Out now: “Operativism: Labor, Automation, Agitation”, themed issue of e-flux journal, guest-edited by Matteo Pasquinelli and Elena Vogman

Originating in the context of the workshop “Operativism: Social Intelligence and Mediation,” organized by Marietta Kesting and Elena Vogman and held at ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry in June 2025 (with Devin Fore, Michael Kunichika, Bettina Malcomess, Doreen Mende, Matteo Pasquinelli, and Alla Vronskaya), the April 2026 issue # 162 of e-flux journal is dedicated to “Operativism: Labor, Automation, Agitation.” As the editors Matteo Pasquinelli and Elena Vogman write in their editorial, “Responding to the intensification of ‘military operations’ in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran, this special issue of e-flux journal advocates for a return to a materialist genealogy of ‘operativism’—a concept that spans labor politics and scientific management throughout the twentieth century, from the Soviet avant-gardes to postwar cybernetics to modern warfare and the multiple interpretations of Harun Farocki’s ‘operational images’.” Unsatisfied with “debates on the ‘operative ontologies’ of media [that] have foregrounded technical configurations,” Pasquinelli and Vogman turn to “the ‘social machine’ and the organization of labor that underwrite operations,” to “propose ‘operativism’ as the other side of its technical and tactical operations.” The resourceful issue features articles by Vogman and Olexii Kuchanskyi, Devin Fore, Aleksandra Selivanova, Alla Vronskaya, Kalindi Vora and Neda Atanasoski, and Tom Holert. English translations of “operativist” texts by Aleksei Gastev, Evgenii Petrov and Harun Farocki span a conceptual and materialist trajectory from the Soviet 1920s to the present. Farocki’s 1969 essay “to scientize agitation and politicize science” is translated for the first time, and is contextualized and discussed in the contributions by Holert and Kuchanskyi/Vogman.