Draft Graduation Proposal

What do you want to make?

I'm still insecure about the nature of the grad.project / the form I want to give to my research. What I know is that I would like to work on the topic "community stories/organizations and/vs institutional narratives". Starting with looking at my personal experience with co-living, I want to choose one of these experiences, analyze its organizational and social structures and propose a work out of it. My three main experiences with three different living communities are: the small village where I was born, part of the "Autonomous Province of Trento", a small self-organized house/community in Venice, and the historical community in Rotterdam called the Poortgebouw. For my graduation project I would like to use one of these places as playground to experiment with their set of rules, values, decision-making structures and other forms of self-organized tools of living together, and contextualize them within the larger panorama of the civilized and institutional organizations they are sharing the soil of a city. I want to communicate and (maybe?) let other people experiment the methods that we use in our community in order to do things together. Which kind of emotional infrastructures people build in order to facilitate life and signify their values? Small scale communities are in my opinion simple and large non-biologically related family-organization. As families, communities works through practicing common-rituals that shapes the habits of their households. At the same time, these kind of communities are atypical and often non-socially accepted. In our society of massive privatization the space for the public encounter is starting to disappear, what if we look at those "islands of exclusions" as places for testing new parameters of "sharing commons"?

How do you plan to make it?

I first want to look deeply into the three different forms of communities and analyze some selected peculiarities:

- their decision making process,

- their regulations systems,

- their infrastructures,

- their relationship with the "outside".

After that I will start looking at similarities and differences. With a special focus on their struggles, weaknesses and conflicts. In the process I would like to include interviews to some of my old flatmates, my family, my current cohabitants. (which kind of questions I want to ask?)

After that, I will have to start to invent the scenario for the experiments / performances / games I want to stage as graduation project. The idea is that those performances will be some sort of tests to "pro-test" against predefined standards and codes of "being together".

What is your timetable?

November - December: analysis of communities & small sketches/experiments of games/performances/etc.
January - February: interviews and processing analysis & small sketches/experiments of games/performances/etc.
March - April: drafting experiments/performances/games
etc... or something along those lines :)
I need to first start doing things.

After that I will follow the above-mentioned pre-method. Hoping it will work, and to don't get stuck in the research.

Why do you want to make it?

To have fun together, first,

to provoke a critical reflection on how we build relationships between us and others and we signify them with meaning,

to trigger bigger discussions on how we learn habits (looking at information forming processes, G.Bateson) while sharing things with someone else,

to present a possible method of experiencing life and things through encounter,

to question the notion of "autonomy" ( & its semiotic ambiguity), predefined categories, and,

to celebrate the extra-categorical, the importance of contact and proximity, the non-dualistic relationship between particular and common, private and public, individual and collective.

Who can help you and how?

Our tutors, all of them, to help me reflecting on building my own media/tools to present this potential work,

The people of the community where I live in, and looking and the history of the community. Some old inhabitants of the Poortgebouw (already in contact with them),

My dad (who's the "sheriff" of the village where I was born and is a master of negotiation),

Stad in De Maak (http://www.stadindemaak.nl/),

Varinia Canto Vila (choreographer and dancer, who works a lot on the body as place of mediation between super-imposed regulations and personal will) we did a workshop together last year, I would like to ask her some help if possible in finding methods for my practice, or just as inspiration,

Femke Snelting, our tutor, especially for the project we did together "Interfacing the Law".

Relation to previous practice

There's an important relation with the recent work I've done, the Autonomous Archive, which consist in an archival machine built to collaboratively collect materials from the historical archive of the Poortgebouw. The archive is an attempt to write alternative codes of archiving the stories of our community. I say "alternative" because the settings we designed for our machine are not shared with the archive of the city (the archive works on a local server) and are built upon a media-wiki page: a non hierarchical form of database and collective platform that allows multiple users to implement or modify the collection. In my work I find important to problematize the struggles of collectivity: I think there's a necessity to start looking again at the way we assume the law and we make it ours.

Relation to a larger context

References

People:

Varinia Canto Vila http://www.workspacebrussels.be/nl/artists/varinia_canto_vila-102.html

Koiné Teatro: http://www.database.it/koine/koine.htm

Vereniging Poortgebouw: https://poortgebouw.org/

Parasite 2.0 :http://www.parasiteparasite.com/

Friction Atlas: http://frictionatlas.net/

The struggle site: http://www.struggle.ws/

Mireia Saladrigues http://www.mireiasaladrigues.com/w/

Convention on the Use of Space, Adelita Husni-Bey http://www.gallerialaveronica.it/artworks/adelita-husni-bey-237-white-paper-the-law/ http://www.useofspaceconvention.org/app/uploads/2015/07/CONVENTION-EN.pdf http://www.useofspaceconvention.org/#

Legislative Theatre , Theatre of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Boal https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/augusto-boal-legislative-theatre-politics/

Texts:

"Who Told You So?! The Collective Story vs. the Individual Narrative", edited and curated by Freek Lomme,

"Community and Civil Society", Ferdinand Tonnies,

"Communitas", Roberto Esposito,

"Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life", Roberto Esposito,

Stavros Stavrides, "Common Space as Threshold Space: Urban Common- ing in Struggles to Re-appropriate Public Space”,

Augusto Boal, Legislative Theatre http://forumtheatre.by/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Boal-Augusto-Legislative-Theatre_-Using-Performance-to-Make-Politics.pdf

New Draft 26.10.17

I started commenting on the text above... so for planning/timetable, see up there :) We can run through the latest version together next week, for the final touches. In general: nice! it's getting there! well of course you need to fill in some blanks, or combine the old version with the newer for references, etc. Also, what I'm missing is some sketches/visuals/screenshots of experiments you're doing, and in the 'relation to previous practice' you can add some images just to give the assessment crew a better idea (those who haven't followed you closely). Conceptually all ingredients are there, you just need to make clear how you're going to turn concept into practice, so unpack a few things to make it more concrete. Good work! What do you want to make?

