I
am born in 1984, in Avignon, south of France, a place that I've never really
felt related to. At the age of 16, I started to “leave”, to take distance from
my original place. First in Marseille where I did high classes of literature
and philosophy at the same time when I was involved in many theatre and
performing art projects. Then, with a need to move again, I came to Paris in
2005 until 2008 for continuing my studies and, first of all, for encountering a
place where I thought for the first time: I am at home! Everything I was
missing was there: libraries, conferences, cultural activities... I dived into
it, doing 3 curriculums at the same time (at Sorbonne 1, Sorbonne 3 and École
Normale Supérieure for a “magistere of contemporary philosophy”) and starting
to work as dramaturge with different stage directors and choreographers (Robert
Cantarella, Pascal Rambert, Rachid Ouramdane, Toshiki Okada...). I always gave
a big care to the relation in between practice and theory by trying to put into
dialogue and reciprocal nourishing, my philosophy and my artistic projects.
This gave birth to different “parallel objects” of the creations I was involved
in, like magazines, open rehearsals and new forms of discussion in between
artists and spectators, shared library installed in different venues and
finally a residency for creating not an art work but a creative theoretical
work that I was asked to invent. The 104, an artistic and interdisciplinary
establishment opened in 2008, offered me a studio for this and I used it during
one year for the development of the centquatrevue, a 3 dimensional
magazine: online,
in life
(series of open studio under various forms like micro conference,
interdisciplinary diners, collective walk organized by spectators, mostly from
the neighbourhood, for the artists in residency...), on “paper”.
This
huge project supposed to be worked collectively, turned to be a solitary one
because of financial crisis of the art space (official argument) but mostly
because of a certain behaviour that I saw very at work here: self
consideration, lack of curiosity and of desire to “know what the other, the
neighbour, is making just next door”. This lead me back to my philosophical
research about contemporary need for renewed collaboration, for collective
projects and actions done through differences, for, to say it briefly: new form
of politics and I decided to resist to the tendency I was attending not by
doing a thesis about this question in University but by practicing it. Despite
of the said “nice situation” I had in Paris (working in a prestigious art
space, having responsibilities, nice salary) and against the “wise advices” I
decided to take distance (again!) and to go for my practical research by
thinking and creating what can be an interdisciplinary collective based on
notions such as “exchange of practices and knowledge”, “process more than
production”, “copyleft”, “common trough differences”: this took the form of the
kom.post collective that we started in Berlin in January 2009 without knowing
nor the places that may host our experiment, neither the people that will
answer to the call for participations. Of course, at that time, with such an
open idea which was promoting the process, the try out, the not targeted
reflexion, it was sure that we will not get any help from any institutions and
we even did not try to ask for. We (Laurie Bellanca, the first artist who
joined me in this creation and me) just “did”, organizing each month of 2009
experimental session in berlin, helping sometimes the coming artists or
researchers for paying their plane tickets with our own money or trusting the
participation of the ones who were more able to...
Actually,
the financial question was not problematic since we all needed these sessions
of not producing, just researching, meeting, thinking and trying. I recently
realized that a lot of people today are ready to even pay for this by going to
programs/seminars/workshops just in order to find what they don't have in
production system and in their carriers. Rather than looking for such things,
we created it in an alternative and collaborative way and I think this makes
the fact that, after 3 years, kom.post is still doing a lot, that all the
pessimistic advices of “it will not work, it will turn, as it did for any
collective, into a power relation etc etc...” were wrong because there is still
not one “director” but just different actors who impulse projects in different
parts of the world (Laurie in Paris, Jen in Berlin, Chad in Dublin, Sozita in
Athens, Tania in Moscow) and propose to other “kompostian” to join when they
want and can.
This
is such a fruitful way to think about “participation” and to share it with
audience where it is really happening: not in a “participative creation” were
very often its place is predefined but precisely in the process that we always
opened for visitors and their singular feedbacks at the end of our sessions.
Because of this “inviting mood” kom.post started to be known, therefore to be
invited, therefore to get money by the calling venues or events, each time
different allowing it to continue not being attached permanently to an
institution. Kom.post is nomadic, it exists through its people who are
responsible for the event they want to organize or to make us join in terms notably
of finding venues, resources, means and this work! Nobody is “salaried” by
kom.post and this is a choice: we don’t want to turn into a company, an
enterprise that may cancel because of logic of “task and duties” this tension
between desire and freedom that let each of us joining or not an event,
inventing a new thing, calling for new inputs or giving some. This fragility of
not being permanently paid (even if you work 48hours a day for it!) is also our
luxury for 2 reasons:
-
it prevents us from what we were trying to put into question by creating
kom.post: a given system.
-
the life of the collective depends of this “differencial existence”:
individuals have to leave the common, go to their respective places of work and
research in order to get back enriched and able to enrich, by something
different, the collective. Julie needs time for her ne.tart that she also
teaches in various art schools, Felix for his choreographical research, Céline
for her writings and me for my philosophical research and thesis that I decided
to start only now, after 3 years of “practicing collective” in and out of
Europe since, as kom.post, I can say that I am completely nomadic. With 2
points of reference: Paris and Istanbul where the universities to which my work
is attached, are based. I have the chance to get paid for doing this by French
university which is for the first time supporting this kind of “research and
practice” Phd. This can be said as exceptional but if I look at how kompostians
does to sustain their lives I can say that for each it is the same: by an
alternation of payment received for our respective art/theoretical work and for
the kom.post projects (that most of the time just pay travels).
I
am a bit extreme in this by not having even a “basis” a referent house
somewhere but if today I think I will find one (in Istanbul is the plan), I
know that I needed this “leaving” trajectory. By going out of each system I met
in my life, I have been able to realize that they are precisely “systems” which
means they are constructed, they come from a human decision and gesture that,
as we know, can do mistake and can have alternatives. I consider as a task for
cultural workers the fact to let appear this by trying a different process, a
different logic of doing even if when it comes to the “done” it is hard to not
be part of this system again (art scene) without just “going out of the world”.
And this is not the point since the aim is precisely to share these alternative
ways as a possibility for resistance, to give them a visibility that may damage
the superficial and nice mask the superstructures are trying to show. We all
know this: European help for transcultural projects BUT with an already defined
idea of who are the cultures to put in dialogue for this or that year,
international price for said “innovative projects” BUT: don't we have to
question first the fact to be asked for “innovation”? Is it an artistic or
economical criteria? What does it mean to accept this? And if, how can it be at
least named or questioned in the creation that the price is allowing to exist?
This is a permanent question that kom.post as each of its members are asking
and that shape their choices of life and of “where the money comes from” that,
of course, makes part of what they do. A contemporary activism...
6.02.2012
