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Es war nicht mehr als eine kühne Idee. Die aber führte zu einer Szene mitten in der Lobby des Interconti, Wien, Viennale, 2004. Jean-Marie Straub und Danièle Huillet waren für einige Tage in der Stadt, um im Filmmuseum über John Ford zu sprechen. Nun sitzen an einem Vormittag im Oktober unter anderem Alexander Horwath, Enno Patalas, Danièle Huillet und Jean-Marie Straub an einem Tisch, was naheliegend erscheint, um über eine mögliche DVD-Edition zu sprechen. Inwischen wird dieses Vorhaben von den Editions Montparnasse, Kinokuniya in Japan und der Edition Filmmuseum nach und nach und sehr sorgfältig realisiert. Eigentlich aber sollte die Herausforderung eine andere sein: Internet. Wir hatten eine Platform im Sinn, wo sämtliche Filme von Straub/Huillet im offenen Codec und bestmöglicher Qualität zum freien Download zur Verfügung stehen sollten, plus Texte und Meta-Texte. Es erschien uns die einzig angemessen konsequente Weiterfühung ihrer kompromisslosen Haltung gegenüber jeder Verfügungsgewalt von Produktions- und Distributionsmittel.

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Last week after some newspapers reported on slave albour conditions migrants working as strawberry pickers in greece, the migrants in the rural area of Manolada went on strike. The workers from South Asia and the Balkans demand that their daily wage be increased from €23 to €30 (based on 12 hour work day and having rent for living in makeshift tents deducted by their employers). It is the first time that migrants in rural Greece are going on strike. Their employers have denied to give in to these demands (they are claiming that this would ruin them). Subseqeuntly 400 of the striking migrants were attacked by attacked by farmers and hired thugs. 3 trade unionists have been hurt and received treatment in hospitals. So far the poice have arreted 1 framer and 60 of the striking migrants.

The non-existence of any legal entry to Europe for Asylum-seekers produces a market of illegal transport facilities, a prospering business at the EU-borders. The closed borders have produced this market and the criminalising the market's actors at the same time. Draconian penalties against - as the border regime calls it - “people trafficking” increases the prices for transportation on one hand, and makes the market more attractive on the other hand, as well as making a secure arrival at the aimed destination impossible. Migration from areas which have become impoverished, plundered and unliveable through war and/or through electronic/textile/raw material production and disposals are one way to defy the world order. Our protest's aim is to support the interests of the people who have decided to take this hard and dangerous path.

Start: 2008-04-28 14:00 End: 2008-04-28 17:00 Timezone: Etc/GMT+2

The Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta) has been variously described as artists, media practitioners, curators, researchers, editors and catalysts of cultural processes. Their work, which has been exhibited widely in major international spaces and events (from Documenta to the Venice Biennale), locates them squarely along the intersections of contemporary art, historical enquiry, philosophical speculation, research and theory - often taking the form of installations, online and offline media objects, performances and encounters.

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While the number of migrants and refugees is rising everywhere, the European Union is implementing a more and more restrictive border regime to limit, control and "manage" migration according to its own interests. The result is violent exclusion of migrants and refugees, leading to thousands of people dying every year outside the walls of Fortress Europe, in the desert, in the Mediterranean sea or in the Atlantic ocean, leading to enforced mass deportations, leading to millions of "undocumented migrants" and asylum seekers who are deprived of fundamental Human Rights and Labour Rights. FRONTEX, the "European Border Agency", plays a crucial core role for this racist european border regime and has achieved rapidly growing importance and budget since its foundation in 2005.

On the 15th and 16th of march 2008 about 200 people attended a meeting on migration and deportation in the Malian capital Bamako organised by the AME, a grassroots organisation of deportees. This 'Association Malienne des Expulsés' wanted to pass on the experiences of the deportees from European and African countries to the 'candidats au départ' and discuss the repression of the sans-papiers in Europe and the almost complete sealing off of Africa by to the extended European border control. The AME meeting tied the struggle against deportation and for freedom of movement in Africa to this struggle in Europe. Bamako is one of the ten stations of the Transnational Chain of Migrationrelated Actions.

The 5th issue of "Crossing Borders", a transnational newsletter on "Movements and Struggles of Migration", is out again in several languages with a focus on womens migration. One year ago "Crossing Borders!" appeared for the first time as an attempt to foster transnational communication ...Website: http://www.noborder.org/crossing_borders/

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MayDay! MayDay! From Milano to Helsinki, from Malaga to Berlin, MayDay Parades have spread throughout Europe and beyond. They express the common will to fight precarization and the criminalization of migrants, to make the daily struggles of the precarious visible, to work together to subvert and disrupt the flows of money and power in Fortress Europe. Nowadays, precarity is structural and generalized. It's the paradigmatic condition of work. Structural, because it is the modern form of capitalistic dominance on labur, the outcome of individual bargaining at the expense of collective bargaining. Further, labor precarity is transformed into precarity for life. When the separation between working time and living time blurs, in a context where worktime can be expanded with no limits, precarized labor conditions become precarious conditions of existence. Migrant workers are the most precarious among the precarious.

