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Destituent spaces and improvised institutions between collectivity and critique.

Gigi Argyropoulou

Fugitive publics do not need to be restored. Τhey need to be conserved, which is to say moved, hidden, restarted with the same joke, the same story, always elsewhere than where the long arm of the creditor seeks them, conserved from restoration, beyond justice, beyond law, in bad country, in bad debt.(Harney and Moten 2013, 63)

In the years since 2007 we have witnessed a series of political events in response to social and economic crises. From localised struggles over commodification of public space and occupations, to demonstrations and uprisings across different locales, people improvised responses to neoliberal domination. In Southern Europe and in Greece in particular the ongoing economic crisis and radical austerity reforms forced social frameworks, funding structures and infrastructures to collapse. Social imaginaries were challenged and since 2010 citizens and cultural workers have produced a diversity of self-instituted forms such as occupations, interventions, acts of institutional critique, emergent DIY performance praxis, and collective platforms. Improvised DIY collective structures and solidarity networks offered new ways of thinking political participation and modes of self-organisation. Diverse experiments questioned what is considered as ‘appropriate’ political or cultural practices. These performative mobilisations marked a paradigm shift in the modes of practicing and taking part in politics and culture while at the same time opened up questions regarding potential and functional methods of artistic practice and research.

These practices, as forms of ‘instituting otherwise’, emerged in result of losing the certainties of know-how in an ever-changing landscape. Not from a place of potentiality/experimentation with forms but as emergent practices of survival in the here and now. While such practices improvised ways to - as Lauren Berlant suggests – ‘unlearning the world you don't want to reproduce’ (2017), they also experienced numerous and repeated challenges and failings both in the face of coercive systems and repressive mechanisms and from within these sites of collective struggle confronted with durable politics and sedimented social practices. This impossibility to be translated into alternative sustainable futures seems inseparable from what made them possible.

This short article will discuss two instances of self-organisation engaged with cultural production, research and social solidarity that took place in the Athenian landscape during the years of crisis. Specifically, I will discuss two cultural occupations that took place in recent years: Embros Theatre occupation in 2011 and Green Park Occupation in 2015. These ephemeral experiments are engaged simultaneously with theoretical production, performance practice, spatial organisation, and social action which seemed to reinforce each other through public programmes. This discussion operates from within my own situatedness and involvement as someone who took part in these experiments. By examining practices and methods employed I seek to consider how such experiments that ephemerally contested sedimented social practices and initiated new modes of organisation could offer models for rethinking and situating practice and research.

Embros Theatre

Embros Theatre in the centre of Athens, was occupied by the Mavili Collective in November 2011, at a moment when Greece was temporarily without a government. The Mavili Collective was a group of performance makers and theorists that came together in 2010 in order to rethink the cultural landscape of Greece. After a letter to the then Minister of Culture, counter-signed by over 500 people in arts and education and a series of actions that called for collective participation as the last remnants of the welfare state rapidly disappeared, Mavili moved outside the legal framework and occupied the disused theatre building. Instituted as a reactivation, the occupation sought to function as a practical example of what culture can do in times of crisis. The programme brought together over 291 artists, theoreticians and practitioners from different generations and from across many fields of practice - producing a dense public programme of activities running from the morning till midnight. A manifesto published at the time stated:

Today 11 of November 2011 Mavili Collective occupied the historical disused theatre building of Embros in Athens, deserted and left empty for years by the Greek Ministry of Culture. We aim to re-activate this space temporarily with our own means and propose an alternative model of collective management. For the next 11 days Mavilli will reconstitute Embros as a public space for exchange, research, debate, meeting and re-thinking. We act in response to the general stagnation of thinking and action in our society through collective meeting, thinking and direct action by reactivating a disused historical building in the centre of Athens. In the sight of the current situation we refuse to wait for “better days”, we refuse to accept the current crisis as terminal and we refuse to sit back. We actively propose new structures, which we hope, can become sites of negotiation, debate, re-formulation (Mavili Collective 2011).

Instead of a curatorial statement, or a single unifying theme, Mavili curated its programme by devising pluralist forms, categories of action, and structures that others could inhabit. The audience witnessed the co-existence of diverse forms of practice in the programme and on the stage of Embros and began to actively take part in the production of a public space. Established artists, university professors, students, immigrant groups and emerging artists co-existed regardless of categorisation. Challenging hierarchies and exclusions, the program brought together a generation of artists and theoreticians producing forms in response to the landscape of Greece of the previous decade. The programme temporarily questioned both the we and the they and produced the illusion of an evolving we in Embros - a we differentiated from the sedimented cultural practices in Greece.

