"'The sourball of every revolution: after the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?" - Mierle Laderman Ukeles
"Everybody wants to be in a collective but nobody wants to do the dishes" - A meme on Instagram
How to do things collectively? How to work together? How to deal with the different cultural backgrounds and different (precarious) living situations? How to set up a collective that works within the current sociopolitical forces and its demands? Working together in a collective such as Varia can be chaotic, uncomfortable and slow, but it can also create communal moments of conviviality and belonging. As Varia, we would like to think about these questions by spending time with other collectives and one invited guest during a one-day programme.
Doing the Dishes and then Revolution is an event in two parts: a private 'Dishes' moment with other collectives - Feministas en Rotterdam, Hackers & Designers, Sarmad and SOUPSPOON Collective - and a public evening where we share our collective 'Revolutions' in conversation with an audience and a guest speaker, the software artist and writer Marloes de Valk. Marloes will share her research 'The Damaged Earth Catalog'[https://damaged.bleu255.com/], which responds to digital urgencies of climate breakdown. She will present her work whilst responding to the day's events.
We would like to invite anyone who is interested in working/doing/making/creating/living together to come to Varia on the evening of the 9th of December to join the conversation. After the presentations there is time to enjoy some drinks and snacks together and continue the discussion informally.
Bios
Sarmad is an independent, non-profit interdisciplinary platform for research, publishing, collective thinking, and education in the fields of art, architecture and design. Based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Sarmad has been evolving since its foundation in 2012. It started as a magazine for experimental photography and evolved into a platform working across different disciplines from photography, visual arts and architecture to writing, performance art and film. https://sarmadmagazine.com/
Hackers & Designers is a non-profit workshop initiative, organizing activities at the intersection of technology, design and art. By creating shared moments of hands-on learning H&D stimulates collaboration across disciplines, technological literacy, and different levels of expertise. https://hackersanddesigners.nl/
SOUPSPOON Collective was formed in Rotterdam, summer 2022 by Pitchaya Ngamcharoen (TH), Raffia Li (CN), Maoyi Qiu(CN), Miyoung Chang (KR) and Dakota Guo (CN). Attempting to cultivate a common, Asian contextualized space for the particularities that elude translation, it aims to convene a generative forum of “minor gestures” and “micro politics.” https://www.instagram.com/soupspoon.collective/
Feministas en Rotterdam, in their own words: "We are a collective of Spanish-speaking feminist migrants. We make soup deliciosa. We celebrate diversity and recognize the importance of community. We embrace slow and non-productive moments. We support pleasure and joy as a form of resistance. We stand against all kinds of discrimination. We collaborate with local initiatives. We are in constant (de)construction." https://m.facebook.com/FeministasEnRotterdam/
Marloes de Valk is a software artist and writer in the post-despair stage of coping with the threat of global warming and being spied on by the devices surrounding her. Surprised by the obsessive dedication with which we, even post-Snowden, share intimate details about ourselves to an often not too clearly defined group of others, astounded by the deafening noise we generate while socializing with the technology around us, she is looking to better understand why. https://www.bleu255.com/~marloes/
Time: 18:00 - 20:30
Date: 9th of December 2023
Location: Varia, Gouwstraat 3a, 3082 BA
Entrance: Free
Our poster has some thank you's to make. It uses the font Résistance by A collective, distributed by velvetyne.fr, a type foundry advocating for the fundamental freedoms of the libre fonts user. It also features a postcard distributed by Hong Kong Free Tours, printed with Kwong Wah Printing Company, that is a tool to raise consciousness around precarious living conditions in the metropolis. It is titled "Kitchen/Toilet/Shower in Subdivided Unit".
This project is supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL.
