Après plusieurs années depuis son initiation et sa conception, le projet Wiki Village a été finalisé ! Ci-dessous un petit historique de cette belle, longue et complexe démarche : Wiki Village a été initié par l’Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA) en 2015 pour le concours Re-Inventer Paris, en associant des acteurs importants de la transition écologique et …

An exhibition organised in the frame of the project C4R (Cultures for Resilience), by tranzit.ro, in collaboration with Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée (FR), Casco Art Institute (NL), Nethood (CH), in partnership with Minitremu Association (RO) and supported by the Creative Europe Program of the European Commission. 2 – 15 July 2023 Riverside Pavilion / Children’s Park Ion Creangă, Timișoara A research exhibition comprising documentation produced in the C4R activities, as well as artworks and documents related to a localised understanding of resilience. The first edition of the exhibition took place in July 2022 in Bucharest, moving to Sofia in September 2022 in an adapted version and with some works presented in premiere. The third edition in Timișoara shows a selection of works from the previous two editions, alongside new contributions that respond to the context of the project and to Minitremu Art Camp 8 intended for high-school students. The new iteration of the exhibition expands the different understandings of the concept of resilience – both related to nature’s regenerative (im)possibilities amidst the climate challenges of the current times, and to the different forms of organization in the rural and urban areas based on an ecological, sustainable and communitarian thinking and acting. Apart from the existing research related to mapping several ecologial farms in Romania, the video presentation of 20 more artistic initiatives in nature and the rural, the presentation in Timisoara includes new initiatives and artistic work from the region closer to Banat: Healthy Places, a co-design model for green and social regeneration of community spaces in Timisoara run by Studio Peisaj; a work by Nita Mocanu documenting the results of the spruce bark beetle invasion caused by draughts and destroying the forests in the Apuseni; or Andreea Medar & Mălina Ionescu’s long research into the accidental water leak in Racoti village which has created in time a mini-delta, being the main source of water supply for the local inhabitants. The exhibition is designed as an informative and learning space activated by the artists invited in the Minitremu Art Camp 8. Participants: * atelier d’architecture autogérée, r-urban, CASCO, nethood, Remix the commons, tranzit.ro; * Gilles Clément, Georgiana Strat; * Alex Axinte, Bogdan Iancu, Monica Stroe, Alexandru Vârtej; * GreenMogo, Legumim/ Gastronaut, Luca’s Farm, Nettle Garden, Țopa Farm, Soil and Soul, Seed Bank “Casa Semintelor”; * Delia Popa, Vlad Brăteanu, Eduard Constantin, Oto Hudec, Anamaria Pravicencu, Andreea Medar & Mălina Ionescu, Nita Mocanu, Roberta Curcă, Studio Peisaj, TerraPia; * Ovidiu Țichindeleanu; * Carambach (Adriana Chiruță), Cecălaca/Csekelaka Cultural Studio (Oana Fărcaș), Crețești Studio-Garden (Delia Popa), Cucuieti Permaculture (Otilia & Radu Boeru), The Dendrological Park Romanii de Jos (V. Leac), Drenart (Stoyan Dechev, Olivia Mihălțianu), The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life (Dana Andrei, Edi Constantin, Valentin Florian Niculae), The House of Light and Information (Matei Bejenaru), Intersecția Residency (Emanuela Ascari), Jan Hála House (Zuzana Janečková), LATERAL AIR (Cristina Curcan, Lucian Indrei), Muze. Gemüse Initiative (Maria Balabaș & Vlad Mihăescu), The Rajka Orchard (Martin Piaček), Rădești House (Irina Botea Bucan & Jon Dean), Reforesting project (Vasilis Ntouros, Dora Zoumpa), Siliștea Future Studios (Adelina Ivan, Ioana Gheorghiu, Virginia Toma, Ramon Sadîc, Robert Blaj, Vlad Brăteanu), Slon Residency (META Cultural Foundation, Raluca Doroftei), Solar Gallery (Ariana Hodorcă & Albert Kaan), Watermelon Residency (Daniela Pălimariu, Alexandru Niculescu), Na záhradke Gallery (Oto Hudec), Khata-Maysternya/House-Workshop (Bogdan Velgan, Taras Grytsiuk, Olga Dyatel, Ekaterina and Olga Zarko, Alyona Karavai, Yulia Kniupa, Taras Kovalchuk, Magda Lapshyn, Anna Mygal, Sasha Moskovchuk, Svyat Popov, Tanya Sklyar, Natalia Trambovetska, Vilya and Ivanka Chupak); symbiopoiesis (Andrei Nacu). * Raluca Voinea. Curator for Timișoara edition: Adelina Luft In the framework of the C4R project, tranzit.ro has looked at practices that redefine the relationship with the countryside, with land and soil, with nature, with food and