Image: Members of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation [Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional], paintings via artist Rigo 23, as part of the exhibition ‘We Are the Time Machines: Time and Tools for Commoning’ at Casco. Exhibition architecture by Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik. Photo: Niels Moolenaar

Seminar 7: May 23-25, 2017

Southern Wave going live – in preparation for the broadcast in Eindhoven

Image: Identity in the making design by Luca Carboni & Nina Stottrup / Southern Wave

Southern Wave’s final session is dedicated to preparing for the collectively made broadcast that will air a few days later as part of Van Abbe Museum’s Becoming More ten-day caucus. The subsequent audio will be presented within Casco’s “exhibition phase” of Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, together with the Southern Wave broadcast in Mexico City. This occasion also marks the first collectively determined Southern Wave radio broadcast, and its experience is an invitation for collaboration beyond the form of the class.

Keeping in mind what we set out to do and with the intention to live up to the new collectively edited descriptor for Southern Wave, we’ll divide our time as follows**:

Tuesday, 23 May, 14:00 - 21:00 working session

14:00 – 15:00 Plenary to share the status of the respective working groups

15:00  – 18:30 30 minute individual meetings (with Stephan, Pitchaya, Ines, Nina, Maya, Aldo) whilst the rest work in their respective working groups

18:00 –  19:30 Dinner

19:30  –  21:00 Working groups continue

Wednesday, 24 May, 09:00 – 21:00 working session

09:00 – 10:00 Plenary

10:00  –  13:00 30 minute individual face to face meetings (with Anya, Tirza, Wayne, Wilfred, Luca, Areumnari, Monica)

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 21:00 Set up and Tijs Ham / STEIM will be around for technical support

Thursday 25 May, 18:00 – 22:00, Southern Wave live!

18:00 – 19:00 music during dinner arranged by Maya and Stephan

19:00 jingle 5 sec.

Wayne recites a text in NL > 8 min

Stephan on silence > 10 min

jingle 5 sec.

Tirza on hosting > 3 min

Areumnari sings singing > 13.5 min

jingle 5 sec.

Luca archival sound mix > 10 min

?Ines > 10 min

jingle 5 sec.

Tirza on hosting > 3 min

Wilfred “eases into it”: 1,2,3 10 min

Anya interviews > 15 min with song

jingle 5 sec.

?Pitchaya > 10 min

Crater Invertido > 10 min

jingle 5 sec.

Tirza on hosting > 3 min

Maya > 10 min

jingle 5 sec.

Aldo tells a story > 12 min

Nina > 10 min

jingle 5 sec.

Tirza on hosting > 3 min

Monica reads tarot > 14 min

jingle 5 sec.

Poetry recordings during left over time.

**(working time table)

Tuesday, 23 May, 14:00 - 21:00 working session

14:00 – 15:00 Plenary to share the status of the respective working groups

15:00  – 18:30 30 minute individual meetings (with Stephan, Pitchaya, Ines, Nina, Maya, Aldo) whilst the rest work in their respective working groups

18:00 –  19:30 Dinner

19:30  –  21:00 Working groups continue

Wednesday, 24 May, 09:00 – 21:00 working session

09:00 – 10:00 Plenary

10:00  –  13:00 30 minute individual face to face meetings (with Anya, Tirza, Wayne, Wilfred, Luca, Areumnari, Monica)

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 21:00 Set up and Tijs Ham / STEIM will be around for technical support

Seminar 6: April  21 & 22, 2017

Southern Wave, An Editorial Gathering

Image: 5-watt FM transmitters, antenna, and microphones built during the workshop: Transmission (Technical implications and policies of the electromagnetic spectrum) led by Juan Pablo Villegas in Mexico City.

Our almost final gathering will be of an editorial nature and picks up on our formative journey to Mexico City. It will question how we can critically look back and apply what we have learned as we cull, cut, and develop new material for the Southern Wave online and our FM broadcast in Eindhoven on 25 May 2017. To this end, our editorial meeting will be structured as follows:

PART I

Fri, 21 April, 14:00 – 18:00

1. The aim of this day is to collectively create a concrete brief outlining our Southern Wave program in Eindhoven to present to our technical support Tijs Ham | STEIM who will join us the following day to work out. We will dedicate forty minutes to collectively workshopping each of the following elements:

• Live editing of the Southern Wave descriptor text*
• The identity of Southern Wave (printed matter, website, jingle etc.)
• The physical setting (see Part II of the day)
• The radio program (incl. music, adverts, shout-outs, and other fillers between each of the live segments)

Additional

• Southern Wave presentation at “Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons”.
• Southern Wave publication

PART II

Fri, 21 April, 19:00 – 21:00

1. We have two spaces available for our temporary broadcast studio in Eindhoven: the DIY Archive within the Van Abbe Museum; and the Mariënhage church across from the museum, where the meals and DAI classes will take place. During this session, we will discuss the following questions: What conditions do both spaces bring? Which audiences are they connected to and whom do we want to address? Most importantly, next to planning our live radio program, what other materials can we imagine setting up in the studio? Which books, objects, and visual materials could be important for us to include?

