The Coming Community
“Decisive here is the idea of an inessential community, of a solidarity which in no way concerns an essence”
Giorgio Agamben
The Coming Community aims to experiment the possibilities of ephemeral cohabitations and gathering in a specific space-time: a place inhabited by “disseminated, temporary and nomadic” communities – to use the words of Giorgio Agamben, who inspired this project. Nine artists from France, Switzerland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Russia developed through video, voice, movement or sculpture subjects related to: performativity, language, ritual, mythology and technology. Originally planned to be held at Coco Velten in Belsunce, Marseille (November 13-28 2020) as part of Manifesta 13, The Coming Community emerged from the encounter and dialogue between two duos of curators based in France and Switzerland – each imagining different strategies on the importance of interpersonal relationships and collaborative process within the frame of curatorial practices.
Thought as an “active space” (stage, content and context – F. Malzacher, J. Warsza), this collective project explores potentialities and policies of ephemeral communities as tools to create a space of commoning, With this approach, it works on and with the local context, using the relationship between public space and audience to study situations participating in collective power or in new narratives.
We persist in thinking, discussing and writing together. In the context of the current situation, the physical part of the project continues in multiple digital and textual media. Three virtual meetings during November have emphasized the possibilities of rethinking the exhibition space in terms of conviviality and collective understanding. Beginning with “How do we come together in a world that isolates us?” by Nora Sternfeld, our interest intersects with different institutional models such as the “para-institution”. This alternative model dealing with cultural-political relations that propose the pedagogy of “refusing the refusal” instead of simple criticism. With these approaches, the result will be an experimental anthology created in alternative ways of publishing and distributing. Composed of theoretical reflections, it will bring together the perspectives and processes of all invited artists. In collaboration with Station of Commons, Belsunce Project and Copie Machine, thisanthology will be printed in Marseille, Hamburg, Prague and Geneva and distributed for free. Finally, The Coming community is for us a means of broadening the methods of exhibitions producing; from the site of installation to practices of commoning.
A proposal by ex situ – Cassandre Langlois & Simona Dvořáková – and the curatorial duo Gabrielle Boder & Tadeo Kohan.
With contributions by: the artists Flora Bouteille, Anatol Dirkas, Michala Julínyová, Nastasia Meyrat, Nicolas Pesquier, Rudolf Samohejl, Trapier Duporté, Victor Villagafnem, Victor Yudaev; Station of Commons (Grégoire Rousseau and Juan Gomez) and Nora Sternfeld (HFBK Hamburg).
The project was planned as a part of Manifesta 13 in Marseille.
It is supported by Cité international des arts, Czech centre in Paris, Slovak Institute in Paris, Institut français de Prague, Etat de Vaud, Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain, DIP, Genève, Pro Helvetia – Fondation suisse pour la culture, Ricard Foundation, Ville de Lausanne, Frame Contemporary Art Finland and has been realised in collaboration with the HFBK (University of Fine Arts Hamburg) Hamburg
Online programme and vidéos:
November 13th: How can we learn something which doesn’t exist yet?
Non-public conversation between curators, artists, Station of Commons and Nora Sternfeld
November 20th: How to create a disseminate community? Talking about para-institutions in Marseille and beyond
An experimental public talk: In discussion with curators, artists and exhibition spaces in Marseille and in relation the exhibition project, Nora Sternfeld Sternfeld develops the term “para-institutions”; in recent years, many artists have declared their work to be a “museum” what she calls “para-institutions”. They own the institution using their own resources. To the extent that they are both an integral part of the institution and another type of institution in the making. This complicated relationship means both acting alongside and outside the institution. The para-institution is therefore not an anti-institution. Sternfeld does not repudiate the institution, but she seeks to question its role without rejecting it.
