This an intensely risky moment, emotionally and strategically. The phase change could knock you off your feet, especially if this is your first time participating in a major mobilisation. I’ve been in this position before, back in 2011 when we decided to close the camp at Occupy Wellington. So I wanted to write you this letter. Granddad Rich has a story for you. Please imagine a rocking chair, a pipe, a pot of tea.

Back in my day…

Joining Occupy absolutely blew my mind, and blew my heart right open. It was the first time I felt the courage that comes before hope, the first time that “solidarity” moved from my head down into my heart, my blood, my hands. I reckon I did 30 years of growing up in 3 weeks. It felt like we were on the front edge of history, wide awake and fully alive at last.

So leaving the camp feels super risky. At this moment, despair is the biggest threat. Is this the end? Do I go back to my normal life now? Was I deluded when I felt like we were changing the world?

First off, I know you know this, but humour me while I remind you anyway: the camp is closing but there’ll be more actions. These weeks in London were just one line of an epic beautiful song. Extinction Rebellion will carry the tune for maybe a verse or two, and then some other movement will pick it up and carry on. When I joined Occupy in 2011, I had no idea that I was entering into a lineage, generations of resistance made invisible by the histories I learned in school, a thousand grandmothers I never knew the names of. Occupy dispersed, but the lineage continues. I watched it surging through Hungary, Taiwan, Brazil, Korea… the movement of movements is everywhere. Your job is not to bring an end to injustice, to stop climate change, or to replace capitalism. You just have to keep going.

“It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it either.” — Rabbi Tarfon

The surest way to guarantee your endurance is with company.

If you’re not sure what to do next, I can tell you what worked for me. After we left Occupy, a small crew of my closest allies made a commitment to each other. We made a pledge to keep going: to let go of individualism and hold tight to the mutual aid, the care, the passion and the purpose that we found in camp.

Eventually we started a tech co-op to spread the meme of participatory democracy. Now I have a consulting company helping groups to get beyond hierarchy. For the past 7 years I’ve been paid to work on the problems that feel most urgent to me. I’m free from the discouraging, dehumanising, exhausting grind of my old bullshit jobs. I’m not rich, but I’m satisfied, deep down in my guts. It’s not all plain sailing, but I have an anchor, a rudder, and crewmates I trust with my life. I can’t tell you how much my life has improved since I found my meaningful work, and found the people to share it with. Sure, that’s partly down to privilege and good luck, but don’t underestimate the value of a clear intention. It’s in my head every day like a mantra: mutual aid, meaningful work, mutual aid, meaningful work.

Probably you’re not going to start a tech co-op. If you’re committed to Extinction Rebellion, you can join one of the many local XR groups. But XR doesn’t have a monopoly on solidarity: you can form a savings pool, a reading club, a shared house, a freelancer collective, a community choir… just don’t go on alone. At the very least, find 3 or 4 people you can meet with every couple of weeks: form your crew now while the enthusiasm is high, so you can hold each other up when the energy gets low. If you need inspiration or resources for how to do this well, check out microsolidarity.cc.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep
You must ask for what you really want
Don’t go back to sleep
People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch
The door is round and open
Don’t go back to sleep

— Rumi

p.s. This story is published by Richard D. Bartlett with no rights reserved: you have my consent to use it however you like. You’ll find files for easy reproduction on my website. The artwork is licensed for non-commercial use.

No rights reserved by the author.

The post The Morning After The Rebellion: An Open Letter To The People of #ExtinctionRebellion appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Small-scale actions were followed by mass protests in 2015 and at the beginning of 2016. The watershed moment followed the demolitions of 25 April 2016, when citizens showed up in great numbers to protest, demanding resignations and laying criminal responsibility at the door of officials.

In the months to come, 10 major protests took place, each one bigger than the last. At the height of the protests, there were 20,000 people on the streets of Belgrade – the biggest civic protests since those that toppled Slobodan Milošević in 2000.

From the beginning, the initiative included direct actions and mass protests, using legal challenges to the development, as well as intense media campaigns. The development which contravenes Serbian legislation is still underway, but the protest have nevertheless injected a new sense of hope onto the streets of Belgrade. It has showed the strength of its citizens willing and ready to take back the control of their city, their lives and their future.

Today was a great protest organised by “Ne davimo Beograd”, commemorating a year after violent demolition, done by “phantoms” during election night in 2016.

Would you like to learn more about this initiative? Please contact us.

Or visit nedavimobeograd.wordpress.com

Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

The post Belgrade, Serbia: Ne da(vo)mo Beograd Takes on Luxury Development appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Commons: Self-organised (re)production as a socio-ecological transformation

About the authors and their positions

We, the authors of this text, Leslie Gauditz and Johannes Euler, are active in the Commons Institute which, among other things, promotes the creation of knowledge and the education on Commons.

We are about 30 years old, with a middle-class background and make our living in academia. We were brought together by the fact that we both practise commoning, and reflect and write about it. In order to give Commoners from our circles the opportunity to collaborate on this text we sent preliminary versions to our mailing lists. Several people have contributed to its development with very helpful comments.