natural resources, with the rural communities and with people in the big cities who are looking for sustainable alternatives to their life styles. All the partners in this project have used a variety of tools: anthropological and cultural mapping, conferences, discussions and seminars as well as digital platforms, in order to highlight different forms of resilience in our societies, in the East, West and North of Europe, touching on issues from the circuit of organic food, to sustainable building materials, forms of commons and of governance, communities structured around ecological thinking and action, and not least artistic initiatives that seek for linking with nature and the countryside. Some of these different understandings of the concept of resilience will be reflected in the exhibition Now the impulse is to live! As part of a project that is still in progress, the exhibition offers a format for continuous reflection on the topics researched. Riverside Pavilion, situated in Ion Creangă Children’s Park in Timișoara was created following the idea to continue the public space into the building, without having any steps or obstacles, so that interior and exterior merge together. Minitremu Art Camp is a yearly summer camp intended for theoretical, real or vocational high school students and students in their first years of college. The project is supported by the EC's Creative Europe - Culture programme. ERSTE Foundation is the main partner of tranzit. The event is part of "Outside the school" a component of the Knowledge fields (along with Kinema Ikon, Asociatia Foc si Pară / Indecis and Association Doar Maine) part of the national cultural programme "Timișoara – European Capital of Culture in the year 2023" and is funded by the City of Timișoara, through the Center for Projects. Exhibition title and cover image from a material on Luca’s Farm, by Alex Axinte.

SUMMARY TEXT SOME MORE TEXT HERE Nettle Garden, a connection between consumers, producers, nourishment and land Brândușa and Anselm moved to the countryside in 2013, to the village of Stanciova, Timiș county, drawn towards the idea of a lifestyle more deeply connected to the land and the nourishment it produces. At the same time, the two saw moving to the countryside also as a break from the academic medium, whose essentially theoretical products they didn’t consider too useful. The two met in Germany during their studies, Anselm being a Belgian citizen. Brândușa graduated with a Master’s degree in Rural Development and, prior to moving to Stanciova, she spent a study internship in India. The choice to settle their household in Stanciova was grounded on the existence of a community of young people relocated from Timișoara at the beginning of the 2000s; the group decided to move to the countryside with the purpose of creating a community and of implementing rural development programs. Drawn by the promotion the community made online, through a blog, Brândușa and Anselm came into contact with the members and moved to the village, with the possibility of living in a house renovated by the members of the community; “we only brought our backpacks with us”, Brândușa highlights. Shortly after coming to the village, Brândușa and Anselm bought a piece of land they could afford, with the purpose of building a house to live in and planting a garden. The construction of the house took two years, from 2014 to 2016, during which time the two lived in the community house. For the construction they analysed various alternative construction techniques. They mainly had to choose between a house made from cob and one made from bales, in the end opting for a house made from wheat bales built on a wooden structure, which they considered it offered better thermal isolation. Nettle Garden came into being from the desire of Brândușa and Anselm to produce ecological nourishment for themselves, but for other people, too, which they would sell in a community-supported agriculture (CSA) system. Brândușa manifested interest towards this form of agriculture during her Master’s degree, when she wrote her dissertation about this type of food production and distribution and which she wanted to try first-hand: “and this is why the dream slowly developed, we settle close to Timișoara, all good, so we can start growing vegetables at some point”. Beginning with the spring of 2021, the two managed to gather enough surplus in their production to start selling vegetables, in a CSA system, to around 10-12 consumers in Timișoara who subscribed to their baskets. Nettle Garden is basically the name Brândușa and Anselm gave to their household. It is about 2000 sq.m. and comprises the