COOP ~ Assembling Land: Rehearsals towards Place-making from Day to Day
Seminar 4: 28 - 30 May 2024
Confluence title: What did we do together?
What did we do together? Following the confluences: Imagining Land & Water; Storytelling: Who owns the narrative?; and I am of Water, of Water I am, we gather the harvest and form a structure of how to continue working together.
During the confluence, we will focus on the COOP’s third thematic circle: Out/institution. How do we operate both inside and outside the institution, and how to maneuver within the material and immaterial remnants that emerge outside it? How do these remnants shape our understanding in relation to land and its resources? Through two sessions held by guest artist Yazan Khalili, we will explore a different form of learning, through sharing or dismantling knowledge. We will collectively consider the questions proposed by the QoF: How does collectivity create multitudes? And how do we reclaim resources as a communal practice?
In preparation for the summit, we will host a virtual exchange with QANAT collective, a platform that explores the politics and poetics of water in Morocco and beyond to reflect and act upon the multiple contextual understandings and forms of (re)production of the commons. Additionally, we will activate the format of durational live broadcasting as a tool to reflect on our harvest vis-a-vis the summit and beyond. Departing from the ever exhaustive relation between host and guest, we question: how can we become hosts while simultaneously carrying our role as guests? Amplifying our encounters with local practitioners and infrastructures in Morocco, we renegotiate the lumbung ideals and navigate a mutual structure for instituting in the ‘outside’.
As part of the Palestine Teach Outs, a four-hour session by Learning Palestine will take place. This intimate session aims to learn about the ongoing oppression and resistance in Palestine through historical and personal storytelling.
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Tuesday - 28 May |
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Morning 10:00-13:00 |
Group check-in (1h) Drafting the summit: Collectively noting the questions we each bring in, to share the urgencies relating to our COOP, while preparing the groundwork for our SUMMIT contextualization. Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Studies, by Fred Moten & Stephano Harney (2h) Collective reading of Chapter 2: The University and the Undercommons in response to the students mobilization across the globe. |
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Afternoon 15:00-20:30 |
Palestine Teach Out: Learning Palestine session with Yazan Khalili (4h) (in collaboration with COOP Curating Positions - Stream of consciousness: between collective filmmaking and anarchist thought) How to tell history from the point of view of the zombies? The Learning Palestine sessions aim at learning and teaching (could also be ‘sharing knowledge’ or ‘disseminating knowledge’) about the ongoing oppression and resistance in Palestine through historical and personal storytelling. They are in-person, intimate sessions through which the story of Palestine is told through time and place, using the militant pedagogical techniques of drawing and writing, without showing images or pre-made visuals. Break (30mins) Book-binding workshop (1h) Binding a collection of A5 DIY pamphlets provided by Learning Palestine. The pamphlets are meant to be read and circulated with others after reading them. |
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Wednesday - 29 May |
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Morning 10:00-13:00 |
Question of Funding (3h) How can we think of action and resource redistribution? For this session, a brief introduction to QoF is followed by a workshop where the COOP participants are divided into three working groups, connecting it to the summit in Morocco. Each group will draw from a question/ proposal they would like to work for/ with during the summit (this is not the final group division, but rather a rehearsal). As we are employing the lumbung method of collaboration, the COOP participants are harvesting their intents and actions with funding in poetic and practical ways. |
Afternoon 14:00-20:30 |