November 27th: Coming Commons
Coming Commons brings forward discussions on the future of distribution and archives of printed matters with artist Anne-Laure Franchette, co-organizer of Volumes book fair. Juan Pablo García Sossa will present his research project Instituto Habanero on post-conflict situations in Colombia and his proposition of Magical Realism as a form of Speculative Design applied in Global South in conversation with theorist and curator Nora Sternfeld (Professor HFBK Hamburg).
Invited artists:
Flora Bouteille, Anatol Dirkas, Michala Julínyová, Nastasia Meyrat, Nicolas Pesquier, Rudolf Samohejl, Trapié Duporté, Victor Villafagne,Victor Yudaev
Nora Sternfeld, HFBK Hamburg
Nora Sternfeld is an educator, curator and, from October 2020, professor of arts education at HFBK Hamburg. She is currently Professor of Documenta at Kassel Art College. She is co-founder and partner of trafo.K (office for education, art and production of critical knowledge, Vienna) and is part of the freethought collective (research, education and production platform, London). Among other things, she writes on anti-racist curating, critical education, institutional exclusions and the possibility of reclaiming the neoliberalized concept of participation.
Station of Commons
Station of Commons is a research project on Digital Commons initiated by Gregoire Rousseau (Helsinki) and Juan Gomez (Geneva).
Launched in February 2020, Station of Commons produces research on the possibilities of reappropriating technology in public space. The starting point of this research questions both centralized knowledge, data centers managed by private interests and the social implications that derive from them. What are the interdependencies at work between users, providers, access services, technology and their relative knowledge? And how can we imagine another critical model of accountability located in time and space that is unique to its actor or community? How can a truly radical artistic practice emerge in “Open Technology” to find new forms?
Grégoire Rousseau (France) is a laureate of the Visual Arts commissions of the Cité internationale des arts. He is also a FRAME Travel Grant recipient.
Belsunce Project
Belsunce Projects is an exhibition space based in Marseille. Founded in 2018 by Won Jin Choi and Basile Ghosn. It is an independent and associative place whose primary goal is to disseminate contemporary creation to a large public at the local and international level. We see our programming as an endlessly renewed experience, governed by the idea of open form. It focuses on plastic and theoretical research that we conduct in conjunction with artists and curators from all backgrounds.
Our actions take multiple forms: white cards, exhibitions (personal or collective), round tables and book clubs are just a few examples of the proposals that can take place within the space or outside the walls. In addition to the exhibitions we organize, Belsunce Projects hosts independent curatorial initiatives as well as other project-spaces to take over our premises, helping to cement mutual aid within the artistic community.
Belsunce Projects is a place of confluence that uses its curatorial project as a tool to build a network linking artists and local and international project-spaces.
Copie Machine
Copie Machine, Zone de Reprographie Temporaire is a device intended to produce, interrogate and circulate documents in a multitude of forms: leaflets, posters, books, fanzines … Welcoming all forms of action through photocopying, Copie Machine is an incentive to act and make us act. Photocopying has this capacity to transform us “both as author and publisher”, as McLuhan sensed in 1967, into looters, as suggested by the 1992 slogan “Danger: photocopying kills the book” and makes everyone of us a potential political agitator.
Both contextual and reproducible project taking the form of a convenience store, Copie Machine adapts once again to respond to the context of the Marseille district of Belsunce, and transforms Belsunce Projects into a Zone de Reprographie Temporaire (ZRT), where everyone can come and photocopy their documents “from € 0.00 incl. Tax”. Based on the principles of copyleft, and accessible to all, Copie Machine is designed outside the attentional economy and proposes to transform the public into an actor and a user, by seizing the device and the set of documents put available by guest artists and thinkers.
Designed by Laura Morsch-Kihn and antoine lefebvre editions in collaboration with the Edith research team (Esadhar Recherche) in the peripheral district of Grand’Mare in Rouen in 2017, Copie Machine has since experienced several reactivations: within FILAF in Perpignan in 2018, at Printroom in Rotterdam and at La Tôlerie de Clermont Ferrand in 2019
Coco Velten (moved online) Coco Velten
