“The apparently permanent can be temporary, while the temporary could be very permanent.” - Ackbar Abbas

‘NønSpace’
2-channel installation
dir. Nicolas Sauret & Ashley Wong
23min, 2009

NønSpace is a work that attempts to probe at the often puzzling and elusive space of Hong Kong. Through its unique history, geography and politics, Hong Kong has sprouted from a small Chinese fishing village to a globalized financial city. From British influence of Western capitalism to a return to a long lost Chinese reality, Hong Kong has formed into a place of in-betweenness.

Through interwoven voice interviews with artists, academics, architects, NønSpace approaches notions of space to reveal aspects of a city and culture that is difficult (and perhaps impossible) to underpin. Topics of density, public/private space, colonialism/post-colonialism, identity, society, urban development, and government policy quickly emerge. Through collected materials, photographs and field-recordings from a two and three year stint in Hong Kong, the creators piece back through memory in a desire to understand and in a dialogue with the city and self.

NønSpace is hazy in content and in form. The fluid construction of photographic stills and voice, speak around a city, but never at it. It is an approach to space that can be used to navigate any city and environment to explore what is behind the construction of a space and place.

Conversations with:

Linda LAI (professor, City University), Andrew LAM (director, Museum of Site), Kit LAM (sociologist, Chinese University), Warren LEUNG (independent artist), Map Office (Laurent Gutierrez & Valérie Portefaix, artists/academics), Alvin YIP (architect, Poly University) Music: Oren Ambarchi (Touch music)

‘Nønspace’ has been presented in:

2010
video installation, This is Not a Gateway, London
video library, Rencontre Internationale, Paris/Berlin/Madrid

2009
screening, Asian Cultural Council, New York
screening, Urban Nomad Film Festival, Taipei
preview exhibition, Goldsmiths College, London

Nicolas Sauret is a filmmaker and producer based in Paris. He has worked 6 years in Laos and Hong Kong where he pursued an MFA in Creative Media at City University. Since his return in France two years ago, he has co-founded Inflammable Productions, a production company that focusses on new forms of narratives for documentaries, and a dynamic collective of authors, filmmakers and photographers. He also works as project manager with the Institute for Research and Innovation of the Pompidou Center. His work has been featured in a number of exhibitions and festivals including Cinéma du Réel, Vidéoformes, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, Tokyo Video Festival, Hong Kong Asian Film Festival and Urban Nomad Film Festival. inflammableproductions.com

Ashley L. Wong is an artist, cultural producer and researcher based in London.  She has produced numerous artistic and curatorial projects internationally and has presented work in Taipei, Hong Kong, London, Paris, Madrid, New York, and Gothenburg. loudspkr.org

Eva Weinmayr is an artist, lecturer and co-director of AND, a new platform for experimental publishing. AND’s current activities include the Piracy Book Project producing new collections for the Byam Shaw Library. Recent and upcoming exhibitions by Weinmayr include The Cult of The Difficult 2011; The Institute of Mental Health Is Burning Newport Museum and Art Gallery 2011. http://www.andpublishing.org/

Sion Whellens is Client Services Director at Calverts, a common ownership worker co-operative. He also works in co-operative development, particularly within the creative and cultural, arts and communications fields and is an elected member of the UK Co-operative Council and a Director of Co-operatives UK. http://www.calverts.coop/

16 April 2011

Images from our last event are now up on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61884352@N02/sets/72157626553118748/

Listen to the audio from the three panels here:

The Amateurist Network panel with Eva Weinmayr and Sion Whellens

…ment panel with Anthony Iles and the University of Strategic Optimism

DOXA panel with case studies of Mutant Space, Public Work Group and Invisible Venue

www.publicworksgroup.net

The debate about ‘Commons’ seems to be growing by the day. It is a term that is close to what we do and how we think. This text is an attempt to look in more detail at our own commons, at what we have in common as colleagues and friends. The reason for starting from our own immediate, tangible situation is not to move the subject  into the private sphere, but on the contrary to reflect on the wider implications of what ‘to common’ could mean starting from our own actions, within the public and private spheres we are part of.