I want to produce a generative and performative game that allows multiple players to compose legislations that will be applicable on the small “society” created by the players. The game looks at how legislations are written and with the support of some programming tricks, I plan to build a generative tool that allows people to decompose the sentences of some selected regulations and play with new narratives. Add some screenshots of the experiments you're doing. So people get a more complete ideaThe tool would be the support for the game itself. I’m now trying to take a decision on the nature of the laws I want to manipulate. At the moment I think I will look at conventions on the use of public space from different cities. The goal of the game will be to re-write ad-hoc regulations that could be applied on the imaginary-community created by the players.What does this imaginary community look like? Do you play the game online or irl? With a large group or just a few? Is it imaginary in the sense that you can play alone and influence a virtual/simulated community? I’m still trying to push further this goal into a more tangible and less speculative goal that can make the game ending, but I’m still in the process of experimenting and researching. I think the game I want to design and stage should have a real application in the city of Rotterdam. How are you going to work towards that goal? For instance: will you develop it inside/with the help of a certain community? Will you test it's applicability while developing?

Some key concepts that I want to explore:

• relation legality-illegality One concrete example of each?To see how that would take shape in game form or how these juxtapositions relate to the overall goal of the project
• relation public- private
• relation community-civil society
• potentialities of conflictual collaboration*

How do you plan to make it?

At the moment I’m experimenting and playing with different laws. I tried to imagine a small game (as starting point) that would use the texts from different laws as support to create different narratives on imaginary regulations. I worked on different texts, deleting part of the sentences and building “space” to use different terms. The terms that the people can use to fill the empty spaces of the sentences derives from the collection of words that have been previously deleted from the same texts. In this way different words from different regulations are used as source words for the re-composition of the “new” texts. I tried to look at possible Python scripts to generate a template of the sentences, and/or the randomization of the words to use to complete the text. This is just a starting point, but for me it was important to do that because it made me realize that my focus on the language of regulations can be the key of the critique I want to outline. What I’m criticizing is the binary assumption of law that regulates the use of public space upon the way we want to actually live that space.

What is your timetable?

1. Research and experimentations with texts from regulations, python scripts for building templates for the texts, research on types of laws,

2. Testing all the attempts of the game with people, making various experiments with different groups of people, see if people get it and feel free to play and discuss,

3. Design & production, making decisions on the form the game will take,

4. Alternative applications of the game in various contexts.

Why do you want to make it?

Laws are tools that in the act of regulating the organization of a community of people, makes “less common” the “commons”. Laws are immune to the community itself: they are protecting the commons by a series of obligations or gifts to “give”. The common law is what bounds individuals to a community. Something common is something that doesn’t belong to anyone, but requires an effort, an accomplishment of a duty or an obligation. Community is something that determines individuals at a distance and in difference from their very selves. What individuals have in common in a community is the lack in community. Community is both necessary and impossible. Considering that the condition of our existence is rooted in living in communities, our existence is always regulated by laws. We have always existed “in the law”. I want to make this project for a necessity of re-democratize how law is produced and performed. How we can rethink ways of producing more commons within the commons? How can we explore new ways of experiencing freedom within a controlled system? ( specifically in the system of our public spaces = places where bio-power applies bio-regulations on bodies)

I would also like to imagine my work as an effective legal instrument that can be played or used in different contexts. Ultimately the game can also be performed as a theatre script, I would like to use performance to spread a political message. On the line of the “legislative theatre”* of Augusto Boal, the scripts I will generate will be played to reveal oppression and or generate narratives on the way we live our public space.

Who can help you and how?

Relation to previous practice

This project will connect with almost all of the projects I have been done before. Characteristic of this project : characteristic of old projects

• use of public space : choreography of identitarian control (https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/1st_Final_Essay:_Choreography_of_Identitarian_Control), works on gait analysis and biometrics of surveillance (“adopt a walk”, “DIY gait analysis” https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/2nd_Final_Essay: , https://issue.xpub.nl/02/)
• reflection on legality / illegality relation : autonomous archive project (http://franc-g.com/Autonomous-Archive https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/Autonomous_Archive)
• use of gaming techniques as ways to perform an issue: Op=Op (http://franc-g.com/OP-OP-Book)

Relation to a larger context This bit below belongs at the top of your 'why?', it explains your motivation really well! Could do with a bit of unpacking though. For 'relation to larger context' you could refer to other artists/theorists touching on this topic. You explain the larger context of your concept really well in the rest of the text I think considering our current political panorama, and considering the disappearance of public spaces or commons, there’s a fundamental necessity of claiming the “extra-categorical”* that will produce new spaces of freedom. How to turn our biopolitics into affirmative politics of communities.

Maybe this could be of interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Democratic_Paradox or other writings of Chantal Mouffe

References

Glossary:

• conflictual collaboration: collaboration based on strategical forms of conflict. forms of collaboration where the decision making process is dynamic and can change. Importance of underlining the contradictory nature of the act of collaborating. It is contradictory because the connection between individual interests and common interests is always in tension. Collaborating cannot be a mere act of deleting power relations, but should be seen as a contextual process of playing together a game of “strategical conflict”.
• legislative theatre: theatre method initiated by Augusto Boal, consequently to the famous Theatre of the Oppressed method. This method consist in showing and performing legal struggles in order to communicate and offer tools to escape daily oppression.
• extra-categorical: that escapes old and established standards of identification.