And all roads lead to the abodes of men
Iuliana Dumitru, 2023
I know that the ideal world is only a phantasm and nothing would convince me
otherwise but sometimes I arrive in places that give me a spark of hope. The
short period of time that I am spending there makes me rethink my position.
There actually is an ideal world to be discovered in a lavender garden, a field
in which delicious vegetables grow or a parcel of land invaded by sunroots. In
order for these worlds to exist, someone had to imagine them and work for them,
work really hard. A rebellion against a fast-paced and unjust society that
consumes us gives birth to these worlds. An imperfect world brings to the
foreground the need of (almost) perfect places, maybe even utopian places. A
sheltered environment, which unfortunately has to obey the big world, could
change the mainstream views.
Such places are in need of one or two visionary people, some leader(s) that can
make things move around and a team that helps with the building process. Alone
by ones’ self, such project is unattainable — it is always a matter of
community, it is either your given family or the chosen one. Building such a
world is a continuous work, one that becomes your identity, one that can add a
nickname to your name like for Felicia and Marius from Green Mogo or Ionuț and
Alex from Sol și Suflet . I will start to narrate my experience with both of
these spaces from an auto-anthropological point of view, relating to them as
being part of the Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life collective.
According to the presentation on its site, Green Mogo is a “centre for education
and counselling on energy, a space dedicated to dialogues on eco-friendly
housing and easy to follow solutions for an eco-conscious life ”. Practically,
Green Mogo is a meeting place where caring for the environment is the core
subject and caring for the others is a lifestyle. Felicia and Marius founded
Green Initiative association in 2006. In 2008 they bought a parcel of land in
Mogoșoaia where they built a green house that has an earth roof, a garden, as
well as a communal space dedicated to meetings, workshops and learning. What
surprises me about the Green Mogo story is that, even though the space in
question is a private one, — a family lives in there — it is still opened for
the local community and others. Felicia and Marius are always receiving guests
that they treat with lessons, knowledge and good food.
Our visit there was a hybrid type of visit in which we received information
about the place and the ways in which it developed along the years. We were also
treated with delicious food cooked by their son, Daniel. After a guided tour
through the garden in which we gathered tomatoes and bitter apples, we went up
the green roof of the training hall. There, up high, Felicia and Marius
proceeded to narrate the story of the building that we had below our feet. It
was made with recycled materials, including car tires. The building itself
became a didactic material. They video-documented the entire process so it could
serve others interested by this type of building and they also collaborated with
students from Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism. They prefer to
engage the young in their projects in order to give them a chance to gain that
experience that society already expects of them even in the first years of
university.
Of all their projects, the one that impresses me the most is the Summer school
dedicated to children from the village. Green Mogo is not only a place near
Bucharest that uses a resourceful and renowned area, it actually improves the
place by giving and holding space for the residents of Mogoșoaia, thus Green
Mogo becomes itself an important resource. Felicia is also involved in local
politics where she advocates for green areas protection and banning investors’
real estate projects that would erase a big portion of the nearby forest. She
advocates for education even outside Green Mogo. She managed to bring “A doua
șansă” programme in Mogoșoaia, thus aiding 60 people. Felicia and Marius
succeeded to create a meeting space through Green Mogo, a space where local
needs and resources can meet with outside ideas and resources.
I first heard about Sol și Suflet when it was still merely a sketch. Back then,
it did not even have an official name and the vision seemed impossible to
attain. I cannot even imagine the amount of work needed up until this point. I
met Ionuț Bănică at tranzit. ro/București and knew him as this godfather of the
permaculture that took place in the communal garden from street Gazelei 44.
After tranzit. ro/București vacated the place in December 2019, Ionuț and an
ensemble of colleagues and collaborators took over the space and kept its
legacy. It even took upon itself the name of “The Legacy Bucharest”, a
co-working space interested in developing ethical entrepreneurship and honouring
the natural eco-system. During the weekend, you can find here fresh vegetables,
either sourced by them or other local farmers, honey, teas and herbs. I find
more than fascinating the way in which these initiatives and their initiators
cross paths upon different occasions and timelines, and how each of these
meetings generate new ideas, collaborations and projects.