For this purpose, a conversation, speaking amongst and with each other to try and think together, seems to be the most appropriate way to approach these questions; this both reflects the form of this essay and the process which generated it in the first place. We – Andreas, Céline and Kathrin – have done things in common for a long time already: education – both given and received, projects, friendships, holidays, studio space, dinners, etc. Rhyzom was also a sixteen months project during which many common things were shared, discussed and practiced. We want to use this conversation to explore some of the experiences and observations from those shared activities further – also in regards to each of our own practices and research. We wish to reflect on the genuine common spaces, subjects and activities that arose during this time of being and working together, and speculate on their potential.

Kathrin

What is our own ‘self-interest’ and the ‘common interest’?

We try to balance this carefully in our projects, which allows us to work with others and invite others into our work, without feeling that we are being patronising or manipulative.

If someone has enough self-interest (as in declared by themselves) in an idea or structure proposed by us, then this is the first step towards common ground.

Both motivations need to coexist, they seem complementary, and as reasons they  bridge between the personal and the shared.

Andreas

I think that moment is crucial: self-interest or an understanding of personal motivations often gives meaning to an action, which is an important aspect for others to see and understand in order to relate.

In most of the projects we (public works) act as agents within a local context trying to implement self-managed or participatory processes. Acting as an agent immediately means being an outsider and being limited by funding resources that support the time for our involvement. As public works we collectively articulated a desire to work on larger projects. Larger in terms of physical scale, time scale or the networks of people involved. One way of starting a larger project for me

was Abbey Gardens* and I made a conscious decision of getting involved first a citizen and, if appropriate at a later stage, as a professional. This has also meant that my involvement is limited to my spare time and all my input is unpaid volunteer time.

* Abbey Gardens is a public space, which is open daily for anyone. What was a neglected wasteland has been transformed into an open-access Harvest Garden where anyone can grow and harvest flowers, fruit and vegetables.  Abbey Gardens was initiated by the Friends of Abbey Gardens, a group of local residents with the help of ‘somewhere’, a multi-disciplinary, non-profit creative company  run by artists Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie and Newham Council.

CéLine

Why the commons?

Hannah Arendt has a clear reasoning towards providing us with an answer, she defines the public domain as corresponding with the Commons, of the city and of politics, as opposed to the private. The domain of the private, on the other hand, relies on excluding others from claiming one’s property, and by extension, where one is deprived of the possibility of being, acting and talking together, which defines the common world, the public domain, the world outside the door.

Thinking with commons should prevent us from creating (or hiding behind) redeeming ‘common good’ projects, good for all, for the public good etc… but it requires that  we articulate our own motivations, our underlying interest in relationship to these. This is important because it clarifies our position (to ourselves, to others) but also contains the expectations we may have

about projects we do, preventing latent expectations of gratitude, engagement, appreciation, and understanding that these are the (patronising) underbelly of so many participatory projects. I would even say that through this question we are talking and raising issues that are very similar to questions that were posed 500 years ago by people in different situations, but resembling needs and desires – this perhaps is another way of speaking in common. We are, in effect, taking sides in these struggles, and that is what is meaningful in friendship. I take friendship very

seriously in these terms, as a political alliance and responsibility. To be friends in projects also means to rely on each other and work collectively towards productions that exceed individual authorships or appropriations. This leads very practically to sharing on different levels, sharing resources or conditions, but also to forming support structures for activities and practices, that are just simply to be inhabited by each of us. A lot of our commonality came through very pragmatic decisions to set things up together: our studio, networks, projects, ideas and resources, which in our case also include sharing mobility (it was Kathrin who realised that my constant travelling could be useful to things we did together rather than the opposite).

