Bartleby House

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The house Bartleby eV - Center for Career refusal was a 2014 founded non-profit organization based in Berlin-Neukölln and an interdisciplinary project, dedicated to the "growth and career fetish" of neoliberal capitalism involved. The association has ceased its work since 2017, the website has been switched off.

Naming

The Bartleby House project is named after the 1853 short story Bartleby the Writer of Herman Melville , first published in Putnam's Monthly Magazine and included in Piazza Tales in 1856 . In it, a clerk in a law firm refuses to carry out the tasks assigned to him for a long time without giving a reason. The founders relate this to capitalism as “a systematic error that is fatal, and the vast outlines of which are beginning to appear before our eyes. Something is coming to an end. The validity of the old concept of order expires. "

Founder and program

Jörg Petzold
Anselm Lenz
Alix Fassmann

House Bartleby propagates the systematic career refusal. " I would prefer not to " is his motto after Bartleby the writer's constant refusal formula in Melville's story. The founders include Alix Faßmann , Anselm Lenz and Jörg Petzold . The members see themselves as a free association of “everyday experts” who are jointly researching a new understanding of work and a fairer agreement in business. The association was originally founded in 2014 as a virtual network; There is now also a shop in Berlin-Neukölln, where like-minded people can meet.

The social scientist Helmut Martens calls Haus Bartleby an “example of the search for answers to the crisis in the working society”, which is increasingly producing “ working poor” and “ burnouts” . In 2015, journalist Katrin Gottschalk described the members as “aesthetic strollers [...] who pack their message in Art Deco and casual bar music”.

Appearances and performances

The group made its first appearance at the International Degrowth Conference 2014 in Leipzig with the lecture “Instructions on career refusal”. At the Elevate Festival in Graz on October 25, 2015, they presented a performance entitled The End of the neoliberal Era .

The capitalism tribunal was a fictional court process launched by the Haus Bartleby collective. Lawyers, economists, historians and philosophers gathered in brut Wien from May 1 to 12, 2016,and negotiated alleged crimes of European capitalism in fictitious legal negotiations. Several preliminary negotiationstook placein the home port of Neukölln in 2015. On December 2, 2015,the Berlin Summit on the Rules of Procedure for the Tribunal was heldin the House of World Cultures . From 405 real charges that were collected online worldwide, seven topics had emerged, including “Work in capitalism”, “Media and education in capitalism”, “Exploitation and human rights violations by the tobacco industry” and “Crimes against Africa”. At the beginning, the theater on Karlsplatz was rededicated as a courtroom. The trial days could be followed via a live stream on the tribunal's own website.

The Capitalism Tribunal
Vienna , May 2016
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One of the judges of the tribunal, Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey , located it in Brecht's concept of ›intervening thinking‹ , which is by no means limited to the theater, but can be applied to all scientific, political and artistic fields. The standard described one of the trial days of the tribunal as follows: “There were 24 charges dealt with under 'Labor in Capitalism' [...] The complaints can be filed anonymously on capitalismtribunal.org and can be read there collectively. On Thursday they were directed against 'the ideology' of capitalist self-exploitation . Or repeatedly against the Federal Employment Agency , the German counterpart to the Austrian AMS : mainly because of the humiliation of jobseekers and the exploitation of low wage earners. The destruction of the health system, the Hartz IV system and the privatization of care for the elderly were also repeatedly accused. Basically, it was about the exploitation of workers as ' human capital '. "

In 2016, the Capitalism Tribunal was nominated for the special prize of the Nestroy Theater Prize.

In September 2017, activists from the House of Bartleby took part in an occupation of the Berlin Volksbühne . On the occasion of the change of artistic director from Frank Castorf to Chris Dercon , an alternative program was staged. After a week the police evacuated the house.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the former Haus Bartlebly activists Anselm Lenz and Hendrik Sodenkamp founded the Democratic Resistance Communication Office and called for hygiene demos in front of the Berlin Volksbühne, with which they opposed the measures against the pandemic and the alleged establishment of a dictatorship Germany wanted to protest. These demonstrations quickly developed into a nationwide phenomenon, in which well-known right-wing extremists such as the people's teacher Nikolai Nerling and conspiracy theorists such as Heiko Schrang participate. Former supporters of the Bartleby House such as Guillaume Paoli and Nis-Momme Stockmann have since distanced themselves from Lenz and Sodenkamp.