little bale house, with an annex housing the compost dry toilet and the shower, the vegetable garden, a few fruit trees which were already planted when they bought the land, two solariums, enclosed spaces for geese. In the farmyard, there were tools and farm equipment: electric-hoe, pitchfork to loosen the soil, a “wire boat” whipped up by Anselm to carry hay, but also spaces for stable waste and for compost. Two dogs and a few cats had their homes in the garden. Aside from the garden, they use two adjacent lands to raise hens and geese. One of the lands is rented from a local, and they use another one, abandoned and with uncertain ownership, to raise geese, reclaiming the priority, at least a moral one, in favour of the one who uses the land. Recently, they leased two ha of farmland, but they haven’t undertaken any farm work there yet. The dwelling space has a relatively small area, being built on the footprint of an older mudbrick house. It is composed from a room that serves as a living room, a kitchen, a studio, and an attic accessed through an abrupt wooden stairway, which is used as a bedroom and storage space. The house is heated with a stove built by Anselm using the system of a “rocket-stove”, which he adapted: instead of thick logs, it uses sticks and wooden shards which burn intensely to maximize the efficiency of the burn; the addition he brought to the system is a space made from refractory brick meant to store and radiate heat. Around the house, Brândușa and Anselm were in the process of painting a cement terrace, which they built in order to avoid spreading mud around. When I arrived at Nettle Garden, Anselm was experimenting with a new seeding method, using an instrument he DIY-ed from a leaf blower, to which he attached a plastic bottle used as a seed recipient. He explained that this instrument will help him in the no-till farming they are practicing, where the land is not ploughed or dug, but the superior humus layer is permanently enriched with the purpose of keeping life inside the soil as much as possible: “all the earthworms and the insects in the soil remain there and live their life”, says Anselm. The two insist upon the ideal of keeping life in the soil by using no-till farming, saying they do not agree with ploughing the land every year, as is the usual in classic agriculture, because, on the one hand, it destroys the living things in the soil, and on the other hand, it creates a hardpan layer, below the limit where the plough works, which becomes waterproof. Their technique is sowing the crop directly onto the soil, which they, eventually, lay to the ground or chop, to sow into this one the next crop which will be harvested, or the seedlings. Anselm explains it this way: “I’ve seeded it and the triticale grew all winter. It just sits there, growing, covering the soil and it turns into straws, and when the time came to transplant, we chopped everything with the brush cutter and we were left with a layer of minced straws. (…) And then you haven’t ploughed the soil, you don’t lose water, during winter something grew, I mean, if it was a little bit warmer and the sun would shine, something would grow and would become organic matter, which means it wasn’t dead. The more it grows and you have organic matter, the more you enrich the soil and it becomes looser, water seeps easier, there’s more life and it’s more fertile”. While Anselm was experimenting with the blower, together with Brândușa we made seedlings, with the help of a small manual press, by making little cubes of soil where we planted turnip seeds. She also presented to me a device made by Anselm, which made 200 seedlings at once, which they didn’t use though, as they preferred to plant different varieties. In fact, the garden was abundant in vegetable varieties. I helped Brândușa with harvesting them for the second day distribution. The tomatoes were, by far, the most prevalent; the 200 tomato stalks were very diverse, totalling 10 different varieties. Similarly, the eggplants were purple and white and in various shapes, the courgettes were too, of different varieties. Furthermore, Brândușa confesses she is passionate about experimenting with various uncommon vegetables: tomatillos, cucamelon, Palestinian white cucumbers, as well as mizuna, arugula, mangold. She even admits that this year’s diversity can also be a disadvantage and that she would prefer in the future to settle on less varieties, with the intention to do research among the consumers to determine the varieties she should settle on. The vegetables are planted in alternation with flowers; for example, between tomato rows one finds rows of marigolds, Brândușa