However, this text still reflects our personal view on the Commons movement, and is shaped by our specific position within this movement and the discourses that belong to it.

1. What is the key idea of the Commons?

Commoning: a different way of living and acting together – within capitalism but with a trajectory past it.

Commons are products and resources that are created, cared for and used in a shared way in a great variety of forms. The term has increasingly come into use again over the past decades – “again“ because Commons as concept and praxis are ancient and exist worldwide (see Bollier/ Helfrich 2016). In the German speaking areas the traditional and widely used term “Allmende”, that denotes the shared cultivation of meadows and woods, has been known since the Middle Ages. Today, the research on the shared use of natural resources is mainly connected to the name Elinor Ostrom who received the Nobel Prize for economics for her research in 2009. Ostrom (1990: 58-139) collected best practice examples: self-chosen regulations and locally adapted conflict resolution strategies were some of the design principles of the long-lasting self-governed institutions she described. Differing from Ostrom other authors assume that the main shared features should be looked for in the actual social arrangement, the Commoning, rather than in the institutions and regulations (see Euler 2016; Meretz 2014a).

An ancient irrigation system, cooperatively administrated in Naters, Switzerland. (Image: Johannes Euler)

The spread of knowledge-centred digital Commons (such as Wikipedia) and the development of free software (such as GNU/Linux and LibreOffice) played a decisive part in the rising attention paid to the Commons in the past years.

Currently, Commons can be understood as a concept based on equality and self-governance that is in conflict with the capitalist logic of commodities (see Meretz 2014a). Instead of an exchange of goods it relies on voluntary contributions. In them, there is no equivalent to the division of labour into care activities (that is caring for other people and the environment) and the productive activities as well as the division of production and usage processes which are common in capitalism: for example urban Commons gardens are usually not about producing food for sale but, next to ecological food production, also about cooking, eating and celebrating together. This is not to say that exchange or said division phenomena do not exist in Commons projects. However, Commons mainly work according to a different logic; both aspects are at odds with this logic and are brought in from the capitalist world outside.

We would like to stress that there are no universal blueprints for organising Commons together. We assume that the manners and rules in different times and contexts adapt to the needs of the people involved and thus vary. Nevertheless, we can point out common features. Regarding this it is important to clarify that commoning does not just deal with collective property but rather it breaks with the exclusionary logic of property as such. Instead of excluding others by the means of abstract law (property), Commons concern the actual physical (and potentially inclusive) discretionary options of possession (actual use). Essential to this is a focus on the needs of those affected by the commoning processes, or those taking part in them.¹

The logo of the licence system “Creative Commons”.

The Commons perspective looks specifically at a type of shared living in which people have a great influence on their own living conditions and choose the activities they pursue mainly according to how much pleasure they give, and how crucial they regard them to be.² For example Wikipedia came about because people valued a freely accessible and self-organised form of knowledge and enjoyed writing. Although they may occur, imposed, hierarchical and exclusive organizational structures are quite in contrast to such motivations and are mostly rejected. The aim is to realise rather than valorise one’s own potentials.

For the long-term the self-organising Commons point of view can be the foundation of a society beyond market economy and state. Core principles are: contribution instead of exchange; actual use instead of property; share all that you can (Habermann 2015); use all that you need.
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2. Who is part of the Commons movement, what do they do?

The social movement as part of the Commons world: Who produces what how, why and with which effects, and who uses it (up)?

While there is no Commons umbrella association, there are visible networks such as the Commons Strategies Group and the P2P Foundation, the Commons-Institute in the German speaking countries and the School of Commoning in Barcelona. Which persons actually devote themselves to promoting the Commons world and represent it publicly, who hence makes up the Commons movement, is not easy to determine as there are no systematic studies. Thus this text serves not least a reflection on ourselves as authors: do we even want to speak of a Commons movement? We definitely do not claim to give a comprehensive overview; even less so about what is happening in other parts of the world.

Book-exchange in Büsum in the North of Germany. (Image: Johannes Euler)

Commoning can be found in any imaginable social context and connected to various resources – such as air, seeds and water but also caring for those in need, digital technology, housing, cooking, art and music, modular bicycle construction and means of production. This is due to the fact that it is not inherent to the nature of a resource whether or not it is a Commons. Instead it essentially depends on the way humans deal with them and with each other (see Acksel and others 2015; Helfrich 2012; Euler 2016). If we look at the currently prevailing definitions of social movements (e.g. della Porta/ Diani 1999), they are united by a more or less pointed focus on a connecting self-image (or rather an identity) and the intentional direction of activities towards societal transformation and/ or a political goal. Movements are further identified according to their protest behaviour. Answering the question for the Commons movement thus depends on the political action repertoire and who subjectively sees her/ himself as a Commoner³ – so it depends on who could be considered being a constitutive part of such a movement.

