November 2024

Faberllull is hosting scholars, creators and activists from several countries to assess the state of democracies and how culture can respond to the threats and attacks on basic human rights from anti-democratic discourses. The participants will share their experiences and proposals to stop the spread of authoritarianism and types of neo-fascism that are popping up and threatening democratic principles.

“Faced with a global systemic crisis, we have to stand up for the radicalisation of democracy, all the while proposing a legitimate criticism of the structural failings of existing democratic systems,” says residency curator Marcelo Expósito. In this regard, the programme also aims to highlight that practices opposing new authoritarianisms are based on a long tradition of criticism of inequalities and democratic activism, often from people who have been made invisible, silenced or even made to disappeared by historical dynamics of modernisation.

This event, promoted by Institut Ramon Llull, aims to create a place for dialogue and shared ground among the participants, while also building a collaborative network of international spaces for thought. Through conversations and debates, the participants will reflect on aspects such as new and old negationisms, impoverished communication in the democratic public sphere, reactionary re-appropriation of subversion and disobedience, global culture wars, new scenes of political experimentation and the importance of decolonialism, feminism and climate justice today.

In the 1970s, Michel Foucault posited the notion of the “non-fascist life”, summing up one of the deepest aspirations of the revolts of May 68: to not only build forms of radically democratic government where authoritarian violence had no place, but to also create non-fascist subjectivities. It is important, then, to ask whether it is still possible to tackle the challenges of the 21st century from a new republic of historically and currently rebellious subjectivities.