saying she would want even more, with the purpose of helping both the pollinators, as well as pest control. She says associating marigolds with tomatoes is a classic combination, as they remove the tomato pests. The ecological agriculture Brândușa and Anselm practice implies the plants are to be exposed as rarely as possible to pest control treatments. The products they use are, most often, nettle soaks made by Brândușa herself, and on the rare occasions where they were forced to buy mass market products, they only used products which are certified for ecological crops and waited a longer time than recommended until the harvest. Although they are not certified as bio producers, Brândușa and Anselm claim they fulfil all the organic farming conditions, the cost of obtaining the certificate being the sole reason they don’t have one yet. The two use exclusively compost and stable waste, the latter which they have to buy for prices they find steep, considering they don’t own animals and, according to them, less and less people in the village do. The compost that results from matter coming from the composting toilet (humanure) isn’t used, because they aren’t fully confident in its safety, being rather a way to ecologically eliminate physiological waste, but sometimes they use it when planting trees. What they do use in the garden from the composting toilet is the liquid part: “diluted pee, because it doesn’t have pathogens and so it’s a good source of nitrogen and phosphorus. We dilute it 1/10”. For the seedlings they either use the seeds they kept, or bought online from other gardeners, from Romania and the Republic of Moldova. It is very important for Brândușa to avoid hybrid seeds, both because they cannot be saved in order to reproduce a similar variety, and because, for ideological reasons, she doesn’t accept buying seeds which are conceived so that the plant cannot be reproduced, and this happens even in the case of plants whose seeds she usually doesn’t save, such as carrots. Aside from the vegetable garden, Brândușa and Anselm are raising hens and geese; they bred the geese from a few goslings they bought and they sacrifice the birds themselves. From the woods, the two gather wild garlic, nettles and mushrooms, rosehip and cornelian cherry; the forest is also a source of dry wood for the fire and even logs which they used to make pillars for the terrace. Brândușa’s and Anselm’s lifestyle doesn’t exclude also using modern techniques and instruments in the garden. The vegetables are watered using a drip irrigation system, the birds are cooped up with an electric fence – the two agree it has been very effective in preventing fox attacks, which at some point they had to fight away. They also wish for a tractor, as a distant goal, to which they could attach no-till farming devices, because ”a tractor isn’t necessarily just a plough”, she explains. And so, the production techniques and the domestic routines of the two are in accordance with an ecological lifestyle, which highlights the respect shown to the land and nourishment. Besides, the domestic routines can hardly be separated from the food production, given that the two aim to live, as much as possible, with and from the land. As part of this lifestyle, the two adapt the classical practices, techniques and means of production, and experiment with alternative practices, routines and tools, which differ from those of the locals. The differences in practice have been noticed by the locals, which were curious and asked for information about how to build a house of bales, while suggesting other techniques: “kind of like, you won’t make it, you know. Or when we were building, neighbours would pass by and tell us, wouldn’t it be cheaper?, something something, if you’d use cinder blocks… I’m not using cinder blocks, that’s that”, Brândușa points out. But she describes the relationship with the villagers as a good one, being bothered however by the neighbours which are used to burning trash as a way of cleaning, or the ones which throw away trash next to their fence, despite the fact that there’s a sanitation and waste sorting service in the village. Brândușa also earned a reputation by being an educator in the village. At the same time, she helps the neighbours with repairing bicycles; she had a repair shop in Timișoara and also organized a repair camp in the village, “where people from other workshops in Europe came over, this kind of anarchist, independent shops”. But she gave up her repair shop so she would dedicate herself to the garden. However, at the present moment, Brândușa and Anselm cannot completely sustain themselves from farming. Anselm is