new
content
added on

04.04

Click

by
Rebekka Kiesewetter

by
Juliette Chrétien

Kreative Arbeit kennt keine Bürozeiten. Privatleben und Arbeit: Grenzen verschwimmen und verschwinden. Auf Plattformen wie Instagram und Facebook noch mehr. Teilen, teilen, mitteilen. Selbstdarstellung, Ich-Verherrlichung, das eigene Leben als Mittelpunkt. Fotografen sollen Online-Plattformen nutzen, heisst es. Ohne sie gehe es nicht mehr. Präsenz. Werbung. Aber für wen? Fürs professionelle Ego, den Berufsfotografen? Fürs private Ego, den Gelegenheitsknipser? Lassen die sich überhaupt trennen? Was ist der professionelle Wert von Alltagsfotografie? Inwieweit zeigt sich Persönlichkeit in Auftragsbildern? Was ist zu teilen? Und was mit wem? Mit Freunden-Freunden? Mit Berufskontakten? Was sind überhaupt „Freunde“? Was bloss „Kontakte“? Gibt es überhaupt eine Privatsphäre im Web?



Was heisst professionell? Jeder „kann es“ heute. Polaroidfilter verschönern und verherrlichen auch das banalste aller Bilder. Das allgegenwärtige Smartphone verändert die Ästhetik der Fotografie, den Beruf des Fotografen.

Die Anonymität des Webs schützt, das Persönliche wird dem Unpersönlichen gleichgemacht. Die Anonymität negiert die Geschichten hinter dem Bild. Das Smartphone verändert das Bildverständnis, die Rezeption von Fotografie. Eine Reduktion auf die offensichtlichste Ästhetik. Web ist im direkten und übertragenen Sinn eindimensional. Gewicht fehlt. Je grösser die Masse, desto nichtssagender und leichter das Einzelne.

Jeden Tag ein Polaroidbild. Mit der Kamera, nicht mit dem Smartphone. Instagram-Stil, nicht im Netz geteilt, sondern in einem Buch umgesetzt. Das Buch als Rahmen: Abwägen, Selektion, Konzentration. Das Buch als Objekt: Haptik, Gewicht, Bestand. Die Webästhetik wird zum fotografischen Statement. Was für die „Macherin“ wertvoll ist, erhält auch für den „Bild-Konsumenten“ Relevanz. Nicht die Masse sieht, sondern der Einzelne. Wer, bestimmt die Fotografin.

by
Anne Gabriel-Jürgens & Marvin Zilm

by
Jonas Löllmann

(Please listen through headphones or loudspeakers)

von
Claudia Stöckli

Auftrags- und Freelancefotografie
von
Flurin Bertschinger

by
Gregory Gilbert-Lodge

by
Ronny Hunger

by
Teresa Palmieri

There is an inseparable connection between who we are and the way we inhabit. Heidegger tries to find it in ancient german language, from buan (to dwell, to build) will derive the word bin (to be), through the act of dwelling and the recognition of the results of this action, man acknowledges his own being. Our inhabiting practices can then be seen as a mirror of our identity. As we construct our identities we build the spaces that can host them. Mobility, flexibility, adaptability, dynamism, heterogeneity, metamorphosis, cultural contamination, lightness, connectivity, deconstruction and reconstruction, are words part of a vocabulary in which many contemporary personalities can find themselves. For those identities in becoming the concept of stability has radically changed and therefore the concept of the space where stability used to reside: the home. “Invest in your future...Invest in a place called home...your own home...” says an advertisement that I found googling: real estate on the internet. Building a house, buying it, owning it have been, for many cultures, values that have been thought as providing and showing some kind of financial security, an empowerment of economic status connected to a full­time employment and a durable life project. But those values are not anymore suitable for many lifestyles, and whatever kind of idea the real estate has inherited from the past, what I perceive around me is much different. Some years ago, in a day like another, my, at that time, twentyeight years old father, was asking himself which home he would have liked to own on the way to the bank to ask for a loan which he would have needed to buy a place that could have hosted his future plans.

(left) Empty spaces. Transforming unused space into temporary dwelling.
(right) Transitional home. Recreating home from time to time

Today, at more or less his same age, I am wondering where I am going to live next, without being able to point on a map where my future is going to be. The mobility and flexibility that characterize creative work are inextricably related to the way we inhabit, which has become, for many jung creative practitioner as me, a practice freed by a tradition that was once able to guide it. Inhabiting results for many of us an arhythmic practice, not characterized by linear sequences (a home, a family, a place to belong to) but rather by choices, negotiations, options, a practice that requires the re­definition of a private place of life and a relational dimension of living. Where we live, how we do it and with whom can frequently change, and we face therefore the necessity for a more transient attitude toward dwelling. In a durable instability, home becomes most likely an idea, almost intangible, a place in continuous transformation and movement, which assumes its meaning through personal actions. We live a culture that is not anymore the one of a place but the one of a time “the absolute present”(1). But even in this sort of place schizophrenia, in which we work, live and love between temporary cities, states and continents, we still have to cope with the last artefact of stability that hunts us: the house. Our dwelling practices try to push themselves through a structured system that still seems to put in its list of requirement stability as a main request. Far away from the idea of my father that having a home of his own where to shelter his future was a necessity, I certainly need to rethink about the financial and emotional relationship that has existed between owning and having a home. What I today need for sure, at least in the nearest future, is to own a network of contacts, references and possible scenarios to face my future. I share, exchange, borrow, connect, reinvent space, I fill temporarily empty spaces and I find in those practices the way of feeling a sense of affluence, a feeling of home.


“I follow my destiny on the wings of time, and while I put my skills to good use, I will find a home.”(2)

1. A. Borg et al. , A home of your own, Volume #30 2011
   Heller A., Where do we feel at home?, il Mulino, 1994
   Dwelling: perspectives on the ways of inhabiting cities, Lo Squaderno, September 2011
2. Agnes Heller

Overlapping spaces. Studio from 9­21, bedroom from 22­8

(left) Private space. Reinventing privacy in shares spaces
(right) Metworked home. Dwelling though connections

An experiment, based on a dialogue between the creature and the creation.

Film: Zygintas Papartis and Govert Flint, Concept: Institute For Applied Motions & Rodrigo Alves Azevedo, Choreography: Rodrigo Alves Azevedo, Sound: Dominykas Daunys, Film Production: Ziggy Pictures, Dancer: Gieorgij Grzesiek Puchalski, Design Methodology: Institute For Applied Motions, Installation:Jeroen van der Drift, Govert Flint, Zeno Franchini, Kim Haagen, Lysander Klinkenberg, Inge van der Ploeg, Martje Roks, Maurik Stomps

CREDITS:
Script for a film by Renata Burckhardt, Concept: Dorothee Richter and Sabine Gebardt, Produced by Postgraduate Programme in Curating and Master Fine Art University of Lucerne, Participants in the script: all students, Actors: students, Direction: Ronald Kolb, Sabine Gebhardt, Dorothee Richter, Mirjam Bayerdoerfer, Editing: Ronald Kolb, Dorothee Richter, Postproduction: Ronald Kolb

by
Andreas Töpfer

Drei Emails* aus einer Konversation
von Rosalie Schweiker (www.rosalieschweiker.info)
und Rebekka Kiesewetter.

* Drei vorhergehende Emails werden hier aus Platzgründen nicht gezeigt (Anfrage um einen Beitrag für thisiswork.org von Rebekka Kiesewetter an Rosalie Schweiker; Antwort von Rosalie Schweiker, die Frage nach dem Salär stellend; Rebekka Kiesewetters Erklärung, wieso es nicht möglich ist, Beitragenden für die Onlinepublikation Honorare auszubezahlen). Das Thema wird von Rosalie Schweiker und Rebekka Kiesewetter bei einem persönlichen Treffen weiterdiskutiert.

Am 07.03.2015 23 [7]:15, schrieb rs:
Liebe Rebekka,

entschuldige die späte Antwort, ich war die ganze Woche ziemlich eingespannt und am Unterrichten, da blieb nicht mehr viel Zeit für die schönen Dinge des Lebens.

Ich würde vorschlagen, ihr nehmt diesen Emailaustausch (inklusive dieser Email und evtl. deine Antwort?) als einen Beitrag für euer Projekt. Das erscheint mir viel nützlicher, als einfach die alten
Arbeiten nochmals zu zeigen. Plus, wenn es um die Diskussion von Arbeits- und Lebensbedingungen im Kunstbetrieb gehen soll, dann muss eure Arbeit selbst auch transparent sein.

Nimm es nicht persönlich, ich bin sicher ihr habt die besten Absichten, aber wenn es kein Budget gibt um die Beteiligten auch an der Wertschöpfung konkret zu beteiligen, dann müsstet ihr
eigentlich euer Konzept von Anfang an total anders strukturieren. Sonst entsteht eine fatale Situation in der ihr (für euch aber auch für Depot Basel), Inhalte und Werte zusammensammelt, für welche dann im Endeffekt wieder die Künstlerinnen das finanzielle und ideelle Risiko tragen müssen.

Ich weiß, es ist alles nicht so einfach schwarzweiss, sondern ein komplexes Grau. Und indem ich hier gerade diese Email formuliere, bin ich natürlich auch ein Komplize in diesem Spiel - aber vielleicht
wäre ein Streik, wie ihn Gustav Metzger schon 1974 forderte, der produktivere Ansatz, anstatt ein ambitioniertes Programm zu organisieren?

Herzlich,
(und hoffentlich mal auf bald zum Kaffee in der Schweiz?)
Rosalie
P.S.
Es gibt noch eine gute Lecture von Lise Soskolne (von W.A.G.E.) zu diesem Thema, http://artanddebt.org/artist-as-debtor/ [8] [15]

-----------------------------------
2015-03-08 12:31 GMT+00:00 Rebekka Kiesewetter :
liebe rosalie

vielen dank für deine email und den vorschlag, sie zusammen mit meiner antwort zu veröffentlichen. sehr gerne. wir haben bereits einige absagen aus ähnlichen gründen erhalten aber noch nie den
vorschlag, sie als beitrag zu veröffentlichen.

du forderst transparenz: natürlich. wir halten transparenz in diesem und auch in anderen kontexten für sehr wichtig. und wir sind uns der ironie von "this is work" bewusst. es gibt ein projektbudget. sieben social designer des fictional collective arbeiten seit vier monaten mit uns an dieser sache, mit den lokalen partnern für die events und den beitragenden für die onlinepublikation sind mittlerweile 50 menschen uas ganz unterschiedlichen bereichen in das projekt direkt involviert. Je mehr leute mitmachen, desto kleiner wird der monetäre lohn für den einzelnen.
wir hätten natürlich ausschliesslich akteure aus der schweiz fragen können, dann hätten wir reisekosten eingespart. wir hätten alles viel kleiner machen oder das ganze aus budgetgründen einfach sein lassen können. aber wäre es das wirklich gewesen? Fictional collective mit seiner arbeitsweise (in der sich auch zeigt, dass die arbeit von "kreativen" heute immer weniger darin besteht und bestehen kann, ein physisches output zu liefern) hielten wir für geeignet, sich mit der situation auseinanderzusetzen. und wieso das ganze national und in kleinem rahmen abhandeln, wenn das thema so viele leute betrifft, und wenn uns, gerade wegen der art, in der wir
als kreative heute arbeiten, ein riesiges internationales netzwerk zur verfügung steht, in dem wir (u.a. durch die onlinepublikation auf thisiswork.org die diskussion um das thema anstossen undführen können?
depot basel und fictional collective sind teil eines problems und auch mitverantwortlich für die situation. depot basel, weil es dank unterstützungsbeiträgen besser positioniert ist als andere, aber
immernoch aus einer gruppe von leuten besteht, deren aufwand und input mitnichten eine finanzielle entprechung findet; und fictional collective, die um das knappe budget wissen sich aber von ihrem interesse am thema "mitreissen lassen" und ein input leisten, das natürlich weit grösser ist, als die zur verfügung stehenden mittel es erlauben würden. ist das nicht auch schön? dass wir
diese begeisterung für unseren "job" haben? dass wir trotz fehlender freizeit (bzw. dem nicht wissen, was eigentlich arbeit und was freizeit ist), aufreibenden "lohnverhandlungen", stressiger
projektarbeit, immernoch die leidenschaft aufbringen können, uns in dieser weise und "gratis" für eine gemeinsame sache zu engagieren? aber geht es wirklich nur um geld im ganzen? auch. aber nicht nur. das möchten wir aufzeigen, indem wir im rahmen des projekts versuchen, die implikationen des themas im hinblick auf ökonomische, physiologische und psychologische dimensionen zu untersuchen und darzustellen. nocheinmal: hätten wir es bleiben lassen sollen? hätten wir uns unter der prämisse "wir können nichts ändern" stumm und taub stellen müssen? damit hätten wir uns und unsere kraft unterschätzt. nein. wenn man ein teil einer situation ist, heisst das nicht sie erdulden zu müssen und passiv zu sein.