Commoners are people who ”move something”. The only thing we can say for certain about the Commons movement from our point of view is: it is a global movement that is internationally connected as well as locally active. But Commons are more than “just“ a social movement. On the one hand it is possible that Commoners do not explicitly pursue the transformation idea and the critique of capitalism, are not networked accordingly, and neither know nor use the term Commons or claim no Commons identity for themselves. On the other hand there are Commoners who act in a conscious separation from the capitalist commodity and valorisation logic. These we want to call activists and identify them as being the movement. They aspire for a transformation of the world according to Commons principles, organise themselves in respective groups and/ or networks and engage politically.

For many activists it is more important to prefiguratively set an example than to demonstrate on the streets. This means that it is a concern for those who make up the Commons movement to create spaces in which aspects of utopian aims can be lived through their actions in current decision making processes and interpersonal relationships: “In my own life I practise what I want to see in the greater whole.” The important part is that the social practises of commoning, whose rationale undermines the capitalist logic, are in themselves aimed at changing society.

Currently we can make out many movements all over the world for protecting the Commons and resisting enclosures. However, we also need a certain reference to the common features in the struggles for Commons as well as to other alternative economic movements. Even if a lot is moving towards Commons, the bigger picture will hardly change if the similarities between these activities are not recognized.
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3. How do you see the relationship between Commons and degrowth?

The Commons and the Degrowth movement contain each other, and differ in focus and strategy

When we were asked if we wanted to write a text that would put the movement and the concept of Degrowth in relation to Commons, we questioned what its strategic significance might be: this project is called “Degrowth in movement(s)“. Would a Commons contribution not create the impression that Commons are a part of the movements close to Degrowth? Or is it also the other way round: Degrowth is a part of the movements close to Commons? It is a matter of the prerogative of interpretation, a question of the framing, and of the levels: Which theme is overarching and which is a cross-section, and what do we need this interpretation for? We assume that a Commons world is a world beyond growth imperatives – but does the Degrowth movement also automatically include Commons into its considerations in the same way?

In the article “Degrowth: In Movement, Strengthening Alternatives and Overcoming Growth, Competition and Profit“ (Burkhart and others 2016) that is part of this publication, the Degrowth movement is (amongst others) characterized based on the participants of the Degrowth conference in the German city of Leipzig in 2014. At the time many people took part who could rather be placed in the ”Commons“ corner. Hence there were a number of contributions on Commons in the conference program, and Commoners gave several of the plenary talks. The false impression associated with this may well be criticised. However we cannot rule out that the same would happen similarly in the opposite case because in the end, from our point of view, Commons and Degrowth in some way contain each other.

An urban garden in the self administrated “Gängeviertel” in Hamburg. (Image: Leslie Gauditz)

If Degrowth means that we humans have to free ourselves from the bonds of the growth imperative, and if Commons activists advocate more commoning in the world, we have to ask ourselves: which growth do we need to free ourselves from? What do we need more of? How could this come about? Who is promoting it? On the level of the actors there seems to exist a high degree of mutual recognition and sympathy. Especially the critical and progressive part of the Degrowth movement that was strongly represented at the conference appears to harmonize with the part of the Commons movement that is critical of capitalism. Both aim at breaking with old patterns that are founded in the logic of today’s social system and have effect into (and through) the individual foundations of acting and thinking. Degrowth circles denounce growth imperatives. The Commons movement criticises the valorisation pressures in the present society. It is obvious that these are two sides of one and the same coin.

As Degrowth was formed as a counter-movement criticizing the growth model, an idea for an alternative of its own was initially not at the centre of attention. Considering commoning however, one can imagine a world in which our living conditions are (re)produced in a non-capitalist way, beyond the growth imperative. Hence commoning is often seen as an integral part in framing a post-growth society. Especially the considerations on Buen Vivir – living well – that are often drawn upon in the context of Degrowth (see Acosta 2016 ; Muraca 2014) show remarkable similarities with the Commons concepts and principles.

However we can also determine differences. Degrowth circles focus on resilience and sufficiency. In relation to the ecological boundaries of the planet these are rather implicitly included in Commons than vigorously discussed among Commoners. From a Commons perspective one can argue that parts of the Degrowth movement are not critical enough towards the capitalist logics of valorisation, and also depend too much on steering mechanisms of the state. In a way this is a different problem focus (also based in the theory) as well as a different approach in regard to the choice of a strategy for transformation.

Which proposals do they have for each other?

Learning from each other: ecological cycles, critique of state and domination, sustainable technology and self-realisation.

What is missing in the Commons perspective and which impulses can it receive from the Degrowth movement – and vice versa? One field in which the Commons movement can learn from Degrowth is concerned with the ecological cycles in a global context. The description and analysis of local and practical knowledge is strong and deeply founded with Commoners. Yet, the Degrowth academics are relatively stronger in pursuing the research on the planetary boundaries and global ecological cycles. Particularly when looking at the point that activists of the Commons movement consider a Commons world a possible reality, an exchange on this point is fruitful and could prevent inappropriate optimism as well as unrealistic scenarios.