PART III

Sat, 22 April, 09:30 – 13:00 with Tijs Ham of STEIM | Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music

1. The second day will be dedicated to workshopping our brief with Tijs Ham, and running through the list of tasks drafted during Part I and II of our editorial meeting. We will also make time for individual meetings for those who desire.

Homework:

1. Listen back and reflect on the Southern Wave 106.1 FM broadcast on Radio Tropiezo, Cráter’s online radio station via Radiolibre.co. Consider the setting that went into putting this day together: the poster, hosting, the setting, and general identity, the transmitter, our online presence (also via Facebook), your contribution, and everything that went into running Southern Wave for that day. What would you repeat? What would you change for the Southern Wave Eindhoven edition?
2. Tentatively we have three hours at our disposal in Eindhoven. We have an evening slot as part of the Roaming presentations, after dinner, from 19:00 to 22:00, which works out at about thirteen minutes of airtime each for fourteen people (including fillers). Building from what you developed in Mexico City and Colombia Medellin, you should come with a solid proposal for what you will do during your segment. Please also consider the technical elements that you will need.
3. If you have not done so yet, please read the attached text describing “Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons” for an idea of what our presentation at Casco could be.

Some additional references for your consideration if you are feeling stuck:

• John McPhee, “Ommision, Choosing what to leave out”,   New Yorker, 2016: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/14/omission
• “Pan African Space Station landings”
• http://panafricanspacestation.org.za/pass_pop-up/
• In Amsterdam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5Dynryb27U
• “Every Time A Ear di Soun,” a documenta14 radio program, on air until 17 September 2017: http://www.documenta14.de/en/public-radio/

*Southern Wave is a roaming online radio platform for collective artistic practice and study. It departs from the saturated terms “global south” and “global north” to examine examples of economic, military, and cultural relations marked by centrality and marginality within global structures of domination.

Adopting these loaded relations as a basis for intellectual analysis and imaginative creation, we question how “south” functions as a term to cite the dispossessed. In doing so, we seek to find ways of acknowledging and drawing attention to the authoritarian regime that influences an overwhelming sense of dependence on the “north” for intellectual life, especially with respect to the “marginal” efforts of decolonization.

At each pop-up studio, Southern Wave sets up a transmitter securing a 5-kilometer radius for locals to tune in. The FM frequency is announced shortly before the broadcast on the Southern Wave website.

Which South are we talking about? – A 12 day seminar

with Coopertiva Cráter Invertido, 14 -27 March 2017

From 14 -27 May, Southern Wave embarks on a trip to Mexico designed by Coopertiva Cràter Invertido and specifically to inquire after the territories of central Mexico City, the semi-rural southern boroughs of Milpa Alta, Tlahuac and Xochimilco and the southern city of Oaxaca in order to turn the Southern Wave thematic on is head as to address “which south are we actually talking about?” The 12-day gathering is shaped to inspire reflection to rearticulate each of our positions and respective relations the “souths’ be they geographically, racially, vis-à-vis class, gender or otherwise determined.

The trip will also give space for the self-organization and development of the final radio broadcast presentation.

Some Thoughts on the Southern Wave Visit to Mexico by Coopertiva Cráter Invertido

Mexico City, March 2017

Mexico City has become—as with many others around the world—a brand city. This condition, by which cities become commodities, has been especially exploited in the last decades in tune with globalization, the rise of the notion of culture as an economic value, and the neoliberal invention of the culture industry. Many artists, cultural workers, commercial gallerists, curators, and enthusiasts from the so-called Global North are traveling to Mexico City, either to explore its art scene or even to settle.

