Documentation: Conditions Collectives
Collective Conditions was part of Iterations, a long-term artistic research into the future of collaborative practice in a digital context. The worksession took place immediately after the opening of the exhibition Operating/Exploitation, a collaborative installation that was exhibited in BozarLab.
References + resources
- Preparatory materials
- Call for participants
- Programme
- Reader/workbook + pdf
- Images
- Recordings
- etherdump: raw files and notes.
Participants/contributors
Aay Liparoto, Agustina Andreoletti, Andreas Dzialocha, An Mertens, Areti Gontras, Aymeric Mansoux, Caterina Mora, Cristina Cochior, Donatella Portoghese, Elli Vassalou, Elodie Mugrefya, Enrique Cesar, Femke Snelting, Helen Pritchard, Joana Chicau, Lilia Mestre, Livia Cahn, Loren Britton, Martin Garriga, Martino Morandi, Marzia Matarese, Nina Stuhldreher, Peter Hermans, Peter Westenberg, Pierre Coppens, Raphael Pierquin, Reni Hofmüller, Rica Rickson, Ruth Catlow, Seda Guerses, Sky M. J. Carranza, Tere Badia, Varinia Canto Vila, Verena Hahn, Wendy Van Wynsberghe, Zeljko Blace.
Plus contributions by: Jean-Marc (BXLUG), Tunde Adefioye, Jija Sohn, Délices Afghans à domicile, Les Cocottes volantes, Myriam Stoffen, Christophe Wullus, Olave Nduwanje, Zoumana Meïté, Mia Melvaer, Jara Rocha.
Ateliers Mommen
The session was hosted by Ateliers Mommen, the last existing 19th century ‘cité des artistes’ that is still active in Brussels. Ateliers Mommen is a collectively run space where artists live and work together, interact and exchange with their public and neighbourhood.
Self-determined objects
The environmental conditions for the worksession were set by artist Loren Britton, who made tables and pillows for the room that we were working in. Loren offered these objects as opportunities to play, create directional flows with the tables and to consider metaphors around way finding and orientation as ways to imagine what collaboration can be.
Loren’s image of the installation Won’t you please write? was used for the communication of the worksession and related Constant_V window exhibition, Collaboration Guidelines.
They also designed a poster that accompanied the session. It was printed on the Rosi risograph in a small and beautiful edition.
Inputs
Participants and invited guests prepared guided tours, presentations, exercises, conversations, cooking sessions, workshops. These inputs functioned as situations to explore the many intersecting issues touched by Collective Conditions.
Operating/Exploitation
A first input was prepared by artists Zoumana Meïté and Mia Melvaer, who welcomed participants with a guided tour through the exhibition in which they participated: Operating/Exploitation in BOZAR.
Translanguaging
An attemptive input improvised with improper translations. We had a live translation kit and everyone was invited to adopt it for an hour to experiment with its short-range radio broadcast capacities. Since translations always are partly interpretation, why not use that property as a feature? One attempt was made by The Dumb Queen, who’s only language is pre-victorian English. She performed a live translation of the guided tour through Mommen by Pierre Coppens.
Other translators stuck to proper translation. Myriam Stoffens’ introduction to Zinneke was for example live translated from French to English by Elodie.
Institutional care
Artist/performer Jija Sohn proposed an input session that involved moving around on the floor of Mommen Salon blindfolded, sensing and touching each other. The exercise was prepared in conversation with stadsdramaturg Tunde Adefioye who connected from Stockholm to speak about institutional care.
Ateliers Mommen
Mommen connaisseur Pierre Coppens gave input through a guided tour and story about the history of Atelier Mommen
Fragile community scores I + II
As part of the score for the week, Lilia Mestre asked all participants to leave an object in the room that was connected to what they brought to the meeting.
- Notes
These notes were taken by one of the small groups discussing their motivations for their objects of choice.
Setting the environmental conditions for thinking together
Loren Britton
Connecting across and between levels and experience
Intimacy-generating - sharing knowledge and experience - we are all brought into a limited moment of exchange
We listen with different parts of our bodies - reminds us that our bodies hold knowledge and experience
Challenging and exposing for someone older, with years of experience and accustomed (and incentivised) to position as expert to create a short-form “lecture” of value and quality into this context.
