Well, one of the real blessings about traveling around the world into different churches is to make new friends in Christ, but also it's a blessing to be reacquainted with old friends, and as Pastor Mark said, this is my third time to Cornerstone, and I've often said there's very few churches that are as zealous for evangelism as Cornerstone is, so it's really a privilege and an honor for me to be with you this weekend, to stand in this pulpit where the Word of God has gone forth with great power and his faithfulness for so many years now. The homosexual movement presents an alarming test for the church today. In one sense, we're at a fork in the road. We can either hold fast to the unchanging truth of Scripture and its condemnation of all sin, or we can cave in to the society and the cultural pressure and ultimately compromise God's Word. That's really where we are today. We're at this fork in the road, and so we really need to take this message to heart, this whole weekend. What are we going to do? And I know that this church has already made a commitment to stand on the truth of God's Word, but tragically there are a number of churches who have made the fatal decision to turn away from God's Word to accommodate the world. And so we're going to look at some of those churches tomorrow, but this evening we want to open up the Scriptures to 1 Corinthians chapter 6 where Paul has written the words and such were some of you. The encroachment of the homosexual movement into our churches has been dramatic in recent years. Part of the blame goes to pastors who are now embracing the LBGT movement instead of resisting it. Many churches have decided to admit homosexuals because they're wonderful people and they just have a different opinion on a few things. Well not only has the aggressive movement spread to our churches, our government, and our businesses, but now homosexuality is being taught in our public school system. I have heard reports now that in elementary schools teachers are instructing the children, you don't have to choose your gender this early in life, you can wait until later on.  How absurd would it be if murders and thieves came together and started demanding their equal rights? We're not going to just focus on the one sin of homosexuality tonight, we're recognizing there but by the grace of God go we. We were once sinners deserving of hell, but because of God's amazing and sovereign grace, we are now new creatures in Christ. But the movement, this homosexual movement is not only restricted to churches, there's a Jewish organization in America called Nehrem and it's interpreting the Old Testament in new ways. We will see that it is what all Sodomites must do in order to rationalize their sin. They have to reinterpret the Word of God in different ways in order to rationalize what they're doing. They say homosexuality is only permitted in pagan rituals, that's what they believe the Old Testament teaches. There are now annual Gay Pride parades in Tel Aviv which may explain why end time Jerusalem is mysteriously called Sodom in Revelation 11.8. Were you aware of that? And so this movement is not only restricted to our churches in a spiritual sense but also to the Jewish community. So why do we as a church this weekend need to address this very controversial issue? Well quite simply if the church doesn't take the lead then our nation is going down the tube. Because who else is going to push for morality against the immorality in this movement? It must be the church. We must take a stand if we have any hope for our nation preserving and protecting the Christian values upon which we were founded. So if you have your Bibles and you've turned to 1 Corinthians chapter 6 we read the words of the Apostle Paul. He says, Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.  He has the power to deliver people from the bondage of sin. And this goes against many homosexuals who say, I was born this way and I can never change. Yes, if you come to Christ you can be changed by the power of God. This is proof in this text. This is what some of you were, homosexuals. But now you have been washed, now you have been sanctified, now you have been justified. And isn't sanctification what true Christianity is all about? The transformation of our lives? Habitual sin is no longer the dominant pattern. It is broken by acts of righteous living that are empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit. If you look at these sins that Paul has listed in these verses, he lists ten sins and four of them deal with sexual immorality. Paul is saying that if it were not for the grace of God, you and I would still be in our sins enslaved to the desires of our heart. That was the desires of our flesh before we came to Christ. But he's also making a vivid distinction here. There's two groups of people. There are those who are unsaved and those who are saved. When we look at the description of those who are unsaved they are in bondage to sin. And so we see a different characteristic between born again Christians who are no longer enslaved to sin and unregenerate people who are still enslaved to the devil and sin. So it is clear that any professing Christian who continues an unrepentant sin is nothing but a false convert. And if you still have your Bibles open in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, I want you to read more of the context in verses 18, 19, and 20. Paul is saying, flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body. But the immoral man sins against his own body.  For you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body. Paul I think is aware that there may be false converts in the church. People that are still enslaved to sin. And so he gives the exhortation to flee immorality.  And we're going to look at how this movement has really grown in recent years. There are many quote-unquote gay Christians in the metropolitan community church and they are all still living in habitual sin. Are you familiar with this denomination? It calls itself a Christian denomination and it now has 222 congregations in 37 different countries. It is said to be an outreach to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families. It bases its theology on the historic creeds of the Christian church and its social justice mission is for the rights of the LGBT including gay marriages. I did a little research, its founder performed the first public same sex marriage in the United States in California in 1969. Then in 1970 he filed the first lawsuit in the United States seeking legal recognition for same sex marriages. The Metropolitan Community Church congregations around the world perform more than 6,000 same sex marriages. One of its best known pastors has been Mel White. Some of you may be aware of him, he's best known for his ghost writing autobiographies of Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. So after years of writing for the Christian right he came out as gay in 1994 and he wrote his autobiography Stranger at the Gate to be Gay and Christian in America. So this movement as you can see has been growing over the last 20 years according to Romans chapter 1 homosexuals like many other unregenerate people rationalize their sin because of depraved minds. And we're going to look in a moment how they rationalize their sin, how they twist and distort scripture so that they continue in this lifestyle. Paul was crystal clear about homosexual behavior. He included it not only in 1 Corinthians 6 verses 9 to 10 but also in 1 Timothy chapter 1 verse 10. The Levitical Law refers to all homosexual behavior in no uncertain terms as an abomination to God. We see that in Leviticus 18 verses 22 and Leviticus 20 verse 13. In other words, homosexual behavior whether it is in the confines of marriage or not is sinful and it cannot be rationalized in any other way. So we must warn sinners. Not one sin will go unpunished. All legal debts to God's divine justice will be paid either by the Lord Jesus Christ as their substitute or by those who reject him. We must warn people Christ is their only hope. He not only saves people from the punishment of sin but also from the power of sin.  I'm sure all of you would acknowledge that. And people deceive themselves when they hear the word of God and don't do what it says. That's what we read in James chapter 1. Lives with unbroken patterns of sin belong to false converts. True converts turn from sin to God and demonstrate victory over sin through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what we need to tell homosexuals who consider themselves Christian. Jesus saves us from our sin, not in our sin. So often people just want fire insurance.  The term gay Christian is becoming more and more accepted in churches and Christian communities.  They are both sinners. They both need to repent and trust the Lord Jesus Christ so they can escape the snare of the devil who holds them captive in this lifestyle of sin. This is not to say that you and I as Christians never struggle with sin. We often struggle with impure thoughts, with immoral thoughts. We struggle with idolatry. This is the life of a Christian because we have the Spirit of God that is still battling the flesh. I think Paul was a great example in Romans chapter 7. He said the things I want to do I don't do and the things I don't want to do I do. There's this constant struggle against our sin nature. That's why one of the great anticipations I have of being in heaven is not only to be in the presence of my Savior but also no longer struggling with sin. Only set free will be in heaven where righteousness dwells. So when we look at the term gay Christian, this is just an oxymoron. We are not the sum of our lust or the sum of our disobedience to God's law. We are a new creation in Christ and therefore we have a new identity as Paul describes in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17. We do not have dual identities. If you remember the passage we opened the message with in 1 Corinthians 6 and such were some of you, but now you have been sanctified, you've been washed, you've been justified, you're a new creation in Christ. The old man has been put to death and so for a Christian to identify himself by a particular sin as gay Christians do is just an oxymoron. Christ has delivered Christians from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His Son in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. We read that in Colossians chapter 1 verses 13 to 14. So Matthew Vines has written a book called God and the Gay Christian. What the Bible says and doesn't say about homosexuality, Vines is an advocate for the acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people within Christian communities. He is training Christians to eradicate homophobia from the church. The question we should be asking is, should Christians be labeled for a sinful lifestyle? I did some research on Matthew Vines. He attended Harvard from 2008 to 2010 and then took a leave of absence in order to research homosexuality in the Bible and he also did research so that he could work towards inclusion of the LGBT people in the church. In March 2012 he delivered a message at his church about the Bible and homosexuality calling for the acceptance of gay Christians and same sex marriages. Since then the video of that speech has been seen more than 500,000 times on YouTube. It was featured in the New York Times and also in the Christian Post. Can you begin to see how much momentum is behind this movement? A half a million times this message has been seen on YouTube. And don't you marvel that the best estimates for the homosexual population is only 3 or 4 percent, but you would have a sense that it's much greater than that, maybe 40 percent or so because of this great momentum, this encroachment into churches and businesses and schools and government. Well Vine rationalized the scripture as he twists and distorts them. He says the sin of Sodom is not related to loving consensual same sex relationships but to the threat of gang rape. That's how he interprets the passage in Genesis 19. And then he also rationalizes and says that Paul does not condemn monogamous gay sex, rather it's lustful excess. The passage referred to is Romans 1 verses 26 to 27. And then Vine rationalizes, Paul does not condemn same sex relationships, rather the exploitation of others in passages such as the one we just read and also 1 Timothy chapter 1 verse 10. Vines also has a bizarre interpretation for Leviticus 18 and 20, which says when a man lies with a man, it is an abomination to God. And now how can you twist and interpret that any other way than what it says? A man lying with a man is an abomination to God, period. But Vine says, God is not condemning committed same sex relationships but the improper ordering of gender roles in a Jewish society. Vines is interpreting the Bible through the lens of his sexuality rather than interpreting his sexuality through the lens of scripture.  