Culture of Permanence | residency call at Arc, Switzerland

An international call for participation by artists for a thematic group residency on Culture of Permanence, considering questions of communal shareholding and knowledge build-up at Arc, in Romainmôtier, Switzerland. It will be held 7-14 April 2016.

In the second decade of the 21st century the neoliberal model is in crisis: we live in a society where 30 to 40 % of the population are knowledge workers within a system that is speculative and expresses the value of social collaboration in a way that does not fit. That leads us to imagining an exodus to a new prototype: we have to create new values and develop new ways of collaborating. Until now philosophers have imagined a different world with various kinds of theories, but how can we actually change it?

One possibility of relational dynamics is the peer-to-peer one, which is a form of communal shareholding: people can contribute to a group project in a horizontal way and can benefit from the results of the collective work, without direct individual reciprocity. Peer-to-peer is about building up a system through contribution from different points of view, by confronting different disciplines with each other, in a community of practice around a mutual goal. Transdisciplinarity starts from the objective, not from a single discipline. The question is rather: who has the best methods or techniques to better understand the objective.

By bringing together practitioners from different fields during a week in April 2016, Arc would like to explore how artistic strategies can be used to address wide-ranging issues related to peer-production and knowledge building.

The common objective during the week will be to develop a vegetable garden at Arc. By orienting ourselves towards permaculture – or ‘culture of permanence’ – we want to look at the link between the historical, social and biological settlement (abbey garden, farmer garden, ecosystem) and a new project. Can the development of a vegetable garden contribute to novel articulations about object oriented sociality: collaborating towards a mutual goal, according to the principles of anticredentialism (you don’t need references or degrees to do a specific task well) and equipotential (everyone has the same potential to contribute to a collective project with their specific talent or project)? What are the social innovations? And how can peer-production be evolutionary and sustainable?

The residency will bring together applicants of this open call with an invited group of experts from different fields.

Participants are invited to contribute with their own research and projects to the explorations and reflections about peer-production.

This thematic residency is developed in collaboration with the Swiss anthropologist Julien Vuilleumier.

Practical:

- The call is open to artists and practitioners from other fields, from Switzerland and from other places.

- Participants will be selected by a jury of arts practitioners and experts from other fields.

- The residency will take place from 7 to 14 April 2016 at Arc artist residency, in Romainmôtier, Switzerland.

- The language of the residency will be English.

- Besides the workshops and work space, Arc offers travel, accommodation and food for this thematic residency.