In Brexit and the rise of contemporary autochthonic political projects of belonging Nira Yuval-Davis discusses the results of the Brexit referendum in the context of the more general rise of autochthonic political projects of belonging in Europe. These can be seen as an attempt to solidify the local in response to the global around elastic notions of belonging which divide the world to ‘us’ and them. The double crises of governability and governmentality as a result of neoliberal globalisation, itself in crisis, have triggered the growth of such movements everywhere. In Europe there is also a growing sense of collective racialized existential anxiety that securitisation technologies have only intensified. The lecture will illustrate these issues mainly in relation to Britain where technologies of everyday bordering have paved the way to the historical victory of the ‘leave’ campaign in the Brexit referendum.

“Occupy, Resist, Produce”, Oliver Ressler’s series of films developed in collaboration with the sociologist Dario Azzellini over the past two and a half years, focuses on the rare, better-organized cases of factory occupations in Europe where the purpose of the struggle is to bring production under workers’ control. The workers take the initiative and become protagonists, building horizontal social relations on the production sites and adopting mechanisms of direct democracy and collective decision-making.
 
The first film “Occupy, Resist, Produce – RiMaflow” (34 min., 2014) deals with the RiMaflow factory, a former car parts production site in Milan which now applies the concept of an “open factory”. “Occupy, Resist, Produce – Officine Zero,” (33 min., 2015) shows the transformation of a factory in Rome once specialized in maintenance and repair of sleeping cars into an eco-social factory. Officine Zero literally means “Zero Workshops”: “zero bosses, zero exploitation, zero pollution”. The most recent film in the cycle, “Occupy, Resist, Produce – Vio.Me.” (30 min., 2015) will be presented at ephemeropteræ after an introduction by Oliver Ressler.
 
Vio.Me. in Thessaloniki used to produce industrial glue, insulant, and various other chemically derived construction materials. After the owner stopped paying wages in July 2011 the workers decided to occupy the plant. In February 2013, Vio.Me. began producing organic cleaning products and organic soap and formed a cooperative in order to operate legally. However, Vio.Me. does not operate as a traditional cooperative. The workers do not consider the company their property but a common good that should serve the community. Vio.Me. has “solidarity supporters” paying a monthly fee in advance and getting Vio.Me. products in exchange. The solidarity assembly also supports the workers' mobilizations.


Nira Yuval-Davis is a Visiting Professor and the Director of the Research Centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at the University of East London. She has been the President of the Research Committee 05 (on Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations) of the International Sociological Association, a founder member of Women Against Fundamentalism and the international research network of Women In Militarized Conflict Zones. Nira Yuval-Davis has written extensively on theoretical and empirical aspects of intersected nationalisms, racisms, fundamentalisms, citizenships, identities, belonging/s and gender relations in Britain & Europe, Israel and other Settler Societies. Among her written and edited books are Woman-Nation-State, 1989, Racialized Boundaries, 1992, Unsettling Settler Societies, 1995, Gender and Nation,1997, Warning Signs of Fundamentalisms, 2004, The Politics of Belonging, 2011, Women Against Fundamentalism, 2014 and the forthcoming Bordering (2017). 

Oliver Ressler produces installations, projects in public space, and films on issues such as economics, democracy, global warming, forms of resistance and social alternatives. Ressler has had solo exhibitions at Berkeley Art Museum, USA; Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid; Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Egypt; The Cube Project Space, Taipei; Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, LENTOS Kunstmuseum, Linz; and Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo – CAAC, Seville. He is the first price winner of the newly established Prix Thun for Art and Ethics Award in 2016. Ressler is currently preparing large solo exhibitions for SALT Galata, Istanbul and MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest.