzenovska about emptiness as a novel spatial coordinate of post-migration realities in “the East;” anthropologist Tanja Petrović and journalist Maja Ava Žiberna about invisibilized workers from the Balkans as drivers of “European integration” (GER | EN); literary scientist and novelist Marlen Schachinger about the last-minute-society in Kosovo (GER); scholar-activist Rutvica Andrijasevic about worker struggles within and against China’s electronics industry in Eastern Europe; researcher and writer Lesia Prokopenko about how the working class in Ukraine consumes China’s shanzhai goods as a phantom of “Westerness” (GER | EN); decolonial researchers Kasia Narkowicz and Zoltán Ginelli about how anti-colonial rhetorics against “foreign powers” are obstructing decolonial critique in Poland and Hungary (GER | EN).

What is the potential of the BLACK BOX EAST as a common space of transnational struggles?

With invited contributions by dramaturge Johanna-Yasirra Kluhs and director and performer Tanja Krone about social practice theater with networks of real people in East and West Germany (GER | EN); researcher and artist Anna Stiede about deindustrialization, labor struggles, and TreuhandTechno (GER); theater-maker Kevin Rittberger and artist Nicolas Mortimer about labor struggles and cybernetic futurism in the GDR (GER | EN); artist and activist Rena Raedle about how workers in the GDR organized themselves in writing circles (GER); political geographer Evelina Gambino about lessons from 19th century labor struggles in Georgia for today’s transnational fight against logistical capitalism (GER | EN); decolonial theorist Madina Tlostanova about what it means to decolonize (post)socialism; social thinker Max Haiven and historian Vijay Prashad about the role of “the East” in the Western radical imagination; scholar-activist Kalina Drenska about unboxing “the East” from within transnational activist networks; literary scholar Karolina Golimowska about social struggles in Poland during the COVID-19 pandemic (GER | EN); researcher and curator Doreen Mende about decolonial imaginaries of (post-)socialism; critical geographer Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro about what current movements can learn from the eco-politics of the USSR (GER | EN); political theorist Gal Kirn about “primitive accumulation” of capital and memory, or how the Berlin Wall fell in Yugoslavia (GER | EN); researchers Sanja Bojanić and Marko-Luka Zubčić about what it means to be up against the Right in Croatia (GER | EN); sociologist Paul Stubbs about the legacies of the Non-Aligned Movement for today’s activism (GER | EN); historian Anna Calori about transethnic workers’ struggles against privatization in Bosnia and Herzegovina (GER); activist hvale about intersectional struggles in Bosnia and Herzegovina; journalist Mihajlo Vujasin about food sovereignty in neoliberal Serbia; scholar-activist Sara Nikolić about urban commons in New Belgrade.