du schlägst einen streik vor: streik halte ich in unserem fall für destruktiv. streik ist für leute, die nichts als ihre schiere arbeitskraft haben, für menschen, die der gesellschaft / ihrem auftraggeber etwas genau messbares entziehen können (z.b. arbeitsstunden, produktivität, output). klar, auch kreative können sich einem output verweigern. maler würden nicht mehr malen, schreibende nicht mehr schreiben et cetera pp.. doch was ist mit dem anderen, nicht in "werken" messbaren, das mit unseren "jobs" einhergeht? die art in der wir arbeiten, uns netzwerke schaffen, die uns auch persönlich bereichern; was ist mit dem wissen, das wir mit unserem engagement generieren, das uns selber ebenso zugute kommt wie den anderen die (zuweilen leider als blosse nutzniesser) davon
profitieren? konsequenterweise hiesse ein streik, sich auch all dem zu entziehen. möchtest du, möchten wir das? ist verweigerung die einzige reaktion auf misstände? nein.
und überhaupt: wie möchtest du menschen zu einem streik verpflichten, die sich der schwierigkeiten ihrer eigenen situation gar nicht bewusst sind? menschen, die ihren eigenen schwierigen status als selbstgewählt verherrlichen und dinge sagen wie: "geld mit meiner leidenschaft verdienen zu wollen/müssen, würde mich in meinem schaffen behindern. deshalb habe ich einen brotjob". wie
möchtest du leute, die eine schwierige arbeitssituation als frei- und selbstgewählt romantisieren, und nicht merken, dass sie schon lange von einem system instrumentalisiert werden, das seinen profitaus genau dieser selbstverkennung vieler kreativer schlägt, mobilisieren?

du forderst, die beteiligten von der wertschöpfung profitieren zu lassen, und du sprichst von einer "fatalen situation, in der ihr (für euch aber auch für depot basel), inhalte und werte zusammensammeln, für welche dann im endeffekt wieder die künstlerinnen das finanzielle und ideele risiko tragen müssen": meinst du die wertschöpfung in rein monetären sinn? wir verdienen
kein geld an der ganzen sache. und an den anderen werten, die im rahmen des projekts und darüber hinaus hoffentlich generiert werden, sind die beitragenden sehr wohl beteiligt. wieso denkst du
dass depot basel und fictional collective in grösserem masse profitieren als die anderen beteiligten? und wieso ist euer risiko grösser als das unsere? wir exponieren und positionieren uns als
"anstifter" doch in gleichem masse wie die beitragenden.
wir können das "prekariatsproblem" nicht lösen. aber was wir können, ist eine basis schaffen, auf der wissen und engagement wachsen kann; eine basis, auf der wir gemeinsam nach wegen suchen
können, in denen wir den veränderten kreativen lebens- und arbeitsbedingungen begegnen können; wir können nach strategien suchen und zusammen lernen, uns in einer situation zurechtzufinden,
die auf den ersten blick lähmend erscheint, die aber eigentlich auch eine chance ist, unser eigenes umfeld neu zu denken. gerade mit den mitteln, die uns als "kreativen" zur verfügung stehen. wir
können bewusstsein schaffen, unsere netzwerke miteinbeziehen, den dialog mit menschen, die das thema aus unterschiedlichen warten betrachten, suchen und herstellen, leute zusammenbringen und versuchen, uns unsere eigene zukunft zu gestalen. bei unserer anfrage an dich und andere ging es uns nicht darum, eine arbeit zum thema in auftrag zu geben. wir wollen beitragende zu komplizen
machen, die von ihrem input auch profitieren können. etwa indem sie sich in einer art mit dem thema auseinandersetzten, die vor einen "formelleren hintergrund" nicht möglich ist, oder indem sie sich mit menschen austauschen, denen sie sonst nicht begegnet wären und neue einsichten gewinnen. denn am ende sitzen wir alle im gleichen boot, und es ist in unser aller interesse, lösungen für das "problem" zu finden. das ganze soll eine gemeinsame suche nach konstruktiven strategien, um unsere eigene zukunft zu gestalten, sein.
in einem artikel auf smow.com steht über "this is work": "what particularly interest us in how far the results and conclusions of the project will read like a critical, independent analysis of the current situation, and in how far a partisan manifesto and call to arms". wir hoffen, es ist und wird beides.

du sagst: "dann müsstet ihr eigentlich euer konzept von anfang an total anders strukturieren": wie hättest du es denn gemacht?

herzlich,
rebekka

-----------------------------------
Am 09.03.2015 12:09, schrieb r s:
Liebe Rebekka,

ah, jetzt bin ich im Dilemma - wenn ich dir ausführlich auf deine Email antworten will, dann bin ich
wieder am unbezahlt arbeiten, wenn ich nicht richtig antworte, sieht's so aus als würde ich mich aus der Verantwortung ziehen.

Als Kompromiss kopiere ich einfach mal Gustav Metzger's Aufruf von
1974 in diese Email.

Herzlich,
Rosalie

_Artists engaged in political struggle act in two key areas: the use of their art for direct social change; and actions to change the structures of the art world. It needs to be understood that this activity is necessarily of a reformist, rather than revolutionary, character. Indeed this political activity often serves to consolidate the existing order, in the West, and in the East. _

_The use of art for social change is bedevilled by the close integration of art and society. The state supports art, it needs art as a cosmetic cloak to its horrifying reality, and uses art to confuse, divert and entertain large numbers of people. Even when deployed against the interests of the state, art cannot cut loose the umbilical cord of the state. Art in the service of revolution is unsatisfactory and mistrusted because of the numerous links of art with the state and capitalism. Despite these problems, artists will go on using art to change society. _

_Throughout the century, artists have attacked the prevailing methods of production, distribution and consumption of art. These attacks on the organisation of the art world have gained momentum in recent years. This struggle, aimed at the destruction of existing commercial and public marketing and patronage systems, can be brought to a successful conclusion in the course of the present decade. _

_The refusal to labour is the chief weapon of workers fighting the system; artists can use the same weapon. To bring down the art system it is necessary to call for years without art, a period of three years - 1977 to 1980 - when artists will not produce work, sell work, permit work to go on exhibitions, and refuse collaboration with any part of the publicity machinery of the art world. This total withdrawal of labor is the most extreme collective challenge that artists can make to the state. The years without art will see the collapse of many private galleries. Museums and cultural institutions handling contemporary art will be severely hit, suffer loss of funds, and will have to reduce their staff. National and local government institutions will be in serious trouble. Art magazines will fold. The international ramifications of the dealer/museum/publicity complex make for vulnerability; it is a system that is keyed to a continuous juggling of artists, finance, works and information - damage one part, and the effect is felt world-wide. _

_Three years is the minimum period required to cripple the system, whilst a longer period of time would create difficulties for artists. The very small number of artists who live from the practice of art are sufficiently wealthy to live on their capital for three years. The vast majority of people who produce art have to subsidise their work by other means; they will, in fact, be saving money and time. Most people who practice art never sell their work at a profit, do not get the chance to exhibit their work under proper conditions, and are unmentioned by the publicity organs. Some artist may find it difficult to restrain themselves from producing art. These artist will be invited to enter camps, where making of art works is forbidden, and where any work produced is destroyed at regular intervals. In place of the practice of art, people can spend time on the numerous historical, esthetic and social issues facing art. It will be necessary to construct more equitable forms for marketing, exhibiting and publicising art in the future. As the twentieth century has progressed, capitalism has smothered art - the deep surgery of the years without art will give it a new chance.

by
Anna Gritz

Martina Muzi in dialogue with Pelin Tan

>> CITY: — I have always believed I could be a temporary home. I have been dreaming to nurture those who temporarily come and look for a place to act. Especially those who bring their creativity, they arrive, act, and maybe leave again. — Picturing a new temporary space for them, I would imagine it to be: hospitable, creative and collective but especially autonomous. — Is it a dream? —

>> P: A temporary space, which is hospitable, creative, collective and autonomous at the same time is not possible in reality. Often, a creative place is not hospitable. Because hospitality is based on unconditional rules. It is a negotiation. Maybe negotiation opens paths to creativity, but creativity is always a word defined by the creative class that mostly does not concern geographical, cultural differences, and heterogeneity. On top of that, "collective" is not a simple word. It needs "action labor" and ethics of the Otherness that is tangible, fragile.

Coming together, deciding together does not necessarily mean "collective action". Collectivity is based on social general intellect. The Autonomous needs to be based on principles. These principles differ from movement to notion of collectivities. Mainly economy - a self-sustainable economy - is the basis of autonomy. All are based on the needs of conflict, agonism.

It is a dream but is possible and temporariness is better than permanent as it does not produce power structures but it creates a social general intellect that can lasts.

>> CITY: — To be hospitable, a city asks for the public space to mix itself with other spaces: the home should fertilize the common, the common should penetrate the factory, the factory should engage the community.— What if principles on which hospitality is based on would enter spaces of collective social productions? —

>> P: "Hospitality" in the perspective of Levinas (and its interpretation by Derrida) is based on unconditionality and radical experience of unexpected. This relation is a basic ethical condition of Otherness but also of the "space" that is involved. Different geographical knowledge and city practices change accordingly. Conflict and Hospitality are inseparable in urban space. Actually, this is what makes the urban space. And the negotiation, the ethical base creates the threshold of creative spaces.

For example,

Kazova production

is one concrete example of a real small-scale factory where hospitality rules have led to collective social production. Özgür Kazova (Free Kazova) is a textile cooperative emerged after Gezi. With the cooperation of people, Kazova workers managed to get their own autonomy.
http://ozgurkazova.org/en/ This example not only is a model of autonomous production and economy, but it also represent the cooperation of many people who were involved in Gezi Park protests and it supports with action labor the workers. Therefore, it is somehow a continuation of the social general intellect which came through the Gezi struggle condition.

There are many other examples from different geographical areas; for example, the one of

Social Kitchen,

which is based in Kyoto. An initiative of cooking, designing, discussing... Although it has been very difficult to maintain this collective creative space, I think that it still represents a primary example of a space with an autonomous structure, labor shift and several collaborations of production and localities (for example local farmers).

>> CITY: — What temporary citizens bring in the new place is a valuable luggage of tradition and possible future spaces for public actions, which I consider a gift from mother/father to daughter/son. Within this generational exchange the design should take voice giving tools to appropriate economic and cultural spaces.— What if a collective creative space integrates temporary citizens with their own luggage, as a source for valuable temporary production?

>> P: The term "temporary citizen" is problematic. Who are they and in what context are they temporary??? The term "citizen" is produced within/according to nation-state paradigm. Normally, seasonal workers, asylum-seekers, immigrants, refugees, students are considered to be temporary citizenship either in a city or a country. I would prefer to go beyond this "citizen" terminology. Basically, I do think, for example, that an urban space is already a space of migration since thousands of years. Urban was always a flux of travelers, migrants, and temporariness. This is what makes a city.

In terms of production, there are several interesting practices that not only produce interesting intellect but as well challenge the notion of temporary citizen or citizen discourse.

There is an example of Free House in Rotterdam. It is a cooperative established by a migrant neighborhood in Rotterdam and led by the artist Jeanne van Hesjweek. The Free House is mainly run by women -mostly immigrants from Turkey- and youth, and they live through their own production: cooking, sewing, construction market space, etc. I think Free House is an interesting cooperative, a place in the neighborhood where the migrant citizens exchange their knowledge and practices. Also, a lot of artists, architects and designers are involved in this space.

Another interesting example could be the one of

"The Silent University"

which is an initiative launched by the artist Ahmet Öğüt -and I am actively part of this project. This fictional university is mimicking an institutional structure and it uses the rules of hospitality combined with other art institutions; it creates its own modalities of practices run by refugees, artists and scholars, researchers.

There is an interesting educational program called "Campusincamps", where Palestinian refugees organise various practices around/in West Bank/Palestine refugee camps aimed at thinking and producing the commons: the garden, the square, the bridge, the pool, the suburb, the pathway, the stadium, the municipality, the unbuilt, the shared.
https://www.campusincamps.ps/about/

>> CITY: Martina Muzi

>> PERSON: Pelin Tan https://tanpelin.blogspot.it

>> Photo: Simon Beckmann

"According to the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben this political regime is organized in society as a "camp" considering to him, it is the camp that define that define the measures of our cohabitation nowadays [...]. For those who lives in a camp the private own and public space completely coincides; the separation between the domestic life in the private home and professional life in the Polis evaporates. At the same time citizens are taken of more and more their citizenship's rights.[...]

Since the modern era artists have been well acquainted with the Agamben camp from the inside out, they are expert and feel completely at home with the condition of the camp.The state of exception has been used by artists since the xix centuries, artist prefer to work as self proclaimed freelance. Ever since the romantic era artists have always made attempts to place themselves outside the world or in any case above the existing normal order. In other words they have voluntarily enter the camp, in order to subject their bodies and minds to their own artistic realm. They establish their own camp, they took the initiative to experiment with life as outlaws, as thieves, charlatans who steal from their own culture to create something new out of it. Artist have since long willfully abolished the division between private and public life, they can work at night wherever, it’s completely mixed.the culture that artist generate is their second nature, manipulated their own nature into culture. they’re fighting against the camp of Agamben with their own encampment."

