I talked to Zeno, who had just watched my video of the Defense Speech of Breivik. I didn’t give him much input about the research that I had done so far but showed him only my analysis of the speech of Anders Breivik and especially one of its two main elements, of the ignorance and one-sidedness of media and journalism. We started discussing about my choices to focus on Breivik as an example and extremism as a subject when Zeno pointed out that my aim “to abandon judgement and categorization of extremism“ carries the exact thing it criticizes within itself. By trying to define what an “extremist“ is and why Breivik would be regarded as one I subscribe to the same logic and rhetoric of the very thing that I am trying to criticize. By saying that extremists are regarded as “the other“ by the ‘normality’ or centre of society I form part of their distinction from what is considered ‘normal’. So far, I have made the mistake of assuming and applying the notion of ‘the normal’ unquestioned and without much reflection. Although I have started to look into definitions of ideology today by individuals such as Francis Fukuyama or Slavoj Zizek, who present almost opposing theories on this subject, I have not considered ideology as something essentially personal. A few months ago I have started to analyse symbols that I surround myself with, objects that have gained a symbolic value through my personal associations and interpretations but I have not taken these thoughts on my own ‘ideology’ further. Zeno made me realize that any content that I choose for my research, that I analyse or capture is an interpretation and expression of my own view. Every choice is tinted by my opinion and ‘belief’, otherwise I would be unable to make any choices. (Interestingly, I do find it very hard to make decisions in certain situations.) Everything that I present or consider as relevant in any sense is the result of who I am, what I believe in, what I personally consider relevant. Therefore, ‘ideology’ seems to have diluted into personal belief..?

Why do I choose to talk and work on a subject that I find despicable myself, that I don’t identify with and that is causing hatred against people that I could also be categorized with? The first time that I truely felt awkward about the subject that I work on was after showing the video of Breivik’s speech to Zeno. He didn’t know much about my project, only that I worked on feminism, extremism and ideology. I also didn’t prepare him at all for the speech that he was about to hear. Now, days after he watched the video I suddenly feel insecure because I don’t really know how he perceived the video, not the speech. I understand his feelings about the speech because I made him answer some questions through a questionaire but I don’t know how he perceives me after having seen me speak out words that I would normally never combine in this way. I just sent him this message: “i have to say.. that i feel a bit awkward because you watched this video of me giving this speech.. i feel kind of insecure about involving my person in the project in that way because it might seem like i identify with the content but actually that’s not the case. it’s strange that i feel like i have to tell you this because i’ve talked to enough other people about the project and haven’t felt like explaining myself but since you don’t know about the project itself and have watched my face for an hour expressing content and using words that are actually causing hatred and suffering i feel strange.. in graz i’ve performed the speech in a room full of strangers and didn’t feel weird because i could take a distance from it by the way i perfomed but the fact that you know me a bit and don’t really know me at the same time takes this sense of distance away, for some reason.. i’d like it if we could talk about this at some point after midterms, i still need to find a way to position myself within this project because i’m trying not to judge content morally but of course i do and feel strange about ‘seriously’ talking about multiculturalism destroying society when people that believe in this would also classify me as essentially ‘multicultural’... anyway..“ Embarrassment is a weird and random feeling, so is awkwardness. It must be a very strong feeling to act against the ‘central ideas of society’ when one is not egomaniac (as this might take one’s sense for reality and self-consciousness away) when I even feel strange about being judged for showing myself in a video as oppose to actually ‘doing’ something. I guess that one can only convincingly ‘act’, or, be active if one’s personal belief in a cause is un-usually stong, not only because of the risk of being prosecuted but being ‘shamed’ by society.