He looks at the Bible through his experience as a homosexual person and he wants to rationalize his behavior and so it's no wonder why Vines is so popular. Homosexuals who call themselves Christians are looking to a man such as Vines to twist and distort the scriptures so that they can live at peace. But this is a tragic, fatal flaw to a very ungodly position. Of over 30,000 verses in the Bible, not one makes a positive statement about homosexuality. Furthermore, every scripture that defines marriage always defines it between a man and a woman. And so these quote unquote gay Christians really have a difficult time coming up with something positive that the Bible says about their lifestyle. People like Vines are desperate to want scripture to say the opposite of what it does. Vines is simply trying to justify his sinful desires. But the only solution to his problem is repentance.  They don't want to turn from their sin. They're enjoying their sin. They want to do both. They want to profess Christ and remain in their sin. So Vines' solution meets both criteria for the gay population that calls themselves Christians. But what he does when he misinterprets scripture, he violates the integrity of God's holy word.  True Christians are those who hate the sin that nailed Christ to the cross. Born again Christians reckon themselves dead to sin and alive in Christ. They have been washed. They have been sanctified. They have been justified all for the glory of God delivering them out of the bondage of sin.  They are victims of deception who need to be warned by those like you and I who have been entrusted with the truth of God's word. So we've seen people like Vines have questionable hermeneutics. There is a warning that Peter gives in his 2nd epistle chapter 3 verses 16 to 18.  Take care that you are not carried away by the error of lawless people. That's the warning that every quote unquote gay Christian must heed. We must rightly divide the word of truth using proper hermeneutics to interpret scripture historically, grammatically, contextually, and also literally wherever it calls for a little interpretation. Paul continues in 2nd Timothy chapter 2 verse 16 that we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, not in the error of lawless men.  They're following the teachings in the books of lawless men. Quote unquote Christian homosexuality is running rampant now and I want to share some examples with you. There is a gay Christian network. It's a place where Christ centered support for LBGT and a focus on Christ and all things takes place.  I'm sure you've heard of Lifeway Christian Bookstores. They're selling a title by Justin Lee who is the director and founder of the Gay Christian Network. They've recently come under some other scrutiny for selling different books that have proven to be false. But then we also have Wheaton College.  Her job is to counsel students with same sex attraction and she says same sex orientation is not sinful. She says it can be an expression of diversity, a unique way of experiencing art and beauty in community. Rogers said and I quote, God has used my gayness for his glory rather than making me straight. She has employed at Wheaton College once a bastion for conservative Christian education. This is how the movement has encroached throughout all of Christianity. Those dealing with same sex attraction may struggle with that temptation for most or all of their lives but it's like pride or anger or heterosexual lust. It is a sinful desire, not an orientation. No one is obligated to follow an orientation. We all have sinful desires but just because we do doesn't mean we're oriented toward a particular lifestyle. Scripture tells us clearly about sinful desire. Let no one say when he is tempted I am tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil nor does he himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then when desire has conceived it gives birth to sin and sin which is when it's full grown brings forth death. That's out of James chapter 1 verses 13 to 15. So the Bible gives a solution for the repentant believer dealing with these unholy desires. I'm sure you're familiar with them, flee from them, run from them, reject them and then we are told to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. We have a sinful desire that comes into our mind, take it captive to the obedience of Christ. We're all going to struggle with sin in this life but it doesn't mean we have an excuse to sin. Well, I think the most terrifying words that are recorded in the Bible are found in Matthew chapter 7. These are the words that professing Christians will hear. People that call Jesus Lord. They will stand before the Lord Jesus and he will declare, I never knew you depart from me. Jesus said that many who call him Lord will hear that on the last day. Many, not a few, many professing Christians will one day stand before the Lord Jesus Christ and will hear the most terrifying words anyone could ever hear. When Jesus says depart from me I never knew you. This is why we need to leave here with a great compassion for gay Christians. They are victims of deception. They call Jesus Lord, but why do they hear those words? Jesus explains it, they never departed from iniquity. True Christians will turn from their sin and turn to Christ. Jesus referred to those who will hear those words as workers of lawlessness, even though they called Jesus Lord. They continued in their habitual sin with no repentance. They are false converts who profess Christ, but have never been born again. And so when we look at the sin of homosexuality, the Bible describes it with a lot of words that we need to be aware of. It is a most degrading and decent and repulsive behavior that dishonors the body. It is ungodly. It is unnatural conduct. It is unique to human beings. It is such depravity that animals don't even behave this way. It is condemned by God. It was punishable by death in the Old Testament, and it's a divine judgment in the New Testament. It is a twisted perversion of God-ordained roles. And yet so many churches and so many Christians today are very tolerant of this sin if only they knew how the Word of God describes it. One man, one woman, leaving and cleaving, that was God's original design. It has never changed. And since marriage is the model from Genesis 2, any deviation from that model is a violation of God's moral law. It is not just unique to Moses' law. The sin of homosexuality transcends the law. Any attempt to justify the sin is to justify what God hates and to deny the truth that is revealed in his Word. Yet one denomination says homosexuality is no more abnormal than left-handedness. That's how much they don't read the Word of God. How utterly perverse it is for so-called Christian denominations to affirm homosexuality, to ordain homosexuals and lesbians, and to marry men with men and women to women. Episcopalians have led the encroachment of this movement. They have a national bishop who is proud to be a sodomite. By the way, the hijacking of the Word gay and the rainbow is part of the LBGT's agenda to overturn the true designation for this sinful lifestyle. It's a clever marketing strategy, and it appears to be working very well not only outside the church, but also inside the church. I don't know if any of you are survivor fans. If you are, you probably watched the most recent episode of Survivor.  When interviewed after the season, one of them said that 98% of the feedback has been positive and people are saying that they are like the two people on the show, gay and Christian. The master of ceremonies interviewed a woman in the audience after the show was over and she said, and I quote, they showcased Christianity very well. In other words, they were an example of what true Christianity is, the way they openly kissed on the show, man to man. This is what the world is looking at as Christianity today. Tragically, this is the mindset of many Christians, many who profess Christ. Well, we know that God will judge all sin and he judges sin either at the cross of Christ or at the great white throne. It is appointed for man to die once and after this comes judgment. We read that in Hebrews 9.27. Jesus said, he who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has one who judges him. The word I spoke is what will judge him on the last day. I was sharing with someone before the conference this evening, he would have been witnessing to a Roman Catholic priest today who was dismissing the Scriptures, dismissing the word as the brother was witnessing to him. And I said, whenever that happens to me when I'm witnessing to a priest, I will say to him, the very word that you are rejecting right now is the word that will judge you on the last day.  We must encourage false converts to take the word of God seriously.  We can be wrong about a lot of things in this life and still survive, but if we are wrong about eternity, we will pay for that mistake forever and forever. There is no escape from the fires of hell. When our hearts beat for the last time, we will immediately find ourselves in one of two places, either in the kingdom of heaven sitting at the feet of our glorious Savior or in the fires of hell being punished for the sin, satisfying divine justice because the person rejected their only hope for salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ. And tragically, as you know, the vast majority of the human race is rushing towards eternity without ever trusting the greatest man who ever lived, who offers the greatest gift anyone could ever receive. And that is the gift of eternal life. When we look at the difference between a false convert and a true convert's response to sin, a true convert has godly sorrow. There is remorse and grief over our sin that nailed Christ to the cross and the shame it brought to his holy name. This is one of the areas that really grieves me with the term gay Christian. What does it do? It brings shame to the name of Christ. So we need to be aware of that. A true convert's response to sin is confession. He agrees with God that he has sinned against God and has broken his law. We see that in 1 John 1.9. A true convert's response to sin is that of repentance. The earnest desire to turn away from sin and to pursue righteousness in the Spirit's power. So a true convert will have godly sorrow for their sin. They will confess it to the Lord and they will have repentance. And there's a one-time repentance unto salvation. But as you know, there is a daily repentance as well. And that is a true convert. A professing Christian who denies that homosexuality is a sin or is convinced that his sinful lifestyle is not really sinful, is probably a false convert. Spiritual conviction is an essential part of true conversion. Until the sinner is convinced of sin, he can never be converted from sin. Until sin is thoroughly revealed, Christ cannot be rightfully claimed. As long as sin is unseen, Christ will be untaught. No one seeks a physician until they are sick. My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, you and I have been entrusted with the truth. Gay Christians are victims of deception. They are false converts. They have rationalized their sin away. Therefore, they're not convicted of their sin. And therefore, they're not convinced that they need a Savior. We who have been entrusted with the truth must warn them. Well, we want to look at gay Christians as false converts and victims of deception. And I hope all of you realize that Satan's most cruel deception would be to convince sinners that they are saved when they are not.  