Pascal Gielen, Incubate Conference, Tilburg 2013

by
Michael Kaethler

new
content
added on

30.03

Click

by
Sophie Rzepecky
2015

“Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 1988.

Sophie Rzepecky on Vimeo

by
Aya Bentur, Bili Regev
in collaboration with Gilad Gotman
2015

‘All our gestures are changing. For we no longer understand the world as an object of manipulation or human beings as subjects that manipulate. We begin to grasp the world as our environment, in which and with which we engage, and that engages with us, and we are beginning to see human beings, including their manipulations of objects as pantomime of the environment itself. We no longer believe that we make gestures but that we are gestures.’

Vilem Flusser, Les Gestes, 1991.

Our daily routines are fragmented, multi-disciplinary and permanently transitional. Alongside changes in working methods, have the physical patterns of work changed as well?

How We Work / Gestures Accompanying Work #1

How we work / Paper #1
In collaboration with Evan Frenkel

Aya Bentur on Vimeo

Please click here to explore the ongoing archive of mapped gestures
















Essay of Association
2015
Sophie Rzepecky


As I sit here in this rather cold yet endearing laundromat, in itself a rather nostalgic room of rotating devices, I am reminded of the enduring slowness of life. Here the imposition of time is at its best, enforced by the repetitive noise of the machines washing, drying and transforming clothes from dirty to clean. Watching the spinning cycle, an item of clothing recurs through the lens of the washing machine door. The machine becomes a device which filters and presents a colour, a texture over and over again.




Andrea Mettler (CH)
2015




Sam Norton (NZ)

HOME

SKYPE

I MISS THE FANTASY

https://www.samnorton.co.nz/

Overprinting
INDEX (NZ)
2015




At our graphic design and risograph printing studio, Index, we have an RP3700 risograph, which after 3 years of ownership and regular use is still a bit of a mystery to us, and so we test things like coverage, alignment, and blending by printing extra prints and tests. These same pieces of paper are repeatedly reused, so we get beautiful overlapping and cross­-referencing, with the prints patterning our process, and our uncertainty. We tend to keep these pages and see them as works in themselves, as the layering of disparate print separations often create unexpectedly poetic results. The works also create correlations between unrelated projects, which we enjoy.

Amy Yalland & Jonty Valentine

Co­directors : Index
www.index.org.nz
index@index.org.nz
facebook.com/indexdesignstudio

Konrad Bialowas (SE)
2015

DO YOU SPEAK ARABIC

https://www.konradwithk.com/

Gabriel (AU)
2015





G uses line and montage to describe musings, memories or fragments of bodies and individuals. They are intuitive and emotional assemblages reacting to the presence or eccentricities of that human or body.

https://gabrielannmaher.com/

U67
Moonlight

Assembled by U67 (Fabio Gigone + Angela Gigliotti) from their agendas

Moonlight is a schizophrenic process that connects two workflows in singular necessity
Moonlight is made by several projects, experienced as an uninterrupted thought
Moonlight calculates and draws but is often in delay
Moonlight collects and records, remembers everything but is not a catalogue
Moonlight is growing endless and everywhere a starting point can be found
Moonlight is in this moment and throughout all day
Moonlight belongs to you by now because you have seen it.

Albert Dadas
by Johan Furåker
A Work on Pathological Tourism (Dromomania)


Nobody had heard from Albert Dadas for over a year. He had disappeared without saying goodbye to any of his friends or colleagues, without leaving any letter of explanation, without even informing his family. Dadas was 26 years old and worked in a gas works in Bordeaux. The demand for gas was high. The town’s streets had gradually been equipped with gas lamps, and modern gas ovens and gas central heating which were becoming all the more common contributed to this. The gas was produced from coal. The work was arduous with a few short and silent breaks, which only allowed for the mechanical consumption of the contents of a lunch box. One day in 1886 he did not turn up for work. Towards the end of July 1887 a young psychology student discovered Albert Dadas crying in his bed in Dr. Pitres ward in the Sankt André hospital in Bordeaux. The young student, by the name of Phillip Tissié took the time to listen to him. Dadas explained that he had recently returned from a long journey and although he was exhausted, this was not the reason for his tears. He wept because he could not prevent himself from leaving when the urge to travel arose. He would abandon everything he had and leave immediately. It would usually begin with him, in the middle of his daily routine, hearing of some remote place and suddenly setting off walking, with only the money he had in his pocket, towards that destination. Whether on the open road or in the mountains Dadas always managed to loose all his personal identification documents. He had lost his marriage certificate and military discharge certificate. He walked until arrested for vagrancy. He had rambled over large parts of southern France but remembered nothing of his ramblings. Phillip Tissié took an interest in the gas worker and the state of his health. Through hypnosis he was able to get Dadas to recount details of his journeys. Phillip Tissié described Dadas (the first pathological tourist) with the following distinguishing features: He was working class, neither homeless nor part of the expanding middle classes. He had whole and clean cloths, was moderate with alcohol and shy amongst women. After completing his doctorate Tissié based a brilliant carrier on Dadas and his travels, his paper was read by many and became a recognised phenomenon, with accounts from Paris, northern Italy and Germany of others suffering from pathological tourism. Although, for the remainder of his life, Dadas had long periods of normality he was never entirely free from his infliction. When he heard of a far away mountainous region he was forced to once again set off on a journey. An exhausted Dadas was arrested for vagrancy in Constantinople and Algeria and in Moscow, where having been suspected of being a revolutionary, was sent to Siberia. By 1910 there remained little interest for the condition within psychiatry.

Gare de Nice 1890, Oil on MDF, 50 x 70 cm, 2008.

1 Wandertrieb, Oil on MDF, 50 x 46 cm, 2008
2 Alter (Second Self), Gouache on paper and Oil on MDF, var. dim., 2010.
3 Polyfocality, Oil on MDF construction, 64 x 59 x 12 cm, 2008.
4 The Pathological Tourist Albert Dadas, Oil on MDF, 47 x 85 cm, 2008.

Note: Alongside working on our projects, we also engaged in many skype conversations about uncertainty, from a spatial context to an economic context, from creative process to very abstract concepts of time and body movement. Extracts of these texts are embedded in the following chapter, as transcripts of conversations that shifted our perspectives and added to our ongoing engagement with the the topic of uncertainty.

Sleeper Cells
Dreaming revolutionaries
by Ben Landau

"The average North American adult now sleeps approximately six and a half hours a night, an erosion from eight hours a generation ago, and (hard as it is to believe) down from ten hours in the early twentieth century." In: Jonathan Crary: 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, London/New York: 2014.

Sleep is one of the last frontiers to be conquered by work, advertising and productivity. Perhaps the space between our ears (the brain) and the connection with the unconscious while we sleep (dreams) present more alien unchartered territory than the outer reaches of the galaxy, of which we know a lot. Not only is our nightly rest still sacred, but accessing the unconscious is a divide which we cannot currently breach. Sleeper Cells investigates one of our last bastions of freedom from incessant work. It imagines the powers of the brain tuned to the pulse of efficiency, production and monetization.



"The nightly hope for the insensible state of deep sleep is at the same time an anticipation of an awakening that could hold something unforeseen." In: Jonathan Crary: 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, London/New York: 2014.

SLEEPER CELLS Presentation

http://www.benlandau.com/




Uncertainty Dialogue 1#
Friday February 2nd 2015

Rodrigo Alves







Claire
It's fucked. But then there is bliss.










Uncertainty Dialogue 2#
Saturday February 7th 2015

M: Martin, psychotherapist and gallery owner
S: Sophie
A: Aya

M: I work 3 days per week as a psychologist, one day also in the gallery, I have therapy sessions in the gallery and then two or three days a week as a gallerist.

S: So there is really a physical crossover actually if you are holding therapy sessions in the gallery.

M: Yeah, there is a big connection between psychoanalysis and art, already Freud was really interested in art and wrote a lot about psychoanalysis in art or art as an expression of psychoanalysis.

A: For me the way you change roles during the week in a way is very interesting.

M: Yes I also think it interesting but also quite hard. it’s not always so easy and if you would have asked me a year ago I would say “oh no problem” but now sometimes I have difficulties with it.

S: You have to be able to compartmentalise your brain somehow to be able to switch between things, how do you manage that?

M: I try to make a clear difference. When I get up in the morning it’s clear for me, or it should be; today I’m a psychologist. But then you know, we are at the beginning of our gallery business and there is so much work sometimes it’s not always possible to make that clear cut. But somehow its also great to work like this, it gives energy.

S: I wonder, has working with artists in the gallery changed your perspective on your practice as a psychoanalyst or shifted your process somehow?

M: No I don't think so, more the other direction. I think working with clients had a big influence on how I contact or speak with artists.

S: What we are interested in and what we do in our creative process (Aya and I have collaborated before on quite a few projects) is using uncertainty and this crossing over of different fields… not knowing what the outcome will be. Using it as a strength or a tool, trying to redefine the word uncertainty as a creative possibility rather than a difficulty.

M: This is really an important point, I think uncertainty is in both of my jobs. As a psychologist you never know in which direction it goes. I say “hello, good day” to my clients and then I have to wait to see what comes. Before each session I feel, yeah I can even say, a little bit nervous because of that uncertainty. It’s not a problematic nervosity, it’s more like “what is coming now?”. As a gallerist there is a lot of uncertainty as well because we have no idea if we can manage the next year, if an exhibition has a good resonance..

S: Yes I guess, especially in Zurich, there is a lot of cost to running a gallery. We were commissioned to do this project just after we graduated actually, at this moment of great uncertainty in our creative careers. At the moment we are working not only on this project, some of us are working on four to five projects at the same time, and its a very ironic commission to work on actually.

[On the event to be held at Depot Basel on the 14th March, 2015]

S: We want to create a factory of uncertainty, we want to invite dancers, performers, musicians to come into the space and through a small framework create work. The inspiration for this was relating to Andy Warhol who had a couch, the red couch, in his studio. They would do a whole day of manufacturing and making these artworks and at the end of the day they would all be drinking and stuff on this couch and the camera would turn and film what was going on, some of his strongest films were filming whatever was going on on this couch. We took this as a starting point. We want to create a similar process to see what can come out from giving a small framework and letting people in somehow, not knowing exactly what will happen, that’s the idea so far.

[In reference to dual working spaces, and a skype tour through the space]

S: Where is the room you do the therapy sessions?

M: This one here.

A: You just put two chairs in the middle? I think this point of crossover is amazing.

S: Yeah, it’s super special.

M: What I do is put in another light, because in this light people don’t feel very comfortable and I don’t feel very comfortable. These are the chairs.

S: Do you also shut the blinds in the room?

M: Yes of course nobody can watch inside on Mondays.

S: It’s so nice how you make the transition actually, just by putting two chairs, a light and shutting the blinds. The space transforms by this small intervention.

A: I think it transforms the space, it transforms the interaction, it transforms your role. A little act that changes the whole setting.

S: Maybe being immediately in a different context helps with that. When you go to a psychoanalyst or a psychologist, the space influences you very much, the waiting room, going in to see the therapist.. You feel like you are ill so you're there. In this way I think the context of the gallery is refreshing, you don’t feel like a patient, you just feel like you are having a conversation with another human being.

M: for me its quite interesting because I’ve never looked at it from your point of view, for me it’s quite normal, I was never thinking about transitions of roles in a theoretical way, I’m just a psychologist and I have a gallery.

A: I think somehow we all have so many roles especially now in terms of economic uncertainty, we are doing different jobs, and each job has a different world. I think our interest goes directly to that, to how you manage to bring together and still keep separate these two worlds.




Ella Rothschild
Two Minutes in the Studio





Uncertainty Dialogue 3#
Friday February 13th 2015

AB: Aya Bentur
SR: Sophie Rzepecky
LN: Lorenz Nufer

AB: We are interested in hearing your perspective on creative work, and the instability of not knowing when or what the next project will be. For instance, working on a few projects at the same time, a few roles at the same time; actor, director, writer. You have to constantly switch … its not a 9-5 job. We are wondering what do you think about this instability?

LN: Well.. its interesting because this uncertainty as the … structure of my life… quite bothers me. Because its stressful, as an actor you depend a lot, you depend on that somebody wants to work with you. Its different as a director because you have have an idea and you can look for people… try to convince them. As an actor your very passive, and I find that problematic. On the other hand, if you talk about uncertainty in the process, that I find very interesting and quite freeing. When I work on my own projects, I did that now for the third time, I kind of think of an idea or a storyboard or character, but I don’t start writing the scene or the text until I start rehearsing with the actors. So its a very uncertain process, its sort of guided by the big picture of the play or story, but of course it turns out very different in the process. Also, all three times I worked with a co-writer, so thats another factor in the uncertainty. When generally there is quite a big factor of uncertainty in a group process or a play… A venue… Because everybody has to have there own space and way and its quite hard to plan. Well you can plan, but its not that fun. Uncertainty is essential for creativity… well for me it is at least. But it is a very stressful factor for living, and sometime it even makes me angry that its so…

AB: I think we can see the contradiction that we were talking about… it can be such a negative and a positive at the same time… We resent it and we need it in a way. And just like off the top of my head, while you were talking I was thinking.. It could be really nice to see this process as a performance, you coming in and having an idea.. and this idea evolving through this exchange of actors.

