COLLECTIVE PRACTICES invites you to our final 3-day online event TO BE CONTINUED, January 20 – 22. Since June 2020, artists, activists, academics, journalists and cultural producers of various disciplines and backgrounds have – explored topics surrounding being, living and working collectively, and have brought people together in participatory gatherings, exchanges and discussions. While this particular series is coming to an end, we consider the work of exploring collective practices to be ongoing — and therefore TO BE CONTINUED.
Save the date/s: 20, 21, 22 January 2021 — join us online!
WEDNESDAY, 20.1. — COLLECTIVE NARRATIONS
A coming together of projects: Bodies, Rituals, Legal Frameworks & Utopias
During our first day of the COLLECTIVE PRACTICES finale, we will be looking at different strands and itineraries we’ve been following since the start of the program.
Consent of the Governed: Kink, Constitution & Race
Party Office X After Party Collective (Vidisha- Fadescha & Shaunak Mahbubani) have invited artists/organisers/kinksters to think about the relations of the body and the constitution. “We think about our positionality, desires and their relationship to the constitutional and legal systems we are placed within, and if they affirm us or not.”
with Vidisha- Fadescha & Shaunak Mahbubani and guests
Discussion & Publication
Sonic Interventions
Sonic Interventions is a project that emerged organically from a pure need, namely, that of creating a community through music with and for people during a time of social distancing. For the COLLECTIVE PRACTICES closing event, the collective will share an iteration of their practice. They will provide an immersive audio-visual performance exploring the sensory perceptions of ritual relationships, with an accompanying photography archive created by researchers & photographers, Nyambura and Jess Korp.
The nostalgia and transience captured in their way of seeing, honours the many places that this collective is from, while celebrating the intimacy of being part of a collective driven by connecting loose threads and the need to re-image home during a time of social distancing. The performance will involve collaborative work between Nyambura from Kenya, Jess from Ethiopia, Astaan of French Malian descent, Exoce of French-Congolese descent, Dumama from South Africa and Dylan Hunter Chee Greene of Chinese-Canadian descent. Here, they will invoke their embodied memory, creating a space that moves the imagination.
with Nyambura, Jess, Astaan, Exoce, Dumama, Dylan Hunter
Exhibition, Performance
Stories From the Future: storytelling and speculative thinking as tools for collective visions of carbon-neutral futures
After 8 months of brainstorming, discussing and time travels to the year 2030, the facilitators of the workshop series Stories From the Future, together with guests, will talk about storytelling and speculative thinking as methods to collectively think about our collective future(s). Based specifically on their experience of conducting an international online workshop over the course of 9 months, we will collectively reflect on the potential of collectively writing and narrating ways to futures yet to reach.
with Lisa Pettibone, Dylan Harris and guests
discussion
THURSDAY, 21.1. — COLLECTIVE EFFORTS
Care, Solidarity, Horizontal Organizing – Relating without Hierarchy
During our second day of the COLLECTIVE PRACTICES finale, we will be looking at methods of collectively relating and organizing our interactions within contexts of working, living and becoming active for common causes.
Practices of Pirate Care
The project “Pirate Care” gathers and maps initiatives experimenting with care as collective political practices have to operate in the narrow grey zones left open between different technologies, institutions and laws. This online session will introduce the project and some of the initiatives connected to Pirate Care that have emerged in response to the criminalization of migration, the rollback of reproductive rights, or the neoliberal crisis of care in general.
with Pirate Care (Tomislav Medak) and others
Discussion
Solidarity as a Collective Practice
In this session we aim to explore practices and concepts of solidarity – as a meta collective practice and imaginary at the level of societies. We look forward to hearing from Jeremy Gilbert, Professor of Cultural and Political Theory at the University of East London, who is currently working on a new theory of solidarity. The theoretical position will meet two perspectives from collective and practical solidarity work. Departing from an idea of solidarity as a coalition in a shared interest, in a shared utopia of a society or world we would like to live in collectively – we would like to explore and understand conceptual facets, visions and stumbling blocks, as well as learn from lived experiences and examples.
with Jeremy Gilbert and others
Discussion
Post-hierarchy: strategies of living and working collectively
In this panel in the context of COLLECTIVE EFFORTS, we will be reflecting on collectivity in cultural (and other) work situations on a meta level by looking at the working structures and conditions of artistic (an other) collective work as such. What aspects and challenges of collective work are at the center of successively working and living in collective structures? How to deal with (personal) responsibility and trust in collective processes, what are the challenges of artistic creation and creative processes in collective structures? How can traditional relations of dominance and informal hierarchies be overcome in a truly post-hierarchical structures of collective work and sharing of responsibilities? These and other related questions will be discussed with different researchers, artists and cultural facilitators from Berlin and beyond.
with Marte Roel & Christian Cherene / BeAnother Lab; Louis Mauff, independent researcher; Lulu Obermayer / KuLe, Berlin; Moderated by Daniela Silvestrin
Discussion
FRIDAY, 22.1. — COLLECTIVE REFLECTIONS
Experiences from the Collective Practices program
On the last day of the Collective Practices program, we create a space for exchange for participants and projects. In a public conversation series, participants interview each other about their various projects, and the projects find resonance with each other. Participants who have worked on related issues join together for their evaluations. The public gets a chance to find out about the projects that have taken place over the 8 month period, get to know their experiences, meet the people behind them, and join the conversation.
Streaming Partner: Boiling Head Media