I’d like to call upon Andrea Fraser’s ‘The critique of artistic autonomy’1  to reclaim some of the issues and their ancestry – where this all comes from. Whether we are totally conscious of this or not, I think the kind of work suggested and taking place with commons, is work against capitalistic modes of production – and by this I really mean against exploitation. This does not mean that exploitation does not or cannot take place, and there are a whole set of new problems that one has to deal with (exhaustion and repetition not being the least of these), but this is where this starts from.

Working on forms of commons and commonality means not working on the creation of objects, or commodities, and therefore not working on things that can be capitalised upon. This is really important in terms of what kind of artistic practice this proposes, and it comes straight from some of the important work that artists were doing in the 70s and 80s, including Andrea Fraser. But of course this is a position, and not a solution – we still have to deal with how to sustain a practice taking place in social labour when social labour in itself is rarely given value.

‘Commoning is embedded in a labour process’ says Peter Linebaugh;2  the idea of entering a commons by working together, added to that beginning taking place in our own everyday life, resonates with larger concerns around feminist practices. Which existing commons do we feel the need to engage with and support further and why? Can we use this text to make commons and commoning more of a concrete activity for ourselves and the world at large? Could we work towards not only clarifying a terminology for this, but also a more propositional language or ideas that can filter back into our practice and projects, as well as the ongoing Rhyzom ‘movement’?

While we know theoretically that togetherness is not based on similarity but on difference (Derrida would say this is the danger of fraternity, or ideas of brotherhood: if we are included and belong together because we are the same, that means anyone coming from an external, or different position would be automatically excluded) this is in fact what happens with us in our collaborations already. We work well together because we bring very different things to the table, or as Katherine shonfield once put it, Although it sounds very obvious to say, a collaboration is about difference, otherwise why bother? Acknowledging difference opens up a space to recognize what you don’ t know, what you do know and what you didn’t know you knew.

Invisible Venue

http://invisiblevenue.com/

Christian L. Frock@Invisible Venue | Yuk Hui@DOXA

(The following conversation was conducted through emails in preparation for the AMASS workshop)

YH: What was your motivation of organizing the invisible venue? Your emphasize the term ‘alternative’ many times in your writings, what is that ‘alternative’ you want to develop?

CF: I created Invisible Venue in 2005 in response to these questions: Is it possible to show something (artwork) that is also nothing (conceptual, digital, ephemeral), everywhere (public spaces) and nowhere (online)? As a curator and cultural producer, I wanted to collaborate with artists to explore their ideas and through this collaboration interrogate the relationship between contemporary art and daily life. Intrinsic to my objectives was finding a way to work both independently and publicly—to what extent could I interject the work of artists into the public realm through the force of personal autonomy? What kinds of opportunities exist in between the margins of regulations and special permissions? What, in short, are the alternatives to the institution?

YH: How does your work relate to the theme of our workshop the ‘commons’? what is your particular take on the term ‘common/s’

CF: Invisible Venue is largely preoccupied with the establishment of artistic autonomy through the use of public space, commonly available resources and the far-reaching capacities of the Internet.  In this regard, my work relates to themes of self-organization and sustainability, though perhaps in unexpected ways.

If maintaining control over the work equates with creative freedom, then creative freedom means freedom from the market, art or otherwise. While creative autonomy within my work can be established through an indifference to the art market, real autonomy and independence in the world at large is predicated on financial independence. This does not mean amassing a fortune—living standards are variable—but rather that independence is achieved when my financial obligations are within my means. So a job that is unrelated to my primary objectives and drains me of all creative impulse compromises my autonomy. Establishing fiscal stability on my own terms and maintaining creative production are the key components of an alternative autonomy.

Cultivate an alternative autonomous model within the existing capitalist system, developed in keeping with the integrity of my work and ideas. Develop a multi-pronged approach to financial independence through a range of tactics and a broad application of skill set.  Explore alternative entrepreneurial methods for fiscal independence: micro-patronage, crowd funding, and fiscal sponsorship. Consider ways to apply business tactics to conceptual endeavors. Use all of the resources available including websites, social networks, and video publishing.

