<synthesis> BLACK BOX EAST – Unlocking Post-Communist Laboratories of Globalization

[Krystian Woznicki]

Hi,

Even decades after the official end of the Cold War post-communist space
labeled in Western media as “the East” remains “different.” Because of
this reinforced Othering of “the East” can it so comfortably function as
an opaque space that obstructs knowledge of its internal workings, that
is, a black box. After all, the supposed differentness of “the East” can
be presented as a quasi-natural opacity under which the post-89
privatization processes of state-owned enterprises, for instance, also
appear, just as naturally, as beyond the light of rational
comprehension. Black-boxing “the East” in this way makes it possible to
obscure mechanisms of exploitation and abuse of power. Moreover, it
provides the perfect conditions for the misuse of subsidies,
white-collar crime, and wide-ranging forms of organized crime. This
post-89 expansion of capitalism fosters the rise of what could bluntly
be called the “mafia politics of neoliberalism.”

The Berliner Gazette (BG) project BLACK BOX EAST takes the case of
Germany as a starting point: an expanding nation-state’s entrepreneurial
agenda (“first we take East Germany, then we take eastern Europe and
beyond”) that has reached a critical limit. BG founding editors
Magdalena Taube and Krystian Woznicki show how studying the making of
“the East” from this angle means unlocking black-boxed post-communist
laboratories of globalization and exploring their dormant potential for
alternatives. Read the German version of their introductory essay here:
https://berlinergazette.de/black-box-east-postkommunistische-labore-globalisierung/
The English version is available here:
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/krystian-woznicki/blog/240121/black-box-east-unlocking-post-communist-laboratories-globalization

*Cooperative Exploration*

Taking East Germany as a starting point for a critical inquiry of
processes of globalization makes it possible to look at it from
different international perspectives, rethinking “the East” from within,
against, and beyond national borders. Participants from more than 30
countries will be invited to embark upon an analogous exploration.
Ultimately, points of intersection can emerge, thus generating common
paths of discourse not limited to a specific nation-state. In other
words, rather than narrowing the project’s horizon to Eastern Germany,
its intervention is set on an international stage. In the course of
this, three dimensions of the BLACK BOX EAST will be explored: First,
the project will investigate how the black box in question is
constructed and whose geopolitical and economic interests it serves.
Second, the project will examine what economic and political realities
the black box conceals and favors. Third, the project intends to create
a common – and above all, decolonial – discourse about and from within
“the East” and thus, not least, shape strategies to unlock the black box
and recode it into a common space of transnational struggles.

*Milestones*

Conceived as a year-long project, the Berliner Gazette will initiate
diverse activities, most importantly a series of texts and a conference.
The BG has created a space for the project within its online newspaper:
https://berlinergazette.de/feuilleton/2021-black-box-east Here, around
40 essays, reports, and interviews will be published in the course of
2021. While the texts will appear in German in the BG, a selection will
be published in English in cooperation with the BG’s international media
partners. In addition to a number of invited contributions (see below),
a *call for papers* (CfP) targets researchers, activists, artists,
journalists, and other producers of subjugated knowledge to submit by
July 14 a text of approximately 1,500 words that responds to the issues
and questions raised by the BLACK BOX EAST project. Meanwhile, the BG’s
English-language mailing list [bgcon] will serve as a platform for
exchange among some 1,000 activists, journalists, and scholars from
around the globe. In parallel, the BG plans to hold a number of *partner
events*, including gatherings with the initiators of the Eastern
European network EAST – Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational
(https://www.transnational-strike.info) and the editors of the book
“Eastern Europe After 30 Years of Transition: New Left Perspectives from
the Region” (2021). The BLACK BOX EAST project will culminate in the
international *Berliner Gazette conference*, which is scheduled to take
place on September 23, 24 and 25, 2021 (tbc).

*Text Series*

The text series is loosely partitioned into three sections that consist
of a selected number of invited contributions (see below) and additional
texts coming in via the CfP.