In July 2021, we were eagerly heading towards Sol și Suflet to discover the
first regenerative farm in Romania, which is situated in Dâmbovița county. We
saw the food baskets online and I was impatient to bargain the colourful
vegetables. The vastness and openness of the farm amazed me, everything seemed
so large, almost limitless. I immediately realised the amount of time it takes
to get from a solar to another. To this adding the amount of physical work that
the farmers go through everyday; from Monday to Sunday and then, on repeat. Even
though the effort seems overwhelming, Ionuț and Alex greeted us with joy, ready
to tell us about their adventure. We received a special guided tour and tasted
the freshly ripen tomatoes. The nearly commercial moment was the presentation of
all of the equipment used to work the land. The role of these tools is to make
the farmer’s life easier without polluting engines. I liked the perfectly
straight lines made by the manual hoeing and covered with mulch netting that
stops the grass from taking over the crops.
We entered the market house, still in the building process. This was to become
the primary line for basket preparations, shipping and selling. At this point
there was only a table inside but as we were being told the story and the vision
for this place, I began to imagine everything. There are plans for the future of
crop-less land: a mixed orchard for biodiversity, a pond for collecting
irrigation water and also for attracting biodiversity. 10% of the land will
remain wild in order to honour the spirit of regenerative agriculture and
spontaneous flora. Sol și Suflet is a space to be experimented, and the simplest
way to do so is to consume its foods. For Alex and Ionuț the general goal is to
produce vegetables without the use of pesticides, and the final goal is for
their practice to be adopted by other local vegetable growers. They do not wish
to be exceptional on the market, they wish for this system to become the norm so
we could all benefit of access to clean food.
Of the Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life is both easy and hard
to write about. I am way too involved in its process not to be passioned about
it and maybe even have some biases. The experience gained at the Station helps
me see the other initiatives from a similar point of view, facilitating my
understanding to their processes and stories and also to the roads took by
people in order to arrive at this point. For us, the Station is “a bet and a
promise, an experiment and an investment in a future that we can still shape.”
For me it is another home. It is the first time my name appears on a property
document and not consider it my own. I consider it to be a common good for many.
By this I do not only mean the co-owners, but also the society at large. The
station is going to be a place for contemporary arts, an open-space to any
curious visitor. I tried to encompass the ethos of these universes that I
managed to assist and I hope that I have succeeded to write about these places
and people with the subjectivity and objectivity of a committed anthropologist.
These worlds are being built in an eco-system that we have the duty to preserve
and grow. There is a single eco-system that embraces the world and each of us
has to continuously nurture connection and the practice of building roads. For
this purpose many resources are needed: economical, emotional, resources of
resistance and resilience. Connection matters because these worlds grow one upon
each other and nurture one another. It is essential that the information
spreads, thereby reaching everyone, not only those interested in sustainable
living and harmonising with the environment. These initiative show how society,
damaged as it is, is still capable of producing ideal worlds through people,
firstly through their dreams and then through their actions. People that have
access to resources grow and build roads towards the others. “But it happened
that after walking for a long time through sand, and rocks, and snow, the little
prince at last came upon a road. And all roads lead to the abodes of men. ”
Research realised in 2021, part of the mapping of eco-farms and other resilient
practices in Romania, commissioned by tranzit in the frame of C4R project.
Text: Iuliana Dumitru
Photographs: Raluca Voinea
Translation by Octavia Anghel
Tag - transdisciplinarity
An exhibition organised in the frame of the project C4R (Cultures for
Resilience), by tranzit.ro, in collaboration with Atelier d'Architecture
Autogérée (FR), Casco Art Institute (NL), Nethood (CH), in partnership with
Minitremu Association (RO) and supported by the Creative Europe Program of the
European Commission.
2 – 15 July 2023 Riverside Pavilion / Children’s Park Ion Creangă, Timișoara
A research exhibition comprising documentation produced in the C4R activities,
as well as artworks and documents related to a localised understanding of
resilience. The first edition of the exhibition took place in July 2022 in
Bucharest, moving to Sofia in September 2022 in an adapted version and with some
works presented in premiere. The third edition in Timișoara shows a selection of
works from the previous two editions, alongside new contributions that respond
to the context of the project and to Minitremu Art Camp 8 intended for
high-school students.
