SoC Public Programme
Autumn/ Winter 2023-2024
There are 12 events coming up in October - February, spanning Public Teaching Sessions from the current Cohort, as well as Alumn* events and our annual Learning Commons open conversation. Many of these events are online, and we’d love to see you there, whether you’ve participated in the School of Commons before, or you’re just curious.
Overview
A Spoonful of Rest
Thursday, 5 October, 18:00-20:00 (CEST)
Public Teaching Session - Online
Open Circuits - a play and read session on explorative ways of knowing
Sunday, 8 October, 15.00-18.00 (CEST)
Backhaus projects in Berlin. Hosted by Eleonora and Muj
SoC Alumn* Event
Learning Commons: Betül Aksu in conversation with Zeyno Pekünlü
Friday, 13 October, 12:00-14:00 (CEST)
Online
SoC Open Call
Announcement Wednesday, 1 November / Deadline 29 November
Pendar Nabipour: Consensual Questioning and Collective Implementation
Tuesday, 17 October, 18:00-19:00 (CEST)
How to collectively decide how to collectively decide?
19:00-20:00 (CEST)
Public Teaching Session - Online
Session Zero, hosted by Pule kaJanolintji and Kit Kuksenok
Sunday, 22 October, 14:30-16:30 (CEST) drop-in online discussion
SoC Alumn* Event (Hybrid: an online connection to Sidvwaba Cave, South Africa)
Bjørn Melhus: FREE UPDATE
Thursday, 2 November, 18:00-19:00 pm (CET)
Digital × Society ÷ Art??
19:00-20:00 (CET)
Public Teaching Session - Online
Salt Traces
November 10
SoC Alumn* Event @ Porto - register for workshops here or join the hybrid event via the telegram channel where a streaming chat will take place between 4-6 PM WET
Interdependent Systems: community economies in culture and education
Tuesday, 14 November, 18:00-20:00 (CET)
Public Teaching Session - Online
(Un) Known Futures, FAST 45
6-7 December 2023
Hosted by LUCA School of Arts, Brussels
End of the Year, a public offering
2-4 February 2024
More information soon
Public Teaching Sessions
Engaging with the world around us through learning together and co-creating a space, network and community of belonging and support, the SoC program aims to promote a broad, integrative understanding of knowledge heavily defined by our community. Through experimentation, dialogue and process, we focus on matters surrounding the production and mediation of knowledge, with a focus on self-organized practices and knowledge decentralization.
Over the past months, the SoC 2023 Cohort has been working within four focus groups, looking into topics that range from cooking to collective intelligence, art to AI-driven technologies, and community economies to accessible education. As part of our Autumn public programme offering, the participants will share their findings, and ways and workings with the wider public in the form of public teaching sessions via Zoom. To expand and deepen their research, a selected guest will be contributing to the sessions.
We are excited to host media artist, Bjørn Melhus to talk about his recent work and visual artist, Pendar Nabipour to talk about collective decision-making processes.
All online lectures are open to the public and are free and accessible through the Zoom link here.
Events will be conducted in English.
A Spoonful of Rest
Thursday, 5 October 2023, 18:00-20:00 (CEST) on zoom
“A Spoonful of Rest” is a hybrid event that looks to rest as a form of resistance. Using sonic scores, poetry and food-prepping-and-sharing as the key ingredients, this event will be collectively facilitated by Jara Nassar, Jamie McGhee, Miwa Negoro, Pooya Kazemi, Erfan Safari, Luise Willer, Lena Pozdnyakova, Germain Calsou, Anna Kücking, Sabrina Herrmann, Eldar Tagi, Maria Aus Monika Dorniak, Louna Sbou, Ihisa Theresa Adelio, Nina Martin, Dami Choi, Arjunraj and Andrea Liu, on-site in Berlin, Zürich, and digitally via Zoom.
If you would like to participate in the event in person, please register by emailing hello@schoolofcommons.com. Please bring a chopping board, knife, some vegetables, and ideally some helping hands, to equally distribute the work- (and rest-) load.
Those joining digitally do not need to pre-register. Please note the event will be audio-recorded.
Consensual Questioning and Collective Implementation, a lecture by Pendar Nabipour
Tuesday, 17 October 2023, 18:00-20:00 (CEST) on zoom
Do systems of representative function as they are supposed to? How inclusive are we in making decisions that affect a larger group or a community? How can we come up with questions and ideas that represent all members of a given community? How does collective consensus help form more accurate results? What tools are out there to help us empower and benefit from collective decision-making?
Consensual Questioning and Collective Implementation is a lecture and workshop event, during which Pendar Nabipour, a visual artist, independent curator and art educated based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands will introduce possible answers to these questions in relation to his research project Open Source Governance.
Following the lecture, Lina Zeller, Sarah Drapeau, Engy Mohsen, Santiago Pinyol, María Angélica Madero, Sinem Görücü, Rahel Stange, Agata Guńka and yourfriendkas will facilitate a digital space dedicated to Making Time, leaning on time-based tools, tools that are about time, about making time, about spending time together.
Pendar Nabipour is a visual artist, independent curator, and art educator based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His main interests are common memories, collective decision-making, playfulness, humour, and nature. He studies the rethinking of established institutions and the ways of enabling initiatives to activate alternative structures, through artistic practice.
