Vision

Arts Collaboratory is an organisation that we build and are a part of, that doesn't mean that AC limits or constricts our autonomy as organisations and our work with other networks or communities. The aim of AC is to create an ecosystem to support different organisations in order to coexist and sustain themselves. The ecosystem is thus an assemblage of various interdependent networks, resources, and organisations, like a living organism.

Arts Collaboratory envisions an ecosystem comprising 25 organisations which acts as one translocal organisation. This does not mean a mere collectivisation in place of individual organisations. Rather, the strength of Arts Collaboratory lies in each individual organisation embedded in their specific local context and working accordingly, while being connected trans-nationally and considering the relationship between the AC and its communities and its accountability to them[8]. Our difference and diversity are key elements for this ecosystem in this regard, as well as the fact that we are an ‘unnatural network’ in the sense that we did not gather by affinity or common interest by our own initiative. Nevertheless, we are connected through common desires and struggles. Four strong desires are recognized in forming our vision:

1. Create a paradigm shift in the post-colonial and neo-liberal contexts

2. Recognize our sustainability as the highest value for the ecosystem

3. Implement the concept of Study instead of demonstration and administration

4. Combine Radical imagination and pragmatism through thoughtful organisation

Paradigm Shift in the Post-Colonial and Neo-Liberal Context

Most of the Arts Collaboratory member organisations are located in the geographic area denoted as the ’global south’. While purposely avoiding the use of this notion for our identity, Arts Collaboratory is conscious of the problems of the current division between the ’global south’ and the ‘global north’ and seeks to transcend them.

This partition reflects the division between labor and capital, namely the structural domination of the former by the latter through the mechanism of never-ending production, the myth of growth and the logic of accumulation. In turn all of these factors have created the culture of individualism and competition, dependency and exploitation, which has resulted in ever-increasing inequality among humans.

While the neo-liberal turn of capitalism since the late 1970s on a global scale has only accelerated this capitalist mode of operation, we find the root of this system in colonization, mainly in the construction of the hegemonic notions of time, value, space and language. All the organisations in Arts Collaboratory continue to be affected by the trauma of colonialism as it is a logical progression, the structures of capitalism in our organizational contexts perpetuate this trauma even after each respective country’s ’independence’ from, or the removal of colonial power.

This makes us keep producing at the cost of our own labor and time, without being able to create our own rules and rhythms. Yet, the crucial recognition that Arts Collaboratory wants to make, in line with many other colleagues and thinkers around us, is that this problem does not just belong to the so-called ’south.’ The general instability, insecurity, the exploitation of labor by capital, and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor are experienced palpably by the majority of the population in the ’north’ as well.

In this light, Arts Collaboratory sees the importance of challenging this paradigm by subverting the above mentioned division and cultivating co-existence. We move forward towards degrowth as opposed to growth, to enact interdependence rather than dependence or independence, to share commonwealths rather than subscribe to capitalist accumulation.

Study and tooling is like a breathing activity for Arts Collaboratory. Breathing is a natural process which does not require the need for approval and evaluation of others. Accountability, as imposed and defined by external systems, produces the process of bureaucracy and multiplies time for administration. A regular, major activity of art organisations these days lies in representation, demonstration and writing reports, which mostly attempts to prove one’s success and strength, and hides failure and vulnerability, or falls into the trap of ’pornomiseria’ - a commodification of misery.

Instead, Arts Collaboratory turns every mode of activity into a self-mutual-(un)learning process where conversation is taken as the most basic and important mode. This way, the time and labor used for the existing form of accountability will be instead used for enriching the self and collectively enriching the process of learning. Based on this new use of time we open the space to different forms of study that are tools to let us create a real praxis. Furthermore, based on the Ethical Principles (see Section C), we commit to sharing our learning beyond ’us in the room’, by transforming part of our learning process into common tools, that we make available to others, and into mechanisms for building affinity and studying diversity of strategies that in turn enrich our commonwealths. Those mechanisms are reflected in Mutual Learning, Triangles, Banga Meetings, Experimental Tooling Projects (ETPs) and Assembly (see Section E).

The recognition of ‘failure‘ next to success is key here as it provides essential knowledge that is neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic, but practice-oriented. Failure may in fact provide more creative, more collaborative, more surprising ways of insights into the organisational being, and thus lead to tools for productivity beyond the dominant narrative of progress.

Inherent in AC is an attempt to shift the paradigm of what ‘lack of resources’ means. Questions, uncertainties, and doubts that revolve around the ‘lack of resources’ discourse are transformed into the development of power in valuing and in revaluing the existing resources that are not monetary or financial. The making of a Resource Map (See D.2) is part of the strategy for achieving sustainability, and highlighting non-monetary resources while at the same time embodying the possible output of the sustainability process.

