This textual and pictorial reader is a follow-up of Davide Grassi’s DemoKino – Virtual Biopolitical Agora, an anti-entertainment interactive movie that develops according to the audience members’ vote.
Inspired in part by the “pianisti” scandal in the Italian Parliament when a number of senators voted in place of their absent colleagues, DemoKino is a virtual parliament, that through topical film parables, provides the voters (participants) with the opportunity to decide on issues that are, paradoxically, becoming the essence of the modern politics: the questions of life – abortion, cloning, therapeutic cloning, water privatization, copyleft, euthanasia, genetically modified organisms, same sex marriage.
“When the issue of life enters the political arena and modern politics becomes biopolitics the democratic decision reaches an impasse: in the political arena laws are being debated on issues that can actually tolerate no decisions and any kind of majority rule is problematic in itself, any political reguation a publicy legitimated act of violence.” (Bojana Kunst)
DemoKino – Virtual Biopolitical Agora is an art book combining Dejan Dragosavac Ruta’s redesign of the visual and textual material of the original DemoKino project with texts from Antonio Caronia, Marina Gržinić, Leonardo Kovačević, Bojana Kunst, Tomislav Medak, Petar Milat and Aldo Milohnić providing a theoretical, artistic and social context.