Potosí Principle Archive Volume 1–4

No 1

From primitive accumulation to the tendential fall of the profit rate / about the communist manifesto, its pride and its no more shareable certainty / two moments of muteness / two models of description, either to execute or to reject power
Images
Mechor Perez Holguin, Entrada del Virrey Morcillo en Potosí, 1718
Letter
to Sally Guiterrez, May 2019
How to rise up the silver flow? / the reforms of Viceroy Toledo / what is an equilibrium? / exodus as surveillance / live as surplus
Lists
Statistical curve of the productivity of Potosí, 1550–1800
Census of non-local Indios so that they attend the obligations like the original ones
The character masks in the procession for the Viceroy
Difference of mita census and delivery of mitayos between 1573 and 1700
The cattle hunts the man, 1504–1650
Chronicles
Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela: Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí: How the calamities continued in this city in various ways. The very illustrious, reverend, and excellent viceroy and archbishop of La Plata is received with costly and splendid fiestas
Why
the Painting Entrada del Virrey Morcillo en Potosí was not coming to the exhibition

No 1a

From primitive accumulation to the tendential fall of the profit rate / the debt regime /
the deep knowledge about struggles in Latin America / why the women are leading the struggle
Images
The hell, Parinacota church, Arica, Chile, 17th century
12 images about the story of the possessed factory women in Malaysia by Sonia Abián
Triumph of the Domestic Workers in Madrid, 2010
Interview
Creating Devils and Spirits, Interview with Silvia Federici, July 2018
Letter
to Silvia, by Konstanze Schmidt, April 2020,
How the struggle of the Domestic Worker in Madrid went on
Instructions
Tariffs and Trades by the Domestic Worker, Madrid 2019
Reports
Guayaquil, Colonial Virus, by Mafe Moscoso Rosero, April 2020
How domestic work at rich people’s parties spreads the Corona Virus

No 1b

The fear of digital capitalism is justified. It ventures out into all areas of human life to pretend that an application of market logic is needed
Images
Guaman Poma de Ayala, The author’s journey and questions to the king
Do you eat this Gold?
Interview
So let’s get rid of all human thought, let’s zero it out
Interview with Philip Mirowski, December 2017
Letter
to Philip Mirowski / big jumps to mines, knives and masks in the back / frightened about how the privilege of the market to be the keeper of knowledge swallows itself
Plans / Instructions
Guaman Poma de Ayala, Levies for foodstuffs and livestock in this kingdom
Albrecht Dürer, Instruction of measurement with compass and ruler in lines, planes and whole bodies
Cut-outs
Philip Mirowski, Edward Nik-Khah, The Knowledge we have Lost in Information
Jorge Sanjines, Sebastian Mamani walking, La Nacion Clandestina

No 1c

Eight Questions about what has changed in Neo-Extractivism since 2008 /
Can you compare a back with a mountain?
Images
Fray Diego de Ocaña, Drawing of the Cerro Rico, ca. 1600
La Flagelación de Jesús, Anonymous, 18th century, San Pedro, Potosí
Jesus resting, ca. 1500, Peter Breuer for the Saint Nikolai Church in Freiberg
Hump Mine, Toy Museum, Annaberg, 19th century
A poor miner who was injured in his job asking for a little support, photo, early 20th century
Essays
Gabriela Massuh: The true owners of the land or the rampage of the mining industry in Latin America
Maristella Svampa: Mining model, social resistance and imaginaries of development
Chronicles
Can you compare a pit with a tunnel? Vera Figner: The assassination of Tsar Alexander II, 1881
Peter Weiss about Hump mines in: Farewell to the Parents, 1961
… until the work suddenly stopped, arms paused in the air with a hoe hoisted, horses froze, baskets got stuck in the shaft until everything jerked went on again, pushed on, everything hopped on, everything shagged on, everything chopped on, everything cracked on again.
Why
the Painting of the Flagelación de Jesús didn’t come to the exhibition

