When I visited Timelab in 2012, it was a organisation which was working with two distinct communities: international artists, and a mostly local community of ‘makers’.
Since then, the Timelab core crew has taken a bold step further by radically changing the way they operate. The new organisational logic has been inspired by holocracy, alternative business development models, agile software development methods and various other concepts. This change has allowed many barriers to disappear – the artists and makers form one community instead of two, and there is a great amount of transparency in all the activities.
This blog post offers some glimpses to the way Timelab operates, based in the discussions I had with Eva de Groote and Evi Swinnen.
* * *
This is the Timelab manifesto (a rough translation):
Timelab gives examples of small and big changes. These inspire and trigger dialogue, and encourage development of new models. Timelab offers time and space for reflection on a complex society in transition. Continue reading →
Majelis Akbar harvest by Dan Perjovschi, January 2022
Here are some reflections on Lumbung One / documenta 15 –
For me the main motivation to visit Kassel was to try to get a sense of what Lumbung is and how it operates. It turned out that the documenta Handbook (which costs 28€) was the most useful source of information. The handbook dedicates 30 pages to introducing the Lumbung system and as far as I know, this same introduction is not available online.
To me, many aspects of Lumbung seem like steps to the right direction:
Being sensitive to the realities of art collectives in the Global South, giving them a strong mandate to define how they will participate
Setting the priorities right: the participating collectives should be able to keep up their regular activities even though they take part in documenta 15 (“Keep on doing what you are doing and find a translation to Kassel”)
Bringing all the participating collectives and artists into dialogue, enabling peer-support and collaboration
Increasing transparency in the process and finances, placing a substantial part of the funding to a common funding pool (creating a strong incentive for forming collaborations)
Aiming for more active audience engagement (participants instead of audience)
Aiming to build funding and collaboration models that would be sustainable and would function also after documenta (Lumbung Kios, Lumbung Gallery, etc)
An emphasis on sharing and harvesting, via https://lumbung.space, Lumbung Press, etc
Enabling the local art scene of Kassel to get involved
As someone who has been involved in various participatory experiments over the years, I find these aspects of Lumbung extremely interesting. I would also be eager to promote these, to send out a message that “hey everyone take a look at how Lumbung One operates, maybe there is something we could learn from it”.
However, things are not that simple. One distinct feature of Lumbung is the special vocabulary: ‘majelis’ instead of meeting, ‘ekosistem’ instead of ecosystem, ‘sobat-sobat’ instead of hosts, etc. Establishing a special vocabulary makes a lot of sense. It is an efficient way to avoid the hegemony of English/German. It forces everyone who visits Lumbung/documenta to stop and pay a bit closer attention on what’s going on. It is also a clever way to decentralise power and give room for innovation. Each of these terms has the potential of gaining a more elaborate definition and thus becoming a building block of the special Lumbung way of doing things.
The downside of the special language is that it is a barrier, a hindrance for building alliances. It is also a sort of protective buffer, which is perhaps what it is meant to be.
The complexity of Lumbung extends beyond the language. It’s a chimera with many heads and voices.
Lumbung is a practice. It is also a constellation of collectives and artists.
Lumbung refuses to conform and to be exploited: “We refuse to be exploited by European, institutional agendas that are not ours to begin with”.
Lumbung challenges the notions of authorship: “Will the much-needed dissolution of ownership and authorship happen in documenta fifteen? How will economy, credits and aesthetics be practiced and therefore understood differently in the 100 days?”.
Lumbung seeks a new aesthetic paradigm: “Socially engaged art comes from the experience of community and the needs of people. This involves participants in a horizontal situation where there is no leader or artist. This is different to the European paradigm of aesthetics which privileges the role of the spectator. We try to produce a new aesthetics – an ethical paradigm where the viewer is obsolete. They should not be there to observe but to be part of the process”.
The manifesto of Lumbung is “make friends, not art”.