YH: Sustainability is always a major concern, one of your project ‘Project Space Survival Strategies’ in collaboration with Elysa Lozano for Autonomous Organization investigate the sustainabilities of galleries and organizations across the globe, what are your findings and what are these strategies for survival?

CF: As the alternative operates outside of conventional models, there is no established source of sustainability, per se. Projects are produced within one’s means and personal economy, within the surplus, with the help of friends, and outside of business hours. (Day jobs, and sometimes night jobs, preclude regular business hours.)  Experiments are finite by nature, as are experimental models, and exist as a course towards sustainability; they are not financially sustainable, in and of themselves, without an injection of cash or revenue. Sometimes alternatives evolve into conventional business models—there are only two:  commercial and non-profit—in order to achieve sustainability. Sometimes they are gone overnight.  Change is a necessary constant. Alternatives last as long as they last—their relevance is not linked to physical longevity, but rather to the ambition of the investigation and to the quality of the discourse that circulates in its wake. Alternatives have been known to be experimental platforms to launch long careers.  In this sense, they are sustained as narratives within these legacies.

By investigating the motivation for each of these spaces and how they are funded, I have found an incredibly diverse set of ideas, manifestations, and community connections that are articulated through the financial strategies. A very different meaning is created when a project is funded entirely from the administrators’ careers vs. when the artist passes a hat around to get donations from visitors. Each of these strategies articulates a unique perspective on the value of contemporary work within its community and even a stance on how it ought to be positioned in society.

YH: Your works impressed me that you are playing with different social relations (for example when you talked about your experience of distributing cards in the London frieze art fair and bring people to your screening somewhere else), that also seems to me an important elements concerning the commons, what is your reflection after these projects?

CF: When I started the Invisible Venue project space in West Oakland, I was contacted by a young reporter from a local paper who wanted to ask me about how Invisible Venue was going to engage the local community and surrounding region in the projects.  The assumption was that I was creating a community space that was geared towards the betterment of my neighbors, even though I hadn’t lived in the neighborhood for very long and didn’t yet know my neighbors.  It struck me there were conventional expectations around the function of art and how it relates to an audience that hadn’t quite caught up with the new paradigm.

I am interested to engage both an accidental and an art-invested audience, but I am not interested to evangelize art or make converts of my neighbors.  The vast diversity of the commons today–public space in the built environment and in virtual sphere–creates an unprecedented platform from which to reconsider ideas around community.  My first responsibility is to the integrity of the work.  I put the work out in public space–whomever takes note is the community and the rest can pass it by.  The process isn’t completely democratized, of course, but it is no longer limited to physical space; this perhaps allows for a greater commons than has ever existed before.

Writings by Christian L. Frock

Invisible Venue(s): Alternatives to the Institution

Notes on Alternative Autonomy

What is the Visible Alternative? And Other Infrequently Explored Possibilities:

Mutantspace

www.mutantspace.ie

Moray Bresnihan@ Mutantspace | Yuk Hui@DOXA

YH: Can you explain to us what does mutantspace do?

MB: What mutantspace does is give people free support in the production of their arts event and projects. We dont differentiate between the artist or non artist, professional or amateur, we just want people to play, create, make, experiment and fail. We do this primarily through our skills bank which is divided into: CREATIVE, PRODUCTION, MANAGEMENT, MARKETING sections. In other words all the areas people need in order to produce their work.

We are a non-monetary economy running everything on the gift economy principal – people join up by giving a skill into the bank. They can then use the bank as often as they like. Twice a year I do a call out to all members asking them if they wish to take part in our bi-annual diy festival called THE TRASH CULTURE REVUE. We put on everything there is no barrier – it is a collective action and the festival is dependent on the work of the co-operative. The next festival is on from Thursday 5th – 8th May. The entire festival is run on a zero budget and all aspects of it from performances to exhibitions, PR to design, volunteering to documenting are done through our bank. Members get together from all over the place bringing the online co-operative into a real world community

YH:     What do you mean by ‘people join up by giving a skill to the bank’? how does it work?