14:00-15:30 Question of Funding continuation (1h) De-brief by the harvesters (30mins) Break (30mins) 16:00-17:00 Virtual presentation by Francesca Masoero from QANAT collective (TBC) QANAT is a collective platform that explores the politics and poetics of water to reflect and act (up)on the multiple contextual understandings and forms of (re)production of the commons in Morocco and beyond. Drawing from various forms of knowledge and acts of resistance and solidarity to dominant environmental narratives and injustices, QANAT aims to create spaces through which we can speculate upon new collective imaginaries to design new spatial and epistemological configurations for our cities. The collective develops archives of resonant reflections and actions that knit together local struggles into transnational patterns for nourishing debates across dispersed localities. Break (30mins) 17:30-20:00
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De-brief by the harvesters (30mins) |
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Thursday - 30 May |
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Morning 10:00-13:00 |
Coffee-making Thinking Summit: Using the live broadcast as a brainstorming tool for the summit, thinking of locations, people whom we met and would like to reconnect again; what platforms we are using, what are the actions taking place (storytelling, open mic, cooking, etc.)? Roles division: 12-hour broadcast production. Time slots, collecting material, etc. Creating our lumbung: Role allocation in relation to the summit, e.g. time keeper, host, ghost, common pot aw well as working teams for communication, editing, budget, production and other roles emerging from the summit format(s). |
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Afternoon 14:00-20:30 |
Session with Nikos and Peter for any questions regarding COOP SUMMIT 2024 (45mins) Summit format: Finalizing our proposal for the summit format, e.g. radio, speakers, cooking, open-mic etc. Summit collaborators & partnerships: which platforms, who are the peers to be invited. |
Seminar 3: 24 - 26 April 2024
I am of water - of water I am (after Jumana Emil Aboud)
During the confluence we will focus on the themes of place-making and (the in-crisis) water commoning, to explore entanglements with water across time and within indigenous heritage and its colonial ruptures. Who holds the rights to access and utilize water sources in different regions and how are these rights determined? We will explore these questions through site visits, film watching, walks, conversations, and following a score by Az Oor, a land artist from Marrakech. How do we build a walk?: an in-progress score opens up spaces for sensory and critical configurations of ancestrality, the ever-present cultural impact of tourism, and how we navigate in a paradigm of a colonial city. The score outlines the multiplicity of circularities we are in: the riyad, the medina and the landscape.
On the last day, we will have a day-trip to Marrakech to visit LE18 for a meeting with curator and co-founder of LE18, Laila Hida. We will then visit Darb Elaraj, which is within walking distance from LE18, and proceed to Malhoun Art Space afterwards. At each location, we are meeting artists who work around the themes of the COOP’s focus groups: 1. Land & Water, 2. Housing, and 3. Out/Institution, including Fatiha Zemmouri, Nabil Himich, and M'barek Bouhchichi. In preparation for our next trip for the Summit, we reflect on the build form of the riyad through Az Oor’s score: from architecture to the body. How do we reverse our emerging experience (and relationship) with the introverted architecture of the riyad, through tools of orality, circle formations, and exercises of positioning?
Finally, on April 24, we are organizing a reading session as part of Palestine Teach-outs, in which we will read the Manifesto of the Palestinian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, followed by collective reading poetry (all COOPs are invited to join).
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Wednesday - 24 April |
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Morning 10:00-13:00 (indoors) |
- Group check-in (1h) Warm-up games devised by the COOP participants (PAF aftermath) - hosted by Eszter Dobos.