While the number of migrants and refugees is rising everywhere, the European Union is implementing a more and more restrictive border regime to limit, control and "manage" migration according to its own interests. The result is violent exclusion of migrants and refugees, leading to thousands of people dying every year outside the walls of Fortress Europe, in the desert, in the Mediterranean sea or in the Atlantic ocean, leading to enforced mass deportations, leading to millions of "undocumented migrants" and asylum seekers who are deprived of fundamental Human Rights and Labour Rights. FRONTEX, the "European Border Agency", plays a crucial core role for this racist european border regime and has achieved rapidly growing importance and budget since its foundation in 2005.

On February 13th, 2008, Franco Frattini, the Justice, Security and Freedom Commissioner and Vice-President of the European Commission, presented the European Commission's so-called Border Package, entitled 'A comprehensive vision for an integrated European border management system for the 21st century'. The package is comprised of three parts. The first is an evaluation of and outlook for Frontex, the European border security agency. The second part addresses the establishment of the European border surveillance system (EUROSUR). We present this text (which was written for the german language) frontex-watch website in the context of the ongoing transnational action chain that includes an action day against frontex on the 6th of june 2008 in Warsaw.

Missing Image has closed its doors. There was a complex amount of reasons for it, however, it seemed to be the right moment. In the sense not to stuck in an annoying routine, but also, more evidently, the store became a far too expensive hobby which finally got too exhaustive for one person's responsibility.

We are not desperate. In the last four years we rather experienced an often enthusiastic response and somehow urge to the idea of a contemporary form of film library but we also realized that the lovely idea is caught in a constant and tricky conflict with efficiency and the well known economical logic of private business. Finally, the business-model collapsed, public interest probably didn't.

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from Michel Feher (ed.), Nongovernmental Politics, New York: Zone Books, 2007

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Introduction chapter in: Michel Feher (ed.), Nongovernmental Politics, New York: Zone Books, 2007

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The aim of the Summer School is to provide its participants with an comprehensive understanding of the immigration and asylum policy of the European Union from a legal point of view.

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Kosovar Pavilion Venice Biennial 2005, did not confuse only those who cannot distinguish what is an Albanian and what is a Kosovar pavilion, artist or identity but seemingly also players of the great structure of the ancient contemporary art power elite that eventually accepted apologies by the used instrument of this work (e-flux) for challenging their Biennale with a tool of their own system and continued to live on in harmony as nothing had happened in the West (Sunday, color video, 3.01 min.). These works stand and mark a time and a context that is full of Bang! Bang! (Bang! Bang!, color video, 2.20 min.).

From 26th to 30th October 2005, the European Youth Centres in Budapest and Strasbourg organised a symposium in Strasbourg under the headline "all different - all equal". The symposium celebrated the 10th anniversary of the European Youth Campaign against racism, antisemitism, xenophobia and intolerance by marking its continuation and restart.

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Start: 2008-04-07 19:30 End: 2008-04-07 23:00 Timezone: Etc/GMT+2

In this presentation, Israeli-born, London-based architect Eyal Weizman deals with a question whose conditions of existence have not yet materialized: How can Israeli settlements and military bases (the architecture of Israel's colonization in Palestine) be reused, recycled or re-inhabited by Palestinians, at the moment that it is unplugged from the military/political powers that charge it?

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On March 8, 2008, the third station of the Transnational Chain of Migration Related Actions took place in Turin. The conference was planned after the huge demonstration of October 27, 2007, in Brescia (14.000 migrants), and held in the perspective of opening the process toward a migrants’ May Day008 in Milan. Our aim is to improve the general struggle against precarisation of labour starting from the political centrality of migrant labour. In this perspective, and for the developing of migrants’ networking process and struggles, it was necessary to understand deeply how the contemporary conditions of labour are changing and how the political management of borders and migration is connected with the process of precarization of labour as a whole.

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Forty-five Indian construction workers have been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment under charges of holding illegal gatherings, vandalism, and violating public security following their participation in a strike last year for better working conditions.

The ITUC strongly protests against the verdict of the Dubai Criminal Court, a verdict that constitutes a strong violation of Convention 87 on freedom of association. According to the ITUC, Head Judge Jassem wanted to create a precedent and send a strong message to workers “who resort to illegal methods to get their rights from employers.”

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Europe Direct Firenze announces the "IMAGO EUROPAE" CONTEST, which is dedicated to the theme of Intercultural Dialogue. The purpose of this contest is to focus on the importance of intercultural dialogue in the following themes: discrimination and social exclusion, racism and xenophobia, asylum and integration of immigrants, human rights and sustainable development.

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