IDEOLOGY = FORM

An undated press release from the Rojava Film Commune, founded in 2015, states: “The most valuable outcomes of the cinema will be delivered to the peoples of Rojava in their own languages. We shall not allow the cinema to be simplified to become an industrial tool, or a consumable and exhaustible object. The squares of our villages will become our culture and art centers. Our factories and our restaurants will become cinema halls. Our vibrant streets will be our films sets.”

Interview conducted with Diyar Hesso at the Rojava Film Commune, Derbisiye on October 30, 2015.

See Stateless Democracy, eds. Dilar Dirik, Renée In der Maur, Jonas Staal (Utrecht: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, 2015).

“Social Contract,” in ibid., 131–58.

My own research in the autonomous Rojava region taught me the following: The foundation of the practice of stateless democracy is located in the commune, of which there are dozens in every small city. The city municipality has the responsibility to meet the communes’ infrastructural demands, but cannot enforce its own will upon the communes. For the cantonal council—three in total, from the east to the west of Rojava: Afrin, Kobanê, and Cezîre—the political task is that of coordination and international mediation on behalf of the communes and municipal councils. Finally, the trans-cantonal supreme council connects the three cantons and has the task of facilitating communication within this mosaic of political entities.

Jonas Staal, “To Make a World, Part III: Stateless Democracy,” e-flux journal 63 (March 2015) →.

“Turkey’s role has been different but no less significant than Saudi Arabia’s in aiding ISIS and other jihadi groups. Its most important action has been to keep open its 560-mile border with Syria. This gave ISIS, al-Nusra, and other opposition groups a safe rear base from which to bring in men and weapons … Most foreign jihadis have crossed Turkey on their way to Syria and Iraq … Turkey … sees the advantages of ISIS weakening Assad and the Syrian Kurds.” Patrick Cockburn, The Rise of the Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (New York: Verso, 2015), 36–7.

“The document—written as a foundation text to train ‘cadres of administrators’ in the months after Isis’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared a ‘caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria on 28 June 2014—sketches out how to organise government departments including education, natural resources, industry, foreign relations, public relations and military camps.” Shiv Malik, “The Isis papers: leaked documents show how Isis is building its state,” The Guardian, December 7, 2015 →.

Dilar Dirik interviewed by Jonas Staal, “Living Without Approval,” in Dirik et al., Stateless Democracy, 48.

I write this in line with a series of conversations with writer Vincent W. J. van Gerven Oei on the subject of “progressive terrorism.” With this term we do not refer to what is generally considered “terrorism” in terms of the violence of non-state actors, which, as we discussed, can differ from being the (necessary) result of a liberation struggle (e.g., the PKK) or embody a mere oppressive mimicry of the violence of the state (e.g., Islamic State). With “progressive terrorism” we specifically relate to a terror of form, meaning the existence or emergence of forms that existing structures—such as that of the state—cannot contain, and thus must refer to as “terrorism.” For example, the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz—an essential reference for both Van Gerven Oei and me—in many ways dedicated his lifework to confronting the internal formlessness of any structure of governance, thought, or sexuality: the terror of form in Gombrowicz’s work embodies the necessity to recognize one’s own authorship in confronting this essential formlessness, rejecting any glorification of form as “natural” or “authentic” in its supposed “mature” authority. “Living without authority” in that regard interrelates with Dilar Dirik’s definition of autonomy as “Living without approval”: both name the terror and necessity of liberation.

Especially from the perspective of Turkish President Erdoğan, the existence of the autonomous Rojava region represents a threat to his increasingly dictatorial policies. The rise of the progressive Democratic People’s Party (HDP), which unites both progressive Turks and the Kurdish movement, and which managed to pass the high electoral threshold in the last two elections, has increased the regime’s fear that Rojava will attempt to unite with Bakûr, the northern part of Kurdistan, which Erdoğan considers to be southeastern Turkey. Erdoğan’s regime even tolerated the fundamentalist Islamic State’s use of its borders in order to get rid of the Kurdish autonomists, and Turkey’s strong position in the NATO alliance has been exploited by all possible means in order to gain international support to renew the war against the PKK and block humanitarian corridors or even economic exchange with the Rojava region. A recent article by anthropologist David Graeber gives a clear overview of Erdoğan’s use of the Islamic State for his own purposes: “Had Turkey placed the same kind of absolute blockade on Isis territories as they did on Kurdish-held parts of Syria, let alone shown the same sort of ‘benign neglect’ towards the PKK and YPG [the Kurdish militant organizations from North and West Kurdistan

In a private conversation on October 17, 2015, in the city hotel of Derîk, Amina Osse, the minister of foreign affairs for the Cezîre Canton, elaborated on what she referred to as “democratic discipline.” With this term she named not the role of the state in enforcing democracy upon its subjects, but rather the necessary moral and ethical compass of an individual in bringing about the collective performance of stateless democracy. In a democracy without the state, the capacity to outsource responsibility to an external structure of governance disappears, meaning that we essentially “self-govern”: both in relation to our individual role in the performance of stateless democracy, and that of the community in which we partake. This is effectively summarized by the political group TATORT in their assessment of the practice of stateless democracy in Northern Kurdistan, when they say, “Popular participation generates a politicization of society, in which each person may become an autonomous political actor.” See TATORT Kurdistan, Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan (Porsgrunn: New Compass, 2013), 21.

