# ROBIN HOOD MINOR ASSET MANAGEMENT AT KASSEL dOCUMENTA(13), 2012

*Federico Campagna, Akseli Virtanen & Bifo in dOCUMENTA(13) at Ständehaus 11.9.2012* ([video here](https://web.archive.org/web/20131115074501/http://www3.documenta.de/de/#/research/research/view/scepsi-run-morphogenesis-talk-mantra-bifo-federico-campagna-akseli-virtanen))

Robin Hood Minor Asset Management Cooperative participated in [dOCUMENTA(13)](https://www.documenta.de/en/retrospective/documenta_13) in Kassel, as an experiment in “[RUN morphogenesis](https://d13.documenta.de/#/no_cache/programs/the-kassel-programs/some-artworks-and-programs-initiated-by-documenta-13-participants/scepsi-run-morphogenesis/?sword_list%5B%5D=scepsi)” – an emergence of a new social form.

Below is our debrief - *a Love letter after dinner in Kassel* - by **Karolina Kucia**, about the Robin Hood experience at dOCUMENTA(13).

It is written in a form of love letter, following the love letters by the artistic director *Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev*. **Please, read it. It is from me to you.**

But first, here are the basics:

# Robin Hood is a Love Bank
*An excepts from ["Democratizing the power of finance. An interview with Akseli Virtanen"](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/SkpTU5qaR) (MoneyLab Reader); and ["Is it Art? Is it Hoax? Hedging precarity and protecting the commonfare"](https://www.journalofculturaleconomy.org/is-it-art-is-it-a-hoax-hedging-precarity-and-protecting-the-commonfare-an-interview-with-akseli-virtanen/) (Journal of Cultural Economy)*

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...Pekka: You say that Robin Hood is a paradox, a monster, an experiment in creating a new social form and that it irritates people?

Akseli: Yes, I would say that we are an experiment in creating a new social form. ‘Paradox’, ‘concept’, and ‘monster’ are attempts to articulate this new form. Robin Hood is about creation of these new forms of which I talked about before. Paradox reveals the limits of our current understanding. Monster instead is something unpleasant, disgusting and a-natural, where there are together elements which do not ‘normally’ belong together like art, economy and politics.

So Robin Hood looks like a financial operation, but in a strange way. It creates a foreign language inside the automatism of financial control, it is a parasite or catapult which exceeds the established meanings of finance, makes them stutter and mutate. It releases minor finance from major finance; it turns minor assets into major assets. It is minor asset management. And it is also an attempt of reactivating the body of general intellect. Not in the old political way, but in a paradoxical way. In a monstrous way. In an insolvent way. In a disgusting way. Robin Hood sounds like a ponzi scheme, a fake, or it could be a private group of aggressive entrepreneurs ready to take advantage of the naïve cultural people. It could be a hoax, a scam, or just an ‘art project’. It definitely parasites also the old ideal of community and cooperation. It is unallowable, impossible and disgusting… a monster… but it corresponds to our subjectivity.

Pekka: What is this subjectivity?

Akseli: There is no heroism in the exhaustion and disillusionment we are experiencing. We have elsewhere described ourselves as a group of losers, sad figures, dark souls, cynical opportunists, and depressed princesses. We are not tough or macho, we are soft and wet, impotent and feeble. We don’t march or demonstrate. We have difficulties in getting up from the bed. We need each other just for trying to stand up. We are ‘molle’ [1] people, the future of cooperation. This skepticism is not cognitive but ethical. The impasse is ethical and political at once, it affects our position, our exploration of the world. It is this dead end of politics as we used to know it, which is the breeding ground of Robin Hood. Robin Hood is belief in this world, and not in some other.

Pekka: And the art audience at Documenta did not easily stomach the performance by such merry men and women of Robin Hood.

Akseli: It was a fairly elaborate installation or performance, whose form was a paradox. A lot has been written about it, but I can say it again: Robin Hood is an attempt to think about the possibility of cooperation in a condition where it seems that distrust, suspicion, and exploitation of others has become the most important means of our survival. We have talked about these as the precarious states of mind. What does a cooperation of opportunists look like? How does a community of depressed function? Or cooperation in a situation where we are exhausted by the fact that we need to put all our thoughts, feelings, tastes and relationships to work all the time in every short-term project we get. These states of mind are organic parts of the way in which the economy works. Economy has become a production of subjectivity. Here is also the reason why the old political means – like solidarity, creation of a collective conscious subjectivity, creation of your own values – are not operational anymore and we need to create new forms, paradoxes, monsters which don’t fit to the normal flow of thought and action and may seem disgusting, especially from the perspective of the old morality of the left.

Robin Hood breaks this natural flow of independent action and ready environments, with its specters of mistrusts, weaknesses, confusions, fears, impossibilities, non-commitments and insolvencies – around which we appeared in Documenta too. On the one hand it was a straightforward cold-blooded pitch event to raise more assets under management and exploit the Documenta structure like the meanest motherfuckers of precariat would absolutely do. On the other hand, it was carried out in a way that was insolvent, which included presence of a risk of excess and deception, a semiotic insolvency, a paradoxical or poetic, non-sensical ambiguity of the project, which has not yet become communication but resonates with your subjectivity… which makes you ‘feel it’, and want to ‘touch it’, and forces the demonstrative gesture: ‘here’.