[On money]

LN: If I work with other actors… let me ask it like this… Is there some money we could offer or we could use? Thats maybe… cos well… it depends who I ask..

AB: Unfortunately we are are not getting paid for this project… we have a budget, we can try to use maybe some of the budget… ah...but it won’t get far..

SR: Yes its a very ironic project.

AB: Were talking about economic instability and were creating economic instability.

LN: Well ok… then I have to ask some friends [laughs].

AB: We can try..

LN: No its also for me I can't do a lot of work without money… but we could do something. Maybe … well if I ask some colleagues if they would participate… maybe they would do it for two hours in the evening… but I can't ask them to do it all day..

SR: Well even two hours is quite a long time.

AB: This is why we were trying to use this uncertainty as a framework… to try to use this thing… as something that makes sense to work on.

SR: not draining to much of our time and energy…

LN: Ok good… I just have to work out what is interesting …





Evan Frenkel
Boom Bang Work: PAPER

Paper is at the foundation of everything we do, all we are. From the material that is used in the form of thin sheets for writing on, to the writing itself, the word paper is loaded with meaning. Official documents to prove we are legal entities: 'show me your papers'. And the work we do in school: 'I can't go to the party, I have to finish this paper'. Even designating the default reward for our hard work (money): 'Bill Gates is a dork but he sure has a lot of paper'. Writing, sculpting and printing, paper is as versatile as its meanings. Its flat surface also manipulated to form tactile qualities. The accompanying film documents the process and typeface developed out of the study and respect for the craft, while also hungry for instant gratification with meager resources: 'ghetto letterpress.'

Evan Frenkel in collaboration with Aya Bentur and Bili Regev

Ella Rothschild
Excerpt: Acord

A grotesque image of a character seeking a moment of peace, yet finding herself tangled in objects and strings.





FLESH (or SUNSET)
by Jesper List Thomsen






Uncertainty Dialogue 4#
Friday February 16th 2015

Arkadi Zaides
[Email on 16th Feb, 2015]

Hey Aya and Sophie,
You are catching me in the midst of a residency in Lyon,
Thanks for writing and for your offer to contribute to your publication.Your thoughts throw mine to many directions which circulate around the concepts of Gesture and Uncertainty.

It make me think of the Uncertainty of an Artistic Gesture and the wish for it to resonate in the world. It pushes me to look for clarification of the kind of Uncertainty you are talking about, and as the nature of my artistic practice addresses the political aspects in every gesture, it pushes me to think about the Political Uncertainty and an Artistic Gesture within it.

I am sending you two articles that come to my mind while reading your words and trying to see where these concepts are resonating within me.

Giorgio Agamben who discusses the loss of a gesture in a world which produces images, and Boris Groys who discusses what art has to offer in the midst of mass image production (of violence), guess the artistic gesture is what is at stake here.

This is not yet my contribution but may be can lead us somewhere.
Cheers
Arkadi









[Email on 17th February]

Dear Arakdi,

Thank you for taking interest and for the two articles! Both were very interesting to read.

We identify most with the article of Giorgio Agamben, who is discussing perhaps a loss / new kind of physical engagement with the "now". At this point our process is less politically motivated than yours, however we very much look for this perspective as a contribution, also to be critical against ourselves and examine what we are talking about from all possible perspectives.

We relate our process to more a measurement of the human condition... in using narrative (film), gesture and body movement as a fragmented scenography we provoke action to record / measure / distort and redefine everyday actions (of work, of walking, of design methods).

We would love to discuss with you further what a possible contribution would look like... Would you be free to skype this week?

Kind Regards,
Sophie and Aya


[Reflection]

Arkadi starts his process in the unknown. He understands uncertainty and vulnerability to be meaningful creative drives and welcomes them, never knowing where he will go and where he will end up in the creative process. This is meaningful to lend freedom but within a strong subject matter. There are two ways to look at his process locating it constantly in relation to its surrounding; the uncertainty of the creative process itself and the uncertainty of the political environment around it.

www.arkadizaides.com
www.facebook.com/arkadi.zaides

Yeb Wiersma & Sophie Rzepecky

Yeb invited Sophie through Facebook, to start a Skype chat conversation over the course of an hour, starting on Sunday March 22nd at 3pm.

Download the account of what happened during the live play.

new
content
added on

30.03

Click

by
Heini Lehtinen

What one thinks of oneself becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. What if the independent creative practitioners, ‘the creative class,’ would consider themselves ‘wealthy creative class’ instead of ‘precarious creative class’? Monetary value of work is only one of the values of work but, in today’s society, being paid for work provides ability to create a structure and a certain level of security in one’s life. It is a myth that steadiness of life would decrease one’s ability for creative work. On the contrary – from a psychological point of view, certain structure and clarity in one’s life supports and increases creativity by releasing psychic energy from survival to creation.

‘Lalalabour’ challenges the prevalent, widely spread attitudes about independent creative work in an essay and a series of posters questioning ideals of creative workers.

heinilehtinen.com

by
Silvia Neretti

Cantiere n.5,

“My goal nowadays is to invent a job based on who I am and what I did until now. This discovery, than, needs to find a concrete confirmation in real life, otherwise I will spend the rest of my life complaining that the world doesn’t allow me to find my stability, without noticing that probably I am the main cause why I can’t create for myself a stability.”

Cantiere Per Pratiche Non Affermative

“Most young people I know, aren’t brave enough to do what they really like, for living, because they don’t know what they really like, who they are and their possibilities. They just copy paste a life style and work complaints models that doesn’ t belong to them.”

Arianna, 31 years old, creative workers in the Unknown Time

Cantiere 17.11.2012

“When the point of view on the figure of the designer changes, possible new practices and activities start to be taken into consideration, that are newly related with the new view on the designer itself. Those activities inspire changes."

Cantiere Per Pratiche Non Affermative

Building of a Precedent:
Inken knows now that she is a "sensitive analyst", within visual communication, typography and by being critical and sensitive at the same time. She is looking for connections and inspirations.

Von
Angelika Scheuer

Die Vermittlung von Werten wird in unserer Gesellschaft gross geschrieben. Genannt werden hier vor allem christliche, abendländische oder westliche Werte. Werden diese nicht ausreichend gepflegt, spricht man von Wertewandel, Werteverfall oder fehlenden Werten.Werte leiten unser Handeln und unser soziales Verhalten. Sie strukturieren unsere Einstellungen und beeinflussen unsere Vorlieben. Eine Gesellschaftsbeschreibung kommt daher nicht ohne einen Blick auf Struktur und Dynamik ihrer Werte aus. Der israelische Psychologe Shalom Schwartz (Hebräische Universität Jerusalem) hat auf der Basis weltweiter Studien eine weltweit gültige Wertekarte entwickelt. Die Werte sind allgemein gültig und prägen die Einstellung und das Verhalten der Menschen. Dieses Wertemodell wird in Sozial- und Marktforschung verwendet. Der Wertekreis baut auf Wertegegensätzen auf:

- Der Gegensatz zwischen Egoismus und Universalismus (vertikal) beschreibt die Unvereinbarkeit von Herrschaft der Mächtigen und Gleichheit aller.

- Der Gegensatz zwischen Selbstbestimmung und Tradition (horizontal) stellt den Konflikt zwischen Gemeinschaft und Individuum dar.

- Dem Gegensatz zwischen Bewahren und Wandel (diagonal links) liegt die Wahl zwischen Ordnung und Freiheit zugrunde.

- Der Gegensatz zwischen Selbstbezug und Gemeinsinn (diagonal rechts) repräsentiert den Widerstreit zwischen eigennütziger und altruistischer Orientierung.

Der Wertekreis wird mithilfe der Portrait Values Scale (PVS) erhoben. Den Befragten werden Beschreibungen von 21 fiktiven Personen vorgelegt, die die 10 Werte repräsentieren. Sie sollen angeben, wie stark sie sich darin wiedererkennen. Je grösser die wahrgenommene Ähnlichkeit, umso stärker vertritt die befragte Person diesen Wert. CHART Die PVS wurde seit 2002 im European Social Survey (ESS) in 34 Ländern erhoben. Die Daten (2002-2010) ermöglichen einen Einblick in Struktur und Dynamik der europäischen Werte.

Eine europäische Wertegemeinschaft?
Die Europäer zeigen länderübergreifende Gemeinsamkeiten in den Wertepräferenzen: Gemeinsinn steht über Selbstbezug, Bewahren geht vor Wandel.

- Universalismus, Humanismus und Selbstbestimmung sind die wichtigsten Werte. Als Freiheit (Selbstbestimmung), Gleichheit (Universalismus) und Brüderlichkeit (Humanismus) stellen sie die Quintessenz „westlicher Werte“ dar. Sie sind verknüpft mit einer auffallend geringen Bewertung der Ausübung von Macht und der Zurschaustellung von Leistung.

- Bewahrende Werte – allen voran Sicherheit, gefolgt von Tradition und Konformität – stellen den anderen Pol europäischer Wertepräferenzen dar. Hingegen sind der individuelle Wert Hedonismus und der wandelorientierte Wert Stimulation sind schwächer ausgeprägt.

Neben diesen Gemeinsamkeiten lassen sich Unterschiede zwischen den europäischen Regionen ausmachen. Die Bedeutung von bewahrenden Werten nimmt mit dem Wohlstand der Gesellschaften ab; gleichzeitig nimmt die Bedeutung von selbstbezogenen und wandelorientierten Werten zu.

- In Nord- und Westeuropa favorisieren die Menschen stärker universelle Werte einerseits und hedonistische Werte andererseits.
In Süd- und Osteuropa legen die Menschen mehr Wert auf bewahrende Werte wie Sicherheit, Tradition und Macht.

Wertewandel
Menschen verschiedenen Alters zeigen unterschiedliche Wertepräferenzen. Dies hat zwei Gründe: Zum einen verschieben sich Wertepräferenzen im Lebensverlauf von Selbstverwirklichungswerten zu bewahrenden Werten. (Die Klage Älterer über den „Werteverlust“ der jüngeren Generationen ist ein uralter Topos.) Darüber hinaus findet ein Wertewandel statt, weil heranwachsende Generationen durch andere Rahmenbedingungen geprägt werden: Krieg und Armut fördern bewahrende Werte, anhaltender Frieden und Wohlstand befördern individuelle und wandelorientierte Werte. Ein Vergleich der Wertepräferenzen nach Altersgruppen vermischt beide Effekte und lässt eine isolierte Schätzung des Wertewandels nicht zu. Dennoch zeigt er das Spannungspotential, das zwischen den Werteprofilen der Altersgruppen liegt.

- Ältere Menschen betonen stärker bewahrenden Werte. Besonders gross sind die Unterschiede zu den Jüngeren bei Konformität und Tradition. Aber auch Sicherheit ist für Ältere deutlich wichtiger als für Jüngere.

- Jüngere gewichten stärker wandelorientierten Werte. Am deutlichsten heben sie Stimulation und Hedonismus hervor; aber auch Leistung ist ihnen wichtiger als den Älteren.

- Die „westlichen Werte“ werden über alle Altersgruppen hinweg hochgehalten, auch wenn Jüngere hier Abstriche machen. Jüngere Menschen betonen stärker den egozentrischen Wert Macht, der allgemein sehr schwach ausgeprägt ist.

Wertekonflikte
Ideologische und religiöse Weltanschauungen unterscheiden sich in der Bedeutung, die sie verschiedenen Werten beimessen. Diese Wertedifferenzen sind ein wesentlicher Grund für die Auseinandersetzungen zwischen den weltanschaulichen Lagern. Entsprechend unterschiedliche Werteprofile finden sich zwischen ideologischen und religiösen Gruppen.

- Politische Ideologie wird üblicherweise auf einer Rechts-Links-Dimension abgebildet. Je weiter rechts sich Menschen ideologisch positionieren, desto stärker betonen sie bewahrende Werte (Sicherheit, Tradition, Konformität). Je weiter links sie sich einordnen, desto stärker gewichten sie universelle Werte (Universalismus, Humanismus, Selbstbestimmung).

- Religiöse Konfessionen setzen im Rahmen der europäischen Wertegemeinschaft unterschiedliche Akzente. Zugleich repräsentieren die Konfession geographische Regionen (Protestanten im Norden, Katholiken im Süden, Orthodoxe, Juden und Muslime im Südosten). Protestanten halten die universellen Werte besonders hoch, während Katholiken stärker Tradition und Sicherheit betonen. Orthodoxe, Juden und Muslime ragen bei den selbstbezogenen Werten Macht und Leistung stärker heraus und setzten einen gewissen Kontrapunkt zur christlich-westlichen Wertevorstellung.

