alt.SPACE Residency at Basekamp, Philadelphia (PE), January-April, 2007
The alt.SPACE Residency & Research Centre at Basekamp, Philadelphia.
Between January – April, 2007 members of the alt.SPACE Network travelled to Philadelphia for a residency at Basekamp, a local project space and residency program. During this period, we built a temporary research centre on-site at Basekamp, which we used to host a series of alt.SPACE events during the residency period. Additionally, the alt.SPACE Network was invited to collaborate with Basekamp and other invited groups and collectives on Plausible Artworlds a project intended to function as a framework for various collaborative attempts at re-imagining and re-inventing the ways in which art worlds work. During the residency period, the Plausible Artworlds project was represented at Locally Localized Gravity a large group exhibition at Philadelphia’s Institute for Contemporary Art. At this exhibition, the Plausible Artworlds project took the form of an ‘platform’ or ‘installation’ hosting a series of events organized by different groups from the wider Plausible Artworlds collaboration, including three events organized by the alt.SPACE Network.
Events at the alt.SPACE Research Centre at Basekamp, Philadelphia, January-April, 2007.
1. Reading Groups
During the residency period, three reading groups were organized at the alt.SPACE Research Centre, engaging with the following texts: Hakim Bey, Temporary Autonomous Zones (see http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz_cont.html), Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Harvard University Press, 2006), and Brian Massumi, ‘The Political Economy of Belonging and the Logic of Relation’ in Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Duke University Press, 2002).
2. Peripatetic Sessions
In addition to the reading groups at the alt.SPACE Research Centre, we organized a series of peripatetic reading groups, focusing on a particular area in west Philadelphia and choosing readings corresponding to issues brought up during the walks. In the past century, this particular area of Philadelphia has borne witness to significant population displacements, tidal shifts and minor migrations often narrated and normalized within the generalized framework of white-flight, city blight, urban renewal, and gentrification. These large-scale urban narratives of migration also involve and inform the active efforts of both public and private institutions. The zoning policy and regeneration projects of local government, the University of Pennsylvania’s expansion into its surrounding environs, as well as the private interests of developers, speculative investors and real estate brokers, all play off of and contribute to these movements, each of which has its own set of rationalizations and explanations. Representations of the region, whether it is seen as crime-ridden and derelict or burgeoning and ripe with potential, can function as tools of alienation, divisive and often self-justifying components of a process that involves the grouping, excluding, and displacement of people.
During the residency period, we organized three walks around this area, or rather, focusing on a particular part of this area, that between 48th and 52nd street, these streets designating the previous and current boundary of the University of Pennsylvania’s mortgage program, by which they actively offer support for mortgages applications by university staff and postgraduate students, thus contributing, and actively policing and extending, existing zoning and gentrification/renewal processes and the various forms of migration they imply.
Texts studied along the way included extracts from the work of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Gayatri Spivak.
3. A Skype Dinner Party
Towards the end of the residency period, we organized a Skype dinner party where video links where set up between the alt.SPACE Research Centre at Basekamp, where we had dinner with Basekamp and Kent Hansen, an invited guest from Copenhagen, Trinity Session in Johannesburg (South-Africa), and Aharon Amir in Brighton (UK). Apart from chili eating and beer drinking, a discussion was attempted on the topic of the significance of locale and networking for contemporary, politically engaged artistic practice.
A short video depicting the event was later screened as part of an event organized by the Copenhagen based tv-tv project at the Overgaden art space, followed by another video-conference between the alt.SPACE Research Centre at Basekamp, Aharon Amir in Brighton, and tv-tv, along with a local audience, in Copenhagen, during which we continued to explore the notion of locale and networking in relation to contemporary artistic practice.
4. Open Cinema
At the very end of the residency period, we organized Open Cinema evening at the research centre with the intention of providing a space where those that wish to join can show up, take turns to present and screen their favourite film in a convivial setting followed by potlatch dinner and discussion. Our first meeting comprised a presentation and screening of Lars von Trier’s film Five Obstacles. The open cinema evenings continued for a while after our departure, but are to our knowledge no longer running.
Events at the Plausible Artworlds Installation at the ICA, Philadelphia, January-April, 2007.
1. Café Questionnaire
For the opening week of the ICA show Locally Localized Gravity, we invited friends, allies and collaborators to put together questionnaires exploring the relation between the institution, the artist and the ‘audience’ involved in a show like Locally Localized Gravity. We put together two questionnaires ourselves which you can download here and received an additional three contributions from remote participants in the Plausible Artworlds project which you can download here. During the opening week of the show, we invited gallery visitors, staff and participating artists to join us for a coffee in the Plausible Artworlds installation, have a chat and fill in a questionnaire or two anonymously.
2. Art Histories & Collectivity
For the second week of the Locally Localized Gravity exhibition we wanted to explore the different histories of collaboration and collectivity in various forms of historical practice. Having sent out a call for collaboration, we then proceeded to collaboratively cover the walls of the Plausible Artworlds installation with related archival material: extracts from manifestoes, historical accounts or narratives, photocopied posters, etc. During the week that followed, the walls were continuously reworked, material was moved around to form themes and trajectories, narratives and shifting constellations. Additionally, a public discussion was organized in the space with, amongst others, NYC art historian Alan Moore, Basekamp and members of the alt.SPACE Network. In parallel to the events hosted by the Plausible Artworlds installation at the ICA, we organized a series of Skype based conversations with remote particiants, including both members of the alt.SPACE Network and others collaborating on the Plausible Artworlds project.
3. RE*ENACTING RADICALITY
The fifth week of the Locally Localized Gravity exhibition, we organized an evening of re-enactments taking place in and around the ICA. We had chosen a series of cinematic moments that we felt somehow incorporated a notion of the radical. These moments were screened at the ICA and transcripts of dialogue was distributed amongst participants. After some discussion about the clips, it was agreed that we’d re-enact three out of the five moments we had chosen: a sequence from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s contribution to Germany in Autumn, a sequence from Jean-Luc Godard’s One plus One, and the scene from Jean-Luc Godard’s The Outsiders where the three main characters run through the Louvre.