Connected in diversity. How can we draw our common future? (Image: CC – SA, Sarah Klockars-Clauser)

In the other direction the Degrowth movement could let itself be inspired by the Commons perspective. Degrowth is often about abstract indicators on CO2-Emissions, economic growth or resource depletion from which the movement derives its critique of consumerism and demands for the global North to denounce. From a Commons perspective, qualitative differences and structural systemic necessities for change come to the fore. The criticism is voiced towards a consumption that does not seek to fulfil needs, but instead aims for status and / or the production of added value; and there is a general assumption that a full and enjoyable life is achievable for everyone. This means that the primary target is not an individual renunciation but, on the premise of a collective self-development of all, to find an answer to: who produces what how and why, and uses it (up).

Against the backdrop of the principle “contribution instead of exchange“ the Commons discourse fundamentally criticises the logic of money and exchange. There is a discussion on whether a reform of the monetary systems helps to transgress this logic or rather helps to strengthen it. A long-term Commons vision would be a social system that frees itself from exchange as a societal mode of mediation. In addition there is a basic critical attitude towards state institutions – not only because market and state are blamed for playing a substantial role in various enclosures, but also because Commons do not work in a centralized way. This is also a significant delineation of the Commons movement against a Marxist state centred communism. Locating Commons beyond market and state infers that Commons activists want to break with the principles of the market economy as well as the nation state. It can be said that their normative foundation is a fundamental rejection of any form of domination. A greater consideration of such discourses that critically debate state and market as socially determining institutions could enrich the Degrowth movement and contribute to shed light on structural obstacles to a post-growth society.

A fundamental critique of technology, which is present in the Degrowth context and takes its lead from authors like Ivan Illich (1998), is used constructively within contemporary Commons circles by asking: which form of technology corresponds to human needs, and who benefits from technology to what end? Among others, the strong roots in the digital world and a great participation of tech-savvy people from hacker- and maker-spaces as well as the Open Hardware circles form the basis for certain optimism towards technology (see Siefkes 2013). Critique of technology and optimism go hand in hand: while the one deals with criticising current-day technologies that are seen as problematic, others develop new ones that work according to different principles like modularity, repairability or resource conservation – principles that are also compatible with Degrowth demands. For example the project Open Source Ecology has taken it upon itself to develop fifty industrial machines that a small village needs for its inhabitants to lead a sustainable, yet relatively self-sufficient good life.

As mentioned in the beginning, there seems to be a lot of Degrowth in Commons, and a lot of Commons in Degrowth. Similarly, other currents that are united in this project find themselves sharing a lot with the two movements. Many of the inspirations are discussed and put to practise in Commons contexts. Perspectives that aim for equality of humans and nature as they are found in environmentalist and animal-welfare circles as well as various justice discourses play a role; so does the aim of human equality as demanded by No-Border groups who aspire for a world without national borders. Many sovereignty movements in particular (e.g. for food sovereignty) have a lot in common with Commons as their aim is to regain the power to determine one’s own living conditions.⁵ However, sometimes Commons activists relate to other transformation efforts fairly critically; for instance when the means suggested for implementation stand in contrast to the respective aims (e.g. when hierarchically organised political parties promote Commons). Similarly they criticise approaches and ways of handling things that reproduce or manifest without reflection the logic that needs to be transgressed – exchange, valorisation and money – as well as hierarchies and oppressive conditions (e.g. the reform of the money system through an alternative exchange medium such as Bitcoin).
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 6. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

Together on the way to a post-capitalist world: emancipatory, need-oriented, resource-conserving and without growth compulsion

A transformation perspective that anticipates the path to a Commons society is described as a “seed form” approach (see Meretz 2014b). This term offers an important reference point, especially in the German-speaking countries. More simply put: it is the idea that a consistent practise of Commons can spread in the here and now while it could, simply due to the current crisis prone societal system, be able to become the logic that determines society in the future. Hence the potential of a Commons society is already a seed within the current commoning that is not yet fully developed. At the same time, Commons projects are always in danger of being usurped. Fights to defend, re-establish and negotiate commonly managed resources are necessary as long as the hierarchical nation state and the capitalist market with their respective logics are dominant. These struggles will be more successful if they take place in the context of a strong, shared and most of all emancipatory movement.

One viable post-capitalist vision is that of a world that is not hierarchical but self-organised like a network of functionally differentiated connection nodes; a world in which everyone’s needs can be met through Commons. This world would also be marked by autonomous and responsible activities that give joy and meaning without over-using resources or destroying eco-systems. The Commons movement puts its trust in the human potential and translates the concept of sustainability into the language of human needs: there is a need to preserve the planet that can only be met if we organise our individual and collective satisfaction of needs in accordance with the boundaries of the planet. Commoning is a practical way to deal with human and non-human nature that is not built on an abstract growth compulsion but acknowledges that we humans are a (re)productive element of the earth.

An Occupy Wall Street activist. (Image: CC BY 3.0, David Shankbone)

Literature and links

Links

> Weblog keimform
> Weblog CommonsBlog
> What is Open Hardware? – Blogpost about Open Hardware

Applied as well as further literature

Acksel, Britta u. a. 2015. Commoning: Zur Kon-struktion einer konvivialen Gesellschaft. In: Konvivialismus. Eine Debatte. Adloff, Frank; Volker Heins (Hrsg.). Bielefeld: transcript. 133-145.