I'm sure you know that there are many false converts in many quote unquote, seeker friendly churches. They're all victims of deception. Satan's tears are sewn along with the wheat because churches allow it to happen. Jesus described tears as sons of the wicked one and the one who sowed them is the devil. If you have your Bibles, turn to Matthew 13 and we'll see the Lord Jesus describing these false converts, these tears. Matthew 13, verse 24. Jesus says the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in the field. But while his men were sleeping, i.e. while the pastor was asleep, his enemy came in and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. In verse 28, so the servant said to him, then do you want us to go and gather them? But he said, no, lest in gathering the weeds, you root up the wheat and along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. And at harvest time, I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat until my barn. In verse 36, his disciples asked him to explain the parable. He said the one who sows the good seed is the son of man. The field is the world and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the clothes of the age and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the clothes of the age.  In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So then the planting of tears have eternal consequences for the false converts, the victims of deception. But we also need to be aware of the present day consequences as well. What are the consequences for allowing tears in our church? When there is no call to repentance or discipleship, God is not glorified, Christ is not exalted, the church is not sanctified, the gospel is not effective and sinners are not saved. We must not allow tears to become members of our church. Some of the consequences for allowing them in would be they cause division and then they end up thwarting God's purpose for his church. God has called people out of the world to be sanctified by his truth set apart from the world. And so when we allow the tears and the false converts to be members in our churches, all they do is bring shame to the name of Christ and end up being very divisive. Well, gay Christians are victims of bad theology. Some may be victims of unbiblical methods of evangelism and I'm sure you're aware of those, the most common unbiblical method of evangelism is calling people to repeat a prayer for salvation. We know in the Bible that that just does not take place. In fact, the only sinners prayer we see in the scriptures is the public and crying out to the Lord, have mercy on me as sinner. He was convicted of his sin by the Holy Spirit but no one had to lead him in that prayer. He cried out to the Lord on his own. Other bad theology, some deceive themselves when they hear the word but they don't do what it says, self-deception, some are deceived by distorted gospels or false Christ. There are different ways that the gospel is being distorted but many false converts are simply blinded from the truth and we know this is supernatural deception, don't we? Supernatural blindness, we read in 2 Corinthians 4-4, the prince of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. And so the spiritual blindness remains until when? Until the person turns to Christ. We see that in 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18, the veil of blindness that covers every man's heart remains until they turn to Christ. So as long as a gay Christian is turning to Matthew Vines and reading his book and listening to him on YouTube, he is gonna remain deceived. He's gonna remain blinded. But when he turns to Christ as his only hope, there's a promise that that veil of blindness is removed. Self-righteous pride, a false perception that you are good enough to appease God. We see that given in Luke 18, verse 11, the story of the self-righteous Pharisee and the lowly publican, the self-righteous Pharisee said, thank you, God, that I'm not like this lowly sinner. But yet who is the one that went home justified that day? The lowly publican, self-righteous pride blinds people from the truth. And also religious loyalty, trusting religious leaders instead of God's word, trusting homosexual leaders that call themselves bishops rather than trusting God's word. These are the marks of false converts in how easily they are blinded from the truth of the gospel. We need to warn false converts what saving faith is not. It is not mere intellectual ascent to facts or creeds about Jesus. There are many people who have head knowledge about who Christ is. They can even quote scripture, but the word of God has never reached their heart. They simply have intellectual ascent. Saving faith is not trusting a religion or a church. Some people like Roman Catholics put their trust in their religion to help them get to heaven. And so often as I have studied this deception that has pervaded the gay Christian community, it's so similar to the deception that is prevailed in the Roman Catholic religion. Blinded from the truth of God's word because they're putting their trust in a religion rather than in a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. Saving faith is not believing in a God of one's own imagination.  Well, the real question that needs to be asked is not how can a loving God send anyone to hell, but how can a holy God allow sinners into heaven? And that's only through the blood of Jesus Christ. Well, there are some things that don't guarantee you are saved, getting baptized, doing religious rituals, or going to church. We've already seen that in Matthew 7, 22. All these people who called Jesus Lord, they were boasting in their religious activity, but they never departed from iniquity. Living a good life is not a guarantee that you're saved because why? God's righteousness demands perfection. And the only righteousness that will qualify you for heaven is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And that's given as a gift to those who will trust him. We've already seen that professing Jesus as Lord does not guarantee you're going to heaven. Honoring God with your lips when your heart is far from him will not guarantee that you are saved. And so we need to warn people. The default religion in America today is Christianity. 86% of Americans profess to be Christian. But are they really? Are they showing fruit of repentance? Well, there's what's called a gushy gospel out there. It emphasizes God's love and mercy while ignoring his holiness and justice. One of the proponents of this gushy gospel would be the pastor of the largest church in America now, Joel Osteen, down in Houston, Texas. Have you ever heard him talk about God's holiness or man's sinfulness? He tickles man's ears. He builds up their egos and their self-esteem. It's a gushy gospel, all right. A gushy gospel exalts man and his importance while diminishing God and his significance. It avoids the hard teachings of Jesus. The light of the gospel is being replaced by the gospel light. We see that everywhere, don't we? As we travel not only throughout America, but around the world, this gospel of sentimentality is really taking over the church. So we ask the question then, why are compromised gospels so popular today? Well, there's a couple of reasons. Preachers take the offense out of the gospel to make it more appealing and more acceptable to a larger segment of society. We've got what's called an inclusive gospel now. Pastors are denying that the road is that narrow. They're trying to widen it by making it more inclusive. They're seeking the approval of men to increase their popularity, their influence, and their wealth. Seminaries are now producing CEOs of churches rather than shepherds to shepherd God's flock. It's really sad to see, and I'm sure it's discouraging for all of you to watch this, but let me encourage you. Jesus said all of these things must take place before he comes for his church. And so while it is discouraging to see this great apostasy and the compromise of the gospel, be encouraged, keep looking up for our redemption as nigh. So what are the effects of a perverted gospel? I mentioned 86, 87% of Americans profess Christianity, yet we lead the world in violent crime and social decay. 57% of these Americans believe good people go to heaven. 53% of them did not even know what John 3.16 means. That's amazing, isn't it? And 12% believe Noah's wife was Jonah Vark. I'm not making this up. Well, we're seeing the New Cross. A. W. Tozer did a contrast between the old cross and the new cross. The cross of popular evangelism is producing false converts today. He said the old cross loom in, the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned, the new cross amuses as our churches now are filled with entertainment. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh and the new cross encourages it. Well, there are two ways the gospel is being distorted today. One of the ways is adding requirements to it, adding more requirements in order to be saved. And some of you have come out of the Roman Catholic religion and you know in order to be saved in that religion you must be baptized and do good works and receive the sacraments and spend time in purgatory to purge away your sins and gain indulgences to remit punishment. And you also have to keep the law as a Catholic in order to be saved. This kind of gospel is under the condemnation of Galatians chapter one for anyone adding to the pure grace of Jesus Christ. These additions nullify God's saving grace and they leave false converts dead in their sin. Paul couldn't have said it any clearer in Romans 11.6. If it is by grace, it is not of works. Otherwise, grace is not grace. So every religion in the world teaches that works righteousness salvation. Only biblical Christianity says you're saved by grace because of the all sufficiency of Christ Jesus as your savior. But another way the gospel is being distorted today is by removing essentials. And there's an easy way to remember the three essentials that are most often removed from the gospel today. And that is they all begin with an R. How many times do you hear people call for repentance when they give the gospel? But God commands all people everywhere to repent. That includes everybody in this world. No one is accepted from this. And yet very few evangelists will call sinners to repentance. Another R that is left out is the resurrection of Christ. Paul wrote, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still and your sins. And I oftentimes pick up different gospel tracks just to see the distorted message that is found in many of them. And I'm amazed how often the resurrection of Christ is not mentioned in a gospel track. And yet there is a sinner's prayer. If you believe Jesus died for you, then you're on your way to heaven. What about the resurrection? That's the miracle that took place on Calvary's cross. And the other R is the righteousness of God. How often do we hear the righteousness of God proclaimed in a gospel presentation?  