* * * *
Curiously enough, one major adversary for Lumbung’s mission is Lumbung itself. Lumbung refuses to conform to any agenda, even its own: “Intuitively, every time we invent a principle, we don’t see it through completely: we happen to leave a part open and unruly, like when we decided to turn Fridericianum into a school but still needed the space for work that demands controlled museum conditions”.
So – despite aiming for a radically different manifestation of art, or perhaps even a manifestation without art, Lumbung also features plenty of art, some of which is indeed presented in museum conditions.
* * * *
So – how does one experience Lumbung as a visitor?
My own visit to Lumbung/Kassel took place in late July and I had a chance to spend three full days there. In some way my visit to Kassel was a rather typical mega scale art event visit – I spent 3 days on a bike going through most of the 32 venues, trying to see and experience as much as I could.
My personal highlights were perhaps the Ghetto Biennale at St Kunigundis, Intermundial Holobiente at Compost Heap, Taring Padi at Hallenbad Ost, INLAND at Ottoneum, Eltiqa group at WH22 as well as works by many individual artists (Pınar Öğrenci, Nino Bulling, ikibawiKrrr, FAFSWAG, etc). In other words – the most engaging things in Lumbung were the exhibitions and artworks. This felt a bit odd since as a visitor I was expecting a radically different experience, even a sort of rejection. This also felt a bit unfair for the artists – their works would have deserved to be acknowledged as an important key part of Lumbung, rather than being mentioned as a sort of anecdotal sidenote.
The participatory nature of Lumbung was definitely present as well. The overall vibe was more relaxed and unhinged compared to a conventional art event. One gets a sense of arriving to a festival and there is a promising feeling that many things are just about to happen. Unfortunately, in many locations things don’t evolve past this point. There are many amazing spaces that have been specifically designed for a participatory event, but there is simply nothing going on. If feels like arriving in a festival location a day after everyone else has left.
There are some exceptions though – some of the spaces remain engaging even though there would not be an event going on. It’s possible to browse books and magazines, to touch items, to dig into materials. I particularly enjoyed doing sort of detective work to try to figure out what had been going on in the Intermundial Holobiente workshops.
One visible feature were the big prints of the harvested material from Lumbung meetings. If one browses these materials online (at https://lumbung.space) then one can see them in a context, and can get some sense of the discussions that the community has been having. The big prints in the spaces do the opposite – they rather mystify than clarify. I find this a bit disappointing since this may give many people a wrong idea of what harvesting is about. Harvesting is one term in the Lumbung vocabulary, but it’s also a commonly used term in participatory practices (see for example https://artofhosting.org).
I also did try to make some friends! I had some nice (although short) chats with Lumbung Gallery people, as well as AKA Kassel people. If one would stay longer, these dialogues could have a chance to evolve further.
* * * *
What could Lumbung have done differently? Obviously, almost everything could have been done differently. Lumbung seems to have evolved in a very organic way, with many features being added during the years of preparations. In many ways it is a bold, unique experiment. The documenta organisation would deserve to get more credit for going along with this challenging, constantly evolving process.
Looking at Lumbung from the perspective of participatory practices, what was missing was an updated invitation (or a “calling question”) to documenta. Lumbung invested enormous efforts into changing the way documenta is put together, but from the perspective of a visitor all the basic things still remained pretty much the same. Thousands and thousands of people still flocked to Kassel, they all bought a tickets and perhaps a t-shirt or a book, and they saw plenty of art. If they did buy the documenta Handbook then they could learn about the Lumbung system but it is not the same as an invitation to take part in the system. The story does give some hints on how one could join or contribute, but these don’t match with the actual experience. In some way it’s simply a question of setting the wrong expectations. If Lumbung says that in Fridericianum “anyone can take part” then it’s odd if there is nothing there to take part in.
Would it have been possible to drastically change the fundamental mechanics of documenta? Perhaps not. One way to approach the situation is to acknowledge that Lumbung is doing many important and essential things, but documenta is just not the right context for these. Lumbung is already striving to do some many things that it’s maybe not fair or relevant to question what Lumbung does from the perspective of a regular visitor. However, Lumbung’s focus has been in changing very concrete, practical aspects of documenta, which in my opinion is an invitation for discussing these perspectives.