Acosta, Alberto 2016. Buen Vivir: Die Welt aus der Perspektive des Buen Vivir überdenken. Degrowth in Bewegung(en). Degrowth Webportal. <https://www.degrowth.de/de/dib/degrowth-in-bewegungen/buen-vivir/>

Benkler, Yochai 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Burkhart, Corinna; Eversberg, Dennis; Schmelzer, Matthias; Treu, Nina 2016. Degrowth: In Bewegung, um Alternativen zu stärken und Wachstum, Wettbewerb und Profit zu überwinden. Degrowth in Bewegung(en). Degrowth Webportal. <https://www.degrowth.de/de/dib/degrowth-in-bewegungen/degrowth/>

Della Porta, Donatella; Diani, Mario 1999: Social Movements. An Introduction. Malden/Oxford/Melbourne: Blackwell Publishing.

Euler, Johannes 2016. Commons-Creating Society: On the Radical German Commons Discourse. Review of Radical Political Economics 48(1): 93-110.

Habermann, Friederike 2015. Commonsbasierte Zukunft. Wie ein altes Konzept eine bessere Welt ermöglicht. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 35-37/2015: 46-52.

Helfrich, Silke 2012. Gemeingüter sind nicht, sie werden gemacht. In: Commons: Für eine Politik jenseits von Markt und Staat. Helfrich, Silke; Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Hrsg.). Bielefeld: transcript. 85-91.

Helfrich, Silke; Bollier, David; Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung 2016: Die Welt der Commons. Muster gemeinsamen Handelns. Bielefeld: transcript.

Illich, Ivan 1998. Selbstbegrenzung: Eine politische Kritik der Technik. München: C.H. Beck.

Ostrom, Elinor 1999. Die Verfassung der Allmende: Jenseits von Staat und Markt. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Meretz, Stefan 2014a. Grundrisse einer freien Gesellschaft. In: Aufbruch ins Ungewisse: Auf der Suche nach Alternativen zur kapitalistischen Dauerkrise. Konicz, Tomasz; Rötzer, Florian (Hrsg.). Hannover: Heise. 152-182.

Meretz, Stefan 2014b. Keimform und gesellschaftliche Transformation. Streifzüge 60: 7-9.

Muraca, Barbara 2014. Gut leben: Eine Gesellschaft jenseits des Wachstums. Berlin: Wagenbach.

Siefkes, Christian 2013. Freie Quellen oder wie die Produktion zur Nebensache wurde. In: „Etwas fehlt“ – Utopie, Kritik und Glücksversprechen. Jour Fixe Initiative Berlin (Hrsg.). Münster: Edition Assemblage. 255-272. Access: 22.06.2016. < http://keimform.de/2013/freie-quellen-1 >

Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned skepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

The post Degrowth in Movements: Commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Injecting Imagination into Degrowth

Labelled a ‘domestic extremist’ by the police and ‘a magician of rebellion’ by the press, John Jordan has spent the last 25 years merging art and activism.

He has worked in various settings, from Tate Modern to squatted social centres, from international theatre festivals to climate camps, and co-founded Reclaim the Streets and the Clown Army, co-edited We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism (Verso, 2004), and co-wrote the film/book Les Sentiers de l’Utopie (Editions Zones, 2012). He now co-facilitates the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii) with Isabelle Fremeaux.

The Clandestine Insurgent Clown Army in action, G8 protest, Scotland 2005. (Image: CIRCA)

1. What is the key idea of artivism?

Artivism, merging the boundless imagination of art and the radical engagement of politics.

Artivism is not really a movement. It’s more an attitude, a practice which exists on the fertile edges between art and activism. It comes into being when creativity and resistance collapse into each other. It’s what happens when our political actions become as beautiful as poems and as effective as a perfectly designed tool. Artivism is the Clown Army kissing riot shields to push the police away; it’s the Yes Men secretly infiltrating the world’s media pretending to be corporate mouthpieces; it’s when flocks of flamenco dancers shut down banks promoting austerity in Spain; it’s when the Brandalism collective hacks hundreds of bus shelters in the midst of a state of emergency and replaces the adverts with radical messages. What it’s definitely not about is making political art, art about an issue, such as a performance about the refugee crisis, or a video about an uprising. It is not about showing new perceptions of the world, but about changing it. Refusing representation, artivism chooses direct action.

Proponents of direct action believe that to change things, it is best to act directly on the matter instead of asking others to do things for us. It is the opposite of lobbying and protest marches. Direct action is about transforming the world in the here and now, together. By breathing the spirit of art onto direct action, we can come up with irresistible forms of resistance. If you see a bulldozer cutting down a forest to build a new airport, you don’t write a song about it, you put your body in its way (maybe while singing!). The most beautiful thing, however, —the aesthetic goal— is winning: enabling the survival and continued abundance of the living forest and its ecosystems. With artivism, the beautiful and the useful overlap.