FREE UPDATE artist talk by Bjørn Melhus
Thursday, 2 November 2023, 18:00-20:00 (CET) on zoom
By means of fragmentation, destruction and the reconstitution of well-known figures, themes and strategies of mass media, Bjørn Melhus not only creates possibilities of other interpretations and critical commentaries but also tries to redefine the relationship between mass media and spectators. Using various excerpts of his work, Bjørn Melhus will talk about his artistic research and the relationship between appropriation and re-creation.
Bjørn Melhus is a German-Norwegian media artist and currently a fellow at the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome.
This artist talk will be coupled with a conversation, facilitated by ߔߎ߯ߟߍ߫ ߞߊ-ߖߊ߬ߣߏ߬ߟߌ߲߯ߗߌ (Pule kaJanolintji), Jasmine Alakari, Daniil Posazhennikov, Anna Kostrikova, Egor Tatarenko, Anastasia Moshchenko, Roman Malyavkin, Anna Dobretsova, Riccardo Acciarino, Sofia Goetz and Akio Yuguchi. Digital × Society ÷ Art?? pays attention to the possibilities of Learning through peer teaching, which allows us to cultivate profound connections with one another and the natural environment and establish a harmonious relationship with all entities in our modern community by unlearning separation and embracing a holistic perspective in the wisdom of collective practice.
Interdependent Systems: community economies in culture and education
Tuesday, 14 November, 18:00-20:00 (CET) on zoom
What type of informal economies already exist within forms of learning?
How do our interdependencies relate to accessible education?
How do we make existing practices of care sustainable in (non-)institutional infrastructures? This discussion will curiously engage with alternative ways of learning and caring within (non)institutional settings and groups.
This session is hosted by Ardita Avdija, Adelina Ismaili, Diona Kusari, Njomza Dragusha, Endrit Tasholli, Era Qena, Shpat Shkodra, Toska Salihu, Mariana Neves, Urjuan Toosy, Peter Hermans, Sanna Schiffler, Marion Kliesch, Letitia Calin, Ella Asheri, Theresa Zwerschke and Steph Joyce.
SoC Alumn* Events
School of Commons has sprouted many tendrils! If you’re curious about peer learning or want to connect with the School of Commons, you are welcome to join locally or online in any of the upcoming alumn* events.
Open Circuits - a play and read session on explorative ways of knowing
Sunday, 8 October, 15.00-18.00 (CEST)
Backhaus Projects, Weserstr. 168, 12045 Berlin
Hosted by Eleonora and Muj
Please register via their DM @imujabd and @eleonoratoniolo.
As part of the School of Commons Alumn* event series, we invite you to a reading and play session around multiple forms of artistic research. We’ll employ methods taken from the School of Commons published research gathered over the years, such as games from the How to Love Many in Many Ways project. We want to make it a moment of deep hanging out and radical sharing of knowledge.
Learning Commons 2023: Guest speaker Zeyno Pekünlü
Friday, 13 October, 12:00-14:00 (CEST) on Zoom
This year's Learning Commons conversation, hosted by Betül Aksu, invites artist and activist Zeyno Pekünlü and the SoC community to discuss self-organised learning spaces and the knowledge created within.
The conversation will start with Zeyno’s decades-long involvement with self-organised spaces and collectives in and beyond Turkey and continue with the contributions from the SoC community to collectively imagine the ways such communities appear and disappear globally. The conversation will end with a discussion on how knowledge is produced and circulated within self-organised spaces.
Zeyno Pekünlü is an artist whose artistic interventions mostly take the form of videos and installations. She is currently running the Istanbul Biennial’s Production and Research Program and the Istanbul Cell of Fellowship for Situated Practice organized by BAK Utrecht. Together with Köken Ergun, she is co-founder of KIRIK, an initiative for people and topics in the cracks. She is on the editorial board of Red Thread Journal and also a member of The Institute of Radical Imagination. She was part of the collective Dünyada Mekan (A Place on Earth), a self-organized solidarity space that provided freelancers with free working space. Zeyno has been involved in several initiatives for freedom of expression and art workers’ rights in Turkey, since 2011.
Session Zero
Sunday, 22 October, 14:30-16:30 (CAT/CEST)
Register
Hybrid: an online connection to Sidvwaba Cave, South Africa - facilitated physically by Pule kaJanolintji, and online by Kit Kuksenok.
Part of the SoC Alumn* local events programme, Makhandzambili invites you to spend time with us in and/or near the cave and listen to what it has to say.
(Un) Known Futures
6-7 December 2023
Hosted by @luca.schoolofarts, Brussels
For the last three years, @schoolofcommons has been an associated partner of FAST45 (Futures Art School Trends 2045). Together with 12 partner institutions, we created future scenarios for institutions of higher art education and drafted policies and roadmaps for futures of Arts Education.
All higher arts education leaders, educators, creative practitioners, researchers, artists, students, cultural workers, and policymakers are invited to explore and engage with future scenarios, tools, and findings from the EU-funded FAST45 project.
Take part in policy debate and start constructing a roadmap that will empower higher arts education institutions to anticipate their unknown future and actively shape it.
School of Commons (SoC) is a global community-learning space dedicated to the study and development of self-organized knowledge through commons-based methods and practices, located at the Zurich University of the Arts (but taking place mostly online). The structure of SoC brings together practitioners, researchers, facilitators and activists from all disciplines for its main offering of a 10-month peer-led learning programme. Alongside the programme, SoC works with a broad network of partners and collaborators who help to explore, shape and share the future of Peer Learning as an important strategy and method of lifelong learning.