A couple of weeks ago -on March 30 and 31– we were in Valencia participating in the event
PERIFÈRIES
, which in this 2011/2012 edition has the motto “
Making a collective practice a common experience
”.
More specifically, we were invited to act as facilitators in one of the many working groups that for several weeks have occupied the Thesaurus Hall of the La Nau cultural center of the University of Valencia. During that time and in that same space, several conferences were also held and various video works were shown. The space remains open to the public and from this week you can see the materials generated by the different groups.
Each of these groups had one or several facilitators invited by the PERIFÈRIES organization and, within the general theme “Making a collective practice a common experience”, it had to adhere more or less to a more specific line of reflection also proposed by the organization. For our group, the group in which we acted as facilitators, we mean, that line of debate was marked by the title: “
With what expectations? From what potential?
”.
The group itself was responsible for giving meaning to these questions: What transformations can we expect from a community cultural practice? What can be the product of these practices? What results can we expect from a community and collaborative cultural practice that we will not obtain with other ways of organizing the production and circulation of symbols, representations and rituals? At times it was difficult to differentiate between the potential of community cultural practices and the expectations that we can project on them, between the capacities that in an “objective” way we can find in them and those that desire projects on them. In a certain way, many times we came across a logic of self-fulfilling prophecy, by which the very fact of desiring or expecting something from collaborative and community practices would have the effect that those same desires and expectations are realized.
By the way, we have not yet said who made up the group and it is necessary to do so, without their contributions and personal involvement we could not have done anything, but also among all of us we knew how to create a relaxed atmosphere, and we would even dare to say that sometimes jovial, which made the experience much more pleasant and enriching:
Solar Corona
),
Escola Gavina
and promoter of the project
400colps
), Clara Albero, Sergi Fernández,
AMASTÉ
office, although we have the feeling that his presence was felt throughout the conference… we were also accompanied for a morning by Joan Vilapuig from the
Sitesize
collective, whom we especially thank for coming from Barcelona.
The formation of this group is not random since the PERIFÈRIES organization asked us to propose several people or groups to participate and collaborate in the working group. We find the participation of the students of the Escola Gavina remarkable, because we understood that their presence broke the homogeneity of a group and a context in which, more or less, we all came from the same field close to cultural production. The presence of young people or children in this type of situation is usually associated with a reduction in the intellectual level of the debate; however, this is not necessarily true: the presence of people who do not come from the cultural field forces us to express equally complex ideas without resorting to the usual esoteric jargon, as well as to make explicit those common places that we also habitually take for granted those of us who move in certain areas.
We have not yet mentioned either that the space in which the working groups were organized followed the Open-space[1] methodology proposed by the PERIFÈRIES organization, said method does not contemplate the possibility of being developed in multiple spaces or in transit between said spaces, this condition clashed with our proposal to organize a visit to the Solar Corona, an urban space recovered by a group of architects, cultural activists and neighbors in the city of Valencia. It was also not understood, by the organization and by some participants, that this was a proposal, that is, that it was totally subject to the decision of the group and that it was not part of any program defined by us in advance. This disagreement generated some initial tensions that soon dissipated. The visit to the Solar Corona seemed pertinent to us for several reasons: in the first place it allowed the direct observation of many aspects discussed during the first sessions of work and debate; on the other hand, we understood that the Open-space of the Thesaurus Hall could be a hostile or uncomfortable space for secondary school students and finally we were interested, as always, in the possibility of creating transits and drifts between spaces with diverse degrees and modes of institutionality. This also seemed to be understood by the participants in the group and the visit could be made without further setbacks, which we thank Rafael Tormo and the rest of the organizers of PERIFÈRIES and, especially as hosts, Adrián Torres and the rest of the members of the collective that promotes the Solar Corona.
We also proposed to the group to generate some dynamics that would promote the use of video as a tool for reflection and thus favor the participation of the group of students from the Escola Gavina, accustomed to the use of video thanks to their collaboration with Jordi Orts in 400colps.
Having said all this, we will try to summarize and order some of the points discussed during the two days of work. Following the Open-space methodology proposed, the group formulated and noted a series of questions that would be discussed in a second moment following a previously agreed timing. Some of the questions that arose: what expectations can we project on collaborative cultural work processes? And what potential can we find or build on these same ones? We started a debate to try to define other “subordinate” questions, among which we collected the following: what things are common? What things are collective? How can people manage what institutions currently manage? (e.g. can the students of a school manage what they learn and how they learn it?) What is a collaborative action and work for? What could a collaborative action be for? How is a collaborative action organized? Why is a collaborative work process desirable or interesting? What can we contribute as individuals to a collaborative work process? Where does collaboration between people happen? Where is collective work organized? In line with what we pointed out above, we tried to reduce the questions to their conceptual essence, eliminating rhetorical turns that could obscure their meaning and relate them to specific practices, be it the Solar Corona itself or the organization of a party –the example of the Fallas came up on several occasions and in relation to diverse controversies-.