Ausblick
Das Wertesystem der europäischen Bürger weist hohe Stabilität und Allgemeinheit auf. Vergleiche zwischen Ländern, Befragungszeitpunkten und Geschlecht zeigen nur marginale Unterschiede.Generationaler Wertewandel führt zu Spannungen zwischen traditionellen und Selbstbestimmungswerten. Jüngere Menschen vertreten Herausforderung und Wandel, doch setzt die demographische Entwicklung ihrem zahlenmässigen Einfluss Grenzen. Andererseits dominieren sie die modernen Medien und nehmen dadurch überproportionalen Einfluss auf die kollektive Werteentwicklung. Weltanschauliche Wertekonflikte bestehen auf der Achse zwischen universellen und egoistischen Werten. Die europäische Wertegemeinschaft hat aufgrund ihrer Geschichte und ihres Wohlstands ein Werteprofil entwickelt, das die Grundlage für eine demokratische Gesellschaftsordnung legt. Die Ablehnung der Macht einzelner ermöglicht die Gleichberechtigung aller. Darin liegt der Kern des westliche Werteverständnisses und des Konflikt mit anderen kollektiven Wertesystemen. Die Wertepräferenzen werden von den wirtschaftlichen und gesellschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen geprägt. Friede, stabiler Wohlstand und Modernität sind Träger eines Wertewandels zu individuellen und wandelorientierten Werten. Einschneidende Veränderungen wie die Krise seit 2007 kann in betroffenen Ländern eine Rückkehr zu bewahrenden Werten bewirken. Eine kritische Entwicklung kann entstehen, wenn es zur Abkehr von universellen Werten und eine Hinwendung zu egoistischen Werten kommt.

Dr. Angelika Scheuer arbeitet als Soziologin und Politologin bei GESIS - Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften in Mannheim, Deutschland. Sie ist Deputy Director Scientific im European Social Survey ESS ERIC. Ihr Interesse liegt in der europäisch-vergleichenden Erforschung von gesellschaftlichen Werten und Einstellungen.

Von
Matthias Kappeler

“Du musst eine Sache finden, die du gerne tust - etwas das du gut kannst - und dann bleibe dabei!“: Das ist das Rezept zum Erfolg, sagte man mir. Viele Male. Aber so richtig funktioniert hat das nie für mich. Es gibt so viel Interessantes zu tun, zu lernen, zu sehen, zu machen, wie soll man sich für eine Sache entscheiden können? Die Generation Y, die Superopportunisten, werden wir genannt. Unfähig, uns auf etwas festzulegen, uns zu binden, uns zu entscheiden. Geleitet von der Angst, etwas zu verpassen, das spannender und neuer ist, als das, mit dem man sich gerade beschäftigt. Mit Sicherheit, Routine, am Morgen aufstehen und wissen, was der Tag bringen wird, geregelte Arbeitszeiten, bezahlte Überstunden und am Ende des Monats eine auffällige Beule nach oben in der Saldokurve des E-Bankings: Nein.Dinge tun. Einfach mal anfangen ohne gross nachzudenken: Ja. Der Lehrer hatte mich gewarnt. Er hat mich gelehrt zu analysieren, Pläne, Listen und Diagramme zu erstellen. Projektmanagement, Strategisches Marketing, Controlling,.... Wir haben uns eine Softeismaschine gekauft. Aus China, über einen Importeur in Berlin. Dann sind wir nach Lissabon geflogen, haben Dokumentationen gefilmt. Dann machten wir eine Modekollektion. Dann eine EP-Serie! Auf Flexidisks! Die bringen wir wieder gross raus! Und wir bauen einen Club! Und machen Merchandising! Und dann gibt es da noch meine andere Firma –eine „Digital Agentur“ – in der ich Dinge tue, die mit allen anderen Vorhaben gar nichts zu tun haben. Der Lehrer hatte recht. Es geht nicht so gut ohne Plan. Es hilft, wenn man die Dinge erst durchdenkt und auf dem Reissbrett testet.
Das Vorgehen nach Lehrbuch hätte mich vor unzähligen Fehlern bewahrt. Vieles wäre einfacher gewesen. Weniger graue Haare, weniger Augenringe.
Aber im Raum neben mir würde keine Softeismaschine stehen, der Tisch daneben wäre leer, aufgeräumt. Stattdessen liegt ein Berg von bedruckten Stoffen, Entwürfen und Textilmuster darauf. Der Raum vier Stockwerke unter mir wäre noch immer ein verpufftes Lager. Keiner würde jemals an einem Samstag an unsere Türe klopfen, um die Nacht in diesem kleinen Raum, schwitzend, tanzend, glücklich, verbringen zu können. Auf meinem professionellen LinkedIn-Profil steht Softeis-Verkäufer und Interaction Designer. Bin ich ein Experte auf diesen Gebieten? Kaum – aber ich kann davon leben und ich bin mir absolut sicher, dass ich auch in zehn Jahren noch genug zu tun haben werde. Das ist meine „Sicherheit“. Vielleicht verkaufe ich dann kein Softeis mehr. Oder der Verkauf von Softeis ernährt eine sechsköpfige Familie. Wer weiss. Softeis-Verkäufer, Interaction Designer: Genau diese beiden Berufe fehlen in der (lückenhaften) fotografischen Dokumentation meiner Arbeitsplätze der letzten vier Wochen


Silvia Pillow Neretti hat mich in ihrem Projekt „The Agency of Precedents“ zu einem „Precedent“ erkoren: Ein Vorbild für die Unzufriedenen, ein Wegweiser für die „Arbeit der Zukunft“. Werde ich dieser Rolle gerecht?

Nein.
Aber es ist mir egal.

1. 19.02.2015: Konzepter
2. 19.02.2015: Texter
3. 20.02.2015: Projekt Manager
4. 20.02.2015: Berater
5. 21.02.2015: Key Account Manager
6. 23.02.2015: Design Thinker
7. 24.02.2015: Textil Designer
8. 24.02.2015: Lektor
9. 26.02.2015: Einkäufer
10. 27.02.2015: Fahrer
11. 01.03.2015: Softeis Produzent
12. 01.03.2015: Fahrer
13. 03.03.2015: Bauplaner
14. 04.03.2015: Maler
15. 05.03.2015: Designer
16. 05.03.2015: Gründer
17. 06.03.2015: Schreiner
18. 07.03.2015: Innenarchitekt
19. 08.03.2015: Elektriker
20. 09.03.2015: Maler
21. 10.03.2015: Sound Engineer
22. 10.03.2015: Zimmermann
23. 10.03.2015: Vorarbeiter
24. 11.03.2015: Bauarbeiter
25. 14.03.2015: Dekorateur
26. 14.03.2015: Techniker
27. 14.03.2015: Tutor

Von
Gioia Dal Molin & Yasmin Afschar

Die gegenwärtigen Vorstellungen über die Arbeit von Künstler/innen und Kulturschaffenden, die Idealisierung von kreativen Arbeitsprozessen oder autonomer Arbeitsorganisation sowie die damit einhergehende, in den 2000er Jahren zu verortende Entdeckung (und Beforschung) der sogenannten „Kreativwirtschaft“ müssen in einem erweiterten zeitlichen Kontext der Veränderungen im künstlerischen, ökonomischen und gesellschaftlichen Feld gedacht werden. Noch in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren wurde die künstlerische Arbeit mitunter im Rückgriff auf handwerkliche Arbeitsprozesse und auf spezifische, von der politischen Linken genährte Arbeitsideologien imaginiert. Im Nachgang von „1968“ skandierten insbesondere die einem politischen Realismus verpflichteten Künstlerinnen und Künstler eine Gleichsetzung von künstlerischer und handwerklicher Arbeit. Auch die seit Mitte der 1960er Jahre eingerichteten Atelierstipendien gründeten auf der Vorstellung der Notwendigkeit eines Arbeitsraumes, in dem die Künstlerinnen und Künstler in kontemplativer Versenkung mit Farbe, Pinsel oder Meissel Gemälde oder Skulpturen als konkrete handwerkliche Produkte fertigten. Dieser Imaginationen künstlerischer (und kreativer) Arbeit wurde jedoch noch in den 1960er Jahren mit einer kontrastierenden Folie begegnet. Mit der Verbreitung von Fluxus, Konzept- oder Performancekunst etablierte sich ein Werkbegriff, der die Dematerialisation und die Prozesshaftigkeit künstlerischer Arbeit ins Zentrum rückte. Der Idee oder dem Konzept wurde eine ebenbürtige Relevanz zugestanden, demgegenüber das materialisierte Endprodukt an Bedeutung verlor. Zeitgleich manifestierte sich eine zunehmende Ökonomisierung des künstlerischen Feldes. Die Etablierung des Marktes für zeitgenössische Kunst, die Zunahme von internationalen Kunstbiennalen und Kunstmessen oder die Initiierung von Künstlerranglisten als Mittel der suggerierten Vergleichbarkeit verweisen nicht nur auf das wachsende Interesse an Gegenwartskunst, sondern auch auf die steigende Relevanz von Kriterien wie Sichtbarkeit und Aufmerksamkeit. Im Zuge dieser Veränderungen näherten sich die idealtypischen Vorstellungen über künstlerische Arbeit immer mehr der Idee einer „immateriellen Arbeit“ (Maurizio Lazzarato) an. Diese erfordert nicht nur intellektuelle Fähigkeiten und manuelle Fertigkeiten, sondern auch die Bereitschaft zur Mobilität sowie den Willen, wechselnde soziale Kooperationen zu organisieren und Netzwerke zu etablieren. Die Künstlerinnen und Künstler erscheinen dabei als kosmopolitische, ja als nomadische „Semionauten“ (Nicolas Bourriaud), die sich in unternehmerischem Selbstmarketing, in Vernetzungs- und Organisationsaktivitäten üben. Bis in die 1970er Jahre erschien diese Art der selbstorganisierten, autonomen und oft projektbezogenen Kreativarbeit als Privileg von Künstlerinnen und Künstlern, die diese nicht selten selbst als Speerspitze gegen die kapitalistische Arbeitsorganisation ins Feld führten. In den 1980er Jahren manifestiert sich jedoch jene Umdeutung in Form jener kapitalistischen Indienstnahme, die die französischen Soziologen Luc Boltanski und Ève Chiapello in 'Der neue Geist des Kapitalismus' (dt. 2003) beschreiben. Im Rahmen der dominierenden postfordistischen Arbeitsethik mutiert der autonome, kreative und mobile Kunstschaffende zum idealtypischen Vorbild für die Organisation von Arbeit und Arbeitskräften. Die dadurch entstehende Akzeptanz, ja die Allgemeingültigkeit solcher Arbeitsstrategien hat nicht nur Auswirkungen auf die Arbeitswelt an sich, sondern setzt gerade auch die Kunst- und Kulturschaffenden unter Druck. Die von ihnen einst propagierten Arbeitsweisen werden heute als selbstverständlich vorausgesetzt. Nicht nur die Kunst- und Kulturförderung, sondern auch die Mechanismen jener Arbeitsfelder, in denen die Produktion oder die Verbreitung kultureller Güter und Dienstleistungen generiert wird und die gerne unter dem Begriff der „Kreativwirtschaft“ gefasst werden, antizipieren die kreative, mobile und dauerverfügbare Arbeitnehmerin oder den autonomen, ungebundenen Künstler. Dabei verdecken die hochgehaltenen Losungen von Kreativität und Autonomie nicht selten die prekären Arbeitsbedingungen. Diese Verschiebungen sind gekoppelt an eine wachsende Dominanz ökonomischer Deutungshoheiten. Die Fragen nach wirtschaftlicher Verwertbarkeit künstlerischer oder kultureller Arbeit bestimmen nicht nur den öffentlichen Diskurs, sondern etablieren gegenwärtig auch im Bereich der Kulturpolitik und der Förderung. Die im November 2014 vom Bundesrat verabschiedete zweite Kulturbotschaft, die die kulturpolitischen Schwerpunkte der Schweiz für die Jahre von 2016 bis 2019 definiert, fokussiert stark auf die als expansionsfähig klassifizierten Bereiche Design, Film und digitale Medien und definiert Modelle der Zusammenarbeit zwischen Kultur und Wirtschaft. Die letztlich vagen Begriffe der „Kreation“ und der „Innovation“ fungieren dabei als sprachliche und ideelle Aufhänger für die Begründung neuer Förderkonzepte. Angesichts dieser Entwicklungen plädieren wir für eine gesteigerte Sensibilität in der gegenwärtigen Debatte um künstlerische und kulturelle Arbeit. Die anhaltende Propagierung kreativer, kollaborativer oder in irgendeiner Form subversiver Arbeitsstrategien und die gleichzeitige Frage nach der Wertigkeit solcher Arbeit zementiert einen eindeutig konnotieren Sprachgebrauch und orientiert sich an den vorherrschenden ökonomischen Deutungshoheiten. Die Einforderung von Räumen und finanziellen Mitteln für dezidiert nicht kommerzielle Initiativen, die abseits der Kategorien von konkreter Verwertbarkeit funktionieren und die nicht zwingend produkt- oder zielgerichtetes, sondern mitunter auch uneindeutiges Arbeiten forcieren, das sich in einer anderen, vielleicht langsameren oder auch schnelleren Zeitlichkeit verortet, geht dabei mitunter vergessen.

by
Anna Puigjaner and Guillermo López from MAIO

http://www.maio-maio.com/

by
Heini Lehtinen

Download pdf

A while ago, I briefly spoke to a fellow passenger on a train somewhere between St. Étienne, France, and Zürich, Switzerland. Somewhere on the borders of France, Switzerland and Germany, the guy told me he was a freelancer working as a business analyst for a big medical company. He was a freelancer just like me, travelling and working across Europe. Just that…knowing anything about working for the big pharma, I didn’t even dare to think how much he earned, let alone I dared to ask. Nor did I want to think how would that relate to my own earnings at that point.