The new iteration of the exhibition expands the different understandings of the
concept of resilience – both related to nature’s regenerative (im)possibilities
amidst the climate challenges of the current times, and to the different forms
of organization in the rural and urban areas based on an ecological, sustainable
and communitarian thinking and acting. Apart from the existing research related
to mapping several ecologial farms in Romania, the video presentation of 20 more
artistic initiatives in nature and the rural, the presentation in Timisoara
includes new initiatives and artistic work from the region closer to Banat:
Healthy Places, a co-design model for green and social regeneration of community
spaces in Timisoara run by Studio Peisaj; a work by Nita Mocanu documenting the
results of the spruce bark beetle invasion caused by draughts and destroying the
forests in the Apuseni; or Andreea Medar & Mălina Ionescu’s long research into
the accidental water leak in Racoti village which has created in time a
mini-delta, being the main source of water supply for the local inhabitants.
The exhibition is designed as an informative and learning space activated by the
artists invited in the Minitremu Art Camp 8.
Participants:
* atelier d’architecture autogérée, r-urban, CASCO, nethood, Remix the commons,
tranzit.ro;
* Gilles Clément, Georgiana Strat;
* Alex Axinte, Bogdan Iancu, Monica Stroe, Alexandru Vârtej;
* GreenMogo, Legumim/ Gastronaut, Luca’s Farm, Nettle Garden, Țopa Farm, Soil
and Soul, Seed Bank “Casa Semintelor”;
* Delia Popa, Vlad Brăteanu, Eduard Constantin, Oto Hudec, Anamaria Pravicencu,
Andreea Medar & Mălina Ionescu, Nita Mocanu, Roberta Curcă, Studio Peisaj,
TerraPia;
* Ovidiu Țichindeleanu;
* Carambach (Adriana Chiruță), Cecălaca/Csekelaka Cultural Studio (Oana
Fărcaș), Crețești Studio-Garden (Delia Popa), Cucuieti Permaculture (Otilia &
Radu Boeru), The Dendrological Park Romanii de Jos (V. Leac), Drenart (Stoyan
Dechev, Olivia Mihălțianu), The Experimental Station for Research on Art and
Life (Dana Andrei, Edi Constantin, Valentin Florian Niculae), The House of
Light and Information (Matei Bejenaru), Intersecția Residency (Emanuela
Ascari), Jan Hála House (Zuzana Janečková), LATERAL AIR (Cristina Curcan,
Lucian Indrei), Muze. Gemüse Initiative (Maria Balabaș & Vlad Mihăescu), The
Rajka Orchard (Martin Piaček), Rădești House (Irina Botea Bucan & Jon Dean),
Reforesting project (Vasilis Ntouros, Dora Zoumpa), Siliștea Future Studios
(Adelina Ivan, Ioana Gheorghiu, Virginia Toma, Ramon Sadîc, Robert Blaj, Vlad
Brăteanu), Slon Residency (META Cultural Foundation, Raluca Doroftei), Solar
Gallery (Ariana Hodorcă & Albert Kaan), Watermelon Residency (Daniela
Pălimariu, Alexandru Niculescu), Na záhradke Gallery (Oto Hudec),
Khata-Maysternya/House-Workshop (Bogdan Velgan, Taras Grytsiuk, Olga Dyatel,
Ekaterina and Olga Zarko, Alyona Karavai, Yulia Kniupa, Taras Kovalchuk,
Magda Lapshyn, Anna Mygal, Sasha Moskovchuk, Svyat Popov, Tanya Sklyar,
Natalia Trambovetska, Vilya and Ivanka Chupak); symbiopoiesis (Andrei Nacu).
* Raluca Voinea.