The ‘Artist Talk’ with Tino Sehgal started with the curator of his commission for the Turbine Hall reading out a paper on the relevance of Sehgal’s work and the piece he produced for the art world and the perception of art. She talked about various formal aspects of his work, in the case of the commission one of them being the fact that participants would ‘randomly’ talk to members of the audience in a quite personal and almost intimate manner. He responded to this point of her paper by saying that it was part of his work and role as an artist to “craft“ these kind of situations while allowing performers (participants) to act freely within them. It disappointed me to hear the word ‘craft’ relating to something that I felt was real and profound, so, in the time designated for questions of the audience, I asked him or rather told him about my experience two days before and that his explanation made my experience in the hindsight appear constructed, rational and somewhat less valuable because in that moment it felt like an irrational, ‘real’ and spontaneous moment. I realized that I would like to have this kind of experience also in ‘reality’, in everyday life, that I would feel more comfortable if communication and dialogue worked as spontaneously and openly as with the girl in the Turbine Hall. After the talk I left the room through a corridor where a woman approached me and said “Don’t let his answer influence the way you look at the experience that you had. For us this is also a quite profund and valuable experience.“

I’m waiting for Yilmaz at Old Street Station. Outside of the station two girls are giving out flyers. I don’t take any, walk past them and place myself at close distance. At some point, a man passes, takes one of their flyers, reads it and says “Ah, you’re advertising for a gym.“ He takes off his shirt and tries to approach one of the girls, bowing his arms, trying to show muscle. She backs away. He then turns to the second girl. As she, too, leaves he follows the direction they left in, bows his arms again and makes a sort of bodywave while shouting “Hey baby, look at this!“. Plenty of people are standing by. Nobody reacts. After a moment, he puts his shirt back on and starts walking towards me. I don’t look at him, deliberately. He stops in front of me and approaches me saying “Hey there, how is it going“, in a way that I interpreted as sleezy and flirty. I interrupt him with the words “Who do you think that you are? Couldn’t you see how uncomfortable these girls felt?“ This offends him. He’s talking to me aggressively with ‘masculine’ gestures, saying that he’s obviously just looking for sex, that I shouldn’t judge him for that, that I must be having problems myself to criticise him this way - while I keep trying to explain to him that he was acting very disrespectfully towards those women. While we are speaking he comes closer while I step back. I feel repulsed by him. He notices and says “Why are you stepping back?“. I say that I don’t want to be close to him and suddenly regret having reacted to his provocation at all. It had brought me close to him. “Sorry sir that I talked to you, this is pointless.“ I want to end the conversation. After a couple of more angry sentences, he leaves. Three minutes later Yilmaz arrives. Nothing’s wrong.

I was sitting on the floor in the Turbine Hall when she sat next to me and said: “I like to climb things.“ She told me how it gives her a sense of pleasure to feel removed and watching things from above, to stand at borders between two things and not belonging to either side while at the same time beloning to both in a way. She said that the experience of height in contrast to something below gives her pleasure which to her is an awkward experience; to look down on things happening and to “step out of the everyday“. We talked for a while and she said that she wonders whether sharing experiences of this kind with others is what really bonds people in friendship and that she doesn’t know how to create those kind of bonds otherwise when it’s difficult to be together physically. Before she got up and left she said: “Maybe we just have the tendency to hold on to people in this way.“

After Ibn Kaldun, the notion of solidarity and empathy as central to human interaction and the formation of a social entity. Society would only accept a ‘leader’ in the social hierarchy if it felt compassionate and empathetic with her; physical strength or superiority do not add to the social position of power of an individual, instead it is solidarity that is central to the anchoring of social power. After Kaldun, this general notion of solidarity in society is evoked by religion, which reinforces the strength of the state through a bond between the two elements. The authors add a question to the this thought about the relevance of the state where religion has lost relevance, thus breaking up the bond of solidarity between them.

