A Talk and Book Launch with Franco Berardi (Bifo)

Wednesday 25 March, 7:00-9:00pm

Room 066 | John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design | University of Toronto | 230 College Street

Listen to mp3 audio of event

As a political activist, Bifo has focused on the creation of autonomous sources of information, cultural production and affective participation. Like others involved in the Italian political movement of Autonomia, during the 1970s Bifo fled to Paris, where he worked with Félix Guattari in the field of schizoanalysis. Bifo’s political practice intersects with the theoretical and conceptual terrain of Guattari’s writings to rethink the potential of provisional communities, desire, depression, friendship and political errors.

This event marks the long awaited translation of Bifo’s Félix Guattari: Thought, Friendship, and Visionary Cartography (Palgrave, 2008). Bifo’s biography originates in the author’s close personal relationship and collaboration with Guattari in the 1970s and 1980s. In the words of Gary Genosko, “Bifo ensures that the refrains of Guattari’s processes of subjectivation do not petrify into academic givens but continue to sing their extraordinary singularity and make new becomings available for those engaged in tomorrow’s struggles.” Following an introduction by Gary Genosko, Bifo will traverse the pages of Félix.

Franco Berardi (Bifo) is a writer, media theorist and media activist. He founded the magazine A/traverso and was part of the staff of Radio Alice, the first free pirate radio station in Italy. He is currently collaborating on the magazine Derive Approdi and teaches the social history of communication at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. He is the co-founder of the e-zine rekombinant.org and of the free pirate television network Telestreet. For more information and writings by the author, including his recent Post-Futurist Manifesto, visit Generation-online.

Gary Genosko is Canada Research Chair in Technoculture Studies and Director of the Technoculture Lab at Lakehead University. He has published extensively on Félix Guattari’s life and work in The Guattari Reader, Félix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction, The Party without Bosses: Lessons on Anti-Capitalism from Guattari and Lula da Silva, and the three volume collection Deleuze and Guattari: Critical Assessments. He also edits The Semiotic Review of Books.

Collaborating with a network of activists, artists, and theorists, Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry (TSCI) initiates events that inquire into the new enclosures and creative pathways beyond them.

TSCI would like to thank Gary Genosko, Alessandra Renzi and the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.