This action had an ephemeral horizon of 11 days, but after a series of open public assemblies, Mavili Collective announced that Embros occupation would continue. In the first year of its operation the collective resisted pressure to adopt a fixed organisational model , instead Embros acted as an autonomous, artist-led ‘counter-proposal’, a space of ‘no demands’ transforming itself through continuous trial and error, hosting short residencies, festivals, performances, meetings, research clusters, conferences, collaborations, community events and assemblies, political discussions, solidarity actions and a community garden. Operated at periods of time by different collectives, and constantly improvising with different forms of organisation, Embros established a balance between the political and the cultural, between diverse desires and needs remaining ‘unidentifiable’, constantly assembling diverse attendees. Embros, during this first year practically questioned methods and forms of cultural, political and theoretical production, creating new relations between makers, forms and audiences.

At the same time, Embros resisted operating within familiar practices of the Greek milieu; thus, it refused to operate as squats often do in Greece and also proposed an alternative operation to existing models of cultural production. Wayfinding between a DIY institution and a social space Embros kept organisational formats fluid for this first year, gave space to diverse participants across cultural, political and academic spheres and remained an unexpected space in the centre of Athens. However, the ongoing experimentation with forms and structures of artistic practice and Embros’ resistance to follow established sedimented practices made the space increasingly precarious, as Jodi Dean argues, ‘holding a space for an indeterminate amount of time allows durable politics to emerge’ (2012, 221).

A year later, the crisis in Greece deepened as further austerity measures were implemented. Embros had hosted over 500 cultural activities in that year entirely free of charge, however the new government proceeded with its plans for privatisation and demanded the evacuation of the space. After repeated attempts to establish a dialogue with state representatives failed, Mavili mobilised popular support that opposed the eviction and succeeded in keeping the space open. It also led to a change in its mode of operation that continued with an open weekly assembly. Since then, Embros followed the structure of other squatted spaces in Athens and hosted numerous activities. During these years different collectives emerged, and public programmes sometimes following the spirit of the initial reactivation sometimes countering it. Embros continued as a challenging exercise of social pedagogy, consumed with power relations and micro-politics.

Green Park

She studies but she does not learn. If she learned they could measure her progress, establish her attitudes, give her credit. But the student keeps studying, keeps planning to study, keeps running to study, keeps studying a plan, elaborating a debt (Harney and Moten 2013, 62).

In June 2015, at a moment of hopefulness, a collective that consisted of members of Mavili, artists, theorists, participants in Embros’ assemblies and people that took part in activist cultural critique in the years that followed, initiated a new occupation in a disused building in Pedion tou Areos, one of the two central parks of Athens. This occupation took place at a different moment in time - six months after the election of the left-wing government that came out of the collective struggles of recent years - and thus, sought to practically rethink what might constitute an intervention in this changing here and now. As stated in the manifesto that was published at the time:

Almost 4 years after the occupation of the Embros theatre in 2011 we are activating with our own means a space deserted and left empty for years by the Greek state and propose a 10 day program of cultural and political intervention in the here and now of Athens. This activation refuses a particular temporal horizon and understands itself outside of the logics of ownership. The occupation is not defined by a particular ideology or interest but rather comes about as a result of the encounters born out of the experiments and struggles of the last few years. We propose friendship as a model for organizational formations and autonomous instituting that exceeds neo-liberal calls to order […] in a struggle against cultural and artistic monopolies, ‘creative cities’ and their production lines of co-optation, through this ephemeral collective experiment we aim to co-imagine with fellow city dwellers, the here and now of Green Park and our city (Green Park Athens 2015)

The space experimented with different forms of participation and organisation, testing how a cultural/social space might operate in times of crisis and impoverishment. The Green Park programme didn't demand visibility although it drew large audiences, and refused any dialogue or presentation in press and media. The collective remained unidentified with a changing number of participants. Events were rarely documented in any form, and the space had an irregular pattern of activities, varying in density and frequency and so failed to perform any identity. The occupation lasted for two years and in that time the space hosted conferences, talks, residencies, artistic projects, neighbourhood meetings, a DIY performance biennial, concerts, and solidarity events that re-informed each other, constantly affected by the emergent needs of the project’s surroundings. Located in the heart of the city and crisis, artistic and political activities took place where diverse audiences mixed producing an unexpected and at times even uncomfortable public space questioning methods of cultural/theoretical/political production.

Due to its inherent fluidity the collective structure did not easily adopt more stable modus operandi and the space continued to operate in a manner dependent upon layers of relations and emergent needs. Thus, opening up space for disputes, mistakes and tensions, failings, departures and arrivals, Green Park continued for two years as a an emerging process, through unstable formations without support. Reflecting perhaps one temporal position in between the strictures of a here and now, in a decomposed and recomposed movement, in between institutions, dominant powers and impossibilities. Knowing that our methods and practices will prove once more insufficient, incomplete and impotential, in process.

