VIRUS TDS

We may have infected ourselves because we were born in the same territory. Although we are spores in movement and three of us reached europe, we transmit our rebellious being, inherited by our ancestxrs. During the revolt of 2019, we find each other. In rebel fury and collaboration, our genoma mutated. At pandemia present, we connect our actions of feminist and decolonial practices towards the opposition against the neoliberal organism trying to bolt us down, but its failed attempt transforms us into an affective virus that aims to interweave, replicate and mutate our dis-gendered tactics of subsistence. Part of "Learning from COVID19: Reflections on knowledge-related commons and practices of self-organization amidst COVID19."

Just when a historical moment was taking place as a result of the social manifestations around the world, the outbreak of COVID-19 changed the social, economical and political world scenario radically within a short period of time. The productive and reproductive neoliberal system and its techniques of precarization and instrumentalization which were at the core of the critique of those social protests worsened with the gubernamental measures against the pandemia, above all in the Global South.

In different parts of the world, the COVID-19 has been transformed into a neoliberal tool to alienate us, but the quarantine cannot paralyze us! We have to remember that the social demands persist and the protests remain alive and continue their spreading in the virtual platform. Yes, this moment offers us the possibility to come to a halt to reflect about and to abandon the traditional productive system.

At the moment, we live in a reality where everyone’s health is at risk, particularly who are most vulnerable in society. In the current crisis, political speeches and strategies omit, simply discriminate and wrench the sick, the political prisonxrs⁰, the undocumented, the refugexs, the workxrs and their families, everyone who has been marginalized in this patriarchal and extractivist system. Also the temporary workxrs in the arts and the cultural sector who have historically been marginalized from the social and economical system. We are part of the precarity that has been silenced by the national and global policies: without health security, without channels of circulation for our resources that would permit us to subsist economically and without substantial savings because our creativity has never found a worthy place in the economy.

Now more than ever, it is necessary to re-signify the confinement and re-activate collective dis-gendered tactics of subsistence to oppose the oppressive fibres.

dis-gendered tactics of subsistence:

to infect love

to content and disperse our current situation(s)

to replicate and transmit a rebel genoma

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Genoma [=genetic information] It is the ensemble of dis-gendered tactics of subsistence which build the genetic material of VIRUS TDS, a virus from the megaviridae latinoamericanae family, known as the latinamerican megavirus. This genoma is characterized by a collective polymorphism, i.e. it presents in different forms, elements and composites with the only intention of subsisting the contingency of technological, economical, social, cultural, gubernamental, body and gender precarity of the capitalist system.

to spread a collaborative and emancipating pandemia

to articulate creative tactics of contagion

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Contagion [=infected organisms replicating the virus] In the current health crisis, VIRUS TDS has entered its stage of contagion. Spreaded in the web, the keys↓ allow the virus to bind to nearby organisms covering different territories. The contagion means times of uncertainty. Little we know how the virus will spread, which forms will adopt, which mutations and new composite will emerge, but we stay attentive and creative.

to be a helper virus and to be helped by other dis-gendered virus

to mutate into new affective and productive forms

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Mutations [=transformations of the virus to evade the immune capitalist system] Mutations are fortuitous genetic changes that allow the viral progression in different organisms. The mutative processes are generated through the release of the genetic information of VIRUS TDS↓ and through the coinfection with a helper virus which will create a new genetic material. This process allows the evasive infection of manifold cells and, consequently, of a bigger number of hosts which will allow a pandemia within the capitalist environment.

↑ VIRUS TDS [=técnicas des-generadas de subsistencia]

is a network of affective and political contagion for the resistance against the productive and reproductive neoliberal system and its precarisation and instrumentalisation of art and culture. We put the platform VIRUS TDS at everyone’s disposal as a mechanism to disseminate and spread collectively dis-gendered tactics of subsistence as a possibility to dismantle the oppressive precarity of the capitalist reality we live in. We desire to open and install collective debates of encounter and viral protest superimposing affective networks and virtual tools that go beyond the quarantine. We invite workxrs from different artistic and cultural sectors to get infected and to infect us as a subversive act of the current concept of contagion.

before the precarization of the existence disobedience

“Learning from COVID19: Reflections on knowledge-related commons and practices of self-organization amidst COVID19” is the result of an open call for contributions launched by School of Commons in late April 2020. Shortly after COVID19 put much of the world into lockdown, the contributions form a collection of observations and different practices of learning, self-organisation, and building community amidst a global pandemic. The submitted contributions are varied in form and content, and have not been curated in any way, instead offering space to the diverse experiences and responses of all contributors.