It doesn't get you to heaven. The only way to get to heaven is to be perfectly righteous.  No. But God understands this. And so he says, if you will trust in the only righteous one, then I will give you the righteousness of Christ as a gift. That's your passport into heaven. So we need to preach these three Rs as we call sinners to the Lord Jesus Christ.  Have you talked to some of them? They don't know why Jesus had to die. We talked about this last night. This is one of my favorite questions now to ask professing Christians. Remember, four out of five people you meet today are gonna say they're Christian.  The most common response is because he loved us. Well, that was the motivation for his dying, but why did he have to die to forgive us? Well, why did he have to die to forgive us? Why couldn't he just forgive us? He's God. The answer is that divine justice had to be satisfied. God is a holy and righteous judge, and he cannot let sin go unpunished. He must punish the sinner. And so all of our sins were placed on Christ, Christ-satisfied divine justice so that we can no longer fear condemnation. We have been justified, what a great promise. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Why? Because divine justice has been satisfied. That's why Jesus died. Gay Christians don't know God's only way of forgiveness. In fact, many professing Christians don't know that. I'll ask people, have you been forgiven by God? I hope so. Do you know the only condition by which God will forgive you? No. The last command Jesus gave, repentance shall be preached in my name for the forgiveness of sins. Have you repented? That's the only way you'll be forgiven. Gay Christians don't know the righteousness of God requires perfect righteousness to enter into heaven. They believe they're good enough, just like many other false converts. What are some of the marks of false Christians? They have a zeal for God without knowledge. When I was sitting in a seminary classroom and I read Romans 10, I recognized Paul was praying for the salvation of the Israelites because they had a zeal for God but it wasn't based on knowledge. And so they were seeking to obtain their own righteousness rather than receive the righteousness that comes from God. And I believe that's when the Lord gave me the inspiration, if you will, to begin reaching out to Roman Catholics because I know so many Roman Catholics that have a zeal for God, but like the Israelites, they had no knowledge of God's righteousness. They didn't read the Bible. Another mark of false Christians, they have a knowledge of God without obedience. In Titus chapter one, verse 16, Paul said some profess to know God but by their habitual disobedience, they deny him. Does that sound like gay Christians? Another mark of false Christians, they have a love of God without a love for other Christians. First John chapter four. They have religious activity without departing from lawlessness. They have a self-righteousness without repentance. These are all marks of false Christians. When we look at gay and counterfeit Christians, they have a desire to be saved. That's why they're calling themselves gay Christians. They have a desire to be saved from the punishment of sin but not from sin itself. They wanna continue in their habitual lifestyle of sin. They desire blessings from Christ but not a relationship with him. They desire Jesus as a priest who pardon their sin but not as a prophet to instruct them or a king to rule over them. They desire Jesus but only the way he is defined by their religious traditions or by Matthew Vines or by the gay Christian network. That's where they go for knowledge.  They have no interest in the good shepherd because they love themselves and their sinful pleasure more than they love God. If they really love God, they would pursue him through his word. They would pursue him through the only mediator which is the Lord Jesus Christ. They have a form of godliness but have never been converted through the power of the gospel. So how can we lovingly confront gay Christians? Well, Paul gives us the answer. He exhorts all of us to do this in 2 Corinthians 13.5. Examine yourselves to see whether you were in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you unless of course you failed the test? What is the test Paul's talking about? Peter gave a parallel exhortation. Be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. 2 Peter chapter one, verse 10. So how could we examine ourselves? I believe there's an objective test. Have you responded to the true gospel with repentance and faith? The gospel reveals salvation is by grace apart from merit, through faith, apart from works. In Jesus Christ alone, in his imputed righteousness, his virgin birth, his atoning death, and his glorious resurrection. This is the objective test. This is what we can ask any false convert. Have you done this? Have you heard and responded to the true gospel? Have you repented and trusted Christ alone? Well, what is repentance? A lot of people don't know. We have to tell them. Repentance is the work of God in a sinner's heart which produces a change of mind. That's what the word metanoia means for repentance, a change of mind. This produces a turning from sin and self to God for salvation. We read that in 1 Thessalonians chapter one, verse nine. There is a sorrow for sin that is according to the will of God that produces a repentance without regret leading to salvation. First, a person must be convinced that they are sinners, that they are living in a habitual lifestyle of sin, and then they have to recognize that sin has offended an infinitely holy God, and this produces a godly sorrow which leads to repentance. We see the fruit of repentance in several different ways. When a person resists the devil, that's a fruit of repentance as we see in James 4-7. The fruit of repentance is to recognize divine discipline. How do you know that you're really a child of God? You will experience discipline from a loving father when you continue in sin. If you're not being disciplined, that means that you're an illegitimate child. You've never been born again. You've never been adopted into God's family. So the fruit of repentance recognizes divine discipline. It also rejects religious rituals as a way of salvation. It will renounce religious heritage, as we see in Luke 3-8, when the Jews thought they could be saved because Abraham was their father. The fruit of repentance reveals a spiritual transformation, as we see in Galatians 5-22. You will begin to produce the fruit of the spirit because you are a new creature in Christ. It also relies on the spirit's conviction and power to continually keep turning from sin, as we see in Romans 8-13. The fruit of repentance also is a resolve to abstain from wickedness. That's what we read in 2 Timothy 2, verse 19. Those who belong to Christ Jesus are crucifying the evil deeds of the flesh by the spirit's power. True conversion includes the mind, the heart, and the will. With the mind, we are sanctified and transform with truth from God's word. We see that in Romans chapter 12, verses one and two. And with the heart, we have new desires to please God. New creatures in Christ have the heart of stone replaced with a heart of flesh. And that heart now desires to please God. It has a desire to turn from sin that nailed Christ to the cross. With the will, we become obedient from the heart to the teaching that we have been committed to. That's what Paul wrote in Romans 6, verse 18. So can you see how true conversion involves the mind, the heart, and the will? Not just the mind, many people have had knowledge, but the heart and the will have not been converted. God's word offers several contrasts to examine ourselves. There are two kinds of converts as we have seen, two kinds of faith, two paths to eternity, two kinds of fruit, and two motivations. When we look at two kinds of faith, false converts possess a dead and spurious faith which produces no evidence of a changed life. We see that in James chapter two. James is contrasting true living faith with a false, spurious faith that produces no evidence of a changed life. Tragically, there are professors of Christ, but not possessors of Christ. Now, in contrast, a true Christian possesses a God-given faith which is living and enduring and produces evidence of a new heart in a changed life. Two kinds of faith. Everybody that professes Christ has faith, but what kind of faith do they have? Is it living and enduring that produces a changed life, or is it like this tree that produces no fruit? Well, there's an example of non-saving faith in the Bible, Simon the Sorcerer, but with limited time, we'll look at two paths to eternity. False converts are on the broad road. They are trusting their religious activity while rationalizing their sin and see no need to repent. There are also Christians on the narrow road, and that can only be entered with faith and repentance and by grace apart from works. The Lord Jesus talked about these two paths. Why does the road that leads to destruction and many are on it? Narrow is the road that leads to life and very few find it. Why is it that very few find it? I believe from a human perspective, outside of God's sovereign will, it's because you and I who are traveling the narrow road are not being as faithful as we can be to reach out to those on the broad road and point them to Christ, who is the narrow gate by which they must enter. The narrow road is difficult. Jesus said, strive to enter through the narrow door for many, I tell you, will seek to enter when we'll not be able to. What did Jesus mean? You must strive. Aren't we saved by grace? Well, the context is that there are false teachers. Satan has got a fierce opposition to the gospel, so he has these legions of false teachers that are keeping gullible souls on the broad gate, which he cleverly marked heaven but ends up leading people to hell. False teachers standing in front of the narrow gate saying it's not here, it's the broad way. Keep traveling that way and you will get to heaven. So the striving comes from diligently searching the scripture to test every man's teaching to find out, is this man telling me the truth or is he a false teacher? There's two kinds of fruit. True Christians bear fruit to the glory of God, the fruit of the spirit and the fruit of repentance. Others are known by their bad fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. There's also two motivations for coming to Christ. Some come to Jesus for material blessings, health, wealth, and your best life now. Can you believe that Joel Osteen actually believes you can have your best life now?   