Belief, whether religious or ‘secular’, contributes to the general notion of solidarity in society. After Kaldun common belief is what unites individuals in a society and allows for the systematic extablishment of politics and hierarchy. Common belief unites and facilitates the formation of bonds between individuals, strengthening the power of ‘leaders’ in society. Is this assumption reversible? If beliefs differ and can not be considered as ‘common’, will social factors such as solidarity vanish risking the constitution of social structures and representation? Recent expressions of extremism in public, events that often use measures of violence to increase the impact on society and to make the acting ideological minority ‘heard’ seem to be treated by the general public, media and politics after the principle of ‘war nam nihadan’, a Persian expression that Slavoj Zizek discusses in The Year of Dreaming Dangerously. „emancipatory dreams“ are suffocated from public attention by “neutralizing the true dimension of these events“ and “growing flowers over the buried corpse“ (Zizek, 2012, 1). This repetitively practiced attitude of ignorance and ‘war nam nihadan’ creates an illusion of common belief and unity which is maintained throughout society. Ideology, or, belief has been integrated so thoroughly into life in society that it is not perceived as ‘belief’ but instead as ‘human nature’. As Zizek would describe it, this is “ideology working at its best“. The acknoledgement and conscious consideration of above described ‘alternative’ ideologies and their expressions seems vital to overcome and escape from the overwhelming notion of ideology in society today.

In order to suggest an answer to the above question the authors refer to the historical turn away from religious myths by writers of the Enlightenment and the extension of this development, or the authors decribe it, “this corrosive attitude“ into the creation of “secular myths of politics“ by Marx.

Terms such as “nationalism“, “democracy“ and “socialism“ are used to describe the motivations behind “all kinds of“ acts “performed in their name“. In order to really understand the motivations behind an event or an action the context and its “interpretations“ need to be explored thoroughly. The authors claim that “[a]ny general symbol may be elaborated in support of any specific proposition“, meaning that any symbol might signify any idea or ideology depending on its specific context.

Symbols signify ‘attitude’, belief, ideology.

In the analysis of expressions of ‘extremist’ ideologies it is to be noted that symbols, visual or verbal, obtain meaning only in consideration of the context they are placed in.

The authors note that in verbal behaviours such as speech certain symbols, words, are used to conceal or distort ‘real’ underlying attitudes.

De Tocqueville described the perception of people as ‘the mass’ in democracy as a factor that suffocates individuality an truncates everyone to ‘mediocrity’.

Individuality as oppose to mediocrity within ideology? Which position does the individual take within ideologica systems? Is the advertising of individualism in capitalism just a deception in order to conceal society’s mediocrity?

All the seats were taken so I sat down on the floor in the centre of the room on the height of the second row of chairs and was passed the list of available speeches and first thought about performing a speech by Fidel Castro held in 1953 in context of the freeing of Moncada prison. On the list there were speeches by Bill Clinton, G.W. Bush, Charlie Chaplin, Margaret Thatcher, some Pope and others but one listing stood out to me especially, the Defense Speech of Anders Breivik. I found it interesting and provokative to offer the option to perform this speech and the fact that all speeches were shortened to about 2 minutes while this one was more than 5 minutes long added to this feeling.

As usually, I didn’t volunteer to perform and chose to rather listen to others’ speeches. But while listening to others quite realistic performances I started to think about how a person could seriously perform a speech like Breivik’s in the context of a gathering of ‘progressive’ international political artists and activists and thought that a ‘normal’, calm and comfortable reading of a text like this could not seriously be an option. Though, at the same time, I thought that it might be important to initiate the re on an ideological text like his defense speech.

In the middle of someone’s speech, that I felt slightly bored by because it was simply read out and not interpreted by the person on stage, suddenly, I had the idea to perform the speech in an incredibly high pitched voice and to show a contrast to a usual, deep voice that persons like Breivik would use to speak about his causes.

I decided that if the moderator would run out of people on his list to perform speeches I got on stage to perform Anders Breivik’s defense speech in an incredibly ridiculously high pitched voice.

About 20 minutes before the event ended no other person was on the list of karaoke ‘singers’. So I raised my had, told the moderator my name and which speech I’d like to perform. I didn’t dare to look at the audience in front of me and took my position in front of the screen and microphone.

