With great pleasure, we invite you on 26 June to the promotion of the Macedonian edition of the book “Pirate Care: Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity” by Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak, at KSP Center-Jadro, starting at 20:00.
The book arrives at a time when the question of care is once again becoming one of the most important political questions of our time. How do we care for one another when institutions fail? What happens when the market profits from our vulnerability? And what does solidarity mean when the very act of helping is increasingly treated as an offence?
In a world where care is increasingly turned into an administrative procedure, a private burden, or a service available only to those who can pay for it, it can no longer be understood as a personal or humanitarian issue. Care is a political question. Who has the right to it? Who provides it? Who is left out? And who is punished when they try to help?
“Pirate Care” introduces us to a radical political and ethical vision that emerges from practices of mutual aid, collective organizing and disobedient care. Instead of accepting the idea that care is a limited resource managed by the state, the market or the family, the book shows that care can be a social force. It grows through sharing, cooperation and collective action.
Drawing on experiences from feminist, workers’, digital, ecological and migrant struggles, the authors explore the possibility of creating autonomous infrastructures of support. These infrastructures are both a form of survival and a form of resistance. Care here is not a private virtue or a silent sacrifice. It is a political practice that can create new social relations and new ways of living together beyond the logics of profit, punishment and exclusion.
In a time of economic, ecological and democratic crises, “Pirate Care” invites us to think about how to build a world in which our mutual dependence will not be a source of domination, but a basis for solidarity. The book rejects the imposed logic of scarcity. Instead, it opens space for a different understanding of wealth: as the capacity for mutual support, the sustaining of life and the creation of conditions for dignified living.
At the promotion, we will speak with the authors about what it means to think of care as rebellion. We will discuss how infrastructures of solidarity are built in times of crisis, why disobedience sometimes becomes a condition for care, and how this book helps us recognize the practices of pirate care that already exist around us.
he book is published as part of the “Punktum” edition, edited by Iskra Geshoska and translated by Zarko Trajanoski and Mila Stamenova Burns.
The conversation with the authors and the open discussion will be moderated by Artan Sadiku and Jovana Gjerasimovska.
About the authors:
Valeria Graziano is a cultural theorist and organizer. Together with Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak, she is one of the initiators of the Pirate Care Syllabus project. She has contributed to several collectives, including Precarious Workers Brigade, Radical Education Forum, Boycott Workfare and Women Strike UK. She is the co-author of Rebelling with Care: Exploring Open Technologies for Commoning Healthcare. She lives in Rijeka, Croatia.
Marcell Mars is an advanced internet user. Together with Tomislav Medak, he founded the shadow library Memory of the World. He develops and maintains software infrastructure to support custodians of universal access to knowledge. His research Ruling Class Studies, started at the Jan van Eyck Academy, examines contemporary forms of digital innovation, adaptation and intelligence created by corporations such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and eBay. He lives in Rijeka, Croatia.
Tomislav Medak is a commons and disability rights activist, as well as an independent researcher focusing on technology, the ecological crisis and the transition towards degrowth. He is a member of the green-left party Možemo! in Croatia. Together with Marcell Mars and a community of collaborators in Zagreb, he founded the Multimedia Institute / MAMA, which since 2000 has functioned as a space for cultural and political organizing. Together, they have edited Public Library and Guerrilla Open Access. He lives in Zagreb, Croatia.
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The motto of CRIC remains grounded in the thought of Alain Badiou:
“A community based on a political culture of critical action and confrontation is a community of freedom, of mutuality, of a courageous voyage toward new horizons of society, with sails driven by the winds of creative artistic confrontation and political imagination.”
Program editor and organizer of CRIC – Festival for Critical Culture: Iskra Geshoska
Program consultants and organizers:
Tijana Ana Spasovska and Artan Sadiku
Collaborative team:
Petar Milat, Zorica Zafirovska, Aleksandra Bubevska, Koma Design Studio
For more information:
https://kontrapunkt-mk.org/
https://www.instagram.com/critical.culture/
https://youtube.com/@ngokontrapunkt3837?si=iUuGWynjhBAVMZJ5
Partnerships and support:
CRIC – Festival for Critical Culture is supported within the framework of the project “Culture for Development” of the Government of Switzerland, implemented by the Heartefact Fund. The content and views expressed can in no way be interpreted as the views of the Government of Switzerland or the Heartefact Fund.
CRIC – Festival for Critical Culture is supported by ProPis North Macedonia, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Skopje, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Future Bright Art Foundation, Goethe-Institut Skopje, and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of North Macedonia.
Funded by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author/authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
Споделено на: јуни 11, 2026 во 11:15 pm