Constant flux and the global reorganization of capital have become the norm in terms of how art workers operate and are located in late capitalism. Artist residencies, academic and curatorial visits assert circulation as one of the most valuable activities, driven by deregulation, instability, and precariousness as the mirrors of post-Fordist economies. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are part of a system in which the exhibitionary complex becomes a machine that subsumes everything as mere transactions in its symbolic economy. In the last decades, the assimilation of pedagogical practices by the global art system has also revealed the tensions involved in such practices designated as relational, participatory communitarian or social. As a strategy used to counteract the erosion of debate in the hegemonic centers of capital, the multicultural turn in curating has, since the 1990s, been consuming several art practices in the so-called peripheries that deal with forms of activism and critical pedagogies. While postcolonial spaces are in a dependent relationship with the hegemonic centers, the work we build rests on several layers of meaning. The aspirations of capitalist modernities overlap with everyday life and identitarian traits, assembling a complex ethos in which the exoticization of the Global South—that is, the postcolonial territories considered peripheral by the centers—produced by the update of colonial perspectives, activate a self-exotic condition that is reproduced as internal colonialism.[1] This condition suggests new enclosures in the cultural field—among other aspects of life—in a similar way as extractivism and displacement currently articulate territories at the service of global capital.

Assuming this as a potential condition, how do we open a space for critical speech and alliances in a trans-local dialogue? Where do we place our practice? Which south and which north are we talking about?

South and north, as mere binary categories, seem insufficient to address the complexities of reality. Instead, they are strategic statements to make visible social relations in a global framework. If colonization is reproduced daily both internally (starting from our bodies) and in a global framework, how do gender, race, and class factor into the articulation of historical relations of dependence?

How do we relate and translate each other, and embrace a common understanding based on misunderstandings? In which ways can we walk together without reproducing forms of hegemony among us?[2] How do we critically position our own practices alongside others in order not to neutralize or disband their political power in the name of art? How do we position publishing in a critical way?

Far from propagating affirmations, the program in Mexico for Southern Wave that we propose is an immersive and inquiring one. Drifting through the historical complexity of our current discussions are issues of: autonomy, food sovereignty, dispossession and territory, anti-patriarchy struggles, and the role of the body in the midst of daily enclosures.

We use self-publishing, radio, and critical thought as plastic tools to push for the reshaping of our environment, and to question the logic of the development of capitalist modernity and the way it effects the lives of humans and non-humans.

It is an effort—not free from contradictions—to address self-organization, autonomy, and communalism—practices that dispute colonialism, extractivism, and imperialism.

Despite the techno-industrial modernization of all aspects of life, radio, as an unstable publishing tool, could be a space to imagine other realities. How can we use actual tools to generate a critical meeting in a specific place and imagine alternative modernities together? How do we listen and share what we have heard?

[1] Pablo González Casanova “Colonialismo interno (1969),” in Pablo González Casanova, De la sociología del poder a la sociología de la explotación. Pensar América Latina en el Siglo XXI (México and Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI and CLACSO, 2015).

[2] With “walk together” we refer to the chance to share time and questions as we struggle, and, as John Holloway writes, “‘Asking we walk’, say the Zapatistas. We ask not only because we do not know the way (we do not), but also because asking the way is part of the revolutionary process itself.” There is no defined path, no arrival point. This is a method rather than an end goal. John Holloway, Cambiar el mundo sin tomar el poder. El significado de la revolución hoy (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Herramienta, 2010), 309. English version available online: Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today (London: Pluto Press, 2002), PDF, http://www.edtechpost.ca/readings/John%20Holloway%20-%20Change%20the%20World%20Without%20Taking%20Power.pdf.

Seminar 4: February 10 & 11, 2017

Preliminary Ideas for Zapatista’s Embassy – A Seminar with Dmitry Vilensky of Chto Delat

And so we see in general that in our country, which is called Mexico, there are many people who do not put up with things, who do not surrender, who do not sell out. Who are dignified. And that makes us very pleased and happy, because with all those people it’s not going to be so easy for the neoliberals to win, and perhaps it will be possible to save our Patria from the great thefts and destruction they are doing. And we think that perhaps our “we” will include all those rebellions . . .

– General Commander of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation Mexico, in the sixth month of the year 2005.

In preparation for our upcoming trip to Mexico, this month’s seminar will focus on the ideals and actions of the leftist revolutionaries and Chiapas-based militants the Zapatistas (Army of National Liberation [Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, or EZLN]) vis-à-vis Zapatista’s Embassy, an upcoming film project by the St Petersburg-based collective Chto Delat (What is to be done?). Artist, educator, and member of Chto Delat Dmitry Vilensky will lead the seminar on the morning of Saturday 10 to share research material gathered for the film and to prompt discussion on the Zapatista ideals that their film seeks to capture. On the preliminary ideas for Zapatista’s Embassy, Chto Delat explain:

The point of departure for our fictional film will be an imaginary situation where the Zapatista’s Embassy would appear today in the reality of Putin’s Russia – about 100 years after the October Revolution – and run a meeting with (or bump into) different social and political figures such as anti-US protestors, local environmental activists, Russian cosmists, LGBT and feminist groups, “Crimea-is-ours” groups, and so on. The Embassy tries to communicate the truth of the Zapatista’s struggle but has to face a completely different type of reality.