Opening a conversation around the theme of the confluence, and forming a core question. We will also share the format of Episode 03 (relating to the confluence’s harvesting method) which will be based on the three focus groups: 1. Land & Water, 2. Housing, and 3. Out/Institution. - Imagining a score (1h) This last part of the session will be based on Az Oor’s score, which takes the Riyad as a departure point, a build form we will be returning to at later stages of the confluence, that touch on our COOP’s interest themes. |
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Afternoon 14:00-18:00 (indoors) |
Introducing the Summit format based on our confluences’ harvest and in-situ observations. Collective brainstorming on how our individual and collaborative practices can be weaved in a collective (public) format for August. The COOP is invited to suggest ideas on how the format of a (durational) live-streamed event could hold a structure which activates both in physical and transmissive space. - Summit Brainstorming continues/ student-led (2)
- Noor w/ Thamyres, Tuba, Shaza, Sara - Marina w/ Qiao, Kivanc, Francesca, Saverio |
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Evening 20:00-22:00 (indoors) |
This year, the Palestinian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale takes the form of a manifesto, presented as an A3 Xerox pamphlet. Titled "What is the Future of Art?: A Manifesto Against the State of the World," this gesture calls for urgent action in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It confronts the stark realities shielded by nation-state rhetoric and imperial power. Accompanied by poetry, the manifesto resonates with the themes of dismantling nation-states, reclaiming land, and restoring art and poetry as essential tools of resistance. The unpacking of this timely manifesto, invites participants to join with a selected poem about or relevant to the Palestinian struggle (e.g. Moving Towards Home by June Jordan). |
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Thursday - 25 April |
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Morning 10:00-13:00 (indoors) |
- Film Screening: Amussu by Nadir Bouchmouch (1’38’’) In 2011, the villagers of Imider shut down a water pipeline to Africa’s biggest silver mine to save their oasis. Eight years later, they sing and recite poems while harvesting the fruits of their militancy. - Harvest time (1h) - Skim through the publications series Against Monoculture |
Afternoon 14:00-18:00 (indoors) |
- Aqal Cultural Center Visit to Aqal Cultural Center guided by Ali Aqal, followed by a walk to the “Haha forest” with Argan trees. Later, Hussien Al-Saieh (TBC) who will share with us about the history of water and its relation to the tribes in Morocco, will navigate us through the water infrastructure and water storage on site. |
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Evening 20:00-22:00 (indoors) |
- Roles allocation within working groups (editorial, communication, budget, production etc.) (1h) - Recap with everyone (1h) - COOP one-on-one meetings: mid-term oral evaluations (30 min each) - Noor w/ Chloe, Federica, Anastasia, Eszter - Marina w/ Foad, echo, Meii, Sille |
Friday - 26 April |
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Morning 10:00-13:00 (indoors) |
- First stop: LE18, where we will be hosted with brunch, and a welcome by co-founder and curator Laila Hilda. We will receive a talk about how LE18 started, as well as an insight on the Qanat collective that Laila is part of. We will conclude the morning session with a guided tour through the new project on show. - Second stop: A visit to Darb Elarj درب الأعرج that is located within walking distance from LE18, joined by Laila. |
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Afternoon 14:00-18:00 (indoors) |
- Third stop: Meander in the medina following Az Oor’s score. COOP late lunch to follow. - Fourth stop: Visiting Malhoun Art Space, a newly established experimental venue combining a gallery space, an international residency program, and studios for young Moroccan artists. Here we will be introduced to the co-founders and artist in-residence, Nabil Himich. (TBC) - Fifth Stop: A visit to Marrakkech’s Water Museum (TBC) |
Evening 20:00-22:00 (indoors) |
- Return to Essaouira and late dinner at the riyad. - Farewell <3 |
Links:
Marrakech
Moroccan Biodiversity and Livelihoods Association
Soumeya Ait Ahmed* & Nadir Bouhmouch
Against Monoculture publication series
*Soumeya spent a few years working on apple monocultures in intersection with communitarian cultural creation in the Atlas mountains There’s also a film they co-created around this subject.
Jumana Emil Aboud
Carry Water (Thus Waves Come in Pairs in Sternberg Press)
A brother, a gazelle and moving the mountain to let the sun shine through
Eimear Walshe
Seminar 2: 5 - 8 March 2024
Storytelling: Who owns the narrative?
This assembly will focus on the notion of narrative in relation to land, housing, and institution. Who owns the narrative? How is narrative constructed, and what are the possible platforms that can host these narratives? We will explore the role of museums and archives and consider alternative forms that may be more inclusive than the institution. These questions and more will be collectively pondered through guest talks, workshops, group work, and film screenings.