Curator for Timișoara edition: Adelina Luft
In the framework of the C4R project, tranzit.ro has looked at practices that
redefine the relationship with the countryside, with land and soil, with nature,
with food and natural resources, with the rural communities and with people in
the big cities who are looking for sustainable alternatives to their life
styles. All the partners in this project have used a variety of tools:
anthropological and cultural mapping, conferences, discussions and seminars as
well as digital platforms, in order to highlight different forms of resilience
in our societies, in the East, West and North of Europe, touching on issues from
the circuit of organic food, to sustainable building materials, forms of commons
and of governance, communities structured around ecological thinking and action,
and not least artistic initiatives that seek for linking with nature and the
countryside. Some of these different understandings of the concept of resilience
will be reflected in the exhibition Now the impulse is to live! As part of a
project that is still in progress, the exhibition offers a format for continuous
reflection on the topics researched.
Riverside Pavilion, situated in Ion Creangă Children’s Park in Timișoara was
created following the idea to continue the public space into the building,
without having any steps or obstacles, so that interior and exterior merge
together.
Minitremu Art Camp is a yearly summer camp intended for theoretical, real or
vocational high school students and students in their first years of college.
The project is supported by the EC's Creative Europe - Culture programme. ERSTE
Foundation is the main partner of tranzit.
The event is part of "Outside the school" a component of the Knowledge fields
(along with Kinema Ikon, Asociatia Foc si Pară / Indecis and Association Doar
Maine) part of the national cultural programme "Timișoara – European Capital of
Culture in the year 2023" and is funded by the City of Timișoara, through the
Center for Projects.
Exhibition title and cover image from a material on Luca’s Farm, by Alex Axinte.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANZIT.RO
tranzit is a unique network of civic associations working independently in the
field of contemporary art in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and
Romania and across the borders of a wider Europe. Its main goal is to support
and articulate emancipatory practices, establish connections between culture and
society by moving across geographies, generations, and political realms. Each
tranzit works under its own conditions in a variety of local cultural and social
contexts, using different formats and methods to contextualize, generate or host
theoretical, artistic and activist debates around today’s urgencies.
tranzit.ro has the particularity of being in its turn a network. Founded in 2012
in Iasi, TRANZIT.RO Association is active in three permanent spaces in Romania
(in the cities of Bucharest, Cluj, Iasi), with an additional annual project
taking place in Sibiu and numerous national and international collaborations.
tranzit.ro is based on solidarity and sharing of resources and it maintains its
balance through keeping the autonomy of each centre and opening up for
collaborations with different organizations. Its main purpose is maintaining a
decentralized institution: which is in each place a hub for ideas on positive
social change; which provides a safe space for experiment and exchange; which is
dedicated to an integrated and open understanding of contemporary art as a
gateway to a whole spectrum of knowledge; and which is raising awareness on the
responsibilities and rights of today’s citizens.
Here are a few of the tranzit.ro projects:
http://ro.tranzit.org/en/project/bucuresti/2018-10-25/collection-collective-launches-website
http://ro.tranzit.org/en/exhibition/bucuresti/2019-10-10/artistic-enquiries-into-plants
http://ro.tranzit.org/en/exhibition/bucuresti/2017-06-09/the-veil-of-peace
An exhibition organised in the frame of the project C4R (Cultures for
Resilience), by tranzit.ro, in collaboration with Atelier d'Architecture
Autogérée (FR), Casco Art Institute (NL), Nethood (CH) and in partnership with
Toplocentrala (BG).
2 – 17 September 2022 Toplocentrala, 5 Emil Bersinski Street, Sofia, Bulgaria
“The European Commission Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC) has warned that the
current drought could be the worst in 500 years.” (Euronews, 10/08/2022)
Some would equate resilience today with foolishness, utopianism, naïveté. For
the world is falling apart in millions of incomprehensible pieces and apparently
the realist contemplation of the disaster is all we are left with. For others
yet, there are seeds to be collected and re-sowed, rainwater to be stored,
communities to be invested in and cared for. We will live and we will see, as a
proverb in Romania says. The propulsion for living seems to be the only solution
to the mess around. Living means that the now makes sense, but this belief in
the living is far from just indulging in a timeless now, it is an enacted form
of hope. Some would call it resilience and associate it with skills and
knowledges that have been around for long and keep resurfacing, upgraded
following the challenge of the current times; or with trust in non-human
species, which are most of the times doing their job in protecting each other
much better than sophisticated and destructive chemicals produced in sealed
labs; or they would simply see resilience as the bliss of sharing (crops, ideas,
friends, predictions and uncertainties).
