Gentle Friction - through temporary territories of culture
(2024)
author(s): Alicia Rottke Fitzpatrick
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Friction between the other is not only inevitable but a necessary part of heterogeneous life. However, this friction can occur on a spectrum, from aggressive, violent manifestations to more gentle, subtle forms. This research explores the latter form of friction within the context of cultural events.
There is a growing rhetoric that cultural events are solely for elitist circles, and if this discourse continues to permeate society, the transformative power of these events will be in jeopardy.
To preserve and reinforce the transformative power of these spaces, this research asks: How do cultural events facilitate moments of gentle friction as a means to foster an understanding of 'the other'?
This research began as an introspective exploration into the author's practice. By unpacking the conditions of conviviality, autonomy, and temporality that ensure the friction remains gentle, the research explores how these conditions can be spatially translated to strengthen the experience in these spaces. Concluding with a set of design tools that can be used to ensure the vitality of cultural events, encouraging diverse participation as a means to protect this necessary form of friction between the other.
The Convivial Labour Force Project / Projet main d'oeuvre conviviale
(2021)
author(s): Julien Gagnon Rouillard
published in: Research Catalogue
The Convivial Labour Force Project fits somewhere between the nomadic fablab and the anti-business. Flirting with the limits of a free maker space and applied conviviality, the project is inspired by a desire of reappropriating social economy and questioning the meaning of transaction within mutual aid.
The goal is simple: to offer one’s free collaboration in a diversity of projects - through cabinetmaking to sewing including cooking and horticulture – all while aligning the co-performed tasks with the principles of economic degrowth, conviviality and horizontality.
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Projet main d’œuvre conviviale s’inscrit quelque part entre le fablab nomade et l’anti-entreprise, aux limites du maker space gratuit et de la convivialité appliquée, inspiré par un désir de réappropriation de l’économie sociale et une remise en question de la transaction dans l’entraide.
L’objectif est simple : offrir gratuitement sa collaboration dans de multiples projets – de l’ébénisterie à la couture en passant par la cuisine et l’horticulture – tout en alignant les tâches ainsi co-effectuées avec les principes de la décroissance économique, de la convivialité et de l’horizontalité.
Metamorphosis: Strategies of Convivial Survival
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Marina Grzinic, Jovita Pristovšek, Sophie Uitz
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The last decade has witnessed a metamorphosis in terms of the co-development of a new definition and practice of conviviality as a positive, affirmative act of doing in the form of change. However, the pandemic in the form of social distancing, contagion and isolation presents a new obstacle to conviviality.
The aim of our work is to explore and develop artistic practices that have the potential to intervene in these disrupting dynamics of conviviality. We start from the assumption that arts-based research can function as an affirmative metamorphic force to deepen and strengthen convivial practices. We will engage in a practice of living together through shared learning in the format of convivial working groups and workshops.
This exposition will present the artistic scientific research line that is connected to the FWF-PEEK Project “Conviviality as Potentiality: From Amnesia and Pandemic towards a Convivial Epistemology” funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) (AR679).
As part of our three-year research project, three Convivial Study Workshops will be organised in cooperation with our partner maiz – Autonomous Centre of and for Migrant Women in Linz; two will take place in Vienna (AT) and one in Linz (AT).
In the first year, we are planning the first workshop to explore the global narrative of the pandemic and the social order of distance, contagion and isolation. This condition has impacted numerous NGOs, artistic grassroot collectives and art students, migrant organizations and LGBT*QIA+ communities in the context of the anti-migration and anti-refugee regime in Austria.
In preparation for the actual workshop and in cooperation with the workshop participants we will create a Convivial Script — an exposition as a digitally produced performative story of learning and living, which will function as an archive of linguistic, visual, audio, textual interrogations/representations of obstacles to conviviality.