In the spirit of this underground history of “remembering the impossible”, the Chaoid Group and Weird Economies invite you to our four-day autonomous summer school, taking place from the 28th to the 31st of August 2025 at Fábrica Braço de Prata in Lisbon, Portugal. The summer school builds on and extends the conversations that began during the Missed Dialogues Conference earlier this spring, which brought together artists, writers, researchers, journalists, and historians to reflect on unfinished revolutions, enduring colonial legacies, and the lasting cycle of wars in the MENA region.

Each day will consist of morning and afternoon sessions, with each session organized around a given theme and facilitated by one of the Autonomous School’s invited collectives. The aim of these four days is to continue this work of reconstructing a shared sensibility and consciousness that aids in bridging both the divide that “history” has imposed on us as well as its lasting consequences that continue to structure our present moment, and collectively understand what, in particular, we have inherited from these underground and impossible histories, where one lives as if “under a constant demand, as an employee of History, or an employee of some other power, with many tasks to achieve.”

We are inviting artists, scholars, activists, writers, students, and all those interested in the perspectives of collective emancipation and internationalist struggle to send their proposals around these questions. We are open to a diverse range of engagement with this summer school: from individual theoretical reflections, essays, research presentations, poems, performances, and artworks, to collective forms like workshops, panel designs, game designs, and other performative practices. Please see the detailed questions, themes and our areas of interest below.

Submit a Proposal to Present:

Please send your proposals (500 words max.) to chaoid.collective@gmail.com by June 14th

You may apply either as an individual or as a collective. Collectives are welcome to submit proposals for self-organized and facilitated sessions. If you require additional space, please ensure your document does not exceed two pages. The open call’s deadline is June 14th.

Register to Attend Without Presenting:

You are also welcome to attend the school as a participant without presenting. Please complete the form available on our website and linked in our Instagram bio, which asks for a short paragraph where you can share your expression of interest. We will reach out to you shortly with confirmation of your attendance, you can then proceed to book your travel and accommodation. 

Registration Fee:

The Summer School’s registration fee—whether you’re attending as a presenter or general participant—operates on a sliding scale. Participants with an income are asked to pay 100 euros for the full four-day program, while those without income can attend free of charge. Weird Economies will provide the venue and subsidize or fully cover the cost of lunch and coffee for all participants, depending on the number of attendees. Registration fees will go directly toward covering the costs of organizing the school.

Travel & Accomodation:

You’ll be responsible for arranging your own travel and accommodation in Lisbon. If you plan to attend the school, we recommend booking early to avoid high travel costs. If you’ve explored all options and are still having difficulty securing accommodation, please reach out to us directly—we’ll do our best to help you find affordable housing during your stay.

Questions, concerns and ideas that have shaped the program, and those that stemmed from the conference:

I -  Resistance, Anti-Colonial Struggles, and Internationalism in the MENA Region

• On the eve of the Black September massacre in 1970, Mustapha Khayati and Lafif Lakhdar wrote: “We cannot believe that the hangmen of the masses and of the revolutionary elements in their own countries can be sincere allies of the resistance.” More than half a century later, how are we to understand the role of the state in relation to resistance across the MENA region? What is the nature of the relationship between non-state organizations that adopt state-like forms, existing nation-states, and the broader struggle against imperialism, colonialism, and genocide?

• After two days of discussion and debate during the Missed Dialogues Conference, it was clear that, absent their reformulation for the present, some of the most urgent questions initially posed by previous generations of revolutionaries will hinder rather than aid any possibility of their collective resolution: What new lines of alliances/solidarities are required to transform capital’s interlocking cycles of accumulation, crisis, sanctions, and war into the precondition for a genuinely revolutionary, regional and international, praxis? 

• Given that some of our attempts at addressing this history of “Missed Dialogues” resulted in its mere performance, perhaps revisiting our respective revolutionary traditions from below and to the left remains insufficient for our aims: Where do we look to for building a common lexicon and shared comradely sensibility today? Moreover, with the proliferation of one or many enemy-feminisms, wither proletarian-feminisms in our time of genocide? And perhaps, most crucially, is the question of our shared problems: What are our shared problems today? And what form do these shared problems take in order to be transmissible beyond the ‘region’ and reach both known and would-be comrades internationally? 