The most interesting and fruitful things have probably been happening inside Lumbung, among the members of Lumbung and their close collaborators. The positive effects might have been strong for the art scene in Kassel and for the activities in some far away locations – Indonesia, Colombia, Haiti, Palestine, etc. I’m afraid that these aspects will not be get the attention they would deserve. It’s tragic that fringe far-right groups were so successful in both instigating fear on location in Kassel as well as planting the seeds for the ‘anti-semitism scandals’ which derailed the public discussion.
* * *
The images are from various Lumbung Majelis harvests. Links to harvests:
Inspired by the example by a family in Edmonton we decided to build a ‘rainbow igloo’. We made a Facebook event 10 days prior to the event and several families decided to join in the effort. Each family brought 10-20 bricks (water mixed with food/water colour frozen inside juice/milk cartons) and amazingly the construction process took only a couple of hours!
We did not make a roof (to keep the construction safe) and we extended the form to a spiral, so that more people could fit in. At many times there were only small kids building the thing, parents did not have a chance to interfere 😉
‘Snowcrete’ (a mix of snow and water) turned out to be great building material, easy to handle and strong when it freezes. The temperature was around -7 celcius which was probably quite perfect. The final result has approx 300 bricks, looks great with candle light inside in the evening and not bad in sunshine either…
A snapshot of the grassroot arts, culture and democracy action in Helsinki – if I could clone myself, I could participate in all these events today, on 29 February 2012:
# 9:30 am – workshop & code-camp day of Avoin ministeriö
Avoin ministeriö (‘open ministry’) is a grassroot project that aims to offer help for Finnish citizens to make proposals for changes in Finnish legislation (starting on 1 March 2012, any proposal that can gather 50 000 supporters will be taken into consideration) http://www.facebook.com/events/363561413673265/ http://www.avoinministerio.fi
# 4 pm – Opening event of ‘Sosiaalinen Hub’
A temporary, open, collective workspace in central Helsinki for grassroot actors – an experiment that will last for a couple of weeks: http://www.facebook.com/events/189735227799714/
# 7 pm – Maailmanpoliittiset Diplo-iltamat
Celebrating the latest issue of the translated Finnish version of Le Monde Diplomatique, thinktank Laitos, the day of social rights, etc.: http://www.facebook.com/events/305049742891900/
– – –
…and these are just the events that I happen to be aware of, there are probably many other related events going on as well.
It’s great to be here and participate in all this flourishing energy! 😉
Here is a memo from the Fablab City Helsinki meeting which took place on 14 Dec 2011. A lot of people showed up in the event so there seem to be a lot of interest toward Fablabs and maker culture movement in Helsinki!
The notes were written down by Massimo Menichinelli (thanks!) and I edited these further. Please write a comment if you notice any errors or omissions.
It turned out that the simple information boards opposite to the Data Wall had some quite intriguing content. These boards contained a vision of a Happy Future, with all the improvements that sensors, surveillance and data analysis will bring to our societies. Reading the promises felt like taking a time trip back back to the days 1939 New York World’s Fair that introduced many wonders of consumer devices (including IBM’s electric typewriter).
Coincidentally, Hudson River was also one of the sites where publiclaboratory.org citizen science projects are taking place (see my previous posting). The goal of these two projects is essentially the same – to get better information about the state of the river in order to improve its condition. But in the approach there are drastic differences:
IBM & co use complex and expensive technologies, publiclaboratory.org tools are free or very cheap
Based on a recent press release, IBM & co aim to ‘advance commercialization of emerging real-time river monitoring sensor technology’. Publiclaboratory.org tools are free and open source
In addition to these rather obvious differences, an important issue is what kind of opportunities are lost if river monitoring is left to the hands of big institutions. In case of publiclaboratory.org, the tools offer people a concrete way to learn more about their own surroundings and to take an initiative to improve the conditions. Who is more likely to make noise about the companies that pollute Gowanus Canal, the local activists or IBM & co?
