This year elèuthera marks forty years: “A long journey on which we set sail in the distant 1986, navigating by sight toward the island of utopia that (still) does not exist. And yet this utopian dimension risks becoming a noble lie, or at most an edifying fantasy, if it does not incarnate itself in an actual practice, namely in a communal practice that is able to touch all the fundamental spheres of social life,” explain the publishing house.
For elèuthera, in fact, this collective dimension “is not only important: it is structural. Without our community, and the affiliated communities with whom we have shared long stretches of this journey, we would not be here”.
“Building Community,” for a New World
And it is precisely to “building community” that the publishing house dedicates its fortieth anniversary, “to that process of collective creation that experiments in the here and now and in all latitudes with new forms of sociability, new imaginaries, new materialities.” In short, if another world is possible, “these very communities will be the ones to build it precisely because they were born outside the perimeter drawn by the dominant institutions, by their imagination and by their social ethos”.
But beware, they always emphasize from the publishing house: “There is no perfect community, no perfect utopia, singular and absolute toward which to set off on a voyage along a pre-drawn course. The plurality that characterizes community experimentation across time and space imposes following infinite routes, and not all lead to safe harbors… For this reason we have deemed essential, over these forty years of navigating by sight, sharing the drafts of maps that began to take shape. And our catalog is precisely this: the logbook that has recorded the thousand and more routes that, through perilous currents, are leading us toward the island that (still) does not exist”
The celebration in Milan on October 3 (and two exhibitions)
To celebrate this collective journey, elèuthera organizes a convivial gathering spanning half a day. The event is scheduled for October 3, from 3:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., in Milan, at Scomodo, on Via Jean Jaurès no. 22. Space for meetings, readings, music and conviviality. Because “the right occasion to ‘build community’ and engage in face-to-face dialogue, the occasion to talk about topics that touch our daily life, but also to simply be together and enjoy conversations, music and laughter.”
On the occasion of the celebration, moreover, two exhibitions will be displayed, realized respectively by elèuthera and the Archivio G. Pinelli: A cerchiata, storia veridica ed esiti imprevisti di un simbolo and Faccia da anarchico.