Artivism as an indiscipline

Some might prefer to call it ‘creative resistance’, and some ‘art activism’. Others, following the words of the German artist and co-founder of the Green Party Joseph Beuys, might call it ‘social sculpture’. The authors of Artivisme: Art, Action Politique et Résistance Culturelle (Lemoine & Ouardi 2010), however, simply say that artivism is an ‘indiscipline’, something with refusal rooted in its heart. In fact, it refuses to be contained by the problematic discipline of art or by the separate identities of ‘artist’ and ‘activist’ —labels that assume that artists have a monopoly on creativity and activists one on social change, suggesting that somehow other people are neither creative nor involved in changing the world!

Artivism treats social movements as a material. Their forms of action and alternatives are forms that our collective imagination can change and reinvent. In the same way that an artist might work with wood or paint, artivism might look at plans for direct action to shut down an open-cast coal mine and imagine how it could be made more powerful and theatrical. It might involve designing the layout of a climate camp so that it is more convivial and open as a place to welcome new people. It might involve inventing new ways of holding horizontal assemblies or designing a shared ritual for before going out to sabotage a military base with your affinity group. When, as Gerald Raunig writes, ‘art machines and revolutionary machines overlap’ (Raunig 2007), we get a moment of artivism.ç

2. Who is part of artivism, what do they do?

A rich, diverse and colourful movement, which can bring down empires in the most unexpected ways

The strategies employed by artivists depend on the political context of their work and are too numerous to fit here, but one brilliant handbook and website of tactics, theories and principles is Beautiful Trouble. One example from the book is how to create protests that do not look like protests as a key strategy for those working in repressive regimes or during states of emergency where public dissent is banned. The Orange Alternative did this wonderfully during martial law in Poland in the late 1980s. Despite protest bans, they called for a ‘Gnome’ gathering, to demand better ‘Gnomes’ rights’. When faced with thousands of young people wearing orange gnome hats, the regime’s soldiers did not know what to do, and the generals did not call the tanks in. For the first time since martial law was declared, a mass of people had taken public space back, had a great time doing it, and managed to spread a sense of confidence far and wide. Within a few years the whole of Eastern Europe was out in the streets. Some historians claim that the movements that brought down the Soviet Empire began with artists, guerrilla theatre and musicians opening up space for dissent (Horáková & Vuletic 2003). Humour has often been at the centre of artivist tactics.

Orange Alternative grafitti remains forty years later on the walls of Krakow. (Image: pnapora)

Another common tactic is reverse-engineering, which asks the hacker question: ‘What can this thing do?’. This involves hacking a daily object and turning it into a machine of resistance. You can reverse-engineer anything, including laws: Students at the University of Texas fought back against the new campus carry gun law by strapping on dildos! The organisers of Cocks Not Glocks explained that, although it is illegal to openly carry dildos on campus, they are ‘just about as effective as [guns in] protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play’. This also illustrates the principle of ‘put your target in a dilemma position’, which means that you put your opponent in a situation where they are forced to respond to your action. But whatever they do, they lose, by appearing either ridiculous or violent.

Those involved in artivism are as diverse as their tactics, some went to art school, others to theatre academies, some simply managed to avoid having their creativity sapped from them at school and want to apply it to political action. Artivism’s greatest strategies are perhaps innovation and confusion , as repeating the same tactics —the A to B march, the picket, the internet meme, the blockade, the protest camp, the riot— can quickly lose its impact. The most successful actions are often those where new forms are invented that manage to take the authorities by surprise. That is why movements need to constantly innovate their tactics faster than the authorities are able to respond to them; including, of course, tactics to protect protesters from police violence. In the last decade we have seen a range of creative shields, from the book-block shields made from giant books covers (the image of a cop beating George Orwell’s 1984 is unforgettable), to the Climate Camp’s shields with beautiful photographic portraits of those affected by the climate breakdown pushing through police lines to shut down the builders of a new runway.

Many popular tactics were originally invented by artivists, including Denial-of-Service (Dos) attacks for blocking the websites of opponents, now infamously used by Anonymous.

Creativity and crafting new forms needs time and attention, but given the urgency and speed of activism this is never easy. The spirit of art thus also brings a different rhythm to activism, one that is much more in keeping with the aims of degrowth; a de-accelerated, slower, more considered approach, but no less passionate.

Shields with portraits and tents hidden inside, Climate Camp, Heathrow, London 2007 (Image: Kristian Buus /Labofii)

3. How do you see the relationship between artivism and degrowth?

Opening up the space to dream: nurturing collective creative thinking and the spirit of play within the degrowth movement

At the moment, it feels as though artivists have made fewer connections with the degrowth movement than with other movements such as refugee support, climate breakdown, anti-austerity, alter-globalisation, etc. Why this is the case is hard to fathom.

Climate and the concept of the Anthropocene are huge themes in the art world at the moment. However, much of it is sadly part of a corporate elite using culture as a cheap research and development tool and an effective public relations exercise to promote green capitalism. Volkswagen consultants working with artists and ecologists during the Über Lebenskunst project at Berlin’s art centre Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2010-2012) to look at the future of transport is just one of many examples. At the recent COP21 (2015) in Paris, many big name artists played the role of ‘artwashers’ by creating work for a corporate greenwash event, Solutions COP21, which brought together some of the world’s biggest polluters, from fossil fuel corporations to car manufacturers, from industrial agriculture giants to builders of airports and motorways, for a fair to demonstrate that they had the real solutions to the crisis.