Queering Damage
Helen Pritchard and Jara Rocha
Zinneke: Aux Loups ! Wolven!
Zinneke A ‘getting to know Brussels’ input consisted of going with the whole group on a field trip to the ateliers of Zinneke. Myriam Stoffen + Christophe Wullus discussed the concept, history and daily practice of the parade, how Zinnodes are organised, how different communities participate in a collective moment. And Christophe toured is through the fantastic metal workshop.
Bugreporting
Jean-Marc (BXLUG) + Femke (Constant) gave an input on understanding what is a bug in a programme and how to report it.
Notes
Consents
Martino Morandi proposed a session on consent, and how this practice is experienced differently in social and on-line situations.
Notes of discussion
Reference files
Scheduling
Peter Hermans
An input proposal on time management protocols; How much time would be used/spent/invested by each of us on the project/protocol that brought us here ?
Notes
Game of Conducts
Aymeric Mansoux
“A thought experiment and game to think about the impact of code of conducts, web interfaces, how we deal with information and network topologies, and how we present ourselves, and the communities we belong to, to the rest of the world.”
Notes of discussion
Notes on Striking Academics
Should, Could, Can
Varinia Canto Vila
A physical exercise about expectations of behavior in public space, towards each other, rules, laws, the making and breaking of relations past and futures.
Transformative Justice
Enrique Cesar
Notes of discussion
Leading Recipes
Agustina Andreoletti
Notes of discussion
Bots of conduct
Varia Centre for Everyday Technology
Notes of discussion
Writing manifestos of rest/care
Olave Nduwanje + Elodie Mugrefya
Notes of discussion
Collective work
In different constellations, particpants developed proposals, discussions and prototypes that were documented in notes, recordings and images. The materials were shared during a joined brunch on the final day of the worksession. Instead of a linear and frontal presentation, we opted for micro-lectures, a score proposed by Loren Britton which consisted of one-to-one simultanuous communications between participants and visitors.
Audio-visual gymnastics
How to stretch routines of photographic documentation away from a book of faces?
Notes of discussion
Bibliotecha
Listeners in the room
Following a discussion on consent and how to address issues in an affective and effective manner, we experimented with a different xxx. Every day two non-organising volunteers were catching issues in the room, and reporting back the next day.
Compersion
Manifesto of cares
A group gathered to continue writing a Manifesto of cares xxxx
Figures
Unintended figures of speech creep into our languages. A beginning was made to collect them, unfortunately too late, we collected a few. A good exercise to be repeated in another context.
notes
Tango Thermique
Caterina Mora hosted daily tango sessions that gradually allowed us to experience and play with complicated questions of power, tension and interaction.
Queering Damage Manual
How might we extend queer theories that concern personal injury, into more-than-human ensembles, in order to consider the damages shared by humans and nonhumans? How can we generate ways that take us beyond reparative narratives or benevolent utopianism towards more-than-human life?
Reading sessions
Denise Ferreira Da Silva, 1 (life) ÷ 0(blackness) = ∞− ∞ or ∞ / ∞: OnMatter Beyondthe Equation ofValue
Transgressions and their consequences
Queering Damage songs
The input on Queering Damage was reworked into an acapella proto-anarcho post-punk operette, performed on the final day of the worksession.
Afterlives
Queering Damage @ Sonic Acts
An ‘underground division’ lecture at Sonic Acts on the ROCK REPO project, which starts from the damage around rocks to reconsider their agency. See article
Bibliostrike
A specific installation of Bibliotecha and etherbox was renamed Bibliostrike and handed to the etherstrike collective, in support of the university strikes that took place in amongst others Goldsmiths, Londen in December 2019.
Manifesto of Cares
After the session, a group of participants continued to work between Brussels and Berlin to edit a version of the Manifesto that was published as part of the Intersections of Care project.
Three documents
Three documents that emerged from the session (Manifesto of Cares, Bibliostrike landing page and comments to the Constant Collaboration Guidelines) were featured in the publication Iterations: https://www.books.constantvzw.org/home/iterations
License of these materials (unless mentioned otherwise): FAL
Social Sculptures
Daily exercises to connect bodies through common objects, conducted by Varinia Canto Vila.