*I* How is the BLACK BOX EAST constructed? And whose geopolitical and
economic interests does it serve? With invited contributions by
historian *Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk* about the (un)friendly take over of
East-Germany; historian *Claudia Weber* about “backwardness” and the
“democratic deficit” in “the East”; sociologist *Jürgen Linke* about
constructing Eastern Germany as a social norm; sociologist *Sanja
Milivojevic* about the black-boxed mobility infrastructure in the
Western Balkans; curator *Aleksei Borisionok* and artist *Olia
Sosnovskaya* about the concept of “the New East” as a paradigm of
reinforced Othering; researcher and activist *Inga Lindarenka* about
representations of post-Soviet space in UK media; digital thinker and
artist *Darija Medic* about the construction of the computer user in
Yugoslavia; culture theoretician *Marco Abel* about the role of “the
East” for the birth of Germany as a neoliberal nation-state; activist
and researcher *Christoph Marischka* about the making of the digital
revolution in “the East”; researcher *Ana Vilenica* about historical
revisionism in urban transformations in Belgrade and London and how to
read Western urbanism with the vocabulary of “the East”; decolonial
researchers *Kasia Narkowicz* and *Zoltán Ginelli* about global
historical roots of colonial discourse, including the decolonial capture
by the Right, in Poland and Hungary.

*II* What economic and political realities does the BLACK BOX EAST
conceal and favor? With invited contributions by anthropologist *Tanja
Petrović* and journalist *Maja Ava Žiberna* about undocumented workers
from the Balkans as drivers of “Europeanization” and neoliberal
globalization of Eastern Europe; scholar-activist *Sabrina Apicella*
about how Amazon’s logistical network connects “the East” with Europe at
large; researcher *Mira Wallis* about fieldwork on the gig economy in
Romania; researchers *Lela Rekhviashvili* and *Wladimir Sgibnev* about
the human-tech infrastructure complex that holds post-Soviet space
together; urban researcher *Jochen Becker* about Amazon’s logistical
chains between Berlin and Poznań; investigative journalist *Stefan
Candea* about the politics of cross-border journalism in “the East”;
political geographer *Evelina Gambino* about how the logistical arteries
of the former Eastern Bloc are repurposed in today’s logistical
networks; sociologist and activist *Polina Manolova* about postsocialist
hope, migration, and “the West” as an ideology that sustains and propels
exploitative East-West dependencies.

*III* What are the dormant potentials of the BLACK BOX EAST as a common
space of transnational struggles? With invited contributions by
dramaturge *Johanna-Yasirra Kluhs* and director and performer *Tanja
Krone* about social practice theater with networks of ‘real people’ in
East and West Germany; researcher and artist *Anna Stiede* about
deindustrialization in Apolda and TreuhandTechno; scholar-activist
*Kalina Dresnka* about unboxing “the East” from within transnational
activist networks; artist and activist *Rena Raedle* about the
avantgarde and “the East”; theater director and poet *Thomas Martin*
about the quest for real-existing (post)communist laboratories of
globalization; artist and author *Elske Rosenfeld* about the legacies of
GDR dissidence; social thinker *Max Haiven* and historian *Vijay
Prashad* about the role of “the East” in the Western radical
imagination; researcher and curator *Doreen Mende* about decolonial
imaginaries of (post-)socialism; theater-maker *Kevin Rittberger* and
artist *Nicolas Mortimer* about cybernetic futurism in the GDR; activist
*hvale* about intersectional struggles in Bosnia and Herzegovina;
political theorist *Gal Kirn* about the partisan counter-archive;
journalist *Mihajlo Vujasin* about food sovereignty in neoliberal
Serbia; decolonial researcher *Madina Tlostanova* about what it means to
decolonize (post)socialism; philosopher, theoretician, and artist
*Marina Gržinić* about the politics of Post-Yugoslavia.

Spread the word!

Best wishes,

Krystian Woznicki (for the BG team)

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