And I sure know why. The big pharma makes big bucks. The creative industries…don’t, and seldom do the bucks flow to freelancers of the industry – trickle, at best. It is the industry where young people aspire to work in, the industry in which workers thrive to

express themselves

, the industry and lifestyle of

dreamers.

The industry in which people work

out of passion.

The industry in which work itself is more important than its monetary value, and an industry in which workers are offered

visibility, connections

and

freedom to express

as reward for work done. It’s

LALALABOUR.

Correct?

Not really, not even if we wanted to believe it. Not even if we have been told our entire working lives that the creative industries make so little money that it’s our choice if we want to work in the industry that cannot pay decently.

In Europe, the creative industries both make more revenue than the big pharma and employ more – especially under-30s. The creative and cultural industries revenue 535.9 billion euro a year, and are the third largest employer after construction sector and food and beverage service sector – restaurants and bars.

The economic effect of the creative industries in the EU was studied for the first time in 2014, and the report came out at the end of the year. Out of the total revenue, 127.6 billion euro comes from visual arts, including design, photography and museums, for instance; 93 billion euro from advertising, 90 billion from TV, 36.3 billion from books, 36.2 billion from architecture, 31.9 billion from performing arts, and so on. [1]
Still, as the report states, ‘despite the prominence of their output in our daily lives, the creative industries have long played the role of the last-minute winner in an economy where manufacturing, business services and the public sector capture the limelight.’

Touché.

Thinking that the creative industries are somehow less prominent than other sectors seems also very much to penetrate the creative industry itself. Reasons for entering the industry are the aforementioned self-expression and freedom, following one’s dreams, and often also working independently and being in charge of one’s own work and time. In reality, that dream is often faced by restrictions of making a living financially.

Often, when it comes to financial boundaries of independent creative work, the reasons are real and tangible. Budgets are small, and funding is given to materials, spaces or travelling for a project instead of paying the creative person who conducts the project. Customers or the audience don’t want to pay for the outcomes of creative work, and work is asked for free. Especially the independent creative practitioners live in a constant activism of working on some paid projects and working on personal or collaborative non-paid projects while proposing, pitching and applying for the next ones. And nothing there – that is a part of a life of an entrepreneur.

The so-called creative industry is far from homogeneous, and the conditions of work differ similarly. In the aforementioned study, the cultural and creative industries (CCI’s) are categorized in 11 sectors: advertising, architecture, books, newspapers, music, performing arts, TV, film, radio, video games and visual arts. The scale is wide, and it embraces creative functions from writing to television programming and distribution, from design to developers and publishers of video games and from advertising agencies to performing arts and supporting activities and venues; from authors to specialized book stores, libraries and newspaper and periodical publishing agency to composers and TV music channels.

Those working as employees in one of the more commercial sub-sectors of the creative industry are in a very different position from those working as independent practitioners. An independent artist is often very different from someone working in advertising. A creative mind educated to support commercial means and working for a big company earns income just as any other employee working in other jobs in the same company or other.

However, even in the commercial branches of the industry, there often is no such thing as entry-level salary, unlike in many other sectors. The way into creative jobs the most often goes through unpaid internships or personal, unpaid projects even after finishing higher-level education. Even after unpaid internships, employment, or making a living as an independent creative, is far from guaranteed.Partial reason of this precarity of creative work is structural and rises from within the creative practitioners. The creative class typically cherishes the idea of the ‘precarious creative class’ or ‘the poor and precarious artist.’ Precarity of creative class is theoretized and discussed within the creative practitioners, especially within the intellectuals, academics and independent practitioners, with steady, almost unquestionable consensus.

From a psychological point of view, that unanimous humming becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: dwelling in thoughts of precarity keeps one precarious. Creative workers are asking each other to work for free. They sell their work too cheap. There is always someone wanting to do the job cheaper or even for free.

Without the drive of a human being, the creator, there would be no creative work. Even though robots are already almost able to diagnose diseases and write finance and sports articles that are almost indistinguishable from those written by a human, a human being and one’s cognitive and emotional intelligence is the most important and valuable resource of creative work.[2] Why is it, then, that the most important asset of creative work is so poorly appreciated

within

the creative class itself that the ‘precarious creatives’ are willing to pay a monetary price for physical materials for a project, but do not consider themselves as an immaterial resource of the project, and thus worth being paid for?

Having said that, it goes without saying that the value of creative work is not only monetary. Everything but.

In a study of psychological aspects of creativity [3], inventor Jacob Rabinow, among many other interviewees, points out that he doesn’t start working with the idea of ‘what will make money.’ He remarks that money is important, but continues by saying that ‘if I have to trade between what’s fun for me and what’s money-making, I’ll take what’s fun.”

If someone is solely motivated by monetary value of work – becoming rich and famous – one will be driven by doing what is necessary for the goal instead of venturing beyond the boundaries of what is already known, which is one of the key points of creative work. What is common to creative persons and their work is that they love what they do, and they love the process despite the outcome, be the outcome tangible or monetary [3].

Creative work – working on one’s own terms and on issues that are purposeful for oneself – also is a driver of wellbeing in both an individual and societal level, considering that recent studies show that strong sense of purpose in one’s life prevents depression, obesity, insomnia, Alzheimer’s disease, and heart attacks. It is also a driver for longer life4. The value of creative work – despite it having a big economic value on a European level – is thus far from only monetary.

What is required for one being able to conduct creative work, then? The ideal requirements of the settings of inducing creative work cannot totally be defined, but there is some evidence of what supports working creatively.

A creative person – as any other person for that matter – lives and works in a macro-environment consisting of the society, external attitudes, stimuli and financial support coming from the environment in which one lives. There is only so much that an individual can affect the macro-environment, and the change in the attitudes or support within which one lives and works, for instance, may not be impossible, but slow.

One’s micro-environment is the immediate environment in which one works in: immediate external surroundings, one’s personal structures and internal attitudes. It consists of the environment, activities and surroundings that a person has a possibility to shape and control according to one’s own preferences to achieve a feeling of balance in both space and time.

That personal feeling of control and balance of one’s life and surroundings is a necessary precondition for creative work. The balance of creative work is both rarely being boring and rarely being out of control, and a sense of structure frees psychic energy from survival to self-expression and enables focusing on creative work [4]. What control and structure means in one’s life and work on a subjective level, however, varies tremendously. Some are at their most creative in a seemingly uncontrolled, chaotic environment, but an obsessively controlled personality can be just as creative as the most chaotic one. But, it is a myth that to be creative one needs to live without or with very little control in one’s life. It is but a matter of different strategies.

Subjective sense of control and structure is not necessarily directly related to monetary value of work or to one’s earnings. However, it does aid in creating a structure in one’s life, as it is basically not possible to live without money in today’s Western society. A person being able to live without any money or to dwell for free is an exception, and for many it is only meant to be a temporary solution. Idealism cannot be eaten nor it covers physically.

In November 2014, I attended a lecture by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling in Amsterdam. In a provocative speech titled ‘Whatever Happens to Musicians Happens to Everybody,’ he used the music industry to observe the functioning mechanisms of the creative industries as a whole.

In his talk, Sterling ran through possibilities of funding for musicians, and stated that giving grants to talented musicians is not a solution because any sum of money won’t make a musician more creative. However, he brought up a new ideal for aspiring musicians: singer, model and former first lady of France, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

Whereas Bruni-Sarkozy might not be the most obvious ideal for the creative practitioners, she is

the

example of modern European culture for Sterling. She makes music, sells well and, according to Sterling, donates all her royalties to charity because she doesn’t want to make music for money, but just to participate as a musician. In this sense, she doesn’t only make a living for herself, but also shares the wealth to others [5].

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, however, is well off even without the royalties, and it’s a matter of preference whether one likes her music or not. Just as well we as she should be the new ideal for the creative class, we could speak of actor Leonardo DiCaprio, hip hop artist and producer Russell Simmons or filmmaker Isaac Julien as the new ideals. Leonardo DiCaprio spends his millions on environmental and sustainability issues through Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. Russell Simmons directs his money to the very grassroots young artists and kids through his Rush Philantropic Arts Foundation. Filmmaker Isaac Julien speaks of social, racial and gender issues through his works – and, in his latest work,

Playtime

(2013), criticizes the very same big money art world he himself is a part of.

None of them would have succeeded in the first place without their creative talent. Their creative talent hasn’t, in general, decreased because of the earned wealth, but now they are also able to enable opportunities for aspiring young creatives, environmental protection or to pay attention to inequalities of the society through their work that reaches thousands, if not millions of people. Sterling might be correct in saying that any sum of money won’t make a musician more creative, but also the other way around – money does not need to make a creative any less creative, either.

Earning millions might enable enabling others. Even though we would put millions aside, in the society we are living in, being paid for one’s work enables to create the micro-environment one thrives in – having an apartment, food and not needing to worry about survival.

What would happen, if the creative class would make an attitude shift from ‘precarious creative class’ to ‘wealthy creative class,’ for instance? Someone working in financing would unlikely be asked to work for free – why is it ok within the creative work to ask people to work for free, and get someone to get the work done unpaid or underpaid?

If the creative class would change their own attitude towards monetary value of their work, they would refuse unpaid or poorly paid work, start appreciating their own work and intellectual and artistic property and demand more appreciation and monetary value also from their clients and stakeholders – and not only for the projects, but also for their own work. Appreciating one’s own work – seeing it also worth monetary value – would also eventually shift the perception of clients and funding parties towards the value of creative work.

If a change is wanted, the attitude shift needs to start from within the creative class and from self-perception of each creative practitioner.

An attitude shift, however, is more easily said that done. A community or a collective – let alone all the independent creative practitioners as a ‘creative class’ – won’t change at once.

As Martin Willi,a Zürich-based psychotherapist and owner of Sunday Inventory gallery says, collectives often have a certain point of view, and it is not easy to break out of that perspective.
“In the end, it is a question of orientation – who do I want to be and who do I want to identify with,” he says. “It’s always one or two individuals starting to change their point of view and starting to influence the whole collective.”

“The group doesn’t change as a group. It’s always an individual or two who have the courage to do it in a different way. And then – maybe – the collective can change. But, often, those one or two individuals go out of the collective.”

As Willi points out, it is a question of protection. Through strong common self-perception and preconceptions, an individual or a community protects oneself from exposing oneself to new situations and to possible struggles and disappointments brought by the new situation [6]. The European Commission considers the creative industries as a sector with a bright future. According to the aforementioned study on measuring the economics of the creative industry in the EU, the sector is seen as a part of a solution to draw Europe out of the serious economic, social and identity crisis.

From this point of view, wouldn’t it be time to leave the ‘precarious creative class’ behind in the self-perception of the creative practitioners, too, and to expose ourselves to new perception of the creative class?

The attitude shift might happen one creative practitioner at the time, but the shift from within can make a significant impact on the industry and to each individual working in it. In total, there are 7 million Europeans working for the creative industries directly or indirectly. That would mean many individual attitude shifts, but the shifts could make a big impact, even though the change would be slow.

In reflection to that, legendary designer Bruno Munari’s words [7] from 1966 are still – or again – very up to date:

“Anyone working in the field of design has a hard task ahead of him: to clear his neighbour’s mind of all preconceived notions of art and artists, notions picked up at schools where they condition you to think one way for the whole of your life, without stopping to think that life changes – and today more rapidly than ever. It is therefore up to us designers to make known our working methods in clear and simple terms, the methods we think are the truest [and] the most up-to-date...”

Only this time, our closest neighbours may need to be our neighbours in practice, fellow designers, artists and creatives, and the aim – first of all – to clear our own minds of preconceived notions of creative work and creative industries.

Maybe creative work isn’t such

Lalalabour

– work of dreams but of little reality – after all. •

1. GESAC/EY 2014. Creating Growth. Measuring Cultural and Creative Markets in the EU. [Report.] December 2014. (Link.) (March 16, 2015.)
   
2. Chapman, Jake 2014. Robots Get New Jobs. [Article.] Wired World in 2015. Wired UK, December 2014.
   Goldstein, Andrew M. 2014. Hip-Hop Impresario Russell Simmons on Expanding Art’s Possibilities Beyond the Art World. Artspace. July 16, 2014.
   
3. Csikzentmihalyi, Mihaly 2013/1996. Creativity. The Psychology of Discovery and Invention. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, USA.
   
4. Strecher, Victor J. 2014. The Search for Purpose Begins. [Article.] Wired World in 2015. Wired UK, December 2014.
   
5. Sterling, Bruce 2014. MyCreativity Sweatshop. Institute of Network Cultures. November 20, 2014. Amsterdam. networkcultures.org/mycreativity/2014/12/03/whatever-happens-to-musicians-happens-to-everybody-by-bruce-sterling (March 15, 2015).
   