No 1d

… a silver bridge could be made from Madrid to Potosí that is four fingers thick and fourteen cubits wide
Statistics
New estimation of Leon Pinelo’s calculation for the present / Braudel’s longue durée and the Kondratieff waves / We think of the conversion of debt into behaviour in the Washington Consensus, and about the conversion of behaviour into profit in this last and biggest of all waves of a production that cannot stop
Chronicles
Leon Antonio Pinélo, El Paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo, 1650, House of Trade, Seville

No.1e

The fish falls through the mouth / about lithium in Bolivia triggering the coup d’état / hopes and desires / how to archive a history of 500 years of extraction of mountains and men
Images
highlighting the water reservoirs: Villa Imperial de Potosí con 21 Lagunas, Museum of Defense, Toledo, Franciso Javier Mendizábal, ca. 1755–1757
Interviews
2 interviews with Edgar Huracán Ramírez, Archivo Minero, El Alto, 2008 and 2020
2 interviews with German Muruchi Poma about lithium and the coup d’état, 2015 and 2020
and with Robert Sieland, about the Freiberg method of lithium extraction, May 2012
Plans
Plan to extract lithium on a small scale
Logos of the Potosí exhibition as an illustration of this plan
Archive
Archive of National Mining, El Alto

No 1f

Why machines cannot create value, essay by George Caffentzis, 1997
Images
2 Cupids / how the arrow is turning into a whip
3 parades:
Miner’s Parade, to the wedding of August the Strong’s son in Dresden, 1719
Saints, Priests and Sirens in Jesús de Machaca / Who turns the wheel?
Again Viceroy Morcillo in Potosí under the canopy
Letter
to George / the Leviathan is gorgeous, how the miner’s parade celebrates industry, July 2019
Instructions
Gregorius Agricola: “De re metallica libri XII” – Vom Bergkwerck, Freiberg 1557
Chronicles
Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela: Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí

No 1 (3)

Archivo Caminante walks through transgenic landscapes and thinks on transgenic culture
Images
San Ildefonso receives his chasuble, anonymous, Potosí, 17th century
Images from the transgenic fields
Silhouettes – El glifosato es como una Bayaspirina, 2010 / 2020
Letters
between Eduardo Molinari and AC / AS, November 2019
Archive
Archivo Caminante, The Soy Children, 2010
Trucks, Ekeko, Wire fencing, Homeland, Washing Machine, Soy Children, Constellation

No 1 (7)

How could you work in paradise! Where the margins between Cockaigne – the paradise of the growling stomachs – and Eldorado – the paradise of the indebted – are blurring in this fog of the desiring machines and its endless connectivity which says and says and sings and sings: production is comsumtion and consumtion is production.
Images
Descripción del Cerro Rico e Imperial Villa de Potosí, Gaspar Miguel Berrío, 1758, Sucre
San Francisco and San Antonio with a view on Jerusalem, 1737, San Jerusalem Church, Potosí
Again the painting about water reservoirs you saw in Museum of Defense, Toledo
Letter
to Christian v. Borries about if this description helps to look at Potosí as a smart city, November 2019
Statistics
Leon Pinelo: Map of the Paradise /
Daily Table of the Universal Dilution and the journey of Noah’s Ark
Chronicles
Leon Antonio Pinélo, El Paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo, 1650, House of Trade, Seville

No 1 (18)

40 Curses from a collection of thousands held elsewhere. Spelling out that ‘primitive accumulation’ is not archaic, and its relation to ‘crisis’ is not mysterious.
Images
The Prince of Darkness punishes the ungrateful owners, Guamán Poma de Ayala, Nueva Coronica, Lima, 16th century
Archive
TIPPA (CVA / Wealth of Negations) – The Institute or Perpetual Primitive Accumulation, archive with a few hundred articles a day purloined from both capitalist and alternative media and across the globe from India and China through to the UK, USA, and everywhere else where crisis related things were occurring.

No 1 (22)

Isaias Grinolo: Mallets of the Streets

2.m. mallet, usually of great weight, to beat metals, beat the buns, etc.
5.m. Flamenco song that does not need guitar accompaniment. It comes from the song of the blacksmiths, boilermakers, etc. that accompanied the hammer
Images
Found footage about evictions of people from their homes, Spain since 2011
Lists
I buy gold / suicides 2011–2015
Chronicles
Our embargo is lifted and they call it “glory”.
A cadaver is lifted and they call it “mange”.
Our names are lifted and they call it a “price”.

