Christoph Brunner (Lüneburg) & Kelly Mulvaney (Chicago): How to Organize Well? Participatory Platforms, New Modes of Value, Municipalist Movements.

16.7.2019, Oettingenstraße 67, 80538 München, Raum L155, 18:00 bis 20:00

The municipalist movements in Spain and beyond attempted to circumvent national, state and EU-level institutional and discursive constraints in the aftermath of the so-called Eurocrisis from the early 2010s into the present. If these movements imagined the sociojuridical unit and forms of life of the municipality as a domain for action and a node for network politics, what further inspirations might they give for organizing well in light of contemporary modes of power and authority that draw (on) configurations and relationalities not pertaining to modern concepts of political space? This talk will develop an understanding of muncipalist politics and look at different deployments of technopolitical practices, engaging two aspects crucial to a municipalist reformulation of urban life. One perspective will focus on platforms and environments, digital sovereignty and cryptocurrencies, trust and value, in order to think in critical and pragmatic terms about the politics of funding and funding models. The second perspective will consider a specific aesthetic politics that accompanied the installment of municipalist governments in Barcelona and Madrid and continue to shape the way such processes are experienced and communicated. Together these perspectives will explore an aesthetics of the commons as key part of the municipalist movement and its challenge to think differently about how to organize well.