“The White West III: Automating Apartheid”

Conference conceptualized by Kader Attia and Ana Teixeira Pinto

Organized by Kunsthalle Wien in cooperation with Burgtheater

Contributors: Florian Cramer, Radhika Desai, David Golumbia, Marina Gržinić, Rose-Anne Gush, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Nitzan Lebovic, Olivier Marboeuf, Ciraj Rassool, Dorcy Rugamba, Kalpana Seshadri, Felix Stalder

In his famous essay Discourse on Colonialism, the poet Aimé Césaire argued that what in Europe is called "fascism" is just colonial violence finding its way back home. But his warnings went unheeded. More widely read was The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno et al. Published in 1950, the same year as Discourse on Colonialism, it developed the F scale (F for fascist) in order to gauge the psychological predisposition for fascism among the democratic citizenry, leaving the post-war consensus to settle on the notion that fascism was a personality trait, resulting from the devolution of the individuated liberal subject. Still dominant today, this tendency to psychologize fascism fails to incorporate the colonial dimension, obscuring the continuities between fascism and the biopolitics of empire, and ultimately depoliticizes both.

75 years later, while the West indulges in fantasies of reverse colonization involving the subjugation of white people, the process of recolonization has been renewed with increased ferocity. Recent events in Bolivia, driven by the hunger for lithium, commonly used for mobile devices or electric vehicles, make apparent the structuring force of race in geopolitics, as well as the role of the digital economy in the production and reproduction of a new settler frontier.

“The White West III: Automating Apartheid” contends that without the will to confront the role of race in the production and reproduction of global wealth differentials, the question of the good life can only be raised in distorted form, under the guise of welfare chauvinism or the tech industry’s cargo cult, promising that a cornucopia of goods will be supplied magically—weak utopias whose structural inconsistencies open up an ambiguous space in which a critique or disruption of capitalism can be inflected in the direction of fascism.  

“The White West III: Automating Apartheid” is the third in a series of conferences initiated by Kader Attia, Ana Teixeira Pinto and Giovanna Zapperi at La Colonie in Paris that is devoted to theorizing the different facets of what Nikhil Pal Singh termed "the afterlife of fascism" (the carceral state, ethnonationalisms, and imperial warfare) and the poorly understood relation of settler colonialism to fascism and National Socialism. For more information please see our website.

The conference is part of a series of events collaboratively organized by the new teams running Burgtheater and Kunsthalle Wien, including the Kasino project EUROPAMASCHINE (February–March 2020) and leading up to the exhibition … of bread, wine, cars, security and peace at Kunsthalle Wien, which will open on March 8, 2020.

Kunsthalle Wien’s exhibition program 2020: 

... of bread, wine, cars, security and peace
March 8–May 8, 2020
Curated by What How and for Whom / WHW (Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović)

And if I devoted my life to one of its feathers?
May 30–September 27, 2020
Curated by Miguel A. López
A joint exhibition with Wiener Festwochen

Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* & Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński
June 10–October 4, 2020
Curated by Anne Faucheret

Space for Kids. The Art-Nature Lab or the Mushrooming Cabinet of Wonders
July 7–September 6, 2020
A project of the art education department of Kunsthalle Wien together with selected artists

Želimir Žilnik. Shadow Citizens
October 24, 2020–January 10, 2021
Curated by What, How & for Whom / WHW (Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović)
In cooperation with Viennale

Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2020
November 25, 2020–January 10, 2021
Curated by Lucas Gehrmann
In cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the University of Applied Arts Vienna

Cybernetics of the Poor
December 4, 2020–January 31, 2021
Curated by Diedrich Diederichsen and Oier Etxberria
In cooperation with Tabakalera International Centre for Contemporary Culture, Donostia / San Sebastian

Stay connected: Please check our website for regular updates on our program.
For further information please contact: presse@kunsthallewien.at