No 2

Unmasking human rights as legitimation of states and corporations, doesn’t work anymore when they are worn like costumes of evil clowns.
Images
Anonymous: El regreso de Egipto, ca. 1750, Lima
Manifests
Mujeres Creando: Political Feminist Constitution of the State, La Paz 2009

No 2a

About the Coup d’état in Bolivia
Images
Murals by Miguel Alandia Pantoja and Wálter Solón Romero, Museum of Nacional Revolution, La Paz, 1952
Letters
Letter from La Paz, written in Berlin in March 2020
Open Letter to Louis Fernando Camacho by Mujeres Creando, La Paz, November, 2019
Interview
Interview with Pablo Quisbert, Hernan Pruden and Max Jorge Hinderer, La Paz, February, 2020

No 2b

The extirpation of idolatries and its present / exegesis of the bible by Leon Ferrari and Mujeres Creando
Images
The Punishment of the Senses, J. E. Nieremberg, De la diferencia entre lo temporal y eterno, 1705
Bibles, re-designed by Mujeres Creando
Poster, I don’t participate at the Humboldtforum
Prisoner Graffits, Museum of the Holy Inquisition, Palermo, 17th century.
Interview /
Conversations
Continuation of the interview with Pablo, Hernan and Max, February 2020, La Paz
Victor Montoya, the Tortures of Inquisition, Conversation with the Tio, 2013
Cut-outs
On the colonial impact of modern aesthetics, Max Jorge Hinderer
Leon Ferrari, Conquest and Religion, 1992
Manifests / Interventions
Cultural Worker Coalition against the Humboldtforum “Tear it Down”, Berlin, August 2020

No 2b‚

Supplement by Pedro G. Romero
Images
El ruso. [Archivo F.X. (2004)]
The trovar machine of Menezes [of Arab features … (2008)]
Iconoqué? The destruction of images as idolatry [Metapainting (2016)]
Morphine/KARAWANE [Wirtschaft, Ökonomie, Konjunktur (2012)]
Conversation
A small fire. Conversation between Pedro G. Romero and Jota Gracián.
Archives
P.R.P.C. Potosí Principle (2010)
pie.fmc [unia arteypensamiento (2013)]
Archivo FX

No 2 (11)

Ines Doujak, Eviva el Cotillo, The Investigator and her Friendos, Masterless Voices
Images
a naked old woman dancing with Christmas tree balls glued to her body
a baroque theatre turned into a body
Performance Eviva El Cotillo, La Paz, March 2010
If it is not raining, it is recommended to pass the time reading while crossing the Andes
First appearance of the walking mountain, 2012
Screenshots, Masterless Voices, 2014
Interview
Forked Tongues, conversation and correspondence between Alice Creischer and Ines Doujak, 9 March 2020, in Vienna with addendums on 29 May and 20 June
Monolog
An Investigator, an Indian Automat and a Puppet
Film script, Masterless Voices, 2014
Cut-outs
Confessional guidebook for Indian priests with instructions against their rites and exhortation to help well die, Lima 1585
The investigator in Oruro at carnival
Archive
Loomshuttles / Warpaths / starting in 2010, about the relationships between Europe and Latin America through the medium of Andean textiles / connections with wider global geographies

No 2 (13)

Maria Galindo, The invisible Cage / 8 lessons for everyone who speaks and writes about human rights or records them in words at meetings in committees, in seminars, in calls and essays, in offices, in the style sheets, in the codes of conduct of companies and institutions
Images
Poster of the invisible cage, Graffitis of Mujeres Creando
Interview
Between Machos and Fachos the country goes to hell
Interview with Maria Galindo, La Paz, January, 2020
Manifests
Disobedience, thanks to you I will survive, Radio Deseo, La Paz, in the first weeks of the corona politics in Bolivia

No 2 (19)

Matthijs de Bruijne, 1000 Dreams, clear images of the lives of 89 different persons in China, crystallizing moments of tension, aspiration and hardship
Records
Records of dreams of workers and employees in the Pearl River Delta, in Ningxia, at Yinchuan, Xi’an, Chongqing, Hunan and Beijing, 2008–2009.