In terms of design, the question is whether there is a standardized solution with centralized monitoring or a general instruction which is modified be the local people to suit the local context.
A striking example of the difference between these two approaches that was often discussed during Mobilityshifts were the Adequate Yearly Progress tests that all children in public schools in US have to take. This test was introduced as a part of the No Child Left Behind Act during George W Bush administration. The goal ‘No Child Left Behind’ sounds great, but trying to achieve this goal via standardized tests has been a disaster.
Based on the presentations at mobilityshifts, everyone (teachers, children, parents, school administrators) seems to agree that these tests have not increased the quality of education, on the contrary they have added unnecessary stress to those who are doing well and been discouraging for those students and schools with problems. The points that were emphasised during mobilityshifts over and over again was that people learn in different ways. Good teachers adapt their teaching methods to suit the needs, and luckily here in Finland this is still possible (see Dianne Ravitch’s blog posting about this, her view is a bit too positive, but the main facts are correct).
Unfortunately in many other areas (public institutions, university education, etc) the idea of improving quality via standard tests has been pushed through here in Finland as well, with unhappy results (less efficiency, less creativity, less everything else except suspicion and bureocracy).
Activists are using the tools and methods developed by PLOTS to find out more about the sources of pollution that is constantly accumulating in Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. One of the key tools is balloon mapping, which is used during different seasons of the year to shoot high resolution aerial images of the area. There is also a tool for shooting infrared imagery. By comparing various images, activists have been able to identify a large number of pipelines which are not monitored by any authorities, in fact no one seems to knows what they are and what is coming out from them. Liz Barry spoke of ‘environmental headhunting’ – that these images could be used as legal evidence against corporations and other polluters.
Liz also wanted to emphasise that there is a difference between crowd-sourcing projects that have been initiated by companies and public authorities, and citizen science projects in which the agenda is set by people themselves. The tools created by PLOTS can be used for all kinds of purposes, even to purposes that the creators of these tools would not want to support. This was discussed often during Mobilityshifts conference – how citizen efforts can be re-appropriated to work against them.
Suspected pipelines found by activists in Govanus Canal. The one marked with red colour is the only one that the city authorities have information about.
The Treekit project has created tools for mapping the exact locations and gathering other useful information about trees that grow in cities. In New York these tools have been used by local people and the resulting dataset is much more comprehensive and accurate than what the park authorities themselves had before. The point of this activity is not just to gather information – the main point is that trees in urban context need nurturing, that someone has to take care of them. In certain areas of NYC there is a lot of pollution in the air and the trees are struggling. Giving them water on a regular basis already helps, some people have started doing this by using big buckets. Healthier trees means healthier air for people to breath.
Treekit is also connected to the ongoing milliontreesNYC project, with currently 499 517 donated, planted or adopted trees.
Treekit – The red squares are the exact locations and sizes of the trees, measured with Treekit tools. The round items are the locations of the same trees in a database used by the city park authorities. (Phil Silva / Treekit)
An interesting discussion followed, related to the transformation that happens when people start using these tools. One could say that these tools allow ‘non-experts’ or ‘common people’ to become ‘experts’, ‘researchers’ or ‘designers’, but the whole idea of a ‘non-expert’ does not seem to make much sense. Phil Silva (Treekit) emphasised the importance of being allowed to make mistakes, that people can start doing things before they have learned all the details.
To me it seems that instead of learning specific knowledge and expertise, the important thing that these projects can give people is a sense of confidence, a sense of authority, a belief that they can change their everyday surroundings. I guess this is what expertise in practice often is – confidence and authority.
During the three days that our brave Cotton Candy experimentation team spent enclosed in a small room in Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, we learned quite a few things:
– Cotton candy is a challenging material to work with. The temperature has just high enough for the sugar to melt but low enough for the plastic candy machine itself not to melt. If one wants to use color effects, these need to be applied beforehand – once sugar is reached its fluffy and flying cotton candy form, it’s very difficult to apply any extra effects to it. Refilling the machines on the fly (when they are hot and rotating sugar at high speed) was also not a very easy thing to figure out.