I started speaking in a voice that’s higher than the way how I speak usually but that could still be regarded as my real voice by people who didn’t know me, as it was the case with all of the audience, I had just met a few people on the previous day. Throughout the speech I increased the pitch of my voice until I arrived to a point that I could only maintain with effort and I tried to keep this up as long as possible. After a couple of minutes the speech turned to more concrete subjects about  immigration, heritage and culture and I decided to contrast the artificially high pitch with my usual, significantly darker voice and finished the speech quite formally and seriously sounding.

After the video stopped I did, again, not dare to look at the audience and sat down again on my previous spot on the floor. Nobody talked to me directly but I felt I still had people’s attention.

During the next performance a girl and a boy sitting on chairs next to me started arguing about something. She said quite furiously “You can’t do that, really, you can’t do that!“, while he was trying to calm her down.

Three more speeches followed and when leaving the room the boy and girl passed by me again. He looked at me with a look that I interpreted with sympathy while she was still angrily speaking. When they had passed by I heard him say “But she didn’t mean it seriously“ when she answered “Who knows!“

[I’ve recently submitted this piece of writing to a writing contest by A3 Review. The publication published an open call for texts of 150 words length loosely themed around the topic ‘moon’. Being in Palermo for a week, I came accross references to the moon at a few occasions but found the linguistic reference to lunar and solar words in Arabic as particularly interesting. I don’t speak Arabic at all. I’ve attended an informal language lesson with a friend of the friends I stayed with and below knowledge was pretty much the only thing I picked up on.]

In Arabic, letters, and therefore words, are divided into solar and lunar. There are 14 letters which are referred to as solar and 14 which are referred to as lunar.

All words carry the same article in writing. A word's lunar or solar identity, determined by its first letter, influences solely its article's pronunciation. Articles of lunar words are pronounced [al] as in 'al-qamar', 'the moon', while articles of solar words are instead pronounced as a jointing of the letter [a] with a doubling of the lunar letter of the word, as in 'ash'shams', 'the sun'.

I was invited to join Carmen Mörsch’s seminar on Art Mediation at ZHdK in Zürich together with the other six members of the editorial team of ‘Dating the Chorus’, an independent publication we produced during our time working as art mediators at the documenta in Kassel. The publication collected expressions of thoughts produced by fellow art mediators, so called ‘Chorists’. We had been invited to present the publication project and briefly discuss our experiences at documenta 14 with the class of 1st year Master students in ‘Curatorial Studies’.

The seminar was split into two chapters. The first one introducing Mörsch’s independent practice within a collective of art mediators called ‘Kunstcoop’ and laying out the development of increasingly dialogical art mediation stategies over previous editions of documenta. Carmen Mörsch had herself worked as an art mediator at documenta X and had been involved in the art education department of documenta 12. During her work at documenta X Mörsch had documented her experiences and thoughts in written form and lateron published these reflections in form of her master thesis at the Universität der Künste (University of the Arts) in Berlin. Towards the end of the first half of the seminar Mörsch took time to engage in what she called “Märchenstunde” (German for “story telling time”) and read a chapter from her thesis to the group. Interestingly, the experiences she describes felt just too recognisable to those of us who had worked as art mediators at documenta14, twenty years later. Mörsch describes having to struggle for visitors’ attention, encountering discriminatory behaviour and switching from the roles of a callgirl, to an animal tamer, to being regarded as an accomplice, to a nurse, to an animator, to a specialist, to a sinner and to acting as a mirror. She focused her thoughts on how her identity was outwardly changing within the framework of female gender constructions.

I can identify with her analysis. During my work at documenta 14, I actively struggled to challenge the roles people were pushing me into. I don’t believe in fixed definitions and labels, thus, avoiding to be placed into specific categories became a task for my practice as an art mediator. I started developing strategies of generating doubt. While opening myself up to those I encountered during walks, I made sure not to remain on a one-dimensional layer. I spoke about my feelings, personal experiences and associations which triggered individuals to join in and, together, generate stimulating discussions. When a situation felt suitable, I subtly addressed observations of dominant or discriminatory behaviour towards artworks or individuals and thereby sparked discussion.