Participants:
* atelier d’architecture autogérée, r-urban, CASCO, nethood, Remix the commons,
tranzit.ro;
* Gilles Clément, Georgiana Strat;
* Alex Axinte, Bogdan Iancu, Monica Stroe, Alexandru Vârtej;
* GreenMogo, Legumim/ Gastronaut, Luca’s Farm, Nettle Garden, Țopa Farm, Soil
and Soul, Seed Bank “Casa Semintelor”;
* Vlad Basalici, Vlad Brăteanu, Adriana Chiruță, Eduard Constantin, Oto Hudec,
Delia Popa, Sorin Popescu, Anamaria Pravicencu;
* Ovidiu Țichindeleanu;
* New Rural Agenda, Adelina Luft;
* Carambach (Adriana Chiruță), Cecălaca/Csekelaka Cultural Studio (Oana
Fărcaș), Crețești Studio-Garden (Delia Popa), Cucuieti Permaculture (Otilia &
Radu Boeru), The Dendrological Park Romanii de Jos (V. Leac), Drenart (Stoyan
Dechev, Olivia Mihălțianu), The Experimental Station for Research on Art and
Life (Dana Andrei, Edi Constantin, Valentin Florian Niculae), The House of
Light and Information (Matei Bejenaru), Intersecția Residency (Emanuela
Ascari), Jan Hála House (Zuzana Janečková), LATERAL AIR (Cristina Curcan,
Lucian Indrei), Muze. Gemüse Initiative (Maria Balabaș & Vlad Mihăescu), The
Rajka Orchard (Martin Piaček), Rădești House (Irina Botea Bucan & Jon Dean),
Reforesting project (Vasilis Ntouros, Dora Zoumpa), Siliștea Future Studios
(Adelina Ivan, Ioana Gheorghiu, Virginia Toma, Ramon Sadîc, Robert Blaj, Vlad
Brăteanu), Slon Residency (META Cultural Foundation, Raluca Doroftei), Solar
Gallery (Ariana Hodorcă & Albert Kaan), Watermelon Residency (Daniela
Pălimariu, Alexandru Niculescu), Na záhradke Gallery (Oto Hudec).
A research exhibition comprising documentation produced in the C4R activities,
as well as artworks and documents related to a localised understanding of
resilience. The first edition of the exhibition took place in July 2022 in
Bucharest and it is now moving to Sofia, in an adapted version, and with some
works presented in premiere. In the framework of the C4R project, tranzit.ro has
looked at practices that redefine the relationship with the countryside, with
land and soil, with nature, with food and natural resources, with the rural
communities and with people in the big cities who are looking for sustainable
alternatives to their life styles.
All the partners in this project have used a variety of tools: anthropological
and cultural mapping, conferences, discussions and seminars as well as digital
platforms, in order to highlight different forms of resilience in our societies,
in the East, West and North of Europe, touching on issues from the circuit of
organic food, to sustainable building materials, forms of commons and of
governance, communities structured around ecological thinking and action, and
not least artistic initiatives that seek for linking with nature and the
countryside.
Some of these different understandings of the concept of resilience are
reflected in the exhibition Now the impulse is to live!. As part of a project
that is still in progress, the exhibition offers a format for continuous
reflection on the topics researched.
CCA Toplocentrala is the new public cultural institute in Sofia, established in
a close collaboration between the Sofia Municipality and the independent scene
of contemporary art in Bulgaria. The centre provides a platform for performing
arts and music and has an exhibition program, focused on contemporary art and
its social, educational and community impact.
The project is supported by the EC's Creative Europe - Culture programme.