No 2 (19)a

on frozen lakes
and in the hearts of our days
the hopes run worried
with ice skates
Images
Drawings by Dragutin Trumbetas
Essay
by Pujan Karambeigi about “Guest worker” literature
Cut-outs
Im Neuen Land, Gastarbeiterdeutsch, short stories and poems by Guest workers in Germany, 1980
Dictionary
DÖNMEK, by Sergio Raimondi

No 2 (24)

Sonia Abian, The use(less) mouths, A hypothesis on femin(IC)ides in one act /
A (ceramic) piece in four sparks
Images
The mole knew about the battle of images running in my head! One after the other continued to enter my eyes like a reverse haemorrhage, nest in my brain and attack me. “I assure you that I am going to let them go. From today, don’t count on me. But that is impossible, isn’t it? Now we are one flesh with no direction. I am both the beetle and the ants that besiege it”.
Conversations
with the mole of the late antique scholar Claudius Galen about the theatre play “Useless Mouths” by Simone de Beauvoir

No 2 (26)

Leon Ferrari, “La Justicia / 1492–1992, V Centenario de la conquista”, 1992
Images
140 bottles which carry the bestiary of the Catholic religion from one continent to another
Archive
Fundacion Augusto y Leon Ferrari

No 2 (32)

It’s not about beliefs, it’s about a subjectivity that talks like this: “democracy and freedom of expression are important, I don’t want to be enlightened by any authorities. I take this sovereignty when I vote.” If you don’t understand how AI works, you can’t understand how it manipulates you. That’s why I try to learn programming.
Images
Screenshots Dubai, 2011, and similar abandoned places
Interview
Looks like, Interview with Christian von Borries, Berlin, August 2019, about war technology, artificial intelligence, and Smart Cities
Cut-outs
Surveillance Capitalism, by Shoshana Zuboff, 2018

No 3

The culture about whose loss the bourgeois laments has long been for many only a training to act and live like a machine and according to its regimes.
Images
Pia Desideria, Monastery of Santa Catalina de Siena, Arequipa, 18th century
Haermanus Hugo, Pia desideria emblematis, elegiis et affectibus, Antwerp, 1628
Essays / Columns
Max Jorge Hinderer: Decolonising Art? / A cultural revolution must make the enemies clear / Violence / Debt to beauty
Columns for the newspaper La Razon, La Paz October 2019–January 2020

No 3a

About debts
Images
Graffiti in Athens / Island Auctions / Bildzeitung
Letter
Angry June to the Fifth of May Group, November 2017
Conversation
Fifth of May Group with Angry June, 2018
Statement
A Cheap holiday in other people’s misery, Fifth of May Group, May 2017
Statistic
Macrotrend, debt to GDP ratio, historical chart 1970–2020
Reports
The story of the American female worker Eliza,
George Caffentzis, Who can sleep at night anymore, 1975

No 3b

A conciliatory awareness between the extractivist or appropriationist past, and the places of enunciation of those who themselves care, guard, heal, require reciprocity and negotiation
Images
of the exhibitions in Madrid, Berlin, and La Paz
Essay
Outside Witness. On the Historical Reception of The Potosí Principle, by Laura Vallés Vílchez

No 3c

Director’s Interviews
Images
Umbrellas without fabric / German quarantine heroes
Interviews
with Edgar Arandia, Elvira Espejo, Max Jorge Hinderer, Bernd Scherer and Manuel Borja-Villel, 2008, 2018, 2020
Statements
Statement of CIMAM – International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art on the cancellation of Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz and Elvira Espejo Ayca, in June 2020

No 3 (4)