– Cotton candy is great material for art about environmental issues – it’s made of pure white sugar that gives us pure solid energy to burn. Very efficient and very unhealthy. The sugar we bought in Germany said ‘Made in Germany’ in the package while it’s obvious that it has been grown by some low-wage workers in Africa or South-America. Eating cotton candy is also a ritual, a ceremony associated with places such as circuses or fun fairs – places that have been designed for the kids to have fun and for the parents to… pretend to have fun?
– Compared to the English words cotton candy and candy floss, the Finnish and French equivalents ‘hattara’ and ‘barpapapa’ are more interesting and versatile. The word hattara can be applied to all kinds of fluffy things (clouds, hairdos, etc) and it has a connotation of superficiality. In addition to Barpapapa comic book characters, barpapapa also means ‘daddy’s beard’.
Some of the concrete results (see photos above) we achieved were the Cotton Candy Tornado(Aleksi Pihkanen was the main chef), Cotton Candy Crystals (by Christopher Baker) and the ‘redemption ritual’ (design by Tuomo Tammenpää). These were the side effects of the main purpose of the workshop: to bring an interesting bunch of people together to hack, chat and have fun for a few days. Thanks a lot for crew of Kitchen Budapest and Tinker.it for the good times and for Transmediale 09 for hosting us!
In connection with Pixelache 2008 festival, we made a survey about organisational strategies of some prominent grassroot initiatives. We received replies from these people / organisations:
– Ben Fry & Casey Reas / Processing
– David Cuartielles / Arduino
– Douglas Repetto / Dorkbot
– Damien Deadly / Boxwars UK
The questions were:
* What are the aims of the project you are involved in?
* How is the project organised?
* How do you support the work financially and what impact does this have on your project?
* What do you feel you have achieved, and what are the problems you face?
* Are there any past projects/models which have inspired you?
* What are your hopes for the future?
Some excerpts from the survey:
* How do you support the work financially and what impact does this have on your project?
Casey Reas & Ben Fry / Processing: We’ve made a conscious effort to keep money out of the project. We don’t take donations, sell anything, or put ads on the site. We don’t make money directly for working on it and we hope that sets the example for others to contribute. We both have other jobs to pay for our food and rent. We were fortunate to receive a grant early in the project that was used to pay for a few developers to write key components of the software. Last year, Ben received a personal grant that provided some concentrated time to focus on the project. Our web hosting is thankfully donated.
* Are there any past projects/models which have inspired you?
David Cuartielles / Arduino: Before I was member of a design collective called Aeswad, based in Malmo, Sweden. There we had a pretty anarchic way of dealing with projects, deciding how to be paid, etc. The financial model we had was really thought through and helped me to understand that distributed organizations need of a completely different degree of freedom that corporations do. On the other hand I could learn how to make (a lot of) money making the things I like the most and letting the others do the same.
Distributed strategies for world-wide organizations can actually provide a way of living to their members. It is just that nobody will explain you how to make it happen. There is no business school focusing on that. Corporate is a cancer we gotta eliminate from society if we are about to make this new way of thinking/living/working possible.
* What are your hopes for the future?
Douglas Repetto / Dorkbot: I try to stay kind of neutral about the future of dorkbot. As organizations grow they often develop self-protection mechanisms, and sometimes maintaining the organization becomes more important than the actual activities of the organization. If dorkbot is no longer useful or interesting in a particular city, then we just let it die. Sometimes it comes back in another form, sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t try to revive meetings or put any pressure on people to continue meeting. I will keep doing dorkbot in New York as long as it’s interesting and people keep volunteering to give presentations. But there are lots of other organizations doing similar things to dorkbot, so I’m sure that if we go away other things that are just as useful/interesting will take its place.
I’m constantly working to understand how something can seem to be both the most important thing in the world and also completely inconsequential. That’s my primary organizational strategy!
