COOP ~ CHUSMA 2.0: A Coalition of Gossips from Month to Month
Seminar 7: 14 - 21 July 2021
"Patterns of a collective opacity".
We have detected some common practices and interests among the self-named "A coalition for gossips" We decided to share our interests this week in order to further explore these with the materials we have worked on so far in mind. We are interested in Gossip across the differences, traces, tracibility, multiplicity, opacity, echoes, power-relations, hiding-revealing... so that through the practices that we will do this week we will go in search of the mentioned patterns of a collective opacity.
DAY 1
14 July (with the presence of Julia and Francesc)
40 minutes. Collective planning.
THERAPY WORKSHOP led by Lissy
- practice listening & care awareness towards to each other
- body exercise, communication exercise
LUNCH BREAK
WRITING WORKSHOP led by Velvet and Derek
⁃ collectively authored text based on a prompt
⁃ playing with different languages
DINNER BREAK
40 minutes of collective reflection and planning
DAY 2
15 July (with the presence of Julia and Francesc)
VOICE WORKSHOP led by our guest Vera Morais from
the Amsterdam Queer Choir.
LUNCH BREAK
VOICE WORKSHOP led by our guest Vera Morais from
the Amsterdam Queer Choir.
DINNER BREAK
40 minutes of collective reflection and planning
DAY 3
16 July (with the presence of Julia and Francesc)
60 minutes exchange ideas and process with iLiana, Julia and Francesc
ALTER EGO DAY led by Laura and Azul del Monte
⁃ Laura to lead garment workshop, wigs, outfits, costumes
⁃ PAF costume closet
⁃ Bring a few things, don’t plan, bring for the group
⁃ LARP mode led by Azul,
⁃ Wig off means taking a time-out
⁃ 13th body (flip)
⁃ LARP session for the rest of the day in character
LUNCH BREAK
ALTER EGO DAY continues +
MIRACLE MANI/SPOONS JEWELLERY WORKSHOP
led by Lacey
⁃ material gossip, on nails
⁃ scrubs, grooming products, grooming abt care
- jewellery, spoons?
40 minutes of collective reflection and planning
DINNER
NIGHT PRACTICE led by Derek
DAY 4
17 July (with the presence of Julia and Francesc)
40 minutes of collective reflection and planning
YOGA and SOMATIC PRACTICES led by Izaro
- Adaptability, vulnerability and capability
- Body/object
DECOLONISE OUR MEAL led by MAOYI
⁃ tea / breakfast in addition to normal cooked meals
⁃ reading text during the meal, ritual, conceptual
LUNCH
EXERCISE led by Ioana
- exploring public space through collective bodies
2 hours to discuss the final formalisation of our project.
DINNER
1,5 h to discuss the final normalization of our project.
DAY 5
18 July (with the presence of Julia and Francesc)
Presentation to the tutors of the final project
(iLiana, Julia, Francesc)
Production tasks assignment day
Production with Nash and Flip
LUNCH
First Rehearsals
DINNER
DAY 6
19 July (with the presence of Francesc)
Rehearsals
Production tasks
DAY 7
20 July (with the presence of Francesc)
Rehearsals
Production tasks
Seminar 6: 3 - 7 June 2021
THURSDAY 3rd
Morning:
10:00-12:00 Francesc, Julia
12:00-13:00 Francesc& Julia ++ iLiana.
---Nikos presenting the nitty-gritty details of the COOP logistics and more
Afternoon: Francesc, Julia
Evening: Francesc, Julia
FRIDAY 4th
Morning: Francesc, Julia
Afternoon: Francesc, Julia
Evening: Francesc, Julia
SATURDAY 5th
Morning: Francesc, Hypatia, Julia
Afternoon: Francesc, Hypatia, Julia
Evening: Francesc, Julia
SUNDAY 6th
Morning: iLiana, Hypatia
Afternoon: iLiana, Hypatia
Night: iLiana
Seminar 5: 16 - 19 April 2021
Public signs & Collective Rituals : (Un)seen
Following up on our previous sessions we will look into the idea of collective (and public) representations of resistance through the concepts of ritual and signage.
This meeting will explore the power of signs and collective processes in creating new vocabularies of rituals, new alliances and public interventions, whilst breaking up forms of exclusion. We will be focusing specifically in religion as a process of collective worship and think of it in terms of resistance, with specific references into diasporic practices such as Yoruba and Santeria as well as concepts such as "totems" and 'fetishes", while looking into graffiti and guerrilla communication tactics as forms of public signage and signalling.
Lastly this meeting we will gather the thoughts and impressions from all previous exchanges since our first meeting in October in order to work with the signs that will produce the first notes for our final COOP presentation.