a part-time (60%) employee as an inspector for ecological agriculture, while Brândușa gave up her jobs, including a part-time she had with EcoRuralis, to work in food production. The products of the Nettle Garden are distributed weekly, on a Wednesday, in the Faber space in Timișoara. The two haul the vegetables with their own car and they arrange them in the space where people come to pick it up. The distribution is made using a community-supported agriculture system, in collaboration with the Association for Sustaining Peasant Agriculture, towards around 10 to 12 subscribers. Brândușa shows that this system is not market-oriented, given that the consumers are willing to pay a higher price to sustain ecological peasant initiatives, maybe without expecting an equivalent return: “from what I heard, for some of them it’s important that we have a connection, they’re people who can afford to invest a certain sum of money into a household close to Timișoara, maybe even without getting so much in return, but with the thought of helping some people”. At the same time, her main objective is “being able to feed more people”. The vegetables are picked by Brândușa and Anselm on the distribution days, so that they are as fresh as possible. Alongside vegetables, their baskets include, as a bonus, eggs or plants picked form the forest: nettles, wild garlic. The harvest is weighed prior to the distribution and Brândușa counts the vegetables for each consumer, without portioning the quantities. The subscribers are encouraged to bring paper bags to get their products, after each portion is weighed with a scale. A WhatsApp group is used to organize the distribution and keep in touch. Distribution doesn’t mean just delivering the vegetables, but also, as Brândușa points out, knowledge about how they should be cooked, especially the lesser known ones, like tomatillos: “I’ll feel sorry if they don’t use something because they don’t know how and it ends up in the compost. I’d feel so bad, because I worried about that fruit. So it’s in my interest if they eat each gram of the vegetables they receive. (…) we talk on the spot, we look for recipes, they give advice to each other, we have a WhatsApp group and we post recipes there”. The distribution takes place in a generally sociable atmosphere, the relatively small group that comes constantly for the delivery showing a certain cohesion; they often stay for a chat and to socialize after the vegetables are handed out. The distribution space, specifically chosen by Anselm in a popular enough place for youngsters in Timișoara, is featuring various pieces of urban furniture made from wood, coloured in black and purple, in a geometric, modern style. Inside the space, you find a restaurant with a terrace and various shops placed in metal containers, selling even craft beer. Thus, after the distribution of the vegetables, for an hour or two, the consumers socialize and drink beer and other stuff they buy on the spot. The subscriber group comprises middle class people; a Political Science professor from the Western University in Timișoara, also a subscriber, notices: “this thing is very posh, professors, artists. I would like something for the working class”. At the end of the night, together with Brândușa and Anselm, we collected the crates and went back to Stanciova. A few members of the consumers group left together to keep hanging out in some other place in the Fabric neighbourhood. Research and text by Alexandru Vârtej Translation by Dana Andrei The research is part of Regenerative-Reliable-Resourceful, the mapping of resilient practices in the Romanian countryside that tranzit.ro develops in the frame of C4R and of the Experimental Station for Research.

The new book by Hans Widmer (aka P.M., author of bolo'bolo) is now published. "Auf den Boden kommen" (flyer in german), meaning "down to earth", a title inspired by Bruno Latour's work. The book builds on previous collective work curated and edited by Hans Widmer (Die Andere Stadt and Nach Hause Kommen) focusing this time at the neighbourhood scale (20000 inhabitants), the 2nd out of 5 "glomos". One of the book's proposals for living within ecological boundaries without sacrifice is the "terrestrial" Internet, an adaptation of the concept of the organic Internet by Panayotis Antoniadis (through C4R partner NetHood). The initial text has been written in English and is published also as a separate booklet, available to download here. The terrestrial Internet will be then the topic of the next event of the 7at7 series, on Monday February 7 at 7pm CET, with the CIRCE group as a special guest. You can join at https://7at7.digital.