6. Willi, Martin 2015. Interview. Zürich, Switzerland.
   
7. Munari, Bruno 1966/2008. Design as Art. Clays Ltd: UK.

by
Brave New Alps & Caterina Giuliani

• do what you desire
• develop a low-cost practice
• work towards the collective management of basic material resources
• experiment with notions of collectivity and efficiency
• create virtuous and sustainable cycles, both in work and life
• put care into relations with others
• re-invent rules and words
• embrace a perpetual becoming
• have the courage to end an experiment (and to restart it)
• take a position and act from it
• matter to whomever matters to you
• self-define objectives, priorities, needs and desires
• continue to question what you do and think
• exit the conventional circuits of design

* This manifesto is a translated and edited version of collective notes taken during a nomadic

Precarity Pilot workshops held in Lecce (Italy) in July 2014. The workshops are linked to the online platform http://precaritypilot.net/ and explore how designers can undo precarious working conditions, while at the same time making more space for socially and politically engaged practice. Precarity Pilot is a research project by Brave New Alps and Caterina Giuliani.

new
content
added on

07.05

Click

_

Lodovica Guarnieri (LG), Zeno Franchini (ZF), Jonas Staal (JS),
Vera Sacchetti (VS) and Juan Palencia (JP)

Intro - the DEB/T

The way we work is determined by the technology we use and vice versa.While information technologies have been incredibly effective on an horizontal dimension for spreading, sharing, gathering informations and people, we image to build an institution based on the same structure, contradictions and potentials on offer by distributed architectures. We aim to envision the possibilities beyond the ideal of individual autonomy, looking at the community we create through our working connections and choices which makes us interdependent on our “peers”.Starting from current state of unstable

creative professions

, we elaborate a vision for a present/future institution able to respond to contemporary challenges. The DEB/T is the place that embodies our investment in the common ideal of self-fulfillment: not any more dependent or independent workers, but interdependent to all the other professionals that share our conditions. What is the currency we get in our unpaid hours? Aren’t we already accepting informal non monetary payments? Which kind of investment fund are we contributing through our volunteer activities and how it could be reframed?

Lingua Franca - a scenario on present future professions

Our condition of work comes from centuries of struggle and negotiation; nowadays the shift in our behaviour and perception is defined by technologies, these becomes the main battlefield for new rights and value production. Looking at Europe as a geographical space of mobility of people, informations and goods, a new kind of citizenship emerges, its identity is not defined anymore by EU institutions our bound to Shengen territory. Classical institution, due to the incapability to respond to this economical shift, have a hard time to represent who is forced in precarious working conditions.We necessarily belong to different ideologies; the uncertainty in social relations represents a unifying element for a whole generation.Similarly, the technologies we use in our daily life become our Lingua Franca: internet, digital devices, low-cost flights, mobility infrastructures and other

non-places

influence our conception of citizenship and community.

Black market of creatives

The present institutional, economical and technological realm make us interpret Europe as divided in generations rather than national states.Our project aims to create a hypothetical representative institution for European stateless citizenship. Looking at young Europeans, they constitute a transnational stateless state of people moving and investing their resources (education, knowledge, affects, money, job and so on...) not primarily for an economical return, but based on an ideal of self-realization that it’s not anymore formalized by classical institutions. This defines a generation of

spontaneous

workers, self-entrepreneurs, for whom the value of their activity finds expression in the involvement of others. In this realm, investment and profit take shape in belonging to the community one participates to. Individual’s skills and shared projects constitute the new economical exchange. What results from work fulfils with a

wage

and constitutes a common which spreads beyond nations.

Identification Tool - each passport works as a wi-fi router, a device which transforms every passport holder in the node of an alternative network

This arising awareness of the individual’s potential in building a common, is perpetuated with a user-generated principle. Internet, in its immaterial and material structures, becomes the

place

where decentralized communities could be shaped. Taking the creative industries as emblems of current paradoxes and ideals, we aim to problematize the new dominant values of our culture, a revolution which has barely been registered and which affects private and professional life.

Decentralized European Bank / of Trust

In order to formalize this reality, we create a digital and material institution called Decentralized European Bank / of Trust (DEB/T), a parody and hyperrealistic version of banking for the creative world, which is meant to function according to the interest of the users. Through this bank, voluntary work could acquire value in the creation of stateless states and its alternative forms. The DEB/T is thought to be both a

place

and a

tool

which objectifies the value of voluntary work exchanges, through the constitution of different statal forms (peer-to-peer cultural market, passports working as routers, algoithmic and url currency... ), becoming itself a stateless block-chain bank.

Printed Barter Coin and Trust Coin. They are the currency representing the result of work interactions and the exchange of resources in the bank. The texture of both is obtained from the qrcode of the url of the transaction, making the banknote relate to the specific barter and making it trackable

fig 1: Digital wallet - it permits the accomulation of the Trust pension Fund and the overview of the personal activities. It works as a printer of the Trust and Barter Coins

fig 2: Appreciation Card - feedback device: in its analogic version the appreciation card works via RFI reader, as a credit card for emotional connection with a project. The appreciation is immediately digitalized in Coins which are gained by the members taking part in the barter and in a share of the value of the project, gained by who appreciates

Backed by an algorithmic economical system, the interface transforms the barters of resources (immaterial and material) and appreciations of something into common profit, represented by the Barter and Trust Coins. This indeed portrays a system of valorization already in place in social networks.
Using prompt-tools and bureaucratic devices, the DEB/T frames precarious work debate in a propositive way, which exile from the detached perspectives to embrace the daily-life problematics of ordinary precarious workers. Inserted into the European context and discourse, the project consciously inquiries the present technological, economical and behavioural realm, working as temporary

camp

to condense different perspective and re-discuss professions in a framework which do not aim to be nostalgic about a previous social status, but claims an informal and decentralized infrastructure which will secure our future necessities.




Work, social deal and the changing concept of the State

JS: Dears,
Thank you for the very interesting text -- a "Decentralized European Bank" sounds as a great platform for thought and artistic practice, and the Syriza win in Greece might make the urgency of exploring such a structure of counter representation/exchange more urgent than ever.

The concept of the stateless state is of course of my personal concern as well, as my organization, the New World Summit, last September organized the Stateless State conference in the Royal Flemish Theater of Brussels, with 17 representatives of unrecognized states worldwide as speakers. See the program booklet here: https://newworldsummit.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Program-New-World-Summit-Brussels.pdf

Concerning the

valuta

of the bank, I do have some questions. You seem to articulate the alternative to monetary value specifically in the form of labor performed by the creative class (there is an equivalent in the Time Bank project by e-flux, which is also based on an economy of exchange). The issue of course is that of an unequal power relation between the stateless migrant and the stateless citizen. That is to say: the latter might be threatened with precarity, austerity etc, but is still

documented,

which still is a status of minor privilege compared to the undocumented migrants that are roaming Europe today. Further, the traditional understanding of the state also includes members that are

not productive

at all, because of handicaps, sickness, mental disorders etc. In other words: a class that has no "creative capital" that anyone wishes to exchange with them. The idea of cultural capital as basic valuta risks, in that sense, of creating another elite structure between those with the status and ability of providing wanted services, and those who are not capable or do not have the means to provide such service.

LG: We identify the creative class as an example of a productive system backed by a

different exchange and gain

model and especially formalized by different means of representation for the value of work.
Indeed the barter/share of skills and resources, the emotional connection and involvment, the appreciation, which are already present in the process of work (but not anymore represented by money) are imagined as THE currency of this system. So with our project we try to explore how it could be to make it function as a proper economical system (which then could be applied to other contexts too).

ZF: The

Valuta

is meant to be related to the

appreciation

and as well as the assets part of the exchange. What is not convincing me about the time/bank is that, it takes time as general equivalent, whereas i don’t think work should be related to time at all but to the result of it.
Especially talking about cultural production, the amount of time that it takes you to reach a level of professionality should be counted as well (free-time is working time for many of us). We consider the

appreciation

is backing the value of your barter in a similar way of how it happens in social media (more appreciation = more value) as also a way to portray what’s already in place.

LG: The technological development and its diffusion brought to the blurring of the limits between private and working life and consequently to the deregulation of the relation between time and value in the context of work. The old architectures which formalized work, as time-value relation, such as the office architecture, the pension fund, the taxes and the social deal all these elements structured, cannot be anymore applied to our condition and way of working.

LG: Nevertheless the main issue we met in the process was about treating feelings as something economical and measurable; indeed if we talk about emotions in terms of what legitimizes and represents the value of work, the risk is to end up transforming feelings in commodities, something concrete to be exchanged. So we tried to stay in the digital realm, which has a different materiality. Maybe the mistake we did was in the end to look for a physical representation in the Trust and Barter Coins, while it should maybe not even been a coin, but a completely different kind of measure, more related to a specific context and to the resources that can be found there.

ZF: I completely agree with Jonas on the issue of power relation between stateless migrant and stateless citizens, in our case though we are taking some assumptions as well to start addressing it. Talking about migrants and not

productive individuals

would be the next step to discuss about our privileged position and the means we use (such as crowd funding) are much more directed towards positivist, flat views of the world. We want to start from our privileged position to discuss right and duties that are taking shape in decentralized means of communication as well as in european citizenship.

LG: I think we don’t have to talk about citizens and state in the same way as we had been used to do until now. For me the issue of migrants is something even too far from the embrional question we posed. Being denied work means a denyal of citizenship, as we are taken away the tool used to enter in a bigger societal structure which is the one represented by the nation-state. In this case it’s not a matter of being documented. To state that we are

stateless

is of course a provocation, but it is good to express our condition as we don’t belong to any formalized state as active citizens, and participants to the creation of a formalized common, but still an informal one.


The algorithmic European community

“Algorithmic rules has been associated to new forms of power, that reside in the networks, computers, information and data rather than being exerted from above by legitimate institutions.”

Portrait - Intimacy mediated by screens

VS-JP: We very much like that you root your reflection in a European context, which allows to focus the reflection and make it more targeted. However, it seems sometimes that you mix huge topics when establishing your premise. We think this is already quite a complicated topic so it would maybe be interesting to zoom in on the two/three complex issues at hand, and not veer into tangents that make the premises be more complex than they need to be.

ZF: It could be dispervise as a process, as it is in fact empirical in the way we articulate these ideas starting from our daily condition. We try to talk about complex issues which are mostly dismissed as too big to be faced, or approached with a complete refusal. Trying to take a different premise and building on that standpoint a reality, is an interesting way to unveil existing mechanism and their reason of existence.
The capitalist side of share economy, the value of discussion about work as method of creation, the wellbeing of our nation-states and the limit of our borderless europe are some of the issues which through the network created by this discussion could be investigated in a more pragmatic way.

VS-JP: Technology and the internet seem to be fundamental pillars in which you base your reflection, and which lead to this stateless idea you develop in the text. Can technology be a more present part of the project? From our earlier conversation it seemed it wouldn't be as much as it seems to be in this finalised version of the abstract.
ZF: The understanding of technology in it’s two sides is fundamental for our statement: on one side you have the diffusion and decentralization of knowledge and informations, on the other you have a capillar structure that when directed by few points risks to become the opposite of freedom. The use we make of it is more in the language than in the tools for reason of time, nevertheless i think it needs to reach a point of implementation in reality, as this is what networks allows us to do.

LG: The mechanism of the DEB/T questions already existing dynamics through which profit is made from users interactions (think about the like economy), but instead of directing it on centralized networks, it makes a detournment in their function, distributing the profit back to it’s citizens.

VS-JP: While you want to create a physical incarnation of your bank, you constantly refer that many of these transactions happens merely online.

LG: We think that the digital can embody a different idea of the materiality of work. We started from the idea that the exchange and sharing of resources which structure creative work production doesn’t find anymore representation in money, but in gaining ethereal elements like trust, appreciation and personal involvmen from otherst. These are elements which connect people in a kind of parallel community where to the emotional element responds a material or immaterial one, constituted by resources, spaces, handshakes, ideas and so on (depending on each case and context). We were looking for an element which could position itself between the emotional element and the concrete one, a sort of filter, translator of the first into the latter. So we thought about the algorithm as a machine able to translate an interaction, an emotion into something as a currency, representative of the value of activities, time, knowledge, work.

VS-JP: To make these processes visible, do you really need to create a physical counterpart to a mostly digital phenomenon? Case in point, when you state "Internet, in its immaterial and material structures, becomes the place where decentralised communities could be shaped." Could it be that it becomes too gimmicky?

LG: I think we used the digital as a media to make visible the immaterial and material exchanges which happen in the working realm we talk about. So we didn’t actually take a digital phenomenon and made it physical, but we took an informal immaterial and material exchange and we used the digital as a way to give it a symbolic representation. Digital tools would enable everyone to create the currency through their actions and interactions so to establish the Decentralized European Bank we are talking about. What i started to question is more about the dimension of locality. As a decentralized bank, in my view, this institution should be related to specific distributed geographical and material contexts.