We look forward to the glory of heaven. So a false motivation would be to come to Jesus for health, wealth, and your best life now. Jesus even said in John 6, you seek me because you ate of the loaves and were filled. These people were coming after Jesus because they wanted another free lunch. They weren't coming for spiritual blessings, for physical food. Well, true Christians come to the Lord Jesus for spiritual blessings. What are they? Eternal life, forgiveness of sin, deliverance from sin, and reconciliation with God. Are those the reasons you came to Christ?  Did you come to Jesus because he's the only way for those who are lost? He is the truth for those who are deceived. He is the life for those who are dead in their sins.  In 1 Corinthians 1.3, Jesus is our righteousness. Did you come to Jesus because he is sovereign Lord and Creator and one day you will give an account to your Creator? So what must we do with a message like this? I hope you can see that the term gay Christian is an oxymoron. I hope you can see that they are victims of deception. I hope you can see that they need to hear the truth. They need to be warned that they are marching proudly toward hell's gates. They need to repent and trust Jesus as their only hope. We must be bold in this. We must speak the truth and love with anyone who approves or condones or practices the destructive damning sin of homosexuality. I'm sure you're familiar with the last verse in Romans 1, verse 32. There are many people who do not practice homosexuality but who condone it and approve it as a legitimate Christian lifestyle. The same judgment will be on them for condoning it and approving it. We must warn those people as well. And we're gonna look more about that tomorrow as we look at the compromising church. As sin becomes more pervasive, as more tears come into the church and as churches embrace more of the culture, we must be gospel centered and we must call sinners to repentance and faith. Amen. This is what we need to do. I hope all of you are exhorted by the word of God this evening. I hope the word of God has not only exhorted you but fully equipped you to be faithful ambassadors for the Lord Jesus. Many of you are already doing this and so this is just another exhortation but I hope you see this issue that we're facing today is not gonna go away.  Well, let me close in prayer and I think then we're gonna have a break and then a question and answer period. Our Father, we do thank you for the opportunity to open your word tonight and how we are filled with compassion for those who believe they are Christians but have been victims of deception. Well, Father, we pray that you would strengthen us with the power of your spirit to be rooted and grounded in a deeper love for you and your people. Help us to live lives worthy of the calling that you have given us and to please you in all that we say and do. Father, we ask that you protect us with your armor, the shield of faith and the sword of the spirit. We know that there are spiritual battles that are waging all around us. We need to be fully protected. May we represent you with integrity and live according to the truth of your word.  We are forever grateful that you adopted us into your eternal family. Help us to live each day mindful of the shortness of time and the nearness of eternity. And Father, help us to be faithful ambassadors to the Lord Jesus Christ. We ask this in his powerful name, amen.


Good morning, everyone. Good morning, everyone. It is my great pleasure to introduce the keynote speaker of today. Jelena Vassitsch. She is an independent curator, writer, editor and lecturer. She is active in the field of publishing, research and exhibition practice that intertwine political theory and contemporary art. Jelena edits and co-edits several journals and art magazines across Europe and curates and co-curates contemporary art exhibitions and projects. Her latest one in collectivising five stories just set up at the modern Galleria in Ljubljana, deals with the feminist interventions, deals with the feminist interventions into the art historical narration in the 20th century avant-garde art collectives. In addition to curation, Jelena's writing has been published in several publications, amongst them the essay book entitled On Neutrality, published as part of the non-alignment modernity edition by Mocha in Belgrade. Tir Jelena, a heartfelt welcome. Looking forward to hear your ideas and the stage is yours. Hello, thanks. I wished it was some kind of plenary political meeting. It is not obligatory that I speak, but I wished, you know, like it's a big hall and some kind of plenary political meeting, but who knows, maybe one day we'll have this as well. So, I will speak today theoretically and also historically to reflect deeper upon the questions that have been discussed all of these days. Also, some of the questions were part of the theater plays, maybe immediately and kind of explicitly of the peace city without women, the theater without the women. So, these are the topics of artistic labor. What I'm going to do is to return to the research and text of mine that I wrote some seven years ago, which is called Administration of Aesthetics and on the undercurrents of artistic jobs, contracting artistic jobs between love and money, between money and love. So, I will discuss the figures of money and love as they play in contemporary semi-capitalism, that means language and linguistics. I will analyze this process from the perspective of the so-called or what we refer to as independent cultural workers, so as mostly content makers. And I will show how these two figures play in this field and how they are actually connected with what I call referring to a friend of mine and former artist Goran Giorgiewicz, Ideology of Art. Because there is obviously certain terrain which I think is established in the moment when the institution of art is established, when the aesthetic is established, when the art is established as a separate sphere or what we refer to as arts liberales. And I think that no matter how much we as critical art practitioners, which most of us are, and independent cultural workers, and of course the neo-avangardists, alternativeists and so on, generations who worked before us, no matter how much we made a criticism to this very ground, where art is established more or less the 18th century and a project of enlightenment, that we are still very much dependent off that ground. So that ground, I mean which we also in a critical theory today criticize observing all these dark sides of modernity. So basically the question is whether there is a reason today in this kind of post-historical, post-knowledge and so on world to defend the project of modernity. And me, as for me, I'm a practitioner and theorist and this thesis or this talk that I was thinking to share with you today interconnects my experience of organization and cultural political labor on the ground organization that we had here, infrastructure, the process of instituting, the organization of the other scene in Belgrade which encompassed a lot of cultural and activist initiatives and collectives. And also need to theoretically reflect our position to understand it better in social sense and in a theoretical sense. So as I said I'm both theorist and practitioner and so in this, but in a way I'm not that much of an academic person which is of course in this kind of mid-career a problem and I discussed, I mean I had a chat with the previous keynote my friend Tom Meduck, where we confessed to each other, I mean it was more a confession of mine I confessed that I have a problem with this PhD academic and I told him how actually I was always ashamed to put this PhD next to my name, Pankishly as always connected to independent scene. And then observing my later reflections I connected to the one theoretical and practical concept this has been also recently excavated by some friends and co-thinkers. The term of situated knowledge by Donna Haraway which is already established in 1988, I always want to say in 1989 because it is a very symbolic year for also this conversation. So the situated knowledge for me always meant delineating possibility to delineate my own speaking position with also bodily presence and with certain exposure of vulnerability and openness to self-questioning vis-a-vis an academic institutionalized certainty. Situated knowledge problematizes view from above from now the perspective of observation that under the guise of neutrality presents itself as universal by hiding very specific position behind which is quite often of course a male white heterosexual human and so on. Such view is claimed to have the capacity to see but to remain unseen itself. It represents while escaping representation we can have the next slide, this is it, this is the slide. Haraway wrote how feminist analysis which of course makes it feminist and justifies the needs for such an analysis attempts to recognize how power works and how situated knowledges open themselves for new unexpected, untold and surprising forms of knowledge production. So situated knowledge opens the passage between the theory and practice. It shows how body matter, how context matters and how theory is part of life, how cognitive processes are also body processes. It gives this possibility to disclose the figure of I like I'm speaking from this place, from this body, from this experience and I'm exposing these weaknesses, these strengths, possibilities, impossibilities. I'm trying to think each idea has its limitations, ideas are vulnerable. I belong to the first generation of independent cultural workers, we can have the next slide. Active in this region the so-called freelancers in the official theory of management, flexible personas as Brian Holmes reflected upon the idea some decade ago or more. Precariat, another spreading term which is much larger and encompasses much larger field of production than culture itself and is very much connected to this post for this model that again Tom Maddock have spoken more about in relation to dance. And projectariat which is perhaps the most important term for me and which has been reflected by a colleague Cuba Schroeder in his recently published book ABC of projectariat. The work of my generation was framed by the dissolution of Yugoslavia and dissolution of the institutional and infrastructural system of the socially social state based on the principles of self-management and associated labor. Great theoretically elaborated and applied practically with some problems that have been analyzed in social theory and I can mention here many of the valuable books but they won't because I would like to save some time for the conversation for the discussion. My generation of independent cultural workers returned critically to the heritage of Yugoslav socialist modernist project and tried to apply some positive aspects of it in the contemporary practice. We fought against neoliberalism that is against the false premises of the so-called democratic regime that allegedly replaced Milosevic's nationalist politics and war mogulism. So we fought against the false promise of better life after the end of wars and arrival of democracy, the so-called normal life. We can have the next slide. But normality is a capitalist invention. It is an ideologically loaded word although it might not seem like that at the first glance. The normalization of former Eastern Europe after 1989 assumed the transitional stage in which society and individuals who are making this society have to pass through a certain period of disciplinary transformation following the prescribed norms of Western capitalist normality. Such are transformation of the state and public property into private property, transformation of the public space into the private one, industrialization