II - Palestine, Genocide, and the Crisis of the MENA Left

• In a moment when the left is fragmented—if not entirely absent—as an organized force, does the traditional right–left antagonism still hold relevance? Can it still serve as a meaningful framework for confronting colonialism, genocide, and the violence of state power?

• The tension within the left—between those often labeled, rightly or wrongly, as “tankies” or “campists,” and those who reject any collaboration with states—has rarely been as stark as it has become since October 7. But in an era marked by genocide and imperial violence, is this dualism still adequate? Can it account for the complexities of resistance, survival, and solidarity in our time?

• Some regard Palestine—and Gaza in particular—as an exception within the current global regime of war and violence, while others see it as one tragic node among many in a sprawling, imperial and neocolonial network of destruction that spans continents. What are the analytical and strategic advantages and limitations of each perspective for decolonial and emancipatory internationalist struggles in the MENA region? And which of these framings is more historically and materially accurate?

• How can we adopt what Cedric Robinson called a “radical tradition” in Black Marxism—this time in relation to Palestine, where it is neither “the worst” nor merely a metaphor, but a material node of global racial capitalism and a symbolic motor for solidarity, dignity, and insurgent thought?

• Who are the subjects of anti-colonial struggles, revolutions, and resistance across the MENA region in the wake of October 7?

• How does the ongoing devastation of Gaza and the systemic genocide against Palestinians reflect broader patterns of colonialism, imperial interventions, and the entrenchment of geopolitical power struggles in the region, and what alternative frameworks could better capture forms of resistance and solidarity?

III - Decolonizing Representation, Knowledge, and Memory

• How can we confront and transform the infrastructures of knowledge production that remain deeply Eurocentric? What alternative strategies might enable us to break free from the double bind of Eurocentrism and nativism, without reproducing the logic of either?

• Which images and words emerging from struggles and resistance are most susceptible to co-optation by imperialist war machines? And which forms of expression/representation resist such appropriation, refusing to be neutralized, commodified, or reframed within dominant narratives?

• What strategies can be employed to recover suppressed or fragmented memories of past revolutionary struggles, and how might this reshape contemporary political consciousness in the MENA region?

IV - Iran and the MENA’s Missed Dialogues

• What are the implications of historical alliances and missed dialogues between Iran and other MENA revolutionary movements for current struggles against imperialism and neoliberalism?

• How does the Iranian state’s oppression of national, ethnic, and religious minorities within its borders offer critical insight into its approach beyond those borders?

• How have feminist movements in Iran and the Arab world intersected, diverged, or remained in isolation—and what historical, political, and ideological forces have shaped these trajectories of struggle?

• In what ways does the breakdown in historical communication between Iranian revolutionaries and their Arab counterparts inform our understanding of missed opportunities for solidarity? 

• What are the implications of historical alliances and missed dialogues between Iran and other MENA revolutionary movements for current struggles against imperialism and neoliberalism?

• How can indigenous forms of neoliberal governmentality in Iran be reinterpreted as both a product of and a resistance to global capitalist dynamics?

• What lessons can be drawn from the dual perspectives of anti-imperialism versus campism — as both resistance to Western hegemony and an expression of sub-imperial ambitions — in the context of Iran’s evolving state identity in the region?

• How have colonial legacies and imperial interventions reshaped Iran’s political economy and state structure in the post-1979 era?

• How do decolonial feminist perspectives challenge main-stream narratives of the Iranian 1979 revolution and its recent uprisings, with Jina’s Uprising as its most internationally recognized instance, and what new insights emerge when gender is placed at the center of anti-imperialist debates?

• How does the Iranian state’s positioning within the “axis of resistance” complicate, or reinforce, prevailing narratives/discourses concerning global power dynamics?