Neo-liberal ideology is inscribed in our bodies. We can read it through their symptoms, behavioural patterns, habits and illnesses. Let's turn our heads around: What is today's socionormality?

How can its contours be detected throughout the lines of social choreography? How are we facing our faces? How are we mirroring our screens? How are we dealing with the gaze? How are we delivering ourselves to each other? The radical body is called on to create spaces of freedom within this inscription. It is called on to overtake the process of valorisation in order to produce the other of this process. It is called on to create sociality beyond socionormality. How can it deal with this task?

Radical talks take place in a public space and aim to circulate among people. Several invited speakers will present their thoughts on the topics, while the audience will be invited to actively participate in a discussion.

If you feel addressed by this, we invite you to prepare a few minutes of a speech and inform us of your idea, direction, intention to participate, via: hello@spiderfestival.com  

Curator of the Festival of Radical Talks: Bara Kolenc, PhD. 
Speakers: Eva Smrekar, Julia Danila (Germany), Magdalena Germek

Eva Smrekar is a postgraduate student of philosophy and art history at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. She also works in the field of visual arts and has co-authored projects, exhibited in Kapelica Gallery, Museum of Architecture and Design, Arhitekturforum Aedes and elsewhere. Currently, she is developing transmedia artistic research project together with Aljaž Rudolf, exhibited in September 2020 as a part of Ars Electronica Festival. Her current theoretical interests are mostly fin-de-siècle encounters between medicine, visual art and theatre. She received Estonian Artist Association’s Award.

Julia Danila is a producer, cultural manager and curator based in Berlin. She works in contemporary dance and performance in close collaboration with Jess Curtis and Bara Kolenc. After graduating from UCL with an MA in European Cultures, she was awarded a scholarship with Robert Bosch Foundation working in the context of Slovenia and the region of South Eastern Europe. In 2014, she was granted a scholarship with Goethe Institute Beijing for a cultural exchange partnership with producer and curator Zhang Yuan (Paper Tiger Theatre, Ming Contemporary Art Museum). Since the season 18/19 she has been artistic production manager at tanzmainz at the Mainz State Theater.

Magdalena Germek holds PhD in philosophy at the Comparative Studies program Transformation of Modern Thought – Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Culture module at the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU in Ljubljana. Her dissertation was entitled “The Dialectic of Formalisation in the Project of Alain Badiou’s Second Critique” (2020). Her research interests include the relations between aesthetics, ontology, and philosophy of science in contemporary philosophy with a focus on the phenomenological-epistemological aspects of art and science. She has curated several art exhibitions and participated in different projects created through contemporary art practices (contemporary dance, physical theatre).

Now, we all know what is isolation. Antisociality, however, is not a syndrome of pandemic. It is a syndrome of capitalism. Perhaps, the past year was nothing but a sneak-peak into the future. Pandemic was a trailer. Do we want to watch the movie? 

Capitalism is anti-social, it builds upon a deconstruction of social bonds. The more society is being digitalized, the more relations become systemic. Capital, which abstracts from all that is human - not only on the side of work, but also on the side of ownership - is directly transformed into power. This abstraction, which is evermore clearly at work on a global scale, causes systemic violence of unimaginable proportions. It seems impossible to stop the aggression of capital against life on all scales. Or is it? Maybe the key lies in the question, whether we are able to turn isolation into autonomy. Pro-social personality order: mayhap this is the freedom of today's historical necessity? 

Radical talks take place in a public space and aim to circulate among people. Several invited speakers will present their thoughts on the topics, while the audience will be invited to actively participate in a discussion.

If you feel addressed by this, we invite you to prepare a few minutes of a speech and inform us of your idea, direction, intention to participate, via: hello@spiderfestival.com  

Curator of the Festival of Radical Talks: Bara Kolenc, PhD. 
Speakers: Dr. Samo Tomšič, Dr. Alfie Bown (UK), Dr. Keti Chukhrov (Russia)

Keti Chukhrov is ScD in philosophy, an associate professor at the School of Philosophy & Сultural Studies at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow).  In 2017-2019 she has been a Marie Sklodowska Curie fellow in UK, Wolverhampton University. In 2012-2017 she was the head of Theory and Research department  at the National Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow.  Her latest book Practicing the Good. Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) deals with the impact of socialist political economy on the epistemes of historical socialism. Her full-length books include: To Be—To Perform. ‘Theatre’ in Philosophic Critique of Art (European Un-ty, 2011), and Pound &£ (Logos, 1999), and a volume of dramatic writing: Merely Humans (2010).  Her research interests and publications deal with 1. Philosophy of performativity, 2. Soviet Marxist philosophy and communist epistemologies 3. Art as the Institute of global Contemporaneity. She authored the video plays “Afghan-Kuzminki” (2013), “Love-machines” (2013), “Communion”(2016), “Global Congress of Post-Prostitution” (2019) featured at the Bergen Assembly (2013), the Specters of Communism (James Gallery, NY, 2015), the Ljubljana Triennial U-3 (2016, cur. B. Groys), Steirischer Herbst (Graz, 2019).

Samo Tomšič (PhD in Philosophy) is research associate at the Humboldt University Berlin and at the University of Ljubljana. He publishes in the field of political philosophy, theoretical psychoanalysis and (post)structuralism. Recent publications include "The Capitalist Unconscious: Marx and Lacan" (2015), "The Labour of Enjoyment: Toward a Critique of Libidinal Economy" (2019) and the forthcoming "The Anti-Sociality of Capitalism“ (2022).

Alfie Bown (PhD in Literature and Critical Theory) is Lecturer in Digital Media Culture and Technology. He joined Royal Holloway after being Assistiant Professor at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong and Lecturer at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is author of several books including The Playstation Dreamworld (Polity), Post-Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production (Punctum) and Dream Lovers: Capitalism and the Gamification of Relationships (forthcoming with Pluto). He also writes journalism for The Guardian, Tribune, New Statesman, Paris Review, etc. His work is interested in the intersection between psychoanalysis, politics and digital life.

Bara Kolenc is a philosopher (PhD in Philosophy) and artist from Ljubljana. She is a researcher at the Philosophy Department at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, and a lecturer at the Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television, University of Ljubljana. She is the author of Ponavljanje in uprizoritev: Kierkegaard, psihoanaliza, gledališče (Repetition and Enactment: Kirkegaard, Psychoanalysis, Theatre, DTP, Analecta, 2014). She publishes articles in Problemi, Filozofski vestnik, Maska, S Journal and elsewhere and features in monographs (most recently in The Language of Touch, Bloomsbury, 2019 and A Touch of Doubt, De Gruyter, 2021). Shaped by extensive training in classical and contemporary dance, receiving also the DanceWEB scholarship at ImpulsTanz in 2003, she has thus far created twelve evening-length performances, eight youth performances and numerous short performances, performative acts, installations, lectures, and lecture-performances. For her work at the intersection of performing arts, visual arts and film, she has received several awards, most recently the prominent award Theatertreffen Stückemarkt Comission of Work 2016 and the Award for Important Works of Art of the University of Ljubljana in 2018. Her new work Brina: A Kinaesthetic Monument, created in collaboration with Leja Jurišić, Peter Kutin, Patrick Lechner and Mathias Lenz will premiere this year at Spider festival and ImPulsTanz festival in Vienna.

www.barakolenc.com