“Out, and under, and out, and out.” Self-(Dis-)Organisation and the Stories of Libertatia

Recent socio-political developments in the experimental performing arts scenes from Europe have seen a strong commitment to the practices of self-organisation and their liberating impetus. Responding to the experimental nature of many such activities with a likewise experimental theoretical enquiry, this paper invests in an interpretation of self-organising principles from anarchism, cybernetics, and vitalist materialism through the fictional narrative of the pirate utopia Libertatia. The argument thus developed is that the liberating potentials of self-organisation can be located precisely in its inherent tendency toward self-dis-organisation.