To creditors it is just a place where something is wrong - the invaluable thing, the things that has no value - is desired. creditors seek to demolish that place that project in order to save the ones who live there from themselves and their lives (Harney and Moten 2013, 62)

Destituent Instituting

Both Embros and Green Park were instances of improvised instituting from within the strictures and as a response to a specific here and now. As Daniele Goldman (2010) writes, improvisation is not an exercise of freedom but on the contrary the constant negotiation with ‘tight places’ (ongoing engagement with social, historical and aesthetic strictures). Thus, in this way both spaces embraced a process of ongoing improvisation engaged with changing structures of a specific here and now. Seeking to stay present and rehearse ways to ‘unlearn the world you don't want to reproduce’ (Berlant 2017) these moments of instituting as emergent forms of cultural critique ephemerally practiced the making, the unmaking and the function of an institution. The mode of organisation was fluid, responsive, evolving, incorrect, affected and reformulated by the content presented while the labour of making things possible was inseparable from making/presenting work. However this improvised process of engaging with the here and now and contesting sedimented practices resulting into making such practices increasingly vulnerable, precarious, fragile, ephemeral. Both Green Park and Embros, as well as other similar practices that took place during these years made ephemerality visible in their discontinuous controversial interpretations both new potentials of instituting as well as critical limits. The limits of self-organisation, of being together, of improvisation, of infrastructure. Limits of bodies and encounter. Familiar and unfamiliar limits.

Perhaps we could think of such instances as ‘destituent spaces’. Spaces and practices that re-configure existing models of spatial, social, organisational and cultural production. Unexpected conceptualisations and uses of space critically situated and organised in relation to a specific here and now. Polemical, destituent to it and yet implicated in it. Indebted. Broken open. Shifting methods. Without antibiotic affects and therefore embracing their own telos/end, their own insufficiency. Improvising possible positions in a constant struggle between the personal and the public, strictures and making, continuity and stasis.

Lauren Berlant elaborates on structures for transitional times. At times of crisis, she writes, glitches have appeared in the reproduction of life as a revelation of infrastructural failures. She discusses transformational infrastructures to describe generating ‘a form from within brokenness beyond the exigencies of the current crisis, and alternatively to it too’(Berlant 2016b, 393). She writes further ‘how to be in the space of broken form and nonetheless understand that as you proceed transformation can proceed’ (Berlant 2016a).

Such ephemeral infrastructures have materialised in multiple ways during these last years. Producing time from within brokenness. Moments that were not about art, research or politics but situations that critically questioned our personal and collective methods to ephemerally produce new relations, new structures, new forms of life. Challenging our collective capacity of making sense, of making things work while improvising ways to live in brokenness. It is not a matter of who is holding you down, as Stefano Harney and Fred Moten (2015) write, what matters is who is holding you up. Such events, as instances of study, leave us perhaps with possibly less certainty about new models of working, indebted in brokenness. Improvised after-lives of responding, organising, improvising, failing, insisting, with others, might emerge within the horizons engendered by such events. Embracing the impossibility to be reproduced and yet ‘inducing repetition’ is as Berlant argues ‘a transformational infrastructure’ (2017). A fugitive infrastructure. A destituent instituting.

Gigi Argyropoulou is a researcher, theorist, director and curator working in the fields of performance and cultural practice. Gigi has initiated and organised research events, public programmes, interventions, festivals, conferences, performances, actions and cultural projects both inside and outside institutions. She is a founding member of EIGHT/Το Οχτώ, Green Park, Mavili Collective, Institute for Live Arts Research and F2/Mkultra. She has taught at Universities in postgraduate and undergraduate programmes in UK and Europe. Gigi received the Routledge Prize for PSi 18 and and Dwight Conquergood Award in 2017. She is co-editor of the special issue of Performance Research Journal “On Institutions”(September 2015) and publishes regularly in journals, books and magazines. Currently, Gigi is member of the curatorial and editorial board of HKW’s New Alphabet School.

Bibliography

Berlant, Lauren. 2016a. “Interview. IPAK Centre.” You Tube. 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih4rkMSjmjs.

———. 2016b. “The Commons: Infrastructures for Troubling Times.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34 (3): 393–419.

———. 2017. “Q & A about Transformational Infrastructures.” A live lecture delivered in Athens.

Dean, Jodi. 2012. The Communist Horizon. London ; New York: Verso.

Goldman, Daniele. 2010. I Want to Be Ready: Improvised Dance as a Practice of Freedom. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Green Park Athens. 2015. “Manifesto of Green Park Athens.” 2015. https://greenparkathens.wordpress.com/manifesto/.

Harney, Stefano, and Fred Moten. 2013. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions.

———. 2015. “Mikey the Rebelator.” Performance Research 20 (4): 141–46.

Mavili Collective. 2011. “Re-Activate Manifesto.” Mavili Collective. 2011. https://mavilicollective.wordpress.com/.