and mercantilization of every aspect of life and work, commodification of living spaces, of the common urban spaces in which people used to meet and talk without the mediation of capital. This is why the title of this EITM meeting, Work Hard, Live Harder, sounds both opportune and impossible utopian. I would like to understand it as a political demand, the one which suggests that life should be separated from capitalist production. How, if today we speak about life work as a continuum, life-work? If life and work are entwined, if living hard is not an experience, a bliss of life as such, but a representation, a flow of images of internet, a lucrative job of influencers who live the hardest, who are fittest to survive in the representation of life on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Pinterest, together with many others who compete for attention. Do I live hard enough? In this network of self-representing, in this hard work of presenting how we live harder than others, we are becoming more and more said, said by design as media theorists' heart-loving would put it. But the system requests normalization, normality, so those who work hard and live harder sometimes cannot, but must, because show must go on. So, anti-depressants. In the panel a week ago, one speaker confessed, I'm taking anti-depressants, but you know, I pee, I shit, so my excrements together with anti-depressants are going into water, into soil. They infuse fish, vegetable, or the tweet. All food is full of anti-depressants. Oh, this is why we are so normal, I thought. I belong to the first generation of post-Yugoslav cultural workers who graduated from high school and faculty during Yugoslav wars in the 90s. The wars that still don't have a proper name. Anti-Yugoslav wars can be one of descriptive names, since they destroyed all the structures, political horizons, and human relations built through Yugoslav post-war socialist period. Such as the politics of workers' self-management, public property, not private, nor state, but public, social care, like free education for all, free health, medical services, free holidays in workers and students, holiday houses, on seacoast, and mountains, autonomous position in block division of the world with building the non-aligned movement. I belong to Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav generation, to socialist and post-socialist generation, to generation of 20th and 21st century, to pre-internet and post-war, I'm half-half. I have two brains, two minds, two hearts, two nervous systems, two confronted ways of thinking. I'm bipolar. Psychologically, I or we, my generation, in the early stage of life and the past, I'm half-half. I have two brains, two minds, two hearts, two nervous systems, two confronted ways of thinking. Psychologically, I or we, my generation, in the early stage of life and the primary school, which is very important stage of political formation, are formed. And this is also something that the very image, which is part of the banner of this conference in a way implies and announces.  Okay, I don't understand this idea of shock labor as a kind of socialist propaganda connected to the project of modernization, which it was as well. I rather understand it in a land in a sense as increased social responsibility and the will to learn and self-improve continuously, which is, I think, embedded in this image, showing of the conference, work hard, live harder, which is showing the brigades of young shock labors or voluntary brigades who are in the process of collective labor for better now, for common good, for better tomorrow and so on. Okay, I'm speaking about some premises, psychological, that we had in our childhood and which I think very much built our personalities and which we kind of processed intellectually and as cultural labors in the later stage of our life. And the other thing can be called, which influenced our psychology in this early stage, can be called the partisan ethics, like the ethics of solidarity, just struggle, help to the weaker, dedication to the higher common goals, mutual support, sharing knowledge and resources, fighting for autonomy and justice. With this psychological construction and ethics, my generation of independent cultural workers independent because it didn't want to join the national and often nationalist institutions, which adopted new managerial competitive logic as a part of the so-called democratic changes after Yugoslav wars, but wanted to act autonomously, creating parallel cultural stream, we called it other scene. With psychological construction of self-improving, hard laborers and just enthusiasts, we paved the way to capitalist transition with our bodies. Internally, we fought against the capitalist expansion and created the blueprint for different instituting of cultural policies and activism, both in theory and practice. We can have the next slide, thank you. Other scene initiated in 2005 was encompassing more than 7T, 7O organizations of feminist activists, artistic groups, theater and dance groups, theoretical journals, activist groups, film groups, alternative media and education collectives, internet activists, hackers and pirates. Internally, we fought against this expansion and for some ideas, while externally, since the ideological apparatus is a heavy structure and sometimes falls over bodies and desires like heavy cover or top, which we in theory also call ideological over determination, we bridged the gap between the vanishing socialist infrastructure and capitalist structure in making or becoming with our bodies, with our enthusiasm, which in the capitalist conditions operates as self-exploitation. We struggled to show how actually immaterial labor, which was the key term of our times, actually contains in itself certain materiality, which is why the art is labor. We wanted to show that loving your work or labor or love labor, the labor of love in a broader sense, should be recognized as work and receives a remuneration like salary for life, universal basic income. We thought of these things already in early 2000s. All the infrastructures we have built are erased in the belated but very hard, harder wave of budget cuts after the financial crisis in Europe in 2008, which hit the periphery of the former Yugoslav region so strongly, resulting in cutting almost entire independent cultural sector. Many actors emigrated from the country. Many couldn't continue to do previous work. Many became seriously depressed or sick. Many collectives fell apart. All the structures we made dissipated in this process. This reflection between love and money stems from these struggles and I try to articulate the specificity of our project-based independent cultural labor and to articulate its apparatus, the apparatus of production. The title also contains the notions of administration of artistic jobs in this foggy zone of hard work and harder life that operates between love and money, money and love. Okay, I have to check slides later. Okay, now a little bit of history. I hope you will not fall asleep. How love and money are historically confronted in the history of social and in the way state institution of art? Why art is represented as more about love and less about money? Although it is very much about money when we enter the conversations about star system or the figure of artists as an operative ideal for the figure of cool businessmen such as Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and other techno feudals. And now we can have Francisco Nesk's slide, thank you. The institution of art built in the project of European modernity appropriated the divine prerogative of creation. But at the same time it used that same prerogative to open up the space for denying material body, the artist's life. Something that critical art practice would file under artistic work or artistic labor or the social function of art. In the concept of creation and creativity, which are the key elements of ideology of art, in this ideological narrative the work is replaced by free and almighty flow of inspiration of the artist genius. While the work of art is solely defined by immunity or the author's trademark, like uniqueness, singularity, originality. And precisely in the concepts of authorship and originality, in the contrast between the divine attribute of creation, creatio, and the worldly profane production, produccio, lies the ideological opposition between arts and goods, which has been constantly and confidently perpetuated by the institution of art. So we have in a previous theory this idea of art world made by Artordanto, which is very much determinate the art of 60s and 70s and understanding of it and is a reflection of the art of 60s mostly. Then we have this idea of artistic labor as free autonomous labor that is opposing the wage labor, classical labor. So the idea of art as free labor, which is when the art is understood as creation, as creatio, as this divine prerogative. In the contemporary enterprise culture, art is almost never represented as market, not even when it has been nominally legally and institutionally constituted as market example, such as free art fair in London. We can have next slide. A manifestation that without any doubts exhausts its function and meaning in art sales and trades, although its self-representation refers to something completely different. And we can have next slide. In the function of representation and experience, this manifestation frequently employs vast symbolic capital of communication, aestheticization, intellectual work, creativity, and finally money. In order to dissuade visitors, art lovers, collectors, and even actors in this operation, at least for a moment that it is all just about money and goods. I observed this phenomenon as a distance reflex of truths rooted in modern aesthetics and history of art in the moment of establishing the academia and art as an institution. The 18th century art academy provided lessons on distinction between high art and its public function and commercial art as the synonym for the law. That heritage, I claim, has more or less played constitutive function for the institution of art in all its later stages of self-transformation. So, next slide. The examples are numerous. In example, Giorgio Vasari, one of the first, we say, art historians who wrote this life of most famous painter, sculptors and architects Levite in Italian in 1550. Underline all the time this idea of perfection. Then Winklemann, who dealt with modernity and antiquity, with the history in visual representation, called this connection between antiquity and modernity as noble, simplicity, and quite grandeur. Then it's the draw who reviewed the Paris Salon, which is an institution that's preceding the formats of biennial exhibitions today, which are grand art institutions of today. He was mentioning the terms such as corruption of taste by luxury or money that is throwing both arts. Then Joshua Reynolds, one of the founders of the British Academy, observed the very art attributes as this kind of intellectual dignity, which as he says, mobles the painter's art and draws the line between him and pure mechanic who does not produce art but mere ornaments. So we see how this idea of public art, which is not mere decoration, which is not merely something that's useful, which is also not craft, they would insist on it, but is a kind of intellectual dignity, is made for public good or state good, is very ideologically representative. So we see in these examples how the true art has historically divorced from money, from this kind of remuneration. Thank you. I