During the first day, the COOP’s three working groups will finalize the construction of the narrative for the first episode. This episode will be live-streamed on Radio Al-Hara on the last day of the assembly. The editing session will be followed by a talk from our guest, Yousef Anastas, co-founder of Radio Al-Hara. Anastas will share insights into the collective work of establishing the Radio and the principles it stands for.
In addition, we will be participating in the workshop "Political Filmmaking" with Curating Positions Coop, led by Eyal Sivan. In this workshop, Sivan will discuss his films and the filmmaking process.
Throughout the PAF COOP, dramaturg and artist Dimitris Chimonas will lead a three-day workshop during the morning sessions, focusing on methodologies of the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’. We will engage in a warm-up session to prepare ourselves to take up the role of ‘spect-actors’. Coined by Augusto Boal, this term refers to spectators who actively wield their urgencies to investigate, analyze, and reshape the reality they inhabit. This workshop will unpack creative and somatic tools in transitioning from passive observers to active participants through a series of dramaturgical games that become material for our subsequent Chronicle.
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Tuesday - 5 March |
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Morning 10:00-13:00 (indoors) |
- Group work: 1. Land and water, 2. housing, and 3. Institution - Talk by Elias & Yousef Anastas, co-founders of Radio Al-Hara (TBC) Radio Al-Hara is a Palestinian online radio station broadcasting from Bethlehem since its launch in March 2020. The station grew in public notoriety when it launched a solidarity campaign with protests surrounding the Sheikh Jarrah controversy, which it termed the "Sonic Liberation Front." |
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Afternoon 14:00-18:00 (indoors) |
- Reviewing our COOP’s schedule at PAF |
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Evening 20:00-22:00 (indoors) |
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Wednesday - 6 March |
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Morning 10:00-13:00 (indoors) |
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Afternoon 14:00-18:00 (indoors) |
Workshop: DAY 1 with Dimitris Chimonas The workshop’s DAY 1 consists of a series of physical games and exercises which attempt at discovering alternative strategies of working collectively. Based on intuition, impulse, and deep listening, each participant is invited to activate a state of a hive-mind, and allow decisions to not be made, but to arrive. The aim is to create an intimate gathering surface, where knowledge and experience is shared fluidly, free of linguistic limitations. Working towards an exodus of identification, capitalist function and orderly fashion, the workshop’s initiation questions structures that produce collective imaginaries, which are based on the foundations of resistance and care-work.
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Evening 20:00-22:00 (indoors) |
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Thursday - 7 March |
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Morning 10:00-13:00 (indoors) |
Workshop: DAY 2 with Dimitris Chimonas
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Afternoon 14:00-18:00 (indoors) |
The presentation will dive into the obsession of creating the first Palestinian museum that started since the Ottoman Empire, then the British mandate, The Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Authority. It will focus also on several individual attempts of Palestinian to remember outside the institution of Museum and Archive.
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Evening 20:00-22:00 (indoors) |
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Friday - 8 March |
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Morning 10:00-13:00 (indoors) |
Inspired by Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, Boal evolved various forms of theatre workshops and performances which aimed to address the urgencies of the participating audiences. TO stands for interaction, dialogue, critical thinking, action, and fun. While the performance modes of Forum Theatre, Image Theatre, Cop-In-The-Head, and the vast array of the Rainbow of Desire are designed to bring audiences into active relationship with a performed event, the workshops, such as Interacting with the Script: Theatre of the Oppressed are virtually a training ground for action not only in performance forms, but for action in life. Each working group selects a performance mode from TO, which will be used in the formation of the COOP’s forthcoming episode (reflecting on tools and formats for/of the anticipated COOP Summit). |
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Afternoon 14:00-18:00 (indoors) |
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Evening 20:00-22:00 (indoors) |
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Readings:
- Archive Images: Truth or Memory? The Case of Adolf Eichmann’s Trial
- Montage Against All Odds: Antonia Majaca and Eyal Sivan in Conversation
- “The Earth Doesn’t Tell Its Secrets” His Father Once Said (Novel in English)
- “The Earth Doesn’t Tell Its Secrets” His Father Once Said (Novel in Arabic)
- Overcoming Tourism, Hakim Bey
- Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation, Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Films:
Eyal Sivan & Michel Khleifi 2003, 272min (You don’t have to watch the whole film)
Route 181, offers an unusual vision of the inhabitants of Palestine-Israel, a common vision of an Israeli and a Palestinian.In the summer of 2002, for two long months, Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi travelled together from the south to the north of their country of birth, traced their trajectory on a map and called it Route 181. This virtual line follows the borders outlined in Resolution 181, which was adopted by the United Nations on November 29th 1947 to partition Palestine into two states.