MB: If you want to use the resources of mutantspace you simply register. Part of the registration process is to submit a skill, amount of time youre willing to give to another member, experience you have, description of your skill and where you live. Once that is done you can use the bank for whatever you need and whenever you need it. i.e. if you are a musician you might need a graphic designer to design an album cover or a gig poster. You go into the graphic design section or put your area and graphic design into the search bar and a list will come up. You look through the list and can directly email that person through the site. I use this method for all design work for our festival.   You can use it for anything: a venue, a van, a set designer, lighting engineer, painter, dancer, artist, marketing expert, web programmer, etc…

Every member of mutantspace has given a skill into the bank. They have given their time into the co-operative. This means that the more people join the stronger we become. Currently we have over 1500 skills in the bank and members use them for all sorts of things

YH: Do members actively exchange skills through the platform?

MB: Yes is the short answer as mutantspace provides a CONTACT tab on every skill so that you can directly email a fellow member – it is the only way to contact a member and it ensures privacy. However as it is a gift economy you only give when asked. It is not a barter system. There is no value put on any skills and so the skills bank is run completely on trust. Our festival, The Trash Culture Revue is a clear example of how it works. The programme is made up of members, the posters are designed by members, the pr and marketing is done by members. The accommodation is given by members

YH: How do you sustain these projects, for example, financially? the motivation of the contributors? etc..

MB: Finance doesn’t come into it. The projects are sustainable because all the members want to be involved in creative action and have to make an active decision to join because either:

a) they want to use the bank to reduce their production costs

b) they believe in co-operation and the commons. Mutantspace is about making creativity accessible to everyone and making the act of making and producing more sustainable. Mutantspace itself (the website) is run on no money and was not intended to make money – the idea is to create an alternative creative economy that is run by people for people. An economy that is non bureaucratic, has no red tape and is purely there to support creative action. Everything we do is run through our skills bank so there is no financial cost

People can make money through the site in that they can create an event using mutantspace resources and charge at the venue, etc but thats their own business. Mutantspace is solely concerned with people producing creative actions.

As for peoples motivation. Producing creative projects can be expensive and mutantspace alleviates this problem because everything is for free – so the motivation is often a self interested one.

Mutantspace also provides a space for people to meet others from different backgrounds, ages, and so on, so it opens up people to new experiences and gives them the opportunity to learn more about the world around them.

We have pensioners making films and writing in our blog, students involved in protests over the commercialisation of universities, community activists involved in spoken word and slam poetry in pretty grim inner city areas, designers and lawyers and architects and blacksmith and carpenters who just want to help – all sorts of people who can and want to contribute to the cultural life of their place. The state does not encourage this form of activity. Mutantspace provides the alternative

YH: I find your emphasis on gift economy as in contrast to a barter system quite interesting, it reminds me very much of the work of Marcel Mauss, which to some extent rejects the textbook economic history, did you take it from there or what is your understanding of it?

MB: The first time I consciously thought about the gift economy was when i was working in a large arts company dealing with other artists and groups, schools, community groups from different disciplines, ages, backgrounds, etc. Resources were always limited but skills were not. The most practical solution to solving these problems of lack of resources and money was to share our skills ‘you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours’. It just made economic sense

The second time was when i witnessed the gift economy in action on a large scale at the Burning Man Festival in Nevada. A festival in which over 50,000 came together for a festival in the middle of the desert. To literally survive there everyone had to share and gift things to each other (you cant buy anything there)  in order for the festival to work and for everyone to have a great time. Without people, without a commons and without a sense of collaborative consumption there would have been nothing there but dirt

The third was a book called ‘The Gift, How The Creative Spirit Transforms The World’ by Douglas Hyde who advocates the notion of the gift in society and the power of creativity to transform society. He saw the gift as non – reciprocal. In other words you do not have an expectation of the gift being returned to you.

