• Sat 13 – Sun 14 12 2014 •
A revolutionary parable on the equality of men

with FELIX KLOPOTEK

Part 1

SAT 13 12 2014, 15:00

The connection between two distant points

A symposium on the life and work of Roman Rosdolsky
With lectures by Michael Buckmiller, Roman Danyluk, and Christian Frings
Introduction: Felix Klopotek
In German.

Organised by the Academy of the Arts of the World in collaboration with the TtE Library
Venue: TtE Library, Alte Feuerwache, Melchiorstraße 3, Cologne, free admission, free drinks

Roman Rosdolsky was a pioneer of the reception of Marx’s economic theories known as Neue Marx-Lektüre or New Marx Reading. His handbook On the development of Marx's Kapital laid the groundwork for this debate about Marx's criticism of the political economy that evaluated its methodology while being philosophically reflective and historically informed. With books such as Staat und Untertan in Galizien (State and Subject in Galicia) Rosdolsky was the historian of the Galician and Ruthenian (i.e., Ukrainian) peasants’ revolts. As a persistent critic of policies on ethnic minorities and of Marx and Engels' concept of nationalism he developed a lasting self-criticism of Marxism. He was part of the October Revolution, a critic of the Bolshevist course and of Stalin's Great-Russian chauvinism. At the same time he defended the internationalism of the October Revolution and the right of Galician peasants to build their own nation. Rosdolsky survived Auschwitz and after the war he and his family fled from Vienna to the USA so as not to be pursued by Stalinist death squads. He was stateless and wrote and spoke Ukrainian, German, English, Polish, and Russian. Rosdolsky lived from 1898 to 1967 and has today been forgotten – or almost forgotten. His work exists, and his life story has been exhaustively researched. What are we now going to do with it? The four lectures that make up The Connection Between Two Distant Points seek to take Rosdolsky's life and work as their point of departure.

SAT 13 12 2014, 20:00

Arsenal

by Aleksandr Dovzhenko (USSR 1929).

Filmscreening
A revolutionary film about the time of the Ukrainian civil war

Venue: Movie theater at the Alte Feuerwache, Melchiorstraße 3, Cologne

Part 2

SUN 14 12 2014, Doors 20:00, Start 21:00

The revolution is not a time apart from us:

The things that continue in conflict with received ideas

A lecture-performance by Felix Klopotek
Venue: King Georg, Sudermannstraße 2, Cologne
Admission: 3 €

Marlon Brando's smile, Detroit's empty streets, the fossilization of a revolution, the moment of betrayal and the gap in the course of events, the Caribbean lies in the East, Surrealism is in the cinemas, the last train from Vienna, the exit from the continuum, work without hope: world history in a revolutionary square.

The lecture-performance The Revolution Is Not a Time Apart From Us: The Things That Continue in Conflict with Received Ideas will connect the individual life of Roman Rosdolsky with the anonymous and collective forces of insurrectionary history. This connection can only be grasped as one made up of many fragments, demanding numerous detours and makeshift bridges. The main idea is to tease out a dialectic meaning from even the most extremist forms of "history" and in this way to anticipate their sublation. Experimental thinking that shows the way to experimental acting.