Exhibition title from a material on Luca’s Farm, by Alex Axinte Image: Zaharia
Helinger: Watermelon, 1979, acrylic on cardboard. Presented by Watermelon
Residency (Daniela Pălimariu, Alex Niculescu)
At the end of July, we had the chance to visit the exhibition "Now The Impulse
is to Live" organized by Tranzit.ro within the framework of the C4R project, in
the offices of the Order of Architects, in Bucharest.
All the exposed projects (realized in Eastern Europe) showed a new collective
imagination, new directions of action for resilient and poetic, solidary and
creative ways of life ... and, sometimes, even utopias in the process of
realization! Congratulations for this exhibition which should circulate widely
in Europe and be enriched with experiments and projects from other countries.
At the end of July, we had the chance to visit the exhibition "Now The Impulse
is to Live" organized by Tranzit.ro within the framework of the C4R project, in
the offices of the Order of Architects, in Bucharest.
All the exposed projects (realized in Eastern Europe) showed a new collective
imagination, new directions of action for resilient and poetic, solidary and
creative ways of life ... and, sometimes, even utopias in the process of
realization! Congratulations for this exhibition which should circulate widely
in Europe and be enriched with experiments and projects from other countries.
How can artists organize against the increasing inequality amplified by the
pandemic conditions globally? Art for Universal Basic Income – a campaign
initiated by artists – is converging energies with movements across the world
challenging the market’s current modes of exploitation.
Art for Universal Basic Income by the Institute of Radical Imagination (IRI).
While the art market confirms his status as a safe-haven assets provider for the
financial elite, the current pandemic has highlighted the fragility and
precarity of art workers around the world, a condition common to a growing
portion of humanity. In this situation a UBI (Universal Basic Income) would then
represent a solution and indeed an urgent measure to implement. But UBI is not
“only” a response to poverty, it is a necessary condition in order to rethink
our extractivist ecological model, to correct many race and gender asymmetries
and, last but not least, to change the art world’s present neoliberal structure.
UBI must be seen as a tool to open up new subjective spaces, alternative to the
dominating entrepreneurial individualism and focused instead on commons and
care.
If artists are already creating new collective economy models and
alter-institutions, these small scale experiments will be much more valuable
when connected with those growing social movements around the world fighting for
a Universal Basic Income.
The Institute of Radical Imagination (IRI) is a think-tank consisting of
curators, artists, and scholars, whose aim is to develop various forms of
research intervention for the transition into post-capitalism. Together we want
to explore and develop new practices and knowledge that contribute to the
formation of new forms of life and its meanings as the practices of struggle for
the commons. IRI is located at the threshold between Europe and the
Mediterranean.
The School of Mutation is IRI's pedagogical outlet, focused on the need to learn
anew and re-make the world of culture in the unfolding of the biopolitical
emergency brought on by Covid-19. Art For UBI is a campaign initiated in the
framework of the School of Mutation.
ART FOR UBI (MANIFESTO)
1/ Universal and Unconditional Basic Income is the best measure for the arts and
cultural sector. Art workers claim a basic income, not for themselves, but for
everyone.
2/ Do not call UBI any measures that do not equal a living wage: UBI has to be
above the poverty threshold. To eliminate poverty, UBI must correspond to a
region’s minimum wage.
3/ UBI frees up time, liberating us from the blackmail of precarious labor and
from exploitative working conditions.
4/ UBI is given unconditionally and without caveats, regardless of social
status, job performance, or ability. It goes against the meritocratic falsehoods
that cover for class privilege.
5/ UBI is not a social safety net, nor is it welfare unemployment reform. It is
the minimal recognition of the invisible labor that is essential to the
reproduction of life, largely unacknowledged but essential, as society’s growing
need for care proves.
6/ UBI states that waged labor is no longer the sole means for wealth
redistribution. Time and time again, this model proves unsustainable.Wage is
just another name for exploitation of workers, who always earn less than they
give.
7/ Trans-feminist and decolonizing perspectives teach us to say NO to all the
invisible and extractive modes of exploitation, especially within the precarious
working conditions created by the art market.
8/ UBI affirms the right to intermittence, privacy and autonomy, the right to
stay off-line and not to be available 24/7.