Seminar 1: 23 - 26 January 2024
Rehearsal 1: Imagining Land & Water
Over the course of the four-day COOP in Nida, we’ll delve into each other’s interests and practices. Each COOP participant, alongside the tutorial team, will give short presentations relating to their work. We will further collectivize around our group’s working protocols, setting the framework of our shared process during each encounter of the year ahead. Being introduced to the lumbung* practice, known to artists and cultural workers after documenta15 in 2022, we learn of a long-standing tradition of resource redistribution and commoning in the Indonesian context. The discussion will revolve around the way in which we can activate the lumbung to better suit our group’s intentions and area of focus: land rights, housing crises and modes of co-ownership.
Departing from our encounter in Nida and the location’s environment, we engage with the local context and what its history may offer in relation to our COOP. During a visit at Thomas Mann House in Nida, we reflect on the idea of a house being converted into a cultural space, and further question: How’s the notion of co-ownership and the paradox between public-private plays out in this case? After a series of screenings, presentations and reflections, and rotating between our lumbung roles, we conclude by carving out space in the transmissible where this and every forthcoming COOP encounter is harvested in the form of a podcast episode to be released via Radio Al Hara.
* lumbung is the Indonesian word for a communal rice-barn, where the surplus harvest is stored for the benefit of the community. The lumbung practice enables an alternative economy of collectivity, shared resource building, and equitable distribution. lumbung is anchored in the local and based on values such as humor, generosity, independence, transparency, sufficiency, and regeneration.
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Tuesday - 23 January |
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Morning 10:30-13:00 (indoors) |
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Noon 14:00-18:00 (indoors) |
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Evening 20:00-22:00 (indoors) |
Cyprus is an Island (Cyprus, 1946), dir. Keene Ralph. 32’:46’’ We Began By Measuring Distance (2009), Basma Alsharif. 19’ |
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Wednesday - 24 January |
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Morning 10:30-13:00 (indoors) |
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Noon 14:00-18:00 (indoors) |
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Evening 20:00-22:00 (indoors) |
Death in Venice (Italy, 1971), dir. Luchino Visconti (after Thomas Mann novel, 1912) |
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Thursday - 25 January |
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Morning 10:30-13:00 (indoors) |
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Noon 14:00-18:00 |
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Evening 20:00-22:00 (indoors) |
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Friday - 26 January |
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Morning 10:30-13:00 (indoors) |
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Noon 14:00-18:00 (indoors) |
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Evening 20:00-22:00 (indoors) |
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Future Readings:
Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation (2022) Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Chapter 20: Abolition Geography and the Problem of Innocence (22 pages)
THE FUNAMBULIST (Monthly journal)
Demonic Grounds Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (2006) Katherine McKittrick
New Urban Worlds: Inhabiting Dissonant Times (2017) Abdou Maliq Simone, Edgar Pieterse
Mortgaged Lives: From the housing bubble to the right to housing (2014) Ada Colau, Adrià Alemany
Links:
Collective Property: https://www.collectiefeigendom.nl/
We Are ‘Nature' Defending Itself: https://vagabonds.xyz/wandi/
LA PAH Handbook: https://www.rosalux.eu/en/article/2045.la-pah-a-handbook.html