The Cooper Union Interdisciplinary Seminar

the Cooper Union School of Art Interdisciplinary Seminar

Oliver Ressler

Comuna Under Construction

This lecture took place on October 12th, 2010 at 7:00 pm in the Wollman Auditorium at the Cooper Union

Lecture introduction

In Venezuela, a profound social transformation identified as the Bolivarian process has been underway since Hugo Chávez’s governmental takeover in 1998. It concerns a broad process of self-organization, from which has developed a progressive constitution, free education and medical treatment for everyone, and a number of further reforms for the impoverished majority of the population of what is potentially a wealthy state. Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler have made three films on the political processes in Venezuela – Venezuela from Below (2004); 5 Factories – Worker Control in Venezuela (2006) and Comuna Under Construction (2010). The recent one, Comuna Under Construction, charts the successful local self-administration in Venezuela through the formation of consejos comunales (community councils). In more than 30.000 consejos comunales (community councils) the people of Venezuela decide collectively in assemblies about many of their community’s concerns. Several community councils can join and form a Comuna and various Comunas can build a communal town. These councils are built from below, parallel to the existing institutional framework and aim to overcome the existing State by self-government. Comuna Under Construction follows these developments in Caracas poor districts and in the countryside. Oliver Ressler will speak about these films and the political processes embedded, and screen the film Comuna Under Construction.

About Oliver Ressler

Oliver Ressler (born 1970 in Austria) produces exhibitions, projects in the public space and videos which blur the boundaries between art and activism. His projects have been exhibited in solo-exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum; Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul;
Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; Kunstraum der Universität Lüneburg, Germany; Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid and in Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum in Egypt. He participated in the biennials in Prague, 2005; Seville, 2006; Moscow, 2007, Taipei, 2008 and Lyon,
2009. For the Taipei Biennial 2008 Ressler curated an exhibition on the counter-globalization movement, A World Where Many Worlds Fit, which was also shown at Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Canada in 2010.

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