9/ UBI rejects the pyramid scheme of grants and of the nonprofit industrial
complex, redistributing wealth equally and without unnecessary bureaucratic
burdens. Bureaucracy is the vampire of art workers’ energies and time turning
them into managers of themselves.
10/ By demanding UBI, art workers do not defend a guild or a category and
depreciate the role that class and privilege play in current perceptions of art.
UBI is universal because it is for everyone and makes creative agency available
to everyone.
11/ Art’s health is directly connected to a healthy social fabric. To claim for
UBI, being grounded in the ethics of mutual care, is art workers’ most powerful
gesture of care towards society.
12/ Because UBI disrupts the logic of overproduction, it frees us from the
current modes of capital production that are exploiting the planet. UBI is a
cosmogenetic technique and a means to achieve climate justice.
13/ Where to find the money for the UBI? In and of itself UBI questions the
actual tax systems in Europe and elsewhere. UBI empowers us to reimagine
financial transactions, the extractivism of digital platforms, liquidity, and
debt. No public service should be cut in order to finance UBI.
14/ UBI inspires many art collectives and communities to test various tools for
more equal redistribution of resources and wealth. From self-managed mutual aid
systems based on collettivising incomes, to solutions temporarily freeing
cognitive workers from public and private constraints. We aim to join them.
Source:
https://instituteofradicalimagination.org/the-school-of-mutation-2020/som-iterations/art-for-ubi/
ART FOR UBI
RESOURCES:
* ART FOR UBI (MANIFESTO) | launching campaign
* ART FOR UBI (Manifesto) #1 | Open online Assembly
* ART FOR UBI (Manifesto) #2 | Open online Assembly
* The paradoxes of gift economy and how basic income could save, change,
abolish art making. A conversation with Dmitry Vilensky and Oxana Timofeeva
The Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée, AAA, is a research and action platform
that explores and develops spatial tactics and strategies with a strong
ecological, social and political dimension at the level of the everyday.
AAA's work is rooted in local contexts and, at the same time, is connected to
research networks at different scales.
Since its creation in 2001, AAA has been initiating and accompanying citizen
ecological transition strategies (R-Urban) on a local and international scale.
AAA acts at the roots of global crises (ecological, economic, democratic,
social, etc.) by creating opportunities for the greatest number of citizens to
join the ecological transition through resilient and sustainable lifestyles:
short circuits, local production and consumption, reuse and recycling,
collective governance of common goods, etc. To implement these ecological
transition strategies, aaa co-designs and co-builds ecological transition hubs
that are initially managed with local actors and, subsequently, are managed by
the project leaders who emerge around these urban resilience hubs (urban
agriculture farms, solidarity economy spaces, waste reuse and recycling units,
ecological housing cooperatives, etc.).
AAA works through a network open to multiple perspectives: architects, artists,
students, researchers, retirees, politicians, activists, residents and all
concerned users. aaa's projects have been exhibited and presented at the Venice
Architecture Biennale 2012 and 2016, MoMA New York, Berlin Biennale, Pavillon
d'Arsenal Paris, Palais des Nations Unies Geneva, etc. For its work, aaa has
received several national and international awards including the International
Resilient Building Award Building for Humanity (2018), the European Prize for
Political Innovation in Ecology (2017), Laureate "100 projects for the climate"
at the COP21 (2015)...
To see some projects
R-Urban ecological transition strategy
What is to be done ? 4 Questions
Wiki Village Factory
Odaia in Brezoi, Romania
Agrocité in Gennevilliers, France
Agrocité in Bagneux, France
Passage 56 in Paris, France
NetHood (networks over the neighbourhood) is about bridging the digital with the
physical space; sharing ideas and experiences; affirming differences; claiming
our right to the hybrid city; co-creating local solutions for local needs.
NetHood is a research unit based in Zurich, Switzerland, founded in January 2015
as a nonprofit organization (Verein / association). Its current activities
include: the facilitation of information exchanges and cooperations between
researchers, practitioners, activists, and citizens around the association's
objectives; the participation in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary
research, education, and action projects; and the development of Do-It-Yourself
tools and methodologies for empowering local actors to build networked
localities that can support each other without suppressing their differences.