think this was for the previous, for control of the previous slides. Now, in such contrasting antagonistic and variable attempts to remove money, labor, and labor relations from the stage of art representation, there are obvious consensual efforts to explain that art cannot be understood as business as usual, as labor and work, but rather as something completely different. And this is in the very structure of art, in the very history of art, if we observe contemporary uneasiness or the number of paradoxes that are stemming from this, like in example the other day the speaker was telling how Greek cultural minister spoke about art as something that lives in a grey zone. And he's right in a way, I mean, theoretically, though he obviously uses this ambiguity for propagandistic reasons, for bad political reasons. And we can have the next slide, please. Now, how this relates to the case experience of the other scene and the labor of independent content producers. I wanted to investigate in this research the very production apparatus of the project-based practice, and I spoke about projectariat and projectization, to try to get closer to the economic reality of workers active in an ever-expanding world of art, in all its domains of self-critical negation, transformation, excesses, inclusions, exclusions. I wanted to focus on the very moment when projects and collaborations come into life, and to explore the modes of production, which are established by means of language and communication. So, I mentioned at the beginning this semi-capitalism, the term that Franco Berardi before has often written about. So, I focused on the agreements on art, content production of independent cultural labor, which is often funded in peer-to-peer basis agreements that are unofficial and paralegal. The moments of negotiation about the delivery of content or participation in various cultural events. So, these production forms of the independent cultural sector are precisely laid out through this paralegality, through the relationship one-to-one, whereas the institutional official dom, legal verification of agreement comes as an administrative confirmation of something that has already happened. I was interested in the dramaturgy of the processes of contrasting works in art, contracting works in art, in the context of independent cultural labor. I was interested in the field operated by protagonists who live at the bottom of the economic ladder of enterprise culture. Freelance writers, guest lecturers, experimental curators, critically-oriented visual artists, left-wing intellectuals, alternative theater companies, independent critics. In other words, all those who answer to various institutional calls or to the calls of independent organizations, so peer-to-peer. In this text, Between Love and Money, I tried to dramatize these two figures in the characteristic communication schemes. My story was about culture workers who collaborate in various self-organized initiatives behind the curtains of immediate production of glamour and success. The subjects that Gregory Chalet calls dark matter. In the sense of their voluntary political decision to leave the place with the most exposure and immediate connection with the star system and market demands. In this adventure of going down to the field of production or a kind of scenario overview where every similarity with the real actors is intentional, the accent is put on several types of contractual relations in which the relations between love and money play and labor. This is the second comparative binom. Here, I'm trying to think in not binomial way, but in a kind of more differentiated and more nuanced non-binner logic. However, we have these figures, Love and Money, Play and Labor, which are appearing in the speech registry where we always have one person who is a content maker and another person who is organizer, which I signed with the A and B letters, and we can have the next slide. So these are some dramaturgical examples, which are, I don't know, maybe more real than reality, in which I'm trying to catch some of the phrases which are occurring in communication and how this actually language of love dominates in the process, in the very process of contracting artistic works in the case of content makers and independent cultural scene. So you have these terms, like, will you join me, you were chosen, you are the only one, you are invited, I only want to do this with you, looks more as an invitation to love affair than as a process in which we should contract the work. And then we have answers of the two content makers in which they emphasize different things. In the first case, the person doesn't want to talk about budget, but content says writing should not be a profession, and I'm not doing this because of money, but because it makes sense for society. So confirmation of this logic of art that should always be public good and that is very much close to what I said, what I spoke about, than it did draw corruption of real art by money and so on and so forth. But B2, who is a person who still tries to make a living, but is not questioning this dialogue, which I call this scheme of the letter, I called it parade of ladies and gentlemen, or nobility without the protection because everyone is consensual about how it is not nice to mention the word money or fee or something like that. So the B2 person who is eager in actually knowing also about this fee thing will use quite often the terms which are implying organization, like can you tell me something about organizational details, maybe I'm interested in production, more about the whole project, can you tell me something about whole project, about the conditions, et cetera, et cetera. But they are expressing themselves in the language of love, in the language of creation, because art should not be a production. Then the second case, which I call tripartite letter, short reckonings make long friends, and this tripartite letter is more or less naturalized as a canonical form of conversation about contracting in terms of engaging artistic work. And the obligations, of course, are moral, collegial and reputational, and such letters usually involve three information blocks. First is the information on the content and scope of the project. Second is the information about the nature and scope of involvement, place and time of the content delivery, and third is information on the fee. So the letter of the person who invites in this kind of dramaturgical format, which I made on the base of real practice, may sound something like DRXXX, I received your contact details from YYY, are you interested in writing a text concerning the topic of MMMs for ZZZ magazine? Kindly find, attach the concept in attachment, you find something which is very brief and general description. The text should have X to Y words, the length of the text is strictly limited. Unfortunately, the deadline is tight, this is what we hear most of the times. All texts should have to be ready no later than 001 date. In case you are interested in cooperation, kindly send us the draft of your text by the end of the week. So then from this letter one can see, one can see, or you can read it further, and one can see that I receive your contact details from YYY, and the short deadline usually means that you are not the first invited person to do that, but who knows, maybe third, second, fourth, who is recommended by somebody else and which is why the deadline is so short. So here we have the two content makers, the two different type of content makers, B1 and B2. So B1 can think for themselves or discuss with friends on the base of this letter, which is very clear and very rational, but this may also cause different feelings in case of B1. The person who is also kind of rational and maybe cynical in a way would say, eventually I really prefer working for capitalists, at least everything is clear. What you see is what you get, they exploit clearly and publicly, and not under the table like state institutions or our friends who always negotiate also in this language of love, which okay can have and does have much of the good political possibilities and connotations, but is also quite often used as a tool of self-exploiting. So the person B is one of those who is again defending the institution of art and its nobility. I hate when someone talks to me like this as writing a piece of text would be twisting screws. This is an intellectual humiliation, as if writing is not the most important part of magazine production and so on and so forth. And then what, and we can have next slide, thank you. And then I have one longer letter, which is more or less the example of communication, like more warm communication, friendly communication, et cetera, which is I think happening most of the times on this independent scene, in which case the response of B would be mostly direct reflection of the text A, and they do share information about the context of production, about some details, and of K, this is also warm and friendly understanding and so on. But still there are these things on one side on the other side, so on one side such process can be perceived from the perspective of power, from the recognition of the effects of super state ideological apparatus that project work is exposed to, like international foundations, project networks, et cetera, and there's subordination to totalizing tendencies of neoliberal social order. In this case, such a para-contract would mean an concessual agreement of A and B to be beaten by the hand of humanism, a kind of warmer but also creepier version of the previous model. And this extending hand of beating flexible work comes from restrictive scheme of the project form. And the project form is really key for us ideologically, which is characterized by lack of available time, tight deadlines, competitive networking, and self-precarization.  