ZF: I think challenging the material side of something that is mostly seen in its immateriality is fundamental, being it internet or money as well. I think digital interactions exists always as counterpart of phsical interaction and they develop a phisical world which is a limbo between the two. Materializing the virtual part is the frist step in order to reframe it, as it is fancyful to think that it might be enough. On the other part new algorithms need an expertise and extremely clear premises to replace the previous ones, which are still functioning well, but in a critical direction.

by
Katja Praznik

by
dpr-barcelona
(Ethel Baraona Pohl, César Reyes Nájera)

RELATED ARTICLE

http://www.dpr-barcelona.com/

And suddenly the money vanished from our pockets. We fiercely and enthusiastically posed ourselves to find creative ways to raise it. The promise of viral digital enthusiasm backing up our creations rapidly revealed as a lottery available to few ones. Then we started sharing our things in order to have some little income for that. By doing so we helped to create a new elite that in turn, rarely share their things with us.

The moment came when people realised that, in reality, crisis is a form of govern and that is inherent consequence of Capitalism

modus operandi.

While growth remained as the absolute priority for corporations and political agendas we undeceived assisted to the truth of seeing or inner believes moulder in front of our eyes into the promises of smart cities and unlimited data dictating our wishes to come.

This brief story of sharing poses on the table some of the topics discussed in the Third Cycle of Think-Space, promoted by Zagreb Society of Architects. Challenged by the question if cities were able to evolve without money, we explored possible scenarios for a design or architectural practice manipulating the constraints and conditioning of economical forces. Knowing the limitations of such generic proposal we envisioned three fields of exploration: Territories, Culture-Society and Environment, with the aim to search for possible answers that can give a different understanding about money, labour, and architecture; we questioned if art and architecture can help to envision new economic models.

This search had the invaluable help and experience of David Garcia (Territories), Pedro Gadanho (Culture and Society) and Keller Easterling (Environment); three contrasted and diverse profiles which made the search for answers a thought provoking process. As a mean to trigger discussion a Call for Papers explored the search for answers of a discipline situated in the intersection of money and space.

The following projects show some of the proposals presented to the competition. They are not necessarily the winning entries, but somehow show the kind of strategies and proposals posed on discussion during the cycle.

New trade Goods
The first quest for answer was located very close to the Magnetic North in the Arctic lands (From Greenland to Iceland, via Svalvard). The intention was to face proposals with unknown and radical weather conditions, to work in territories where the activity of human being is currently under definition. The design proposals addressed current economic and territorial challenges in Arctic Lands.

Beluga Autopsy. Who Owns the Arctic? Owen Wells

Who owns the Arctic by Owen Wells

proposes three illicit, fictional money making schemes specifically designed for the unique environmental and political composition of the Arctic regions. These schemes enable local communities to compete in the financial environment of the arctic by viewing conflict and greed as another of the regions resources. They encourage the manipulation of mineral speculation, and systems of insurance and finance to support local communities through immoral behaviour. As an example Wells suggest a mineral rush which is initiated through the poisoning of beluga whales with lithium by fishermen working in the Barents Sea. The repetition of this activity would provide the authorities on the island with evidence that a lucrative mineral deposit potentially exists in the waters around the archipelago. Income could be generated legitimately through the sale of infrastructure, or illegally through insider trading on the stock of mineral exploration companies.

A second strategy focuses in Baffin Bay, where Icebergs calved from Greenland’s Petermann glacier start their journey into the north Atlantic. A small special tool uses resonance frequency to break the icebergs in smaller pieces to evade the coastguard’s radar and damage heavy infrastructure, or cause spills. Money is made through the purchase of put options in the insurance companies or energy companies potentially affected by the spill. The third strategy poses the sequestration of king crab population by means of special crab pots to relocate in Beaufort Sea. A press leak initiate a confrontation between the American and Canadian fishing fleets and make money through buying put options in crabbing companies. [1]

Iceberg Resonator Device. Who Owns the Arctic? Owen Wells

King Crab Dispute Region. Who Owns the Arctic? Owen Wells

The strategies proposed by Wells might be labeled as indecent, but are not so different to some of the manoeuvres carried out by corporations to manipulate, induce changes or control resources in strategic locations, with scarce considerations on the lives of affected population, apart from rhetorically referring them as

collateral damages.

The power within this proposal relies in its ability to raise questions and find similarities between current affairs in environments, ecology, politics and business in other regions of the world.

Revert your cultural values!
After exploring the edgelands, or quest moved to the city. Animated by recent experience in extreme territories, the intention was to turn our head and ideas to the city with the eyes of an explorer, experiencing the dynamics of the city with the fresh view and curiosity of a Middle Ages navigator or a space traveler. The second round of ideas searched conceptual strategies and architectural expressions that may represent a new space for cultural exchange that can be built based on new understandings of money. Such proposals had to be design-based and conceived for a location chosen by participants.

Clubland of the FX Beauties. Christine Bjerke

The project Clubland of the FX Beauties by Christine Bjerke

poses an alternative economy and feminization of the existing market, both working with and against it. A ‘world’ which is unregulated and therefore can be argued to play on the notion of the speculative, both within the whole system as well as among the traders. From their personal domestic settings the women gamble money through the intertwined and ‘floating world’ of the FOREX web, outplaying the historical idea of the money market as being controlled purely by the male.[2]

Trading map of the site, St. James. Clubland of the FX Beauties. Christine Bjerke

Clubland of the FX Beauties, located in the space between the gentlemen’s clubs of the so called ‘club-land’, St. James in London. Christine Bjerke

The fictional women’s club at the heart of Clubland of the Fx Beauties entails both a cautionary tale suggesting the collapse of the financial markets, and a gender critique. Conversely, its architectural expression arises as an operation of insertion and deconstruction that, while embodying those fictional aims, also questions existing building typologies, and the symbolic role of interstitial spaces in defining a given urban identity. More than offering an alternative on the contribution of current money systems to the construction of architecture, the resulting proposal instead becomes an interesting attempt to use design thinking so as to probe the relationships between economy, gender and their spatial imprints in the city.

Nature as an artificial construction
Considering that, for architects, building an envelope is almost the only answer to any problem. Such activity contributes to the impact of human activity in the environment and often is determined by geopolitical disputes for the availability and control of basic resources. The third round of proposals explored possible consequences for the environment to slow down and even reverse building activity, and how this quest could be able to generate means of exchange for practitioners. It was also useful to test different understandings of nature, and the role of information to shape matter and build new landscapes; overpassing romanticized visions of virgin and bucolic territories.

Subtraction Coin. Inverting the Periphery. Ryan J. King

Inverting the Periphery by Ryan J. King proposes the use of a commodity-backed crypto currency named

‘Subtraction Coin’. Focused to serve the influx of immigrants to informal arrival slums in Middle East cities. This exchange tool is designed for the Boulaq El Dakrour trading market of collection, transportation and transaction of glass, plastic, stone and metals. The informal neighborhood of Boulaq al Dakrour, on the outskirts of Cairo, is known for its rich history of trading materials and generating internal value. Based in bitcoin protocol, the power of Subtraction Coin comes from the network and the intelligence, integrity, and passion of all the people working to build a more enjoyable place of people, and profits. While bitcoin applied this logic to currency, numerous forks of the protocol allow for distributed autonomous corporations to conduct other kind of services. More than a means of tracing material exchange, Subtraction Coin allows holders to also send anonymous votes through the system to affect the flow of material towards desired urban projects. This characteristic allows direct participation in urban change. [3]

King’s proposal blatantly moves a local currency to a level of global exchange transactions. It allows common people to be directly benefited from trades in open market often restricted to financial managers who doesn’t seem to have a clear idea of the dynamics operating within the system. He uses a clever narrative supported by mass and specialized media, but also by the power of informal communication, through word of mouth and rumors, to move the information from specialized financial markets to directly affect the spatial conditions of the urban ground.

Second Media - Ourselves mediated by screens and networks. Inverting the Periphery. Ryan J. King

In search of new welfare Condition
When thinking on the real meaning of a welfare condition, where welfare has been based on the guaranteed income of working classes accompanied by a system of social services, it is evident that we can't no longer think about this condition in the basis of the capitalist system we're living in. The representation of capitalism is that one of paper money, no matter on which currency one thinks, or in which bank you'll find it. Our values are defined by this currency: the value of our knowledge, of our time, of our work.

If we are confronted to the idea of using a human emotion as a currency, as some of the projects described above do, our mental frameworks tremble, and our responses are diffuse and vague, wondering who will want to exchange any kind of good for greed, envy or fear. But at the same time, with the constant flows of information, hyperconnectivity, and digital paranoia, we are slowly accepting changes in our trade and funding schemes. Open Source networks, free access to information and knowledge, working collaborative structures, D.I.Y. alternatives, among others, are part of the social imaginary nowadays. But there is also a need to demystify these practices, because very often, they’re are also based on the commodification of the

homo laborans,

referring to the prioritization of the economic which has attended the rise of capitalism, as Arendt pointed on

The Human Condition.

After this quest we were able to see that we, as architects and designers, have little to do in conforming the forces that create the crisis conditions, and also can do little in reversing its effects. We can envision and propose different space management possibilities, and even suggest challenging and appealing fields of exploration. We are able to point elegantly to the power structures that construct the field of action of Capitalism, and even identify the multiple faces it shows to adapt to specific site conditions. This identification could be a useful resource in order to articulate alternatives following new metrics and means of exchange.

Certainly we still cannot live without money, but by imagining new possibilities we are able to start questioning the conditions imposed as immutable starting points. By immersing in local conditions we can get rid of the

one-size-fit

standard formulas to apply in all situations, even in the form of schemes or labeled as know-how transfer. And also identifying the siren voices claiming for creative ways to scratch scarce money from the pockets of our equals... until it really vanishes away.

Have you ever thought on using fear as a currency? Are we, as architects, scared enough to start trading?

1. Owen Wells, ’Who Owns The Arctic?’. First Prize ‘Territories’ Competition. Think Space 2014.
2. Christine Bjerke, ’Clubland of the FX Beauties’. Honourable Mention ‘Culture and Society’ Competition. Think Space 2014.
3. Ryan King, ’Inverting the periphery’. First Prize Ex-Aequo. Environment Competition. Think Space 2014.

Von
Vinzenz Meyner

In den letzten drei Wochen habe ich im Zug auf der Strecke Zürich–Bern fremde Menschen in meinem Abteil angesprochen: „Entschuldigen Sie, ich sammle Zeichnungen von Fremden.“ Ich gab ihnen einen A7-Block und einen Bleistift und fragte: „Würden Sie mir eine Zeichnung schenken, von einer abstrakten Form oder Linie, offen oder geschlossen?“ Mit drei Ausnahmen – einer jungen Frau und zwei älteren Militär-Damen – zeichneten die Personen, schnell oder weniger schnell, ihre Zeichnung auf das Stück Papier. Eine Zeichnerin und ein Zeichner haben mich nach dem Grund meiner Aufforderung gefragt. Ich habe ihnen erklärt, dass ich diese Zeichnungen als Grundlagen/Inspirationen für eigene Zeichnungen verwenden werde.
Die ca. 20 im Zug gesammelten „Originale“ habe ich intuitiv zu Formen weiterverarbeitet.

Dieser Vorgang entspricht meiner üblichen Zeichenpraxis, wobei bisher die Ausgangsmaterialien von mir selber gezeichnet wurden. Ich eigne mir diese an, in dem ich alles zur Schablone mache: die Kombinationen, das Sichtbare, das Unsichtbare und das Dazwischen. Die so weiterentwickelten Formen werden zu Symbolen, Zeichen oder zu einer Typografie. Sie werden zu meiner eigenen Sammlung, meinem Vokabular.

In Bezug auf das Vorgehen, das Ausgangsmaterial von Fremden zeichnen zu lassen, interessiert mich die Frage der Autorschaft: Wie wichtig ist dem zeichnenden Fremden im Zug seine eigene Zeichnung als Original? Reicht der Spass am Wieder-einmal-zeichnen oder sind andere Ansprüche und Erwartungen mit dem Zeichnen verbunden? Verkürzt das Zeichnen einfach die Reise im Zug oder betrachten die Teilnehmenden das Resultat ihrer Bemühungen als eigenes und eigenständiges künstlerisches Werk an? Sind sie stolz? Geben sie sich Mühe? Machen sie es für sich selber oder für mich? Was geschieht bei der Weiterverarbeitung? Wer ist Urheber? Die, die das Ausgangsmaterial schaffen oder der, der es weiterverarbeitet? Können sich die Fremden mit meinen Zeichnungen bzw. Formen identifizieren? Oder treten sie mir ihre Rechte an der Zeichnung bei deren Übergabe ohnehin ab? Und in Konsequenz zu all dem: Sind die Reisenden im Zug etwa nur temporäre Gratisarbeitskräfte, die ich für meine eigene künstlerische Arbeit be- und ausnutze?

1. FU6-1 & FU6-2
2. FU7 & FU8
3. FU1 & FU2
4. FU3-1 &FU3-2
5. FU9-1 & FU9-2
6. FU10 & FU8
7. FU4 & FU5
8. 2xFU14+FU15
9. FU11 & FU12
10. FU13 & FU12
11. FU16-1 & FU16-2
12. FU17 & FU18

FUxy = Fremder Ursprung xy (= Von Vinzenz Meyner weiterverarbeite „fremde" Originalzeichnung xy)