Friday 16th of April
Morning and afternoon session with Hypatia Vourloumis and iLiana Fokianaki
evening session, film : Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Saturday 17th of April
Morning and afternoon with Francesc Ruiz and Ghalya Saadawi
evening session : Kader Attia "Totem & Fetish"
Sunday 18th of April
evening session : Listening session TBC
Monday 19th of April
With Francesc & iLiana
wrap-up session morning and afternoon
We would love to speak to those that have not had a one to one yet, or had less than other colleagues:
****Fransesc is available on Monday for one to one's please contact him to book a slot****
Please prioritise your colleagues that have not had any one to one's of yet.
Seminar 4: 21 - 23 March 2021
The tongue has no bones, but it can break bones
Led by Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga, iLiana Fokianaki & Hypatia Vourloumis
A greek saying that means that the power of words is indisputable.
Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me’
An english saying that means that words are harmless.
The weaponization of language as a means of defence and empowerment.
For this session we will be looking into the power of language and its relationship to violence. How powerful are our words? How much has been inscribed into language in the way that we see and understand the world? And how can language and words turn into a weapon, a poison or a pharmakon (medicine)?
* iLiana will be available to Face2Face. Please contact her to arrange a meeting. *
Reading for this session is one chapter from Franz Fanon’s White skin, Black Mask
Text can be found here.
Sunday 21st
Morning 10h-12h: session with iLiana
For the first part of this day week we will be looking into some key examples of theory discussing violence through language and exploring the possibility of language as a weapon by examining the process of codification through the queering of language. Specific slang, codes, jargon and dialects have been a way of communication for queer, undergound or hermetic communities the world over. We will be discussing ways of encoding our experience of the world through these mechanisms and we will be sharing these in the second and third part of our meetings. Slang is social media, emoticons a.o. are also interesting to explore here.
Afternoon 15h-17h: session with iLiana and Julia, collective practical exercise introduction
EXERCISE: Mapping out sticky words and anti-languages. The instructions will be disclosed during the session. We will ask you to share with the group at least one example of a cant, cryptolect, coded argot or anti-language that you know of.
Monday 22nd
Morning 10-13h: session with Hypatia
Reading together Hypatia’s text Shu-Mon, Get it to discuss questions on paralanguage, nonsense, neologisms, 'badness' and misperformance.
Evening: watch film tbc
Tuesday 23rd
Afternoon 16h-18h: wrap up session with iLiana, Julia, Hypatia
Evening: Listen to Up the beanstalk: The faggots & their friends between revolutions
Part 2: https://www.nts.live/shows/guests/episodes/the-faggots-and-their-friends-part-2-19th-may-2020
Seminar 3: 20 - 21 February 2021
Org, org, org: organise, organism, orgy
Led by Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga & Francesc Ruiz
Watch beforehand:
United in Anger. The history of ACTUp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrAzU79PBVM
Julia will be available for F2F throughout the weekend. Please contact her to schedule a meeting.
Saturday 20 - 10:00 - 13:00
10:00
Each one of you will receive an audio file. In the form of a radio program, Julia will conduct you through a discontinuous and selective history of coalitions, affinity groups and operative networks.
Please get comfortable and listen to it, on your own or in company, fully attentive or while doing other things.
11.30 - 13:00
Zoom get-together to check in, react to the questions and topics posed by the listening, and introduce the collective exercise: the creation of a guerrilla poster campaign.
We will share then the details of the proposed mission and working structure, but the exercise will be self-run by the group throughout the rest of the weekend.
Saturday 20 - 18:00 - 20:00
Zoom get-together to put in common the resulting pieces and collectively decide the diffusion strategies.
Seminar 2: 18 - 19 January 2021
Monday 18: 10:00 - 13:00 & 14:00 - 18:00
Led by iLiana Fokianaki
Forms of togetherness in affinity and difference
If gossip is a word that changed through time, then what’s in a word? For this third week of CHUSMA 2.0 we will be looking together into how patriarchy has obstructed us to see forms of togetherness in affinity and difference. For us to understand better the concept of intersectional feminism which is the main umbrella under which we embark on our COOP, its primal that we look into the word intersectionality and its histories in relationship to race, class and gender. For this we will look into important theorists that have first formulated the idea of intersectionality and its problematics, to see how their positioning might become a useful toolbox for our COOP project development. We will unpack this further through films that have portrayed examples of improbable affinities and interdependency. Please be aware our first morning session will be dense.