Human Cost, Unsanctioned performance by Liberate Tate in Tate Britain, London 2011 (Image: Liberate Tate)

Participatory pedagogy

The fact that the degrowth conferences of 2014 included an art thread together with scientific, economic and social threads is encouraging. More of these initiatives should be developed so as to break the ‘academic’ conference mould and include more creative forms of knowledge sharing as well as a more holistic approach. Artivists’ teaching practices tend to be more horizontal and based on participatory popular education models that seek to develop the shared critical knowledge already present, rather than a ‘top down’ knowledge transfer (via PowerPoint or a conference) from the knower to the students. Artivists tend to go beyond mere talking and listening —working and playing with the body and materials; engaging head, heart and hand equally. This should be a key pedagogic strategy —perhaps a return to the pedagogic idea of the ‘polytechnic’, where learning philosophy was no different from learning how to make a chair.

The process of making things together can be a good mobilising tool for developing strong affinity groups and bringing people into movements for the first time. After all, it may be a lot less frightening for first-time activists to attend a workshop to learn —as in the case of Tools For Action — how to make giant inflatable silver cobblestones for an action, rather than taking part in a big assembly discussing a campaign against a new fracking license.

Setting up transdisciplinary solutions workshops/laboratories around particular topics, where artists/designers would be brought in not as the ‘aesthetic communicators’ of the ideas, but as creative participants trying to find solutions in collaboration with other disciplines, would be an important step towards merging the degrowth movement with the spirit of artivism.

Creating spaces that nurture such creative thinking and playing as part and parcel of a movement process is key. The degrowth movement, despite its at times overly academic tone, could have the capacity and sensibility to embody this spirit, because at its heart are notions of a change in our culture towards qualitative rather than quantitative ways of being. Degrowth has been called ‘an example of an activist-led science‘. Perhaps one day we will be able to say that it was an activist-led art as well.

4. Which proposals do they have for each other?

Making degrowth irresistible: the role of desire and fantasy in creating a new culture

I write as someone living in a wood-heated yurt in a small commune on an organic farm in France, where degrowth is at the centre of our collective’s values. For us, degrowth is coupled with good living. As the French slogan goes: Moins De Biens, Plus de Liens —Fewer Things, More Relationships. But in popular mainstream culture degrowth is often misperceived as an activity that involves self-control (stop shopping, stop driving, stop flying, etc.) and privation (don’t want or buy new things, etc.), that calls for a return to the past (stop using fossil fuels/new technologies, etc.) where life was hard (grow your own vegetables, make your own bread, stay local, etc.) and happiness rare. In addition, degrowth is usually framed within an apocalyptic timeline of a planetary life support system collapse —not exactly making it the most desirable of movement imaginaries. Such caricatures of degrowth are a far cry from notions of abundance, pleasure and play that are often present in artistic processes and that are concepts that capitalism has taken away from us.

As with most traditional progressive politics, degrowth has a tendency to work in a scientific, ‘reality’-based manner. Much of the work seems to be passing on information, statistics, facts, economic analyses, etc. It often feels overly academic and heady and ignores emotions —Where is the dreaming and fantasy? While there have been spaces for other forms of intuitive learning, celebrating, etc. at the recent degrowth conferences, this is often seen as merely an addition to the ‘rational’ lectures and workshops.

Stealing fantasy back from capitalism

Capitalism has captured our fantasies with the spectacle of consumerism; its celebrities have become our mythological heroes, its video games our wild adventures. It promises us the fantasy of a better life that can always be even better. Fantasy itself is the fuel of the entertainment business, popular culture and most religions, and yet we fear it as a tool of politics. We distrust anything that might seem irrational and relegate it to the ‘arts programme’.

Artivism, however, recognises that politics has always been about fantasy, because at its heart is imagining what kind of future world we want. We have been able to use such tools, steal them back from popular culture and create what Stephen Duncombe, author and founder of the Centre for Artistic Activism, calls ‘ethical spectacles‘. There, we collectively perform our dreams via imaginative participatory actions, creating new realities via symbols and stories that construct a truth together rather than waiting for it to set us free. The degrowth movement could learn from this and acknowledge that successful politics are as much an affair of desire and fantasy as of reason and rationality. To leave all these powerful tools in the hands of capitalism is a mistake. As long as capitalism’s lures are perceived to be more fun and more able to speak to our desires than degrowth, we will fail to make the radical cultural changes that are so necessary, and buying an iPad will still be way cooler than riding a donkey.

