Franco ”Bifo” Berardi
Participating in discussion on Friday 15.4, 13:00-17:00
Nifca Project space #1
Presentation on Sunday 17.4, 12:00-14:00
Kiasma Seminar Room, free admission
Franco Berardi an italian philosopher, political activist, writer, mediatheorist, media-activist… has been known as “Bifo” since he began to sign his abstract paintings at school with the name. He later became a left-wing activist, joining the group Potere operaio (Worker Power). After Potere operaio broke up into an archipelago of autonomous groups across Italy between 1973 and 1974, Bifo was a part of this autonomist movement’s more “cultural” wing, which experimented with media and cultural production. The result of the political turmoil of the period around 1968 was for Bifo a thorough rejection of any “Partyist” idea of political organisation in favour of developing a concept of “auto-organisation” that would explicitly not constitute a party.
In 1976 he was amongst the founders of Radio Alice in Bologna, the first Italian pirate radio station, which chronicled the insurrectional events of 1977 in the city and was shut down by the authorities. Between 1976 and 1981 Berardi was also one of the editors of the magazine “A/traverso”, which became the paper of the Bologna creative movement. For Bifo and other activists of “Creative Autonomia” use of medias enabled the constitution of a zone of linguistic self-organisation of the movement in alliance with other areas of auto-organisation such as the factory or the University and especially with non-institutional zones of experimentation with ways of life. According to Bifo, capitalism is always flogging a dead horse: in its attacks on unions, strikes and terrorism it fails to notice the emergence of a new uncapturable figure, outside the domain of conventional politics.
Subsequent to the repression of the autonomist movement in Italy in the late seventies, Bifo fled to Paris where he worked with Felix Guattari. During this time he wrote for the Chimeres journal in Paris, the Semiotext[e] journal in New York, and the Musica 80 journal in Milan.
The relationship between communication technology and social movements had became permanently central to Bifo’s thinking and action. He published in the magazine “Alfabeta” the article “Tecnologie comunicative” (Communicative Technology), which forecast the explosion of networks as a decisive social and cultural phenomenon. In 1989 Bifo published the pamphlet Cyberpunk with the publisher Synergon. That was followed by “Piu’ cyber che punk” (More Cyber than Punk), “Cancel”, “Politiche della mutazione” (The Politics of Mutation) and “Mutazione e cyberpunk” (Mutation and Cyberpunk).
In the 1990’s Bifo has focused more closely on the changing nature of capitalism and its utilization of communication technology and culture within a new regime of production. He has given sustained attention to the shift from the New Economy to the war economy. He also published one of the few books to reflect on the experience of Potere Operaio (La Nefasta Utopia di Potere Operaio).
More recently he has published a book on Felix Guattari “Felix” (2001) and the book “Telestreet - Macchina immaginativa non omologata” on the experiment of Telestreet, a network of micro-channels spreading all over Italy against the media-dictatorship.
In his latest book “Il Sapiente, Il Mercante, Il Guerriero” (The Warrior, the Merchant and the Sage) published in 2004 Bifo re-reads the experiences of Autonomia and launches a rigorous analysis of the political situation of the present and its possibilities for radical transformation. Analysis links the economic crises from the end of the 1990’s with such phenomena as the flourishing pharmaceutical economy of drugs from cocaine and Amphetamines to Prozac, the multiplication of disorders such as depression, attention deficiencies, new forms of dyslexia etc.Some of the most central concepts Bifo is working on nowadays are precariat and cognitariat, new proletarian figures under the fractalized networks of semiocapitalism.
More recently he has published a book on Felix Guattari „Felix” (2001) and the book „Telestreet - Macchina immaginativa non omologata” on the experiment of Telestreet, a network of micro-channels spreading all over Italy against the media-dictatorship.
In his latest book „Il Sapiente, Il Mercante, Il Guerriero” (The Warrior, the Merchant and the Sage) published in 2004 Bifo re-reads the experiences of Autonomia and launches a rigorous analysis of the political situation of the present and its possibilities for radical transformation. Analysis links the economic crises from the end of the 1990’s with such phenomena as the flourishing pharmaceutical economy of drugs from cocaine and Amphetamines to Prozac, the multiplication of disorders such as depression, attention deficiencies, new forms of dyslexia etc. Some of the most central concepts Bifo is working on nowadays are precariat and cognitariat, new proletarian figures under the fractalized networks of semiocapitalism. Franco ”Bifo” Berardi In 2002 Bifo was an integral part of setting up the www.rekombinant.org website, a web environment of informal communication that does not add up to identity. Bifo’s articles spread all over the Net, some Finnish translations may be found in Megafoni-webzine megafoni.kulma.net.
The lecture of Franco ”Bifo” Berardi is organised in collaboration with Tutkijaliitto.