At homebase, Berlin, 08 October 2010
For a workshop as part of the HomeBase project in Berlin AC proposed to explore ideas around the creation of communities in an art context. HomeBase is an international, community-based, site-specific and artist-run public art project that was held in Berlin during the months of September and October. The project included an artist-in-residence program and a series of events such as lectures, workshops, talks, etc. Originally founded in New York in 2006, HomeBase’s objectives are to seek out areas of the urban environment undergoing transitional changes and integrate contemporary art into the everyday local experience, opening up the role of art as an educational tool for cross-cultural dialogue, social integration, and community cultivation.
In this context, AC has been invited to carry out a workshop investigating collaborative and collective research practices in the field of contemporary art and knowledge production in relation to the question how notions of collectivity and community emerge. The workshop was planned and conceptualized by all members of the group with the research concerns circulating around the possible constitution of collectivity through communication, debate and knowledge production within a specific local yet cross-cultural and trans-national community.
Prior to the workshop AC examined the exhibition and developed a format that would not only relate to the specific context of the exhibition on view but also tackle questions such as: What is the significance of art for the constitution of communities? How does this process of constitution involve collaborative practices? Is collaboration the joined activity of individuals who collect their ideas to form a sum of them or does collaboration require abandoning the individual and thus supposes a radical production of new and common ideas that potentially can form the basis of a community?
_salon outline:
FRIDAY, OCT 8
4.30 – 7.30 pm
The HomeBase Score
An Event of Co-Authorship
A score is a script. A script is a suggestion. Its interpretation is up to whoever reads with it. The score as a framework provides for the creation of an atmosphere, a multitude of voices that come into a void of noises. You are invited to an evening of co-authorship, exploring HomeBase as an exhibition and exposition under the conditions of collaboration, co-operation and collectivisation – conditions that persistently frame the way we encounter, produce and share our perspectives on contemporary artistic production.
8.00 – 9.00 pm
Is the Whole less than the Sum of its Parts?
An Event of Collective Intelligence
Following on from the idea of a score as a composition of voices this second part of the salon poses the question if communication and dialogue in its multiplicity as well as multitudinousness can actually create a notion of collectivity? Can the common assumption of ‘The Whole being more than the Sum of its Parts’ be challenged?