Almost a year ago, we had the honor to visit Gilles Clément's beautiful garden-laboratory in the Creuse. Share with us this experience via our video 'In The Plants World'(with english subtitles) : It is a concrete and long term experimentation of the idea of the "Planetary Garden", which aims to "maintain or increase diversity through a consensual practice of non-development ... and raise unproductivity to the level of politics". Enjoy your visit!

An exhibition organised in the frame of the project C4R (Cultures for Resilience), by tranzit.ro, in collaboration with Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée (FR), Casco Art Institute (NL), Nethood (CH) and in partnership with Toplocentrala (BG). 2 – 17 September 2022 Toplocentrala, 5 Emil Bersinski Street, Sofia, Bulgaria “The European Commission Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC) has warned that the current drought could be the worst in 500 years.” (Euronews, 10/08/2022) Some would equate resilience today with foolishness, utopianism, naïveté. For the world is falling apart in millions of incomprehensible pieces and apparently the realist contemplation of the disaster is all we are left with. For others yet, there are seeds to be collected and re-sowed, rainwater to be stored, communities to be invested in and cared for. We will live and we will see, as a proverb in Romania says. The propulsion for living seems to be the only solution to the mess around. Living means that the now makes sense, but this belief in the living is far from just indulging in a timeless now, it is an enacted form of hope. Some would call it resilience and associate it with skills and knowledges that have been around for long and keep resurfacing, upgraded following the challenge of the current times; or with trust in non-human species, which are most of the times doing their job in protecting each other much better than sophisticated and destructive chemicals produced in sealed labs; or they would simply see resilience as the bliss of sharing (crops, ideas, friends, predictions and uncertainties). Participants: * atelier d’architecture autogérée, r-urban, CASCO, nethood, Remix the commons, tranzit.ro; * Gilles Clément, Georgiana Strat; * Alex Axinte, Bogdan Iancu, Monica Stroe, Alexandru Vârtej; * GreenMogo, Legumim/ Gastronaut, Luca’s Farm, Nettle Garden, Țopa Farm, Soil and Soul, Seed Bank “Casa Semintelor”; * Vlad Basalici, Vlad Brăteanu, Adriana Chiruță, Eduard Constantin, Oto Hudec, Delia Popa, Sorin Popescu, Anamaria Pravicencu; * Ovidiu Țichindeleanu; * New Rural Agenda, Adelina Luft; * Carambach (Adriana Chiruță), Cecălaca/Csekelaka Cultural Studio (Oana Fărcaș), Crețești Studio-Garden (Delia Popa), Cucuieti Permaculture (Otilia & Radu Boeru), The Dendrological Park Romanii de Jos (V. Leac), Drenart (Stoyan Dechev, Olivia Mihălțianu), The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life (Dana Andrei, Edi Constantin, Valentin Florian Niculae), The House of Light and Information (Matei Bejenaru), Intersecția Residency (Emanuela Ascari), Jan Hála House (Zuzana Janečková), LATERAL AIR (Cristina Curcan, Lucian Indrei), Muze. Gemüse Initiative (Maria Balabaș & Vlad Mihăescu), The Rajka Orchard (Martin Piaček), Rădești House (Irina Botea Bucan & Jon Dean), Reforesting project (Vasilis Ntouros, Dora Zoumpa), Siliștea Future Studios (Adelina Ivan, Ioana Gheorghiu, Virginia Toma, Ramon Sadîc, Robert Blaj, Vlad Brăteanu), Slon Residency (META Cultural Foundation, Raluca Doroftei), Solar Gallery (Ariana Hodorcă & Albert Kaan), Watermelon Residency (Daniela Pălimariu, Alexandru Niculescu), Na záhradke Gallery (Oto Hudec). A research exhibition comprising documentation produced in the C4R activities, as well as artworks and documents related to a localised understanding of resilience. The first edition of the exhibition took place in July 2022 in Bucharest and it is now moving to Sofia, in an adapted version, and with some works presented in premiere. In the framework of the C4R project, tranzit.ro has looked at practices that redefine the relationship with the countryside, with land and soil, with nature, with food and natural resources, with the rural communities and with people in the big cities who are looking for sustainable alternatives to their life styles. All the partners in this project have used a variety of tools: anthropological and cultural mapping, conferences, discussions and seminars as well as digital platforms, in order to highlight different forms of resilience in our societies, in the East, West and North of Europe, touching on issues from the circuit