The vision of NetHood is to plant seeds of collective awareness, critical
listening, long-term thinking, social learning and reflective action toward
sustainable social life.
A few projects of NetHood:
Crochet Heteropolitics Mazi netCommons
REPRESENTATION
Remix the commons is an open and intercultural collective for sharing,
co-creating and remixing documents and projects and initiatives of commoning.
You are welcome to visit Remix the Commons website to find out more!
TOOLS FOR ACTING, THINKING, LEARNING AND ORGANISING BY COMMONING
Remix the commons is an open and intercultural collective for sharing,
co-creating and remixing documents and projects and initiatives of commoning.
Remix is a production collective at the service of the commons movement. It
proposes actions and supports collaborations oriented towards a politicisation
of the commons. Remix allows the identification, collection and invention of
mechanisms that constitute the engineering of the commons. It enables the
knowledge produced by the commoners to be preserved by structuring the
information, in particular through semantic web tools and by making visible a
grammar of collective solidarity action. Remix mobilises activists and
researchers around operational projects that bring the experience of commoning
to life while at the same time equipping the commons movement with new
methodological and technical tools. Meeting formats (Appel en commun, Commons
Camp, ...) for collective publication (Dossier Remix, Cahiers Politiques des
communs, Horizons communs, ...) Tools for co-managing resources (open budgets)
and multi-linguism (FSMET commons, Commons camp, meet.coop) are original,
co-constructed tools that are being re-appropriated by the actors of the social
movements that revolve around Remix. In the continuity of this dynamic, Remix
continues to develop a shared infrastructure of commons based on the models of
the federation (Fediverse) and cooperative platforms, the first bricks of which
are the digital konbit and meet.coop. Remix is seeking the conditions for an
inclusive federation of media players on the Commons to open up a space for
computational communication at the service of projects and the Commons movement,
based on values of digital sovereignty, ecology and ethics.
Remix’s initiatives are also the privileged terrain for building alliances
within social movements with actors engaged in redefining public space
(intermediary places, third places,...), especially those who are bearers and
explorers of the territorial question. Remix operates in this place as a
resource space for activists and their collectives, with no desire to enroll
them, creating a space for cooperation that crosses national, disciplinary and
sectoral boundaries. These spaces are the focal points for the deployment of
self-supporting (self-managed) activities by collectives, both face-to-face
(such as the Commons Camp) and conceived as asynchronous and distant online
devices as for example Les Cahiers politiques des communs. One of the critical
challenges for the commons movement and for Remix is to make tangible the place
of the commons, so far invisible through the distinction between the formal and
informal activity. Remix is involved in action research projects such as those
conducted by Atelier d’Architecture Autogéré (AAA) on Agrocités and R’urban.
This work is a continuation of the Remix pioneering approach to the analysis of
legal tools (les chartes des communs urbains begun in 2015, which can be used as
a basis for thinking about the governance of commoning complexes. In the long
term, we hope to contribute to the multiplication of methods, tools and
indicators that will enable public institutions to recognise triple bottom line
evaluations.
Remix is committed to the emergence of a Commons movement in Europe. The
European Assembly of Communes (ECA), followed by the Commons Camp (Grenoble,
Marseille), allowed a collective project to mature. This dynamic presents itself
as a space of alliance between activists and their organisations to deploy the
project of the commons in its translocal European dimension. After the masterful
success of the Grenoble (2018) and Marseille (2020) commonscamps, a working
space is opening up and is structured around projects, the most notable of which
are: the European laboratory for mutual legal assistance of communes, whose
initial activities are financed by Fundaction, Meet.coop, the international
cooperative for video-conferencing services being set up following the COVID19
health crisis, and the international multimedia publication Horizons Communs,
which deals with the challenges of the commons movement in the context of the
FSMET.
Remix is a commons. Its governance is collective and collaborative: governance
means a process of reflection, decision-making and evaluation based on an open
and enlightened partnership between the various actors and stakeholders in the
project, both locally and globally and in an intercultural dynamic.