Deconstructing the Pyramid  by

by 28. 2. 2023

TEREZA ZÁCHOVÁ
Let’s start from the beginning. Could you explain International Encounters of Community and Environmental Sociology, what does it mean? And who will be part of it?

MARTINKA BOBRIKOVA & OSCAR DE CARMEN
We would explain it as an interdisciplinary space of conversation focusing on how to create new approaches in cultural policies based on the model of the auto-sustainable infrastructures. The participants are both the invited experts who present ideas based on empirical data generated by research, as well as the audience.

TZ
Could you introduce your project Anti-Symposium a little bit?

MB&OC
Anti-Symposium is a meeting that serves as a site for participants to exchange and share their experiences and to discuss the future of independent cultural frameworks. Being an (Anti) Symposium provides a space for a public discussion through horizontal dialogue seeking to generate participatory actions from all of the participants. The benefit of this format is based on establishing a (Non) program where there are no conferences, no discussion groups, no presentations or issues around the theme we raise.

TZ
Why did you decide to make format like a symposium and what does it bring for you?

MB & OC
We are interested in the action of the meeting and the fellowship that exists among the participants who attend
a symposium. We have always noticed that most people most enjoy the social part of the event when everyone drinks or eats together, accompanied by the pleasures of conver- sation, where participants share their integrated experiences through the passing of time, giving as a result a passive act of regeneration of thoughts that are not organized in a formal technical structure of discussion.

TZ
As I know, you have chosen the Uddebo village for the first time. What made you interested in Uddebo? Is there anything that makes it special from other villages?

MB&OC
Our relationship with Uddebo is beyond the Anti-Symposium project, we, together with local artist Linnea MF Larsson, funded FUCK in 2017, a non-profit organization currently based in Uddebo, whose work focuses on promoting inter-social relations in the rural environment through an international residence and local and regional institutional collaborations. We have chosen Uddebo as the base of the IECES because we view Uddebo as an inspiring place where one can visualize the cooperative development of the neighbourhood in helping to organize, enhance and strengthen the participation of the community. It is precisely in these same terms that we are interested in observing other villages, other dynamics, other social realities that IECES can feed on.

Anti-Sympozium, 2019, photo by Antti Ahonen.

TZ
What about village community? What about the relationship between the local and invited guests? I would say it could potentially be difficult.

MB & OC
The community is based on the neighborhood fraternity, any relationship between people based in respect ends up being an experience towards understanding. The experience for people invited to participate in the IECES is to learn and live together. This is precisely what builds a bridge of relations between the participants of the symposium and the local people. And we want this bridge to help generate the possibility of new relationships between the participating actors and the inhabitants that belong to the Uddebo community.

TZ
You have already done two sessions of Anti-Symposium. Have you seen any results? What differences did you find between the two sessions?

MB & OC
It is a long-term project and it will be implemented in different phases over the next few years. The difference from the first edition is that we started from scratch. In this second edition we already had a previous experience that told us what we needed to do to carry out the event and how to build on top of the already existing experience.

TZ
In a global climate of political and economic dispossession, what does ‘community’ and “collaborative” stand for?

MB & OC
It means taking responsibility for our own actions. It means participating in the dismantling of the self-imposed system that monitors and oppresses us. More specifically, if we focus on art, community and collaboration are synonymous with reinventing the concept of production and work, and allow us to explore collaborative practices outside the Western ideal, taking as a reference other organizations installed in Africa, Asia and Latin America involved in social innovation.

TZ
Why should art be interested in community approach?

MB & OC
According to us, art should be interested in community because it is an approach that provides an opportunity
to create and promote an artistic and cultural ecosystem based in a method that strives to improve the quality of the interaction of all organisms belonging to the same social ecosystem.

TZ
What kind of a model of auto-sustainability works for you?

MB & OC
A model of building a sustainable culture in communi- ties where societies can develop in a direction towards a post-human perspective.

TZ
How would you like to continue with Anti-Symposium? And what kind of community would you like to build?

MB & OC
Continuing in the theoretical and practical development of the Anti-Symposium format, we would like to build a community in which a new scenario can be generated that would instrumentalize art as a social model for the common good. For this, we view the education of both children and adolescents, as well as the reeducation of adults as of the utmost importance. An example would be our educational project where we teach narco-passivity classes, putting into practice Gene Sharp’s 198 methods of nonviolent action.

TZ
Does it really sum up your mission?

MB & OC
It is part of our development, as an extension of our artistic practices, within the collaborative and the social.

Tereza Záchová is an art curator and art educator.

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Tereza Záchová