of organic food, to sustainable building materials, forms of commons and of governance, communities structured around ecological thinking and action, and not least artistic initiatives that seek for linking with nature and the countryside. Some of these different understandings of the concept of resilience are reflected in the exhibition Now the impulse is to live!. As part of a project that is still in progress, the exhibition offers a format for continuous reflection on the topics researched. CCA Toplocentrala is the new public cultural institute in Sofia, established in a close collaboration between the Sofia Municipality and the independent scene of contemporary art in Bulgaria. The centre provides a platform for performing arts and music and has an exhibition program, focused on contemporary art and its social, educational and community impact. The project is supported by the EC's Creative Europe - Culture programme. Exhibition title from a material on Luca’s Farm, by Alex Axinte Image: Zaharia Helinger: Watermelon, 1979, acrylic on cardboard. Presented by Watermelon Residency (Daniela Pălimariu, Alex Niculescu)

At the end of July, we had the chance to visit the exhibition "Now The Impulse is to Live" organized by Tranzit.ro within the framework of the C4R project, in the offices of the Order of Architects, in Bucharest. All the exposed projects (realized in Eastern Europe) showed a new collective imagination, new directions of action for resilient and poetic, solidary and creative ways of life ... and, sometimes, even utopias in the process of realization! Congratulations for this exhibition which should circulate widely in Europe and be enriched with experiments and projects from other countries.

At the end of July, we had the chance to visit the exhibition "Now The Impulse is to Live" organized by Tranzit.ro within the framework of the C4R project, in the offices of the Order of Architects, in Bucharest. All the exposed projects (realized in Eastern Europe) showed a new collective imagination, new directions of action for resilient and poetic, solidary and creative ways of life ... and, sometimes, even utopias in the process of realization! Congratulations for this exhibition which should circulate widely in Europe and be enriched with experiments and projects from other countries.

What shape can the infrastructure for the solidarity economy take? The Open Collective is working to build legal, financial, and technical tools which are open source and transparent – enabling connections between financial institutions, cooperatives, mutual aid groups and non-profit organizations. Open Collective Foundation (OCF) is creating a legal, financial, and technical commons for the solidarity economy. Community is about trust and sharing. Open Collective lets you manage your finances so everyone can see where money comes from and where it goes. Collect and spend money transparently. OCF has a unique role to play as steward of a legal, financial, and technical commons—a piece of shared infrastructure—that is resonating deeply with the solidarity economy movement. We can build bridges between 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsorship, the open source community (where we have deep roots), mutual aid groups (100+ are hosted by OCF today), and the movement at large. A new clarity has emerged for Open Collective Foundation: Solidarity will be our guiding principle. Source: https://blog.opencollective.com/solidarity-as-our-guiding-principle/ RESOURCES You can find the Solidarity as Guiding Principle tool by the Open Collective Foundation here. Watch a brief presentation of the OCF:

How can artists organize against the increasing inequality amplified by the pandemic conditions globally? Art for Universal Basic Income – a campaign initiated by artists – is converging energies with movements across the world challenging the market’s current modes of exploitation. Art for Universal Basic Income by the Institute of Radical Imagination (IRI). While the art market confirms his status as a safe-haven assets provider for the financial elite, the current pandemic has highlighted the fragility and precarity of art workers around the world, a condition common to a growing portion of humanity. In this situation a UBI (Universal Basic Income) would then represent a solution and indeed an urgent measure to implement. But UBI is not “only” a response to poverty, it is a necessary condition in order to rethink our extractivist ecological model, to correct many race and gender asymmetries and, last but not least, to change the art world’s