Practices of commoning are based on establishing networks of shared resources, collective care, and mutual aid. From self-organized spaces and collective funds to open source software and cooperative housing, commoning articulates forms of shared and sustainable life. Extending from practices of commoning, the workshop focuses on what Stefano Harney and Fred Moten term “the undercommons”: a sort of resistant, unfinished and fugitive commons that steers us toward unexpected forms of collectivity and agency. The undercommons interrupts the articulation of a formal system of common aims, leading instead to cracks in the system where backroom planning, pirate communities, poetic ideas gain traction – what Moten calls, life in the break. This includes reflecting upon the politics of commoning as linked to black fugitivity, and the racial legacies of capture and enclosure.
Following ideas of commoning and undercommoning, the workshop focuses on mapping and modeling undercommon practices: In what ways is artistic work a form of sharing, and if so, what does it share? How does artistic work navigate between formal and informal situations, between gallery systems and hidden rooms, between the white cube and the black imagination? Can artistic gestures and materials articulate forms of collaboration that remain in the break, that break out or break in?
The workshop includes readings and discussions into commoning and undercommoning, as well as collectively reflecting upon the Art Academy building as an institutional arena. In what way is the Academy a shared space? What are the limits of this common environment? What forms of commoning or undercommoning are we involved with in our artistic practices?
The first installment of the workshop took place March 3 - 5, 2020, at the Bergen Art Academy, with Rayya Badran, Brandon LaBelle, Karen Werner, and participating students from the Art Academy, Bergen, Jutland Art Academy, and the Estonian Academy of Arts.
With: Brandon LaBelle, Rayya Badran