My view on this is that we ‘gift’ all the time in small ways whether it be having a dinner party for our friends, shopping for someone, opening the door for them, giving someone a cigarette, etc…so a gift economy is just an extension of that social fabric. I have many skills (as all of us do) I may not regard them as useful or as particularly important however someone else might. So why not offer them to others. My return is that i get satisfaction in the knowledge that someone needs my help and that i get to make new connections with other people in my locality, community. And it costs nothing but a little time and effort. It makes complete sense.

YH: What is your understanding of ‘commons’ and what role does it play in your project? Or more precisely how do you situate the ‘commons’ within the gift economy?

MB: Well, more complicated now – I feel a rant coming on! Hope this makes some sense. The commons was traditionally an area for all people to graze their livestock, grow vegetables, etc until private landlords put an end to it by fencing in the land and charging rent. This monetization of public property, of ‘things’ is something I feel strongly about. The commons is where cultural activity lives however that is, yet again, being fenced in and monetized by capitalist organisations and the state (our landlords). They now call this space ‘The Cultural Economy’. Mutantspace was developed to oppose this outright and absolutely.

By creating an alternative, open, non – hierarchical, non – monetary system of creative production I hope all members of our co-operative can, eventually, free themselves of this status quo as the current system is destroying the creativity of all people, all society and turning it into a bland, generic product.

Mutantspace is a commons, it is inclusive, it is opposed to privatization, to monetization. Everybody shares their skills freely and which in turn empowers them to do things they may never have thought possible before.

In general terms I’ve only seen the benefits of a commons however I do realise that there will always be issues with copyright etc however I think thats just a matter of time i.e. the creative commons license.

Much of the time its a point of view.

We simply have to stop obsessing over things, hyper – consumption has driven us all mad and is increasingly destroying the planet and societies all over the world. Sharing what we have and perhaps taking a step back is the right way to go forward.

‘Reclaiming Culture and Creativity from Industry and the UK ‘Creative Economy’:Towards New Configurations of the Artistic System’

This paper was written for and presented at the European Congress on Aesthetics at the National Anthropology Museum, 11 November 2010 and explores the shift of the artistic system in the 20th century to the ‘creative industries’ where art and cultural production becomes tied to the global financial economy. Now we see the crisis of the financial economy and the creative industries, and as the crisis of creativity and as the exploitation of amateur production in the digital age. There is a need find a model that invents anew the roles, and practices of artists and the industry and to approach new configurations of the system that can sustain creativity.

Download the full PDF here: ‘Re-claiming Culture from Industry and the UK Creative Economy: Towards New Configurations of the Artistic System’, Nov 2010

Now published in …ment a new journal on art, culture and politics based in London and Berlin. Download the PDF: here

About the Congress

Societies in Crisis: Europe and the Aesthetic Concept
November 2010, Madrid

“One of the important cultural contributions made by Europe towards the foundation of Modernity was its conceptualisation of the aesthetic experience and how it is connected to the value of freedom. Throughout this Modernity and the subsequent debate between Modernity and Post-modernity, its contribution was central to thought on the profound changes occurring in the subject concept, to articulating certain utopian projects and to negative criticism of the systems of representation.

At this, the beginning of the twenty-first century, with the current situation of societies in crisis, we propose organising a European discussion forum to review the prevailing notions of the last decades: the politics and micro-politics of the systems of representation, transformations in the aesthetic thought methodologies and visual studies, the structure of the artistic system, and a review of artistic policies in order to construct the bases for possible new horizons.

For this purpose the General Directorate of Fine Arts and Cultural Assets of the Ministry of Culture of Spain, in collaboration with the Department of Aesthetics and Art Theory of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, organize this European Congress of Aesthetics, which took place on the 10th, 11th and 12th of November 2010 in the Prado Museum of Madrid.”

http://www.uam.es/otros/estetica/concept_of_the_congress.htm