Interview conducted with Diyar Hesso in the Rojava Film Commune, Derbisiye on October 30, 2015. One will note how Hesso’s introduction of the notion of “useful art” resonates with what artist Tania Bruguera has termed “Arte Útil,” following her creation of the Arte Útil Association in 2011: “Arte Útil aims to transform some aspects of society through the implementation of art, transcending symbolic representation or metaphor and proposing with their activity some solutions for deficits in reality … Arte Útil practices try to address the levels of disparities of engagement between informed audiences and the general public, as well as the historical gap between the language used in what is considered avant-garde and the language of urgent politics, science and other disciplines.” Tania Bruguera, “Glossary,” →. Bruguera’s frequent collaborator, theorist Stephen Wright, elaborates further that “usership … names not just a form of opportunity-dependent relationality, but a self-regulating mode of engagement and operation. Which makes usership itself a potentially powerful tool. In the same way that usership is all about repurposing available ways and means without seeking to possess them, it can itself be repurposed as a mode of leverage, a fulcrum, a shifter, and as such, a game-changer.” Stephen Wright, Toward a Lexicon of Usership (Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum, 2013), 68.

In the process of editing this text, Brian Kuan Wood noted in this regard that “‘realization’ here is a key term alongside realism when it comes to form. To be realist assumes a position with regard to the real, where to realize is to alter the status of the real.” Personal e-mail exchange, December 2015.

Whereas the term “morphology” today has significance in domains as different as linguistics, biology, and mathematics, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is considered to have defined the term in relation to the study of plants, rejecting examinations of plant organisms in the tradition of Linnaean taxonomy: “The close proximity of Goethe's perception of art and his study of nature suggests that the choice of the same methods for both fields is based on similar intentions. In several essays, Goethe wrote about his aims as a scientist … His intensive visual examination of natural phenomena, his efforts to objectify empirical observations, to use comparisons, and to establish series of observations, formed the basis for his project of morphology. Goethe defined morphology as ‘the science of form (Gestalt), formation (Bildung) and transformation (Umbildung) of organic bodies.’ Morphology was based on careful examination of forms and their modifications under different external circumstances, as well as on intuition in order to find archetypes (Typen, Urphänomene) and fundamental rules of their (trans)formation.” Johannes Grave, “Ideal and History: Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Collection of Prints and Drawings,” Artibus et Historiae 27.53 (2006): 183.

A relevant study in this regard was developed by architect Francis Cape, who analyzed the role of the bench in different communalist groups in the United States. The “utopian bench” in his analysis becomes the visual and ideological foundation for communalist politics: the surface on which we organize and articulate what a community is, should or could be. Francis Cape, We Sit Together: Utopian Benches from the Shakers to the Separatists of Zoar (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2013)

My first attempt to define the practice of art in terms of a morphology was published as “Een wereld maken,” Metropolis M 1 (2015).

Andrei Zhdanov, “Speech to the Congress of Soviet Writers,” Art in Theory 1900–1990, eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell), 420.

Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship and Beyond (New York: Verso, 2011), 24.

Interview conducted with Diyar Hesso in the Rojava Film Commune, Derbisiye on October 30, 2015.

It is important to name the variety of political parties that are, like the PYD, united in the Movement for a Democratic Society (Tev-Dem): an association of political parties and grassroots movements from all over the region. Within the Tev-Dem coalition, women’s organizations are also prominently present, such as Yekitiya Star, which is part of the larger Kurdish Women’s Movement and chooses its own women representatives and runs autonomous cooperatives and communes. Each of these organizations also runs its own academies, such as the Tev-Dem and PYD academies, but also the Star Women’s Academy, where jineology (the science of women) is taught. Throughout the Rojava region, the cultural dimension of the revolution is shaped by the Movement for a Democratic Art and Culture network (Tev-Çand), which consists of cultural institutions in each village and city that organize theater and musical performances, but also exhibitions and education for children and adolescents—the Rojava Film Commune being one of them.

The main contributors from the Kurdish revolutionary movement to the New World Summit have been Rojda Yildirim and Dilar Dirik of the Kurdish Women’s Movement, Adem Uzun of the Kurdish National Congress (KNK), Dilşah Osman of the Kurdish Democratic Society Movement in Europe (KCD-E), and Havin Guneşer of the International Initiative. See the New World Summit video channel for their lectures →.

Architect Paul Kuipers, a member of the New World Summit, and myself have based a lot of our collaborative work on Russian Constructivist art and architecture, but we have also taken a lot of influence from Brazilian architects: of course Niemeyer, Lucio Costa, and Burle Marx, but even more Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992), who further translated the European modernist paradigm of the infamous Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) into the specific context of contemporary Brazilian society. Bo Bardi took the step of developing a modernism that in many ways ran counter to the European administrative and formalist paradigm by investing far more in the sociabilities of architecture and its relation to other cultural domains, such as art, music, and theater. Her work formed a key reference in developing the interrelating political and social dimensions of the parliament, from its function as a space of political assembly to its cultural manifestation and—through the surrounding park—its role as a recreational space. Part of my research on Brazilian architecture that informed the construction of the Rojava parliament was published as Nosso Lar, Brasília: Spiritism—Modernism—Architecture (Rio de Janeiro/Heijningen: Capacete & Jap Sam Books, 2014).

One of the most well-known Kurdish slogans: Berxwedan Jiyane, “Resistance is Life.”