Session 72, Illegal_Cinema

Screening of a part of the only interview ever made with Amadeo Bordiga. Session proposed by Mattin and Blas Etxebarria, followed by discussion.

In this interview, made just before his death, Amadeo Bordia discusses his discrepancies with Fascism.

The session will be attended by Blas Etxebarria, who will introduce us to the figure of Bordiga and his ideas. Also present will be gite-ipes (Gizarte Ikerketarako Talde Eragilea – Instituto Promoción Estudios Sociales).

Amadeo Bordiga was an emblematic, but little-known figure in Communism. In 1921, he founded the Italian Communist Party with Antonio Gramsci, but was expelled in 1930 for defending Trotsky. Bordiga was totally opposed to parliamentary participation and was criticised for this by Lenin in his well-known essay Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920). In 1926, Bordiga criticised Stalin to his face, and proposed that the Soviet Union be jointly directed by all the Communist parties in the world. In 1945, Bordiga founded the International Communist Party (Partito Comunista Internazionalista) in 1945. The small party maintained Marxist principles and opposed Stalinism, and denounced the USSR “from the left” for its economic system, which it considered to be Capitalism.

To finalise the session, we will talk about the evolution of the Bordigist movement during the years after its founder’s death.

Blas Etxebarria was a member of the first group of Communist militants who disagreed with the Communist Party in Venezuela in the sixties. The group was baptised by the traditional Venezuelan left as Ocho Jóvenes Iracundos. Etxebarria came to Europe and joined the Bordigist movement, where he took part in a meeting with Bordiga himself in Milan. In 1970, he organised the Swiss French-speaking Bordigist section, and in 1978, the Venezuelan section. In 1982 he gave up his active militancy.

Mattin is an artist who works mainly with noise and improvisation. The book Noise and Capitalism (Arteleku-Audiolab 2010) was a joint project of his with Anthony Iles. In 2012, CAC Bretigny and Taumaturgia published the book Unconstituted Praxis, a compilation of many of his texts and interviews, with performance critiques written alone and in collaboration with others. He is currently studying a PhD at the Art and Technology Department, EHU/UPV, Leioa, under Josu Rekalde and Ray Brassier.