A large part of the debate generated around these initial questions did not focus on expectations and possibilities on which there seemed to be a certain tacit agreement, but on the obstacles and problems that we can find in their implementation. Among these problems we could highlight that of the sustainability of those projects or initiatives that are based on the collective management of culture or the city understood as resources for common use: how to make compatible the production (of culture, of city, of networks…) with the very processes of reproduction of life. It was pointed out that part of the “solution” to this dilemma could be the creation of alternative economies, but also from an approach between utopian and radically realistic, for a fairer distribution of income managed through participatory budgets and for the establishment of the universal right to a basic income. These demands arise, in part, from the impossibility of measuring in monetary terms the forms of cooperative, social and cognitive work characteristic of many of the initiatives discussed, but also of contemporary societies as a whole. What seems clear is that the appeal to “militant” volunteering tout court leads, in the experience of many, to the abandonment of community initiatives due to the impossibility of making them compatible with life itself (eating, resting, loving, having offspring… things like that). From another point of view, the need to find a balance between illusion and precariousness was mentioned.
Another of the relevant and recurring issues during the debate was how to escape from forms of economic, institutional, partisan, classist, patriarchal, cultural, etc., etc. parasitization of cooperative work and of the resources for common use that it provides –this is when the issue of the Fallas was brought up-. In relation to this question, the question arose about the type of actions that favor the emergence of “joyful subjectivities”, fairer forms of appropriation and agencies that enable life; here the need for an instituting practice was pointed out, that is, the need for ways of inhabiting and interrelating that make it possible to take power from those of us who have been deprived of it. Power is not something that can be accumulated, but can only be exercised: it crosses bodies, objects, symbols and is inscribed in them, therefore it has a performative character (as Joan feels special aversion to this word, he coined the neologism proformativo, which was adopted with glee by the rest of the group and elevated to the category of shoddy lexicographic milestone).
In relation to the above, the need to overcome the inside-outside dialectic that opposes distributed collective action to the hierarchical institution was also emphasized; we think that it is not about creating new structures outside the institution, but about creating short circuits and tensions that reveal precisely the inconsistency of the dominant structures: as has been said many times, it is the distributed action and the cooperation of countless social actors, human and non-human, that produces wealth and value. Back to the Fallas and in relation to this of the short circuits and the tensions with the institution, initiatives such as the #intifalla mobilization or the Falles populars i combatives in which the Solar Corona collective took part were mentioned.
In line with these reflections, the power of memory (individual and collective) was highlighted as a trigger for social transformation. Once again, the memory of popular Fallas, prior to partisan instrumentalization and elitization, was used as an example. Memory is also part, following the reasoning of Ricardo (AMASTÉ) during the debate after Nekane Aramburu’s conference, of a kind of “source code” of collective practices and the production of the common.
In another order of things, the forms of organization of collective work and the criteria that should guide it were also addressed. It is usually argued that forms of organization based on hierarchy, leadership and representation are more effective than those more horizontal ones based on direct participation; against this opinion, the need to review the criteria by which the effectiveness of an action or an organization is measured was pointed out in the first place, since these criteria are not only not exempt from ideology but also, in a performative (or “proformative”, according to tastes) way, articulate a certain ideology inscribing it in individuals and in their interrelationships. Another part of the group insisted on the fact that, in general terms, there is no learning in participatory modes of organization and decision-making; in this last respect, the question of memory and the need to review past forms of collective organization was mentioned again. Reference was also made to the rules (what rules should govern a community? How are they decided? What happens if they are not met?).
We also talked about the optimal degree of openness and permeability of communities for their survival, and in relation to this the figure of the night watchman was mentioned, which in turn was related to that of the keyholders of the Mess Hall of Chicago: people who have a set of keys and have access at all times and without restrictions to a space for common use, which in turn implies a series of responsibilities. There was also talk of the network as a way to scale the organization in communities and collaborative work, an issue that Jordi Claramonte also touched on in his afternoon intervention…
In short, as is often said, there were many and varied issues that we talked about during these two days; but it was talked about in passing about one that surrounds them all and is how once back in our daily environment we can activate all those words. This leads us to reflect on the usefulness –and the need- of meetings like PERIFÈRIES. It is evident that one progressively builds their work, their practice and their thought based on countless references and relationships, and that those that we wove during these two days will have their reflection in future concrete actions, possibly in very small and not always evident acts, in new conversations and relationships; however, we are still concerned about the aestheticization of dialogue, on the one hand, and on the other hand the use of the meeting as a staging for mutual recognition and the positioning of each one within the cultural field. Things that occur to us, that go through our heads… don’t pay attention.
Once again we take the opportunity to thank all those who have accompanied us during the conference for their involvement, generosity and care. We hope to meet again and think and do things together, because, as was said on more than one occasion: “you can’t do it alone, with friends you can”.
[1] To learn more about this method see the corresponding entry in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-space_technology or the website www.openspaceworld.org.