Similarly, I’ve put behaviours or opinions up for discussion which addressed myself personally but I couldn’t step away from being labelled, particularly by individuals who I felt sympathy for and who expressed likewise feelings about me. I remember opening myself up to a small group during a walk open to the general public, telling them that I personally don’t identify with traditional gender roles and that, therefore, I find it difficult to be regarded as ‘feminine’ in the traditional binary sense in social contexts. A woman I had gotten along with quite well until that point made a comment in response, saying that looking at me she couldn’t understand why I would say something like this because I was such a “beautiful woman”. I felt completely misunderstood und pushed into the role of the “youthful woman” and didn’t know how to get out of it although I didn’t feel comfortable at all - so I smiled and continued speaking. I felt confronted with similar feeling on a few occasions. Assumptions were made, I made clear that I didn’t see myself fitting the labels I was given and I ended up being the topic of debate amongst visitors. Although these kind of situations sometimes caused sensitive psychological and emotional reactions within myself, I was convinced that the open discussion of social roles, personal assumptions and individual emotional reactions were central to the public discussion of topics such as gender.

Skills in non-violent communication and conflict mediation had helped me to engage in discussions diplomatically and, therefore, allowing for conversations to evolve with little of my interference as well as to decide when to take position and to confront individuals with my personal conviction. People were anyway forming opinions, so why not discuss them openly and take advantage of the collective moment to exchange thoughts and learn from each other’s experiences?

I’ve written my master thesis in Contextual Design on the topic of political extremism and have, in the context of my research, made an effort to personally identify and thereby understand what ‘extremism’ is. I’ve analysed cases of so-called extremists such as Anders Breivik, Pussy Riot and Femen and have come to the conclusion that from the ‘extremist’s’ perspective whatever they choose to do comes accross as logical and well-founded while others might perceive their actions as ‘extreme’ or ‘out-of-line’.

On the example of Anders Breivik, who is commonly described as a Norwegian extreme right-wing, islamophobic mass murderer, I’ve read and performed his court statement and have analysed his arguments. I thoroughly disagree with his opinions and his actions but have learned that his argumentation follows rational logic and that his actions were conclusions of his thinking. I will refrain from demonstrating what I mean exactly since I don’t want to reiterate his argumentation but I can say that his logic follows causal chains of arguments. ‘If one thing is the case, then this follows; if this follows, then that is the case.‘ Through an analytical process of reading and re-enacting I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘extremists’ act on their convictions. Thinking and doing are in line.

The cases of Pussy Riot and Femen come from a different political and social sphere: Pussy Riot, a Russian punk band which performed an ad hoc performance in an active Russian church and Femen, a group of female activists who make an effort to stand up patriarchal political and social structures by applying aggressive techniques of demonstrating which originated in the Ukraine. Within their social contexts both Pussy Riot and Femen are regarded as extremists from the perspective of the ‘mainstream’. In the West instead both groups are celebrated as liberating forces. Apparently, ‘extremism’ is a relational term. Depending on the perspective one looks from, the other’s actions are judged. If they’re outside of what ‘the mainstream’ considers ‘normal’ the acting individual is labelled. From the perspective of the mainstream the outsider’s actions might be extreme. From the perspective of the outsider the mainstream’s beliefs and actions might be far from what they consider as ‘normal’.

Another example: A person is thoroughly convinced that the exploitation of animals for consumption is wrong. Their moral standards are firm and the disagreement with industrial mass breeding and torturous exploitation of animals guides their ethics. They actively withdraw from their role within the cycle of consumption tied to industrial parties exploiting animals. From their perspective, a personal casually eating a burger is insanely cruel, given the fact that educational information about food production methods are widely available. From the other’s perspective, the vegan is ‘extreme’ since they act differently than what one has been traditionally educated to regard as healthy nutrition. It depends on the social context one is situated within which makes one or the other belief appear as ‘normal’ or ‘extreme’.