Pekka: The artistic director of Documenta accused you of concentrating only on money?

Akseli: Carolyn [Christov-Bagargiev], who I really respect and like, got in the end perhaps a little irritated and raised her voice to ask why do we only think about money, even if the whole Documenta13, for example, was made with love! Well, with love and €29 million we might add…But she said that money does not exist, only love. She meant that it was not money, which made Documenta, in essence happen, but love from which artworks emerged. And the entire big art audience nodded and hummed as a sign of consensus. We answered that we know the situation very well, because we work and produce everything all the time only with love too – and it is exactly this which exhausts us. Robin Hood offers affective rest in this situation. This affective rest – that the members do not need to put all their abilities and skills and relationships to work, to bond, to create a community etc. – with still a possibility of income, is in the core of Robin Hood. Just give your money, we will make it work and give you more back, and you can do what ever you want. You can save your love. We are a love bank. Documenta13 crystallized it almost perfectly.

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# Love letter after dinner in Kassel

Dear,

Why do I feel not so pretty?

You must want to know why did I spit into the salad.

What is it really about, to be a parasite.

I will try to tell you now. When I am a parasite, I will remain minor. I never become major because it means the death of my feeder and myself. When you are a parasite, you are ugly, you are unethical and disgusting. Nobody likes you. You would just look silly rising your fist up in protest of this inequality.

Why did we think, that to be like this, would be a political tool? Because it would mean to admit that inequality just is. And what is so bad about that. To think how can we take back what has been parasited from us. Our potentiality to do anything. Perhaps there is no way this would look good. Perhaps there is no other way, we will need to spoil the dinner. Only this way we can give a sign of our alive smelling body, that has been disinfected into the pure capital of this dinner set. We would like to do it with love too, but every time I say this word I smell flowers. And it smells too much of perfumes here.

Why would you my dear tell me that you love me if I can actually feel it when it happens and I do not care then is this love or what the hell it is.

Why would you my dear tell me that we are equal, when I feel more alive looking into rat’s eyes.

Why would you my dear tell me that this will work? So I can fall asleep.
Washing machiiiiine…

This, my love, is what I can give, promise not to fake it on my face, rather keep it blank.

How did we spit into the salad at Kassel Documenta? We simply started to talk about money.

Money or love? And why money?

This weird dichotomy appeared during the discussion after Robin Hood’s presentation in Ständehaus. Why?

They asked why do we repeat the same capitalistic game that is already overruling us, why would we not concentrate rather on another game, kindness, compassion, friendship, collaboration of affects, and love, some things that are more necessary for life and creating than money, that we could create a life without money, an exchange without money.

I say, my love, that exactly this immaterial production of relationship is overruling our life. Do you really work for money anymore? Really? No, work has become the only thing you love. That’s why equality on the level of money is a place to cut our confluence. Imagine us in a mutual relationship of greediness and generosity. Why this clarity of intentions and desires releases room for something else? Solidarity, collaboration and equality only on the level of money gives us freedom. Not only from the necessity to compare our middle class male, female, whatever professional relationships poses, but because it frees us from the necessity of social connectivity, collaboration of our affects, capitalization of our social skills. It makes us distant, it gives me my distance and I can breath. That is what I need. It’s a dream, I know, but I can breath now. Because it frees me from the constant collaboration, constant evaluation, how much my creative and social skills are still worth for you. How much you value me. And I you.

Robin Hood is pure speculation, it is pure collective opportunism, based only on distrust and non-ownership-of property, you cash your input, you count it anytime and thanks to that you are free from constantly estimating value of your friendships and creativities and connections, and you are not alone, the presence of another is an actual help, it actually make everything possible. From a distance. It is only a cooperative of joint money and joint uncertainty, joint risk and joint potentiality, that is the only thing we share, and it is able create a weird kind of equality. This is not an idea of an ecosystem, it is an actual ecosystem. A weird community, something not based on a blood tie (person’s power), on a political tie (community’s power), on a tie of continuous submission and obedience (pastoral power), but on a tie of heterogeneity, becoming together of different. Co-emergence of different, hold together only by a distance. It is not exploitation, it is freedom.

You do not need to bullshit a friend how dear he or she is to you to stay together.
I do not want to trade my time with you, my skills, my social abilities I am already enslaved of doing this all the time. Do you understand?

“Money doesn’t really exists”, said to us C., the artistic director of dOCUMENTA(13). And – “This [Documenta] was done with something else”. “It was done with Love”. Exactly. I Know. That is my life. It is not only Documenta but all production. That is what exhausts me, this something else. Love is how the valorization works.

Money is a pure parasite, it doesn’t grow on itself, it only sticks to something. But it also is an element of metamorphosis. It can move a person from one class to another. It can make you move. It has a power to organize. To have some money in the pocket gives you freedom, you see. What will happen when that door is closed? We can pretend that class society does not exist, but the security, the social well fare is shrinking. What will happen when this door is closed?

Robin Hood is a proof: basic income is a real possibility.

I’ve seen there a piece of work carefully picked by the curating team. Piece of art that I am sure touched everyone, Korbinian apples.

“Korbinian Aigner, artist, gardener, priest,
Venue: Karlsaue Park Fridericianum

*Born a farmer’s son in 1885 in Hohenpolding, Germany, Korbinian Aigner from 1912 on taught drawing at a monastery’s boys’ school in Scheyern. As an obstinate opponent of the Nazis, he was denounced and deported to the Dachau concentration camp. In the Dachau “plantation,” he cultivated seedlings, later called the Korbinian Apple. He survived imprisonment, remained a priest, and dedicated himself to pomiculture and the distribution of his fruit until his death in 1966.” (documenta website)*

Apples picked and reframed with gratitude. I feel grateful too. I do not just succumb to the sentiment. How many times this reframing will carry the sentiment and keep it inside the frame. I did it here too. What does it take to actually do it.

It is not art, it is an apple. Eat it.

Why you cannot trust me? Because I am an artist. Not a special one, just as everyone else, Beuys’ dream come true. Everyone’s creative work is necessary and capitalized. Everyone works just for himself. Maybe only with his iphone as a companion. I will do everything to make myself visible. To get to the stage. I cannot trust myself.

Franco (Berardi) asked us, the night before the show: why would I trust you? Why would I trust that this is anything else. I was first angry, but then I got it, this is the key, we are at the core. So I answered: I don’t know. It might be not. And this is simply too sad answer to seduce you. We’ll be now trying but we might fail. It is true. Is it worth for you to try with us? I don’t know. But this is the question you and I now confront. What is cooperation based on distrust?

Why did Franco decide to give us so much room in the talk and even helped us like a caring father there. I don’t know. Did he trust us? I don’t think so. Why it is important not to know and not to think so: we use something, something precious, Sakari’s development of almost 20 years, 20 year of circumstance that made it possible and impossible. Now we came together somehow and it somehow works. Akseli’s knowledge and understanding helped, we use it too. And all our relations. But this is still something different, like a little monster. It was warmly developed with care in a safe place. Not cynical enough and smart people nurtured it for a long enough time, and enabled it to go out. Now the company is out there in necessity of managing in existing structures and opinions and point of views. It is great, but also all the time we meet the refrains, the automatisms of the structures that try to tie Robin Hood to doxa, to the necessity to explain, prove, conform. In a few months now we have heard it thousand times. It does not work. It has already been tried. It is a hoax. It is a scam. Why should I trust you? And we repeat, you should not, we don’t know what will happen.

It is tough, to remain a monster, a paradox. The way how we approach it needs to be in constant reinvention. I am grateful to all of you, who decided to come without guarantees and stand by it. Still, lets not hurry in eagerness or impatience, let’s stay a bit in this uneasiness, and distrust. This is the worry, the easiness to approach the product, yes, openness, yes the efficiency yes, top performance, yes, too, more members yes, too. Credibility, yes too. But we also have to keep it alive and not fake it. We are a spit in the salad.

You know, it is so easy, my love. My body is trained well enough to not even recognize the false. So, at the end then, love again? No, I just try to remember myself.

Parasite has a parasite

We got a parasite in Kassel. We invited them, we promised to pay their trip. This group called Romanian President Candidacy joined us. They did not explain what will they do, they did not want to collaborate. They could see a mutual goal, we did too. We came together, they did their thing, we did ours with smelling each other and situation, is that really necessary? What is there to say necessary. No agreement, no consensus. Open approach to fulfill one’s goal. And a weird joy. Difficult to explain, I will try once more: like with Franco, we did not trust each other. Why would we? It felt more important to be uneasy and possibly vulnerable than equal and independent. Out of it came a strange feeling and clarity of equality of different kind and actual kindness, actual possibility. We would not be sincere, a bit fooling, a bit dishonest and strategic, but still something was clear, we are there to really become what we are dreaming of or disillusioned about. We will risk it and put our ass on the line we have drawn for ourselves, and they did too. It only sounds romantic. It was silly, naïve, very risky and also in larger scale of event unimportant. But we played.

This way only we can drop out of the returning arbitrary power game, which goes like this:

Minor: poor or suppressed or precarious victims of the Bad system

Minor puts fists up, minor becomes major or nonexisting.

We think we can afford only these gestures. Or get really creative, make something completely different, start new.

But not, because we are not this kind of minor. We are also not idiots, we have learned.

We remain minor, gather our assets and manage them.

This is uneasy, because it would mean to actually see and accept what this minor is. It is not a victim, and it is nothing special, it is not that romantic my love. That is the game. It is some kind of middle class cognitive workers, mass intellectuals, both quite fine and exhausted.

Karolina Kucia
A member of Robin Hood Minor Asset Management