Tuesday 19: 14:00 - 17:00
Led by Francesc Ruiz
Our second part of CORRESPONDENCES will dive in Ray Johnson:
"AN OPERATION IN MATH IS ANYTHING THAT LEAVES A SCAR"
(Toby Spiselman)
After having put into practice one of the New York Correspondence School’s choreographies, we will insist on the tactics and scope of Ray Johnson's relational work discussing about other ways of constituting communal epistolary correspondence. We will think about how to use this collective power through activation and addition, diffusion and dissemination, beyond remaining in a closed circuit we will think about how to affect others with our correspondences.
SHELLEY DUVALL FAN CLUB
Shelley Duvall Fan Club, Paloma Picasso Fan Club, Nancy Sinatra Fan Club, Dora Maar Fan Club, Princess Stephanie Fan Club, Coco Gordon Fan Club, Odilon Redon Fan Club, Giusseppe Arcimboldo Fan Club... Ray Johnson stamped inscriptions on his letters that affiliated him to numerous fan clubs in a non-exclusive cult and worship that did not differentiate between individuals, socialites, stars and artists.
The fan clubs can be understood as learning communities.
"EVERY LETTER I WRITE IS NOT A LOVE LETTER"
(Ray Johnson)
Taking advantage of the proximity of Valentine's Day we will think about writing a collective letter that expresses other ways of understanding love outside of the patriarchal construct of romantic love.
Seminar 1: 14-16 November 2020
These first days together will be directed to introduce and start knowing each other as a group, as well as building the grounds and setting out the research framework for our COOP.
Morning 10h - 13h
Group introductions:
COOP members presentation
Francesc + Julia introduce the Chusma-Gossips COOP guidelines
Afternoon 14h - 18h30
On Gossips: research subject introduction
iLiana (video recording) introduces herself and State of Concept
Collective reading of Silvia Federici “On the Meaning of Gossip”, from Witches, Witch-hunting and Women (2018)
iLiana (through video) introduces the conceptual stakes of her research on Gossip, followed by a group debate
This first meeting we will be discussing the idea of the curatorial act as instituting through the formation and development of State of Concept, and its collaboration with the DAI. We will then zoom in into Gossips and its principal ideas and how they can be elaborated and developed through the research and collaborative process of the COOP of Chusma 2.0, addressing possible future theoretical threads for our group.
Night 19h30 - 22h
Movie night
SUNDAY 15
Morning 10h - 13h
Subversive collage workshop:
Looking at the visual archive of demonized women’s friendship, we will look out for material and visual forms of intervening and countering that representation
Afternoon 14h - 18h30
Correspondences 1
In this first session we will try to trace a genealogy of artistic distributive practices and we will get in touch with Ray Johnson's and the New York Correspondence School's production from the handling and study of some of the materials, texts, drawings and collages that he poured into his network through the postal system.
The New York Correspondence School can be understood as both a gossip channel and a potlatch orchestrated by Ray Johnson in which, in a more or less organized manner sailed tangentially through a key moment in the history of contemporary art, anticipating, as José Estaban Muñoz points out, a singular queer communicative utopia.
From that initial reading we will think of possible strategies to replicate and implement some of the New York Correspondence School distributive tactics. The objective is to initiate an alternative communication circuit based on the elaboration of diverse chain letters that will be maintained and multiplied throughout the year and that will allow us to keep a communication network in parallel to our meetings in the flesh.
Night 19h30 - 22h
Listening night
Up the Beanstalk: The Faggots & Their Friends, NTS recordings featuring readings from the 1970s cult queer fantasy “The Faggot & Their Friends Between Revolutions”
MONDAY 16
Morning 10h - 13h
Hypatia Vourloumis, our theory tutor companion, will lay out her take on Gossips as an apocalyptic and queer practice. She would do so through the figure and thought of José Esteban Muñoz as well as the recently convened encounter in State of Concept, “Apocalyptic Feminisms”: https://stateofconcept.org/event/apocalyptic-feminisms/
Afternoon 14h - 18h30
Counter-Cartography of words workshop: cannibal, queer, pirate, gossip
Can we trace the genealogy and use of the words employed to degrade collectives? This will be a first exercise in possibly building lexicon-archive tracing the use and misuse and counteruse of certain words, and their performativity through time
Beauty Salon 1: Be careful with each other, So we can be dangerous together
The Beauty Salon will be a fixed recurring space in our COOP for mutual teaching and self-learning, taking as inspiration the infrastructure of the beauty parlour, where solidarities, gossip and aesthetic negotiations abound.
The first session will be an introduction and debate on the constellation of issues that come together here (care, keratin, peligrosity, norms, etc) through discussion and small practices, followed by a somatic listening exercise.