Books

With their manifesto published in 2015, an anthology with the title of the song of the same name by Tocotronic Sag everything! , wrote House Bartleby “a guide to a lifelong general strike”. In order to think of a new world, one must first step out of the old one. The group wants nothing less than to let capitalism die "as well as everything that, in their opinion, has to do with it: mania for self-optimization, principles of exploitation that lead to burn-out en masse, precarious employment relationships that have long since reached the middle of society, fears of relegation and existence who drive the daily hamster wheel in favor of an increasingly smaller and increasingly wealthy group of the super-rich. And of course everything that goes beyond the problems of the individual: exploiting the environment, waging wars for economic interests, distributing power in favor of elites instead of real democracy. ”This is how Ruth Schneeberger described the concept in the Süddeutsche Zeitung .

Two years “after its much-noticed service”, the Bartleby house can look back on an extensive art project, wrote Susanne Messmer in 2017 in the Taz on the occasion of the presentation of the second book Das Kapitalismustribunal with readings in the Volksbühne Berlin . It has become “a very serious, a difficult book. But it is also a book that destroys all criticism of the Bartleby House, as it has popped up again and again since its foundation. "

Publications

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hannes Soltau: Activists want to occupy the Volksbühne. In: Der Tagesspiegel. September 21, 2017.
  2. ↑ Center for career refusals: Turn off your mind No thanks! N21 Press. October 2, 2015, accessed May 9, 2016.
  3. ↑ Luisa Jacobs: The career denier , Zeit Campus, September 4, 2016
  4. ↑ Better Place : Haus Bartleby eV , accessed on May 10, 2016.
  5. ↑ Thomas Samboll: Why people refuse a career. Deutschlandfunk, July 10, 2016.
  6. ↑ Helmut Martens: work. In: Hubert Cancik et al. (Ed.): Humanism: Basic Concepts. de Gruyter, 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-047136-6 , p. 104, fn. 8
  7. ↑ Katrin Gottschalk: Against the system. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. October 1, 2015.
  8. ↑ transform magazin : About a guide to career refusal. In: Friday. Community, December 12, 2014.
  9. ^ Elevate Festival Graz: Haus Bartleby . accessed on May 10, 2016.
  10. ↑ Lukas Tagwerker : Capitalism in the Dock , FM4 , May 2, 2015 [advance notice], accessed on May 10, 2016.
  11. ↑ Heimathafen Neukölln : Second preliminary negotiation: Is large property theft , July 18, 2015, accessed on May 10, 2016.
  12. ^ House of World Cultures : The Capitalism Tribunal - Berlin Summit on the Order of Procedure , accessed on May 10, 2016.
  13. ↑ Marie-Thérèse Mürling: "Capitalism Tribunal " in Wiener brut , Ö1 Kulturjournal, May 2, 2016, accessed on May 10, 2016.
  14. ↑ > "Capitalism Tribunal" in Wiener brut , Ö1 Kulturjournal, May 2, 2016
  15. ^ Passagen Verlag : [advance notice]: “Das Kapitalismustribunal”, from April 25, 2016 in Passagen Verlag , accessed on May 10, 2016.
  16. ↑ Helmut Ploebst : Brut: Fictional process against real exploitation . In: The Standard . May 6, 2016, accessed May 10, 2016.
  17. ^ Die Presse (Vienna): Nestroy: Burgtheater leads the dance of nominees , September 27, 2016, accessed on September 30, 2016.
  18. ↑ Nestroy Prize Winner 2016 , nestroypreis.at
  19. ↑ Hannes Soltau: Activists want to occupy the Volksbühne , Der Tagesspiegel , September 21, 2017.
  20. ↑ Peter Kümmel: The whole city is a theater , Die Zeit , September 27, 2017.
  21. ↑ Jakob Hayner: The closeness between the artistic director and the occupants of the Volksbühne: performance instead of revolt. In: Jungle World . 5th October 2017.
  22. ^ Peter Laudenbach: self-marketer Anselm Lenz: aluminum hats on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz . In: The daily newspaper: taz . May 7, 2020, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed May 8, 2020]).
  23. ↑ Anti-coronavirus demos: The new cross-front movement is radicalizing extremely quickly. In: Belltower.News. Retrieved on May 8, 2020 (German).
  24. ↑ Erik Peter: Heads of the Corona relativizers: Alu with civil rights facade . In: The daily newspaper: taz . May 7, 2020, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed May 8, 2020]).
  25. ^ Longing for Deceleration , Kulturpalast, 3sat, October 22, 2016
  26. ↑ Ruth Schneeberger: Capitalism is broke, we serve a dead person. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. September 21, 2015
  27. ↑ Susanne Messmer: I would rather not. In: Taz. January 12, 2017.