Instead of artists flocking to apply their creativity to the movement, they continue to work in the advertising industries and other machines that reproduce capitalism’s desire traps. Without their creativity degrowth will remain a beautiful set of ideas rather than a new culture. The questions we must ask are: How do we learn to educate each other to desire differently? How can degrowth become as sexy as capitalism? And how can small really become beautiful? And, last but not least, how can we begin to sense the inherent violence of industrial civilisation, to really, deeply feel the crimes against life that it perpetuates, to shake off the anaesthesia, the numbness, and return to aesthesia, the senses?

More coherence is needed

What degrowth can bring to artivism and especially to the art world is the drive for coherence between thinking and living. Separating what we believe in from how we act in the world inevitably leads to suffering, and confusing role models. With many in the cultural field there is a chasm between their politics, aesthetics, ethics and everyday life. Many artists and cultural producers fly from conference to biennale, to carry out work about climate change, while others exhibit anti-systemic work in museums sponsored by banks. Not considering their life as a material to work on, a concept Foucault articulates as ‘a technique of life, an art of living’, they reproduce separations of capitalism. Instead of applying their creativity to questions of how we could travel without causing climate breakdown, how we could organise without domination, how we could grow our food without destroying our soil systems, how we might build new communes, they continue to live in constant contradiction between what they believe in and how they behave. Degrowth’s focus on holistic practices could change this.

5. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

Building a culture of resistance where art and activism are no longer separate from everyday life

One of the most urgent tasks is to build a culture of resistance. I don’t believe that we will be able to put in place solutions to the ongoing social and ecological catastrophe without acts of resistance. Those who profit from the present economic system will not relinquish their power. We need movements that are able to show desirable alternatives while being prepared to resist the current system. Without a shared set of values and behaviours, without a culture where acts of resistance (from protest to sabotage) are supported by a wider population than that which is actually ready to take part in them, we will not have the systemic change necessary to achieve justice and avoid the collapse of our life support systems on this planet.

That is why things like bringing degrowth and a climate camp together are key, because not everyone is going to be suited for the front line of resistance. But all these people need to feel part of a shared culture. Yet movements so often forget this and don’t see the importance of creating the material infrastructures and affective sensibilities that support resistance in the long term. Unfortunately, many in the transition town networks — or in other cultures of ecological alternatives such as permaculture et al. — while thinking long term solutions and material infrastructures, seem to think that our culture will be able to magically transition from capitalism to ‘something nicer, greener, etc.’ without resistance. I don’t believe this culture will somehow undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane, equitable and sustainable way of living. I think we have to undo much of this culture and rebuild entirely different ways of being and sharing our worlds and that this is what resistance is: confronting and dismantling unjust structures of power to make way for other cultures to flourish.

This is what a culture of resistance looks like
A culture of resistance is one based on sharing our material and emotional support with those involved in a movement of resistance.

A culture of resistance is when in winter 2015 in France citizens opened up their homes and farms to the 200 people in the tractor and bike convoy that rolled up from the zad occupation (an autonomous resistance zone against a planned airport in western France) to the COP21 in Paris, despite the state of emergency and bans on their movements. A culture of resistance is not the so-called ‘ecological’ philosopher Bruno Latour refusing to sign a letter against the building of the same airport because he fears his name being associated with radical ecologists.

Routes of the Underground Railroad, 1830-1865. (Image: public domain)

A beautiful example of a culture of resistance was the underground railroad that enabled slaves to escape the southern United States. It’s not the French government evicting refugees from their self-made Calais camps to force them into a prison-like set-up with no communal space. At the heart of a culture of resistance is refusing a culture of domination in favour of a definition of love that enables the other to be free.

Breaking down the separations

In the end I think that in the new culture that will come after the culture of capitalism and domination, the role of art and activism will change radically. Art as a thing separate from everyday life, a thing for the rich to collect and profit from, a thing to watch or to own, done by others, will be over. It will be seen as a verb rather than a noun; a way of doing, a certain quality of paying attention that anyone can practice in everyday life, not just the ‘artists’.

Perhaps the notion of the activist as someone who is a specialist in transforming society, will disappear too, as in a society of the commons, run with local assemblies and a confederation of commons rather than the hierarchical state, everyone will feel part of a process of social transformation, part of a practice of politics. In this society, politics will not be separate from ethics anymore. Aristotle saw the pursuit of the good of the political community as a branch of ethics, the pursuit of human good as a whole. This pursuit he called Eudaimonia, meaning ‘the good life’, and he believed it was the ultimate goal of all human beings. 2300 years later, perhaps the degrowth movement will bring us closer to this dream than ever before.

Links

The Centre for Creative Activism, based in New York
The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii) brings artists and activists together to co-design new forms of creative resistance
Interview with its co-founders of Labofii John Jordan and Isabelle Fremeaux

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Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned scepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

Lead image, Clown Army – Polizei Gorleben Demo 2010 Dannenberg, by Simon Engel (Flickr)

The post Degrowth in Movements: Artivism appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Lambert is a founder and director of the Center for Artistic Activism where he hosts resources and workshops to help aspiring activists innovate new means of social transformation.

Visit Steve’s website visitsteve.com to learn more about his many interactive art projects.

More links to creative and playful means of engagement can also be found at the Team Human resources page under the heading “Protest and Resistance”

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