"How a wave of municipalisations in Europe is challenging privatisation"

  
"A wave of privatisations made its way from the coast of Britain towards the Continent in the 1980s; gaining momentum after the fall of the Berlin Wall, privatisations became a tsounami hitting the shores of Europe in the 1990s, east and west. 

Former state monopolies in “strategic sectors”  were privatised for all sorts of reasons: to encourage innovation, promote economies of scale, reduce public debt, attract foreign direct investment and improve productivity. Privatisation was now conventional wisdom.

Goods formerly considered public – water, transport, housing, energy, electricity, telecommunications, waste treatment, health, education – were treated as commodities. Under the guise of consumer protection, often, privatisation eroded the quality and accessibility of public goods and services.

Be that as it may state-owned companies and institutions in Europe have largely become passé, although they are very much the norm in China, India, Russia, and other emerging markets. However, in Europe too,  there is movement in the opposite direction, that is, towards public ownership.

A recent study published by the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute (TNI) reveals a pattern of return to public ownership...

Read more from source here.

"Post-sentence:" My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today

["February 12, 2019," photo (by the artist) of a piece from the exhibit."]  

If art is to be meaningful it has to say something significant from the private or public world; one artist who does this is Barcelona’s Xavier G-Solis.

Having seen some publicity for his upcoming exhibitions in Barcelona and Vilafranca del Penedes, it’s clear to me that in his work he’s skillfully combining profound statements with more intimate acts of expression. 

In other words (like me), he sees the role of an artist as being someone who communicates in images where words alone don’t do the required job.

What appeals to me most about his creations is the pro-democracy and anti-authoritarian symbols in the exhibition, which has a title that is a play on words of “state”. Or maybe it’s more accurate to also say “State”.

In a piece that could be controversial to some, he uses shoes – his most popular item of choice over his career – in this case alternating red and yellow espadrilles previously worn by dancers at the Festa Major de Vilafranca.

These traditional Catalan shoes are shown with a military-style sword skewering through them. Their hanging down laces suggested running blood and puss to me. The work is entitled “February 12, 2019”, the date when the pro-independence political prisoners’ trial began.

This is what has been termed as a post-sentence installation, arranged alongside some engravings made with an open-casting machine on bare ground: a brutal and forceful technique that the artist hadn’t used since 2012, when the outraged “Indignats’’ occupied the Catalan capital’s most well known public square (as well as Xavier’s attention.)

Next to this are two pieces entitled “Europe”, including a bank safe that has a combination number lock forgotten years ago. Who knows what’s inside. As well as the promise that visitors are going to have the opportunity to manipulate one of the exhibits, the artist has also been scheduled to do some kind of performance in the gallery.

G-Solis, a former lecturer in philosophy, told me: “If you want to understand my work, you may have to start by thinking about the history of the human, the history of the power of man and how it began with the technique of making fire and continued with the gesture of getting on top of the world and other humans: the powerful high classes began to wear skins under the feet or some kind of sandals for ceremonies. Finally, footwear was globalised as a sign of socialisation: repression, distance, simulation, psychological protection, ostentation. All characteristic of the worst kinds of power.”

And that is exactly what I personally want from art, in any of its forms: substance.

We are living in an age where, sadly, the written word is carrying less weight as an important way to influence minds and actions. Increasingly, visual artistic expression is the preferred means for a younger public to get their ideas, and in the case of video, also their information and inspiration.

In private art galleries in Catalonia, there are still legal ways to make our chosen points. If that becomes dangerous or impossible in this European country, then we are no longer living in a place that can claim to be a democracy.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2020.]

“Catalonia is a European problem demanding a European solution” – Yanis Varoufakis

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"On Wednesday, at a press conference in Barcelona, [DiEM25] co-founder Yanis Varoufakis presented his proposal for a European response to the current crisis in Catalonia, and for similar crises in the EU.

Here’s Yanis’ full statement:

The EU’s response to the crisis in Catalonia has been hypocritical (it has intervened in the ‘internal affairs’ of Greece, Ireland, Italy etc.) and logically incoherent (by hiding behind the claim that it is a union of states, it motivates Catalan statehood). 

Moreover, the EU has been responsible for stoking the discontent that led to the current crisis in Catalonia – through austerity and large bankers’ bailouts. The time has come to Europeanise the solution to a problem that is European in both its nature and causes."

See source for a link to download the proposal here.

Images from the Stasi secret police files (of then East Germany)

Simon Menner

While conducting research on surveillance, I realized that the public has very limited access to images   showing the act of surveillance from the perspective of the surveillant. What actually is it that the Orwellian “Big Brother” gets to see when he is watching us?

For over two and a half years, I applied this question to materials from the former East Germany’s Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, which had become publicly available after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Stasi was one of the most effective surveillance apparatuses ever. The quantity and breadth of the images I was able to unearth was surprising: images documenting Stasi agents being trained in hand signals, or perfecting the art of disguise; Polaroids taken during clandestine searches of people’s homes, to ensure everything could be put back where it belonged; photographs made by Stasi spies photographing other spies.

Many of the images shown here might appear absurd or even funny to us. But it is important not to lose sight of the original intentions behind these pictures—photographic records of the repression exerted by the state to subdue its own citizens. The banality of some of these pictures makes them even more repulsive. Many of the images are open to wide interpretation and could feed or confirm the suspicions of the Stasi agents viewing them. For example, the photograph of a Siemens coffeemaker: Is this West German consumer product evidence of contacts with Western agents? Or merely a present from relatives? The difference can mean years in prison, demonstrating one of the fundamental problems and limitations inherent to any and all forms of surveillance.

Presenting most of these pictures can be a double-edged sword. Many represent an undue intrusion into people’s private lives. Does reproducing them repeat the intrusion and renew injustices committed years ago? I grappled with this difficult issue and concluded that the pictures should be presented because they make an important contribution to discussions about state-sanctioned surveillance systems.

—Simon Menner, November 2014

For fascinating and disturbing photo exhibition click here.






[Source and creator: Open Society Foundations. (Creative Commons license rules.)]

Thumbs down to democracy

“Let the state perish so that the markets can live.” A true statement of our times: Cartoon from El Roto in today's EL PAÍS newspaper.