present neoliberal structure. UBI must be seen as a tool to open up new subjective spaces, alternative to the dominating entrepreneurial individualism and focused instead on commons and care. If artists are already creating new collective economy models and alter-institutions, these small scale experiments will be much more valuable when connected with those growing social movements around the world fighting for a Universal Basic Income. The Institute of Radical Imagination (IRI) is a think-tank consisting of curators, artists, and scholars, whose aim is to develop various forms of research intervention for the transition into post-capitalism. Together we want to explore and develop new practices and knowledge that contribute to the formation of new forms of life and its meanings as the practices of struggle for the commons. IRI is located at the threshold between Europe and the Mediterranean. The School of Mutation is IRI's pedagogical outlet, focused on the need to learn anew and re-make the world of culture in the unfolding of the biopolitical emergency brought on by Covid-19. Art For UBI is a campaign initiated in the framework of the School of Mutation. ART FOR UBI (MANIFESTO) 1/ Universal and Unconditional Basic Income is the best measure for the arts and cultural sector. Art workers claim a basic income, not for themselves, but for everyone. 2/ Do not call UBI any measures that do not equal a living wage: UBI has to be above the poverty threshold. To eliminate poverty, UBI must correspond to a region’s minimum wage. 3/ UBI frees up time, liberating us from the blackmail of precarious labor and from exploitative working conditions. 4/ UBI is given unconditionally and without caveats, regardless of social status, job performance, or ability. It goes against the meritocratic falsehoods that cover for class privilege. 5/ UBI is not a social safety net, nor is it welfare unemployment reform. It is the minimal recognition of the invisible labor that is essential to the reproduction of life, largely unacknowledged but essential, as society’s growing need for care proves. 6/ UBI states that waged labor is no longer the sole means for wealth redistribution. Time and time again, this model proves unsustainable.Wage is just another name for exploitation of workers, who always earn less than they give. 7/ Trans-feminist and decolonizing perspectives teach us to say NO to all the invisible and extractive modes of exploitation, especially within the precarious working conditions created by the art market. 8/ UBI affirms the right to intermittence, privacy and autonomy, the right to stay off-line and not to be available 24/7. 9/ UBI rejects the pyramid scheme of grants and of the nonprofit industrial complex, redistributing wealth equally and without unnecessary bureaucratic burdens. Bureaucracy is the vampire of art workers’ energies and time turning them into managers of themselves. 10/ By demanding UBI, art workers do not defend a guild or a category and depreciate the role that class and privilege play in current perceptions of art. UBI is universal because it is for everyone and makes creative agency available to everyone. 11/ Art’s health is directly connected to a healthy social fabric. To claim for UBI, being grounded in the ethics of mutual care, is art workers’ most powerful gesture of care towards society. 12/ Because UBI disrupts the logic of overproduction, it frees us from the current modes of capital production that are exploiting the planet. UBI is a cosmogenetic technique and a means to achieve climate justice. 13/ Where to find the money for the UBI? In and of itself UBI questions the actual tax systems in Europe and elsewhere. UBI empowers us to reimagine financial transactions, the extractivism of digital platforms, liquidity, and debt. No public service should be cut in order to finance UBI. 14/ UBI inspires many art collectives and communities to test various tools for more equal redistribution of resources and wealth. From self-managed mutual aid systems based on collettivising incomes, to solutions temporarily freeing cognitive workers from public and private constraints. We aim to join them. Source: https://instituteofradicalimagination.org/the-school-of-mutation-2020/som-iterations/art-for-ubi/ ART FOR UBI RESOURCES: * ART FOR UBI (MANIFESTO) | launching campaign * ART FOR UBI (Manifesto) #1 | Open online Assembly * ART FOR UBI (Manifesto) #2 | Open online Assembly * The paradoxes of gift economy and how basic income could save, change, abolish art making. A conversation with Dmitry Vilensky and Oxana Timofeeva