Sustainability is thus a condition which captures the struggle and the process of defining, redefining, and experimenting with each member’s definition of themselves. It is a practice which expresses AC’s readiness for being in a state of perpetual invention and for decolonizing the existing power relationships. What emerges from this process is a series of choices, speculations and lessons that can be used to write our own history and future.

At the same time, however, AC acknowledges the need for monetary resources that are still obtained through “traditional” methods such as fundraising. Although AC works in shifting the paradigm of funding and the existing power dynamic within the funding scene, AC is also aware of its position within the existing paradigm. The need for fundraising is acknowledged. How to go about it remains the question. See Section E.3.2.c Fundraising.

Radical Imagination & pragmatism through thoughtful organisation

We are convinced that the complex challenge of Arts Collaboratory is the process of unlearning that allows us to be aware that we are our own obstacles.

The deep problems we face are not only outside of us, but within our own mental structures, social relations, and historical and cultural contexts. Active exploration through radical imagination is absolutely necessary to build this ecosystem based on our ethics.

What is Radical Imagination?

On the surface level, radical imagination is the ability to imagine the world, life and social institutions not as they are but as they might otherwise be or become.

It is the courage and the intelligence to recognize that the world can and should be changed. But radical imagination is not just about dreaming of different futures. It's about bringing those possible futures ’back’ to work in the present, to inspire action and new forms of solidarity across boundaries and borders, real or imagined.

Without a radical imagination, we are left only with the residual dreams of the powerful, and for the vast majority they are not experienced as dreams but as nightmares of insecurity, precariousness, violence, and hopelessness. Without a radical imagination, we are lost.

Radical imagination remains a driving force in the dynamics of our political moment. It is not a thing that individuals possess, but something that groups activate and do together. The imagination is our capacity to think about those things we do not or cannot directly experience, but it is also the filter or the frame through which we interpret our own experiences. For this reason, the imagination is an intimate part of how we empathize with others, the way we project ourselves into the future, and gain inspiration and direction from the past.

Radical imagination is a deep force at the very basis of the human subject, the realm of ‘the imaginary’ where ideas, meanings, associations, fixations, drives and affects circulate beneath the threshold of conscious thought. The notion of the ’radical’ inherits its most powerful meaning from the Latin ‘radix’ or ’root’, in the sense that radical ideas, ideologies or perspectives are informed by the understanding that social, political, economic and cultural problems are outcomes of deeply rooted tensions, contradictions, power imbalances, and forms of oppression and exploitation.

The radical imagination is that tectonic, protean substance out of which all social institutions and identities are made, and which, likewise, is constantly in motion under the surface of society, undermining and challenging all that we take to be real, hard, fast and eternal. Likening the radical imagination to magma, that volcanic substance between liquid and solid. Seemingly permanent social forms (from the ideal of marriage to the form of the state, from the value of money to the concept of nation) are the temporary solidifications of the (shared) radical imagination.

Radical imagination is also that force within individuals and collectives that resists the present order, that screams ’no!’ and refuses to be conscripted. Art is the very concrete means for exercising this radical imaginative power: hence is ’Art’ + ’Collaboratory.’

B.2.1 Sustainability understood in its multiplicity

B.2.2 Sustainability and the need for funding

Sustainability is the primary concern within the AC ecosystem. It is a condition and a process which incorporates the determination of each organisation. It has always been referred to as the capacities for self-sustainability and self-determination.

It not only denotes a reason or a means by which to live but also an avenue for making sense and valuing the various forms of the existing discrepancies among the AC members. The value of the ecosystem lies in how each member shows their willingness to take care of, and at once acknowledges their inter-dependency to each other.

Sustainability is most of the time measured in how well an organisation can survive, i.e: goes on, and mainly in terms of money. However, in AC, sustainability is looked at in its multiplicity and interwoven layers, since an organisation is not only dependant on monetary resources but also on intangible resources (such as experience, knowledge, etc.) and relies greatly on the relations it maintains within its community and its context, in order to sustain the intentions of the work it does.

The shift towards degrowth and ecological sustainability is very much linked to the idea of working towards self-sustainability for the organization and the ecosystem. This involves a shift towards qualitative content rather than quantitative, strengthening rather than growing, caring rather than exploiting and exhausting.

In that regard, it is equally important for an AC organization to work on its internal structure (exposing power dynamics inside the organization for example; placing values such as care and studying at the center as part of the day-to day practice), rather than the structure of its funding. It is also necessary to be aware of its surroundings, namely other organizations working in the same field and to nurture the spirit of openness towards the different communities. This is especially true since in the precarious context where arts and social work reside, the survival of an organization depends to a great extent on the informal relations it maintains with its community (through emotional support, non-waged labor, networking, etc.).