Zapatista’s Embassy will be part sitcom, part Greek tragedy, thus developing the methodology of Chto Delat’s previous films, which are often played with ghost characters. The construction of the characters is based on profound research and meetings with different caracoles and dialogue with the Zapatista’s subcomandante Moises.

The film will be realized in a studio and we plan to integrate some elements of puppet theater.

In preparation for Dmitry Vilensky’s Saturday morning seminar we’ll collectively watch AV material and read a selection of the texts below on Friday. During this time we’ll also discuss the plans and schedule for the trip to Mexico.

Readings for the Seminar

Zapatista Army of National Liberation, Mexico, ‘Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona,’ Enlace Zapatista, June 2005, http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl-en/

Zapatista Army of National Liberation, Mexico, ‘Between Light and Shadow: in La Realidad [Reality], Planet Earth,’ Enlace Zapatista, May 2014,

http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2014/05/27/between-light-and-shadow/

Raúl Zibechi, ‘Zapatismo’s presidential candidacy,’ Chiappas Support Committee, January 14, 2017,

https://chiapas-support.org/2017/01/14/zapatismos-presidential-candidacy/

Ryan Mallett-Outtrim, ‘Zapatistas and Indigenous Mexicans Create Parallel Government for Indigenous Autonomy,’ Upside Down World, January 10, 2017, http://upsidedownworld.org/archives/mexico/zapatistas-and-indigenous-mexicans-create-parallel-government-for-indigenous-autonomy/

** texts 1 & 2 will also be read collectively during Friday’s seminar

Seminar 3: January 13-14, 2017

“I am thinking of earth as the uncommon and people as the commons” 

A Seminar with Binna Choi

Culling from our Southern Wave gatherings thus far – where we’ve been thinking through themes of (un)commons, pan-Africanism, organization, cooperation, unlearning, and decolonization – we’ll greet the new year by workshopping our relation to the earth vis-à-vis poetry with Casco director Binna Choi, who will also act as the first respondent to your individual proposals for the public broadcast in May.

More specifically, Binna will explore questions of the (un)commons, through Minjung poetry and her organizational experiences as curator to the 11th Gwangju Biennale entitled “The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?),” in her work with Arts Collaboratory (a trans-local ecosystem of over twenty-three art organizations across the globe focused on art practices for social change), and her everyday practice as the director at Casco.

Reflecting on Southern Wave, Binna writes: 

Thinking of the “south,” I am thinking of earth as the uncommon and people as the commons; those under the domination of drill and power, including state power that pretends to paternalism as its mission. Is the Earth humanity’s “luminous blue ball-of-a-home”[1] or is it just land? Does land bring people and other beings together? Who are the people? What and who are the commons?  The Korean word “minjung”[2] could be illuminating here; but who are the minjung and what do they do? How do they make change? Who are the minjung artists? Is there a commonist aesthetics in the art of the minjung, and if so, what does Minjung Art do? 

Inspiration for the answers to these questions will be provided by the poetry of two Korean poets; Kim Sooyoung, a public intellectual who lived during the Korean colonial era and wrote about postcolonial reality, and Baek Musan, a former laborer and labor organizer. An understanding of “south” and “waves” will also be sought through their poetry and other artistic works related to the May 18 Uprising in Korea, as well as insights into how these questions influence my concrete organizational work that I would like to share from the Gwangju Biennale, Casco, and Arts Collaboratory.

Requirements for the Seminar

Reading:

Beck Jee-sook, “Minjung Art in the Year of 2005 or the Year 2005 in Minjung Art.” In The Battle of Visions. Edited by Beck Jee-sook and Kim Heejin (Frankfurt a. M. and Seoul: ARKO and KOGAF, 2005): pdf attached.

Geert Lovink, “Before Building the Avant-Garde of the Commons.” Open! Platform for Art, Culture and the Public Domain (November 1, 2015). http://www.onlineopen.org/before-building-the-avant-garde-of-the-commons.

Bring poetry: Please bring a poem written in your mother tongue that is relevant to the context of Southern Wave. See, for example, “Colossal Roots” by Kim Sooyoung: PDF attached.

[1] Robert Horvitz, “Whole Earth Culture,” Whole Earth Catalog, accessed December 29, 2016, http://www.wholeearth.com/history-whole-earth-culture.php.