You do these things. And this is somehow what the project form implies because it also has its canons. In project forms, individuals put themselves into cooperation and interdependence, determine and reduce their own incomes, while the factor of modern technology speeds up communication and production. The number of project increases as well as the amount of work, while the fees are decreasing. And I'm mentioning again this book, ABC of Projectariat, by my colleague Kuba Schroeder, who analyses these things in greater details. On the other side, to finish with maybe a little bit of hope, but I would like to stay in this field of ambivalences. Individuals in this context of production do have certain autonomy in project management. They have the opportunity to intervene in the field where worker does not apply working conditions, but the working conditions apply the worker. And to convert this classical form of suppression into its opposition. A good manager, like a train switchman, is in the position to re-route the parts and direct the movement totes tendency into another direction. And we can remember the character of divergent in partisan movies or in some kind of revolutionary movies. The possibility of intervention and action now opens towards a wider community as well and refers to collectivist, more democratic model or approach. Love would be unifying element of such collectivization. And here we can find the particle which is as a tote brought by revolutionary feminism. And this is an attempt to create micro-communities, modern cooperatives in which interpersonal working and social relations are organized differently. In her time, Alexandra Kolontai, a Bolshevik feminist, was inviting for a certain parallelism a simultaneous construction of both new social apparatus and of change and the change of personal and interpersonal relationships. Believing that the end of capitalism lies not only in the abstract organization of the state, apparatuses and laws, but also in this concentrated and organized effort to transform personal and interpersonal relationships. Certainly Kolontai linked these issues to the question of emancipation of women and socialization of childcare. But I believe the request for change of social relations on a molecular level of interpersonality can be set as a universal request through a transformation of human consciousness. And this invitation can be also seen as an invitation to revolutionize relationships based on peer-to-peer in line with the struggle for integral social change. So I do think both this as a positive note and first as a thing that really limits us, the projects, the project-based structure, and that really has its ideology and its kind of conquering logic. And, okay, the last slide. So this last slide is, okay, a well-known meme, but I was thinking that it is interesting to kind of return to it in this context of work hard, live harder, and in regard to the reality of body in that body and psyche. So thank you, and I'm open to your comments, questions, what do we do, and so on. Maybe people are hungry. I'm also fine if there is no question. I'm open for discussion, but also I don't insist on discussion. I believe in the notion of... Delayed, also delayed, delayed talks, delayed discussions. Not everything has to be like really fulfilling the form, if you have some questions, or especially comments, or especially other ideas. I'm here, also here we have one hand. Hi, thank you very much. I'm thinking and delaying a lot right now. What do you think we need to learn to change this? To do a step forward, because it was really interesting for me, and then say, okay, I'm totally into this. How can I break the circle? If I had an answer to that question, I wouldn't have a necessity to talk about all this, I think, in this moment. I don't know, I mean, in a style, in a context of situated knowledge, we can also be frank. So, my feeling is that reality struck us very strongly, so that in a way, our entire paradigm, in which we all are with this critical art, like inhabited with all these serious questions, like really pregnant with questions and ideas and desires and projects and content and terms and everything. I think that in a way, it's already, or it's kind of doomed to that. Maybe it's replaced by something else, I don't know. Today, I'm assigning myself as a cultural worker, while my nephew, who is doing special effects and earns well from that, he assigns himself as an artist. So, I wonder, you know, like we are more or less the audience here mid-career generation, and there are new things that are coming, and I think that in these new things that are coming, the new more industrialized concepts of art are replacing our forms of art as thinking, as differentiation, also theory, explanation. Tell me precisely how this thing is, this is our question. Well, the question for younger generations is obviously something else. It is not a question, I mean, as far as I had a chance to observe it, it is more like, see this, see that, see this, see that, and so. So, accumulation of sensations, okay, we are also exposed to this as well, which makes us bipolar because we try to think, but we also try to see this, that, and to be fast enough. So, I don't know, maybe we should more seriously reinvent the entire field, or we die, I mean, as a paradigm. Okay, we die, definitely, as human beings, but I think as a paradigm, because I wonder what we are now speaking about, okay, art as kind of public good, as something that's part of public, this need that when you do something, when you write about something, when you reflect, when you research, when you make an artwork, a piece, you dance and so on, you try to address this to, I don't know, society. You are not doing this just because of yourself, selfish self, but it is embedded in our art practice that it is for some kind of public. So, without this horizon, somehow, the very paradigm through which we act does not exist anyway. And I wonder in which situation we are now today, where this entire artistic intellectual paradigm is just another bubble of reality. Like, okay, you have this bubble, I don't know, of people who believe in creationism, you have this bubble of people who, I don't know, love cats, and you have this bubble of people who are interested in art and theory and so on. I wonder whether it is today our situation, which may be the case. Okay, now I'm speaking to you the most extreme thoughts I have, which is not pedagogical, but okay, I'm not a pedagogue. Okay? Hi, thank you. I have one comment and one doubt to throw in, if I may. So first, thanks for all that. I wanted to say also when you talk about the love and you gave those examples of writing, I also see this, and it's interesting that you kind of explained it to me in a way, something that I started to perceive that I'm not sure if any of you encountered this, but also now in receiving emails that say no to your application, this love language is employed, which I find very interesting and very frustrating, because sometimes I actually, after reading an email, I'm not sure if they said no or yes. You know, and I have to, I feel almost forced to feel for them, although they are in a position of power in a certain way. So just to say like, if you do that, please don't, because it's somehow, it's strange. Or it's producing something strange. And the other thing is that, I mean, I'm just thinking also because from the artistic position, I'm kind of curious in the form that you used for the presentation and how this also immobilizes us as an audience. So I want to throw a doubt about the meme and it's not a critique. It's really a doubt that I'm also struggling with, because maybe some of you know a very viral thing now in Dan's performing arts field is a somatic-based content, which is the Instagram account, which is very popular and it's already, for example, in Poland, we have now the Polish version of it that is getting a kind of notoriety. But then I'm thinking, and this is a discussion I have with my colleagues, is the meme enough? Or is it like, what is it that it's produced that we can immediately recognize ourselves through certain images and we can laugh at it? But then I think taking an example of somatic-based content that it's, first of all, it's quite elitist, I think, sometimes to refer to certain notions that are shared only by a specific group of people. But then I'm also thinking if the memes, more in the cultural way also, as a certain culture of the meme and in terms of signaling certain political problems, is it not preventing us from actually digging deeper into certain things, which I'm not saying with you, but I'm just thinking, because even looking at this image I'm thinking, if it also allows us to kind of love, but then what I feel, if I would be honest with you, I love but I feel despair looking at it, and I feel profoundly sad and disturbed. So also how to reckon with this and how to, because I think it's also a certain sign of times that this sort of form of communication is proliferating, and then I wonder what are the challenges and also the dangers and kind of staying with that medium, for example. Okay, I see your comment more is a reflection than is a question. Maybe what was a bit under the question was this question of a meme and how it operates. Okay, you said yourself how greatly the meme operates, but you also pointed to the second thing, which I would just agree with, that the meme quite often induces this laughter, or some kind of reaction which stems from recognition, you immediately recognize something, you see allusion basically in it, and then this is the end of your labor. It does not inspire you to think further. It is also a view with which I can agree, and what I can say that for me it draws its criticality, and this is why laughter maybe or some kind of reaction is provoked similar, so criticality, similar to the process of, I don't know, appropriation art and so on in the 80s, and it has been a lot of interpretative mechanisms and thoughts employed around the analysis of appropriation art in the 80s. So meme has to do with this logic. On the other hand, somehow knowledge today and political responsibility is quite often replaced by cynicism, and meme is one of the grandest conveyor of this logic, especially on the right. So, yeah, I mean, this is maybe a little bit more extended comment to meme that structured around what you already said, but I agree. For your context and my context, I think the response to the conundrum that you pose in the end or how do we get out of the project horizon has been collectivized, and you create collective structures and you create just a different division of roles and the capacity of sort of resilience and resistance to the division that is imposed by project work. The problem is that that strategy requires one to continue scaling, to kind of be able to contest the context in which one works and exists. That can be political context in the most immediate sense, and I feel that here in Belgrade, in Serbia, that political context has in many ways crushed independent culture in the way that it hasn't managed in Zagreb. So, I just wanted to hear your thoughts about it. You spoke in the beginning about the second scene, Drogacena, and how that is now kind of a thing of a past. So, I would just be curious to pick your brain around what you think about collectivizing. Now, I guess, ten years down the line.  First, here, there is this big difference in the very social structure of Belgrade and Zagreb, which shapes institutions, decision bodies, and so on and so forth. And what I also noticed, there is also like a bit different spirit. I think that here we... which is kind of scandalous that I would say this, but I really do think so that we exaggerated in exercising of self-criticism as well in this process of instituting the independent culture. So, I always used to say, and I have spoken about that the other day with Mariana and the co-organizers of this conference, how we remembered how I used to say all the time, I don't want to go to City Hall to talk to these people because I don't want to teach capitalists how to become better capitalists, like more right, more kind of precise, intellectual, and blah blah blah, and less sloppy in this Serbian sense, kind of more literate in a sense of Brussels and less sloppy and bohemian in a sense of, you know, like Belgrade type of organization. So, I think that the difference that independent cultural workers to capture through other initiatives in Zagreb managed to do more for independent cultural scene, but it is also part of this political structure which is that you manage somehow to at least on the level of City of Zagreb to bring another kind of political bread which is, you know, like very stinky here for years with heavy right wing, and we can't do much. It's a big corruption, it's also like more, it's bigger system, like more differentiated system, and as self-critique, I would say as self-critique of myself now, I would say that I was really one of the harbingers, one of the heralds of this expansionist, unnecessary self-criticism which we used to exercise a lot, and also the second thing is fractionism, which is quite often the malad of the left, and the end. Thank you.


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