The other day I had a discussion with a friend and an aquainance while having dinner together in the context of a project about dialogical communication and radical criticality. We go into the discussion where each other’s boundaries lay in terms of accepting otherness. The aquaintance asked me how I would react if Adolf Hitler walked into the room. Earlier, I had spoken about making an effort to listen to others and to try and be inclusive in my actions. Then, being confronted with the scenario of a thoroughly hateful person trying to engage with a situation I had been part of, I couldn’t envision myself accepting the presence of this individual. I would have acted in order to make him leave. My friend, instead, said that she would have offered him a plate of the food she had cooked for everyone since she believes that showing this individual love would have a positive effect on his attitude towards others. She’s convinced that her love could make him overcome his hate. People can change, can they?

Later, we spoke about the example I mentioned above, the minority of vegans in a world of meat-eaters and vegetarians. I said that, being a vegan, I can stand the sight of my father eating meat. I don’t hate him for being different than I am. The aquaintance responded: “Then you’re not radical in your beliefs.” Here, things start to be complicated. Which beliefs do I evaluate as more or less important? I am grateful to my father and do sincerely love him but I also believe that animals should be respected equally to humans. I believe in personal freedom but can’t accept hateful behaviours. I believe in complexity.

So, let’s get to the topic of squatting. I’ve discovered the practice of squatting during my studies in London, have started hanging out with friends in squats, participated in workshops and events and curiously learned about the Everyday choices squatters made. A quick Internet search brings up this definition of squatting: Squatting is the action of unlawfully occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building. The law defines what’s ‘normal’ in this case and the mainstream will agree that if one doesn’t own a building or doesn’t have permission to use it, it’s wrong to make use of it. On the other hand, it seems logical to make use of a space if it’s not in use. ‘Not in use’ is the central term here. Or, if one doesn’t believe in ‘individual property’ as such, official owners of a property don’t hold authority. Or, one essentially disagrees with the economical split of society and doesn’t want to accept labels of ‘wealth’ and ‘poverty’. Instead of passively accepting their position in minority squatters empower themselves to take action independent of what the mainstream of society might consider ‘normal’.

Again, things are complicated and individuals might act differently in apparently similar situations. Consider: A building has been empty for 5 years, the owners are a company of property developers who are speculating for the value of the ground to increase over time and have left the building to decay. Or: A building has been empty for 3 months, private owners are doing renovation and maintenance work on the building and are actively looking to sell through an agency. In both cases buildings are empty but the second case shows that’s it’s actually still ‘in use’. Practices of squatting which I consider as responsible and ethically acceptable involve a lot of research on a property’s context and sensitivity to one’s position in relation to others. In line with my initial analysis of the term ‘extremism’ I believe that one’s actions should follow one’s convictions but do accept that things are generally of complex nature.

I don’t believe that squatting per se is good or bad just as I don’t believe that anything can be generalised to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I believe in analytical thinking, emotional sensitivity and situational ethics.

Having said this, I feel like it’s of utter importance to further reflect upon the terms of ‘mediocrity’ and ‘radicality’. These are terms which I relate judgement to but so was the term ‘extremism’ before I critically analysed its meaning.

In 2016, Jan Krühler and I have held a lecture about the situation of squats in Enschede, NL, where we live and work. Jan has spent over 12 years living in the town of 160.000 inhabitants. He’s witnessed the flourishing of cultural squats, art squats and buildings squatted for housing. Then as now, political squats were not a common phenomenon in Enschede.

For the purpose of the talk, we’ve mapped over 30 squatted spaces in the city of Enschede as Jan recalled having witnessed their emergence over the course of 12 years. Today, two of those spaces remain. The illegalisation of squatting in the Netherlands has done its job. Although squatting is illegal in the Netherlands, squatters have housing rights which in a legal dispute can turn out to be valued higher than the ownership rights of property owners. Therefore, although illegal, squatting can be validified as housing by a judge. That is if the need for housing can be proven to be higher than the need for the building to be uninhