Self-Organizing a Cultural Common: Radical collective approaches to art and publishing

In this post-Tahrir, post-Occupy moment, how can sustainable agency be found in public and cultural space? Historically, how do communities of artists and radical publishers provide alternative future possibilities for self-organization, self-determination, and resistance to hegemonic structures?

This panel and discussion focuses on multiple moments—past and present—that engage in a synergistic dialectic between sites of self-organized commons and cultural production. Discussions center around specific perspectives from three different social contexts: the traditional Indonesian sanggars as alte

rnative art schools and their relationship to contemporary forms of self-organization in artists collectives; radical publishing in Switzerland and the similarities among publishing and distribution between—the anarchist 1860s–1870s and the utopian 1960s–1970s that are in turn much looked at by contemporary artists making zines and books; and the self-organized Swiss Landsgemeindes, where the people of the canton come together once a year to deliberate and determine how they want to live together in the coming year—a form still extant today and which came out of the commons and pre-modern assemblies.

At this time that calls for a reconsideration of strategies to enact our imagined futures, these largely forgotten histories are a means to critically examine the role of art and publishing in political movements. They also offer up alternative paths to forming communities.

The event includes short presentations followed by an open discussion with Nuraini Juliastuti from KUNCI Cultural Studies Center in Yogyakarta and University of Leiden, Rob Hamelijnck and Nienke Terpsma artists/editors of Fucking Good Art, Rotterdam, and Jason Waite, curator at Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht.

The panel is organized by Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory in Utrecht.