Human strike as a practice of freedom. A gathering-workshop with Claire Fontaine

“Human strike” designates the most generic movement of revolt against any oppressive condition. It’s a more radical and less specific strike than a general strike or a wildcat strike. It attacks the economic, affective, sexual, and emotional positions within which subjects are imprisoned. It provides an answer to the question, “How do we become something other than what we are?” It isn’t a social movement, although within uprising and agitations, it can find fertile ground upon which to develop and grow, sometimes even against these.”
—Human Strike Has Already Begun, Claire Fontaine, 2019

“A lot of work and contributions that we provide for the context surrounding us, the forms of our identity when they are reassuring for others and compatible with the status quo, our complicity with a world that is going towards its own destruction are the fields where new forms of struggle need to be deployed.

We work when we are emotionally and intellectually functional subjectivities, allowing everything to continue without disruption; we work when we bear—without rebelling against them—socioeconomic conditions that we don’t deserve and that are exploitative; we work when we don’t denounce oppression and normalize mental suffering; and we work against ourselves, against the part of ourselves that wants the world to keep going the way it does, because change is too difficult or too threatening.

No matter where we are, whatever we are going through, there is always the possibility of exerting a practice of freedom, creating empowering conditions for us and the people that surround us, in order to live a more meaningful and intense life.”
—Claire Fontaine, 2024

On November 28th, Claire Fontaine gives the gathering workshop Human strike as a practice of freedom at Hangar. Claire Fontaine has been developing the concept of human strike since 2004, a type of strike inherited from the revolutionary feminism whose battleground was the life form at large and not only one’s productive identity as it’s recognized by society. In the workshop, we will invite participants to share examples of gestures of “human strike” through writing, storytelling, performance, or any other art form whose aim is transformative to the people who make them, witness them or collaborate with them.

Claire Fontaine is a feminist and conceptual artist created in Paris in 2004 by Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill, an Italian-British duo who present themselves as her assistants. Since 2018, Claire Fontaine has lived and worked in Palermo, maintaining a studio in the historic Kalsa district.

Claire Fontaine defines a space where the artists’ biographies are not directly connected to their works, allowing their research to become a space of freedom and desubjectivization. The use of appropriation and hijacking in her work stems from the same intention: not to highlight the excellence of the artist’s unique singularity, but to activate the forms and forces within our visual culture, emphasizing their political content. She published with Diversity of Aesthetics a conversation with Iman Ganji and José Rosales titled Foreigners Everywhere in 2022, a comprehensive anthology of her writings with Semiotext(e) in 2020 titled Human Strike and the Art of Creating Freedom, the artist books Some Instructions for the Sharing of Private Property with One Star Press in 2011 and Living, Winning with Dilecta in 2009. Two monographs on the artist have been published by Koenig’s Books: Newsfloor in 2020, with texts by Anita Chari and Jaleh Mansoor, and Foreigners Everywhere in 2011, with texts by Letizia Ragaglia, Bernard Blistène, Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov, John Kelsey, and Hal Foster. The first critical essay entirely dedicated to the artist, Claire Fontaine, a User’s Manual by Anita Chari, is published by Lenz Press in 2024. The title of the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, Foreigners Everywhere, is derived from an ongoing work by Claire Fontaine. Adriano Pedrosa, the biennale’s curator, was inspired by the artist’s neon series, stating in a press conference: “The backdrop for the work is a world filled with crises and multifaceted challenges related to people’s movement and existence across countries, nations, territories, and borders, reflecting the dangers and obstacles of language, translation, nationality, the expression of differences, and disparities conditioned by identity, race, gender, sexuality, freedom, and human development.”

Recent solo exhibitions include: Manifesta 15, Barcelona (2024), Speechless, Bar project, Barcelona (2024) Beauty is a Ready-Made, Fondation Hermès, Seoul (2024); La mer à boire, Mudam, Luxembourg (2024); Star Reply Forward Copy Info Delete, Memphis, Linz (2022); Siamo con voi nella notte, Museo del 900, Florence (2020); I-WE-YES, Studio Concreto, Lecce (2020); Your Money and Your Life, Galerias Municipais, Lisbon (2019); La Borsa e la vita, Palazzo Ducale, Genoa (2019); Les printemps seront silencieux, Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers (2019); #displaced, Städtische Galerie Nordhorn, Nordhorn (2019); Fortezzuola, Museo Pietro Canonica, Villa Medici, Rome (2016); Tears, Jewish Museum, New York (2013); 1493, Espacio 1414, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2013); Sell Your Debt, Queen’s Nails, San Francisco (2013); Redemptions, CCA Wattis, San Francisco (2013); Carelessness causes fire, Audian Gallery, Vancouver (2012); Breakfast starts at midnight, Index, The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm (2012); M-A-C-C-H-I-N-A-Z-IO-N-I, Museion, Bolzano (2012); P.I.G.S., MUSAC, Castilla y León (2011); Economie, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2010).

 

This event is organized by Hangar and BAR project on the occasion of Claire Fontaine’s solo exhibition Speechless at HAUS, a space dedicated to contemporary arts and practices by BAU, open until the following day, Friday, November 29. As a closing event for the exhibition, Claire Fontaine will hold an artist open talk at 7 p.m. on November 29 at HAUS.

Practical information
Date: Thursday, November 28
Time: 5 to 7 pm
Venue: Former Offices, Hangar
Language: English
Free registration via this form

Recommended reading: Human Strike Has Already Begun by Claire Fontaine

Image: When women strike the world stops. Manifesta 15. Photo by Ivan Erofeev.