Internationalism After the End of Globalisation

Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw 25-26 Oct 2019
The delegates will meet in Warsaw not only to review but also to develop theoretical and practical responses to the current crisis, which calls for new modes of connecting on an international scale to challenge the neoliberalism, the evival of the fascist tendencies and ecological disaster, seeking forms of artistic internationalism embedded in the ongoing democratic struggle for climate, economic, gender and racial justice.

The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw invites the public to the summit “Internationalism after the end of globalisation”. It will play the dual role of a conference and a workshop session.

The summit will start off with a conference (October 25) that will critically review neoliberal globalisation in order to move beyond it. This practical and theoretical ambition is driven by the hypothesis that the rise of the far right heralds an end of the globalist project, and consequently those forms of artistic internationalism that have been tightly integrated with global capitalism. This disruption implies the need to look beyond capitalist realism, an aesthetic, existential and social project that has supported capitalist hegemony by deflating both political and artistic imagination. The crisis engenders the evolution of old institutional forms and the emergence of new ones that facilitate civic engagement, are socially useful and align with political forces aimed at reviving democracy. During the conference, a dozen speakers, academics, artists and activists from all over Europe, will share their theoretical and practical insights to prompt public discussion and prepare the ground for later sessions.

Following the famous 11th thesis on Feuerbach, the aim of the summit is not only to reflect upon the failures of globalisation, but to revisit internationalism as an unfinished project. To facilitate this process, the second day of the summit (October 26) will be self-organized, aimed at collective strategizing on an international scale. The programme of plenary sessions and workshops will be created in situ by the gathered delegates, who will present proposals for future actions and discuss their implementation in working groups.

More information on the summit is available on the Museum’s website.