[2] “‘Minjung’ is a Korean word which literally means ‘the mass of the people’. However, during the last 20 years the word has become very popular and it has grown to have a technical meaning, both in theological and sociopolitical circles [ . . . ] The Korean masses have a history of oppression. Thus minjung at one level simply means those who are oppressed. Korean society has relied on the minjung for its existence. The minjung are the workers, the farmers, the productive class, but with no power. The kings and rulers have controlled the history of Korea. The minjung have simply existed but with little importance. Even in their own consciousness they have not regarded themselves as important. In the past twenty years this has turned around. The minjung have begun to replace the rulers as the subjects of history.” See: Sang Taek Lee, Religion and Social Formation in Korea: Minjung and Millenarianism (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1996), 35. (Footnotes omitted.)

Seminar 2: December 9-10, 2016

A Seminar with Ntone Edjabe | Chumurenga, and Tijs Ham | The Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM)

Building on last month’s gathering session, which focused on establishing a common language vis-à-vis practices of “listening, speaking, and thinking-out-loud together,” this month we’ll visit two initiatives that use radio and sound technologies to hear how they develop their program and reach out to their audiences. First we’ll tune into Chimurenga’s online music radio station and pop-up studio the Pan African Space Station (PASS), which will “land” at the central library in Amsterdam from 11–15 December. Catching PASS midway through their set-up, we will be joined by founder Ntone Edjabe who will talk us through their work, which brings together free and political ideas from cultural producers and thinkers across disciplines alike to reflect on the African continent and our relations to it.

The following morning we’ll visit the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM) where member Tijs Ham will lead a brainstorming session on the eventual broadcast, introducing us to the sonic conditions that we can consider when broadcasting live. STEIM joins us for technical support throughout the course.

Timetable

Friday 9th       15:00– 21:00 OBA Central Library, Oosterdokskade 143, 1011 DL Amsterdam.

Saturday 10th  09:00–12:00 STEIM, Achtergracht 19, 1017 WL Amsterdam.

Saturday 10th  12:00–13:00 Travelling time

Saturday 10th  13:30–14:30 Lunch at DAI

Saturday 10th  14:30 Face-to-face meetings at DAI begin

Ntone Edjabe is the founder, among many other initiatives, of Chimurenga Magazine (a pan African publication of culture, art, and politics based in Cape Town) and the Pan African Space Station (PASS), an Internet radio platform streamed live across the African world. The title Chimurenga refers to the Shona word for struggle, as well as to a popular music genre in Zimbabwe. Edjabe’s practice as a DJ weds musical erudition and explicit political engagement centered on Africa’s place in the world.

From 11–15 December, 2016, PASS will land in and transmit from the OBA Central Library in Amsterdam. Launched in 2008 by Chimurenga, PASS is a periodic, pop-up live studio; a performance and exhibition space; a research platform and living archive, and an Internet-based radio station. For more, see: http://panafricanspacestation.org.za.

Tijs Ham started his artistic career in the visual arts but soon moved to music and sound art. Using the moniker Tapage he has released many EP’s and albums on a wide range of record labels. He is the co-founder of the Soundlings Collective and has been instrumental in setting up the think tank Meetups, which discusses many topics related to arts and technology. Currently Tijs is working for STEIM as an organizer. He regularly performs onstage, both solo and as part of the trio The Void*, playing his custom-built instruments based on feedback and recursion.

The Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM) is an independent electronic music center unique in its dedication to live performance. The foundation’s artistic and technical departments support an international community of performers, musicians, and visual artists to develop unique instruments for their work. STEIM maintains a vibrant residency program whereby artists are provided with an artistic and technical environment in which concepts can be given concrete form, and where ideas are catalyzed by the provision of critical feedback grounded in professional experience. Finally, new creations are then exposed to a receptive and responsive niche public at STEIM before being groomed for a larger audience.

Seminar 1: October 21-22, 2016

On Listening and Thinking-Out-Loud Together

Guest tutor: Ferdiansyah Thajib / Radio KUNCI 

Ferdiansyah Thajib is a member of KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, Yogyakarta. He is currently a Phd Candidate at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin. His life work is situated in the intersections of theory and praxis, with specific research interests on queer modes of endurance and forms of affective entanglement in everyday life.

KUNCI Cultural Studies Center inhabits a precarious position of belonging to neither this nor that within existing disciplinary boundaries while aiming at expanding them. The collective’s membership is open and voluntary, and is so far based on an affinity to creative experimentation and speculative inquiry.  Since its founding in 1999 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, KUNCI has been deeply preoccupied with critical knowledge production and sharing through means of media publication, cross-disciplinary encounter,  research-action, artistic intervention and vernacular education within and across community spaces.

http://kunci.or.id