OK, you assume that you’re tired of thinking and maybe you are, and maybe you have to be tired of thinking because this is the role of the artist in a capitalist society. But why do you assume that everybody is like this?
Images
Aleksandr Rodchenko, research photographs for construction of the Belomor Baltic canal, 1933
Lucas Valdés, Retrato milagrosa de San Francisco de Paola, Sevilla, 1710
Andy Warhol’s soup cans
Mural painting commemorating the history of mining in Bolivia, Archivo Minero, El Alto, 2016
Mural painting, The Life of George Washington, by Viktor Arnautoff, 1934
Miracles of the Doctor Saints Cosmas and Damianí, Madrid, ca. 1510
Interview
Cigarette Packs and Tin Cans, conversation with David Riff about primitive accumulation and the forging of subjectivity through art, November 2020
Cut-outs
If a Soup Can could speak, Mikhail Lifshitz, The Crisis of Ugliness, 1968
Dictionary
ЕЛОМОРА ФОТОРЕПОРТАЖ, by Sergio Raimondi

No 3 (5)

When we try to explain social justice to our young comrades, we can immediately sense if our explanations work. If they don’t work, it means that we have to refresh the way in which we make our questions understandable.
Images
Slow Orientation Workshops in St. Petersburg, Athens, and Lecce
Interview
with Dmitry Vilensky and Olga Egorova, about the Zapatist experience of Chto Delat, July, 2018
Instructions
Olga Egorova, Making films Zapatistically

No 3 (15)

Elvira Espejo, Paintings, spinning spools, Life cycles of the textile body
Images
Paintings, 2013, panels about spinning
Interview
Excerpts: From there, it doesn’t go like this, but it comes like this.
Interview with Elvira Espejo and Max Jorge Hinderer, La Paz, January, 2020
Cut-outs
The Textile Cycle in relation to the operational sequence
Screenshots Mayta chay ripurky / Where do you go?
Sonares Comunes, in collaboration with El Parafonista

No 4

Monstrous cats, fallen giants, Dürer’s nightmare
Images
Dream face, Dürer records one of his nightmares, Vienna 1525

Answers to this by Dmitry Gutov, Elvira Espejo, Migrantworker Home, John Barker, Stephan Dillemuth and Sergio Raimondi
Chronicles
The son of Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, continuing the Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí
Leon Antonio Pinélo about the Paradise and the flood to punish the giants

No 4a

Some manifests
Images
Photo of Zambo Salvito, 1871
Ivan V. Zoltovsky, General Plan for the Reconstruction of Moscow as a Garden City, 1919
Countries who signed Convention C169, April 2020
Signing a deed of donation, Jesús de Machaca, 2011
Interview
Notes on an Interview with Roberto Choque, La Paz, 21 January, 2020
Essay
Roberto Choque Canqui, The Tiwanaku Manifest and the beginning of decolonization
Manifests
Tiahuanaco Manifest, 1973
Letter from Vera Zasulich to Marx, 16 Feb. 1881, Genève / Letter from Karl Marx to Vera Zasulich, 8 March 1881, London
Twelve Articles of the Swabian League, 1525
The General Conference of the International Labour Organisation, C169 – Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169)
Why
the Carro triunfo of Jesús de Machaca couldn’t come to the exhibition

No 4b

So there is the “yet”-forest and the “yet”-settlement. They are on the negative side of reality, on the side of diaspora and utopia.
Images
Tree house photos
Interview
with Stephan Mörsch about the occupation of the Hambach Forest, Berlin, November 2020
Plans
How to build a tree house

No 4c

First of all turning yourself upside down, losing yourself, then making alliances with other people, and only then going off and creating something.
Interview
with Tobias Morawski about anarchism and how to reclaim the streets
Plans
Drawings by people from Athens, Barcelona, Como, Berlin, Sao Paulo, and other places

No 4 (20)

About Migrant Worker Home in Picun Village / timeline / poems / curricula
Images
of Migrant Workers Home Cultural and Development Center / Tongxin Primary School / Tongxin Second-hand Shop / the Culture and Art Museum of Migrant Workers / the Library / the theatre / the building of the theatre / the college / the workshop of the poets / the peach orchard
Interview
The more you produce, the more you lose, Interview with Zhibin Lin,
Berlin, August 2018
Plans
Workers University Enrollment, 2015
Workers College Online Training, 2018
Reports
Yu Xiuhua, The Youth of Picun Village
Xu Liangyuan, Beetles
Xiao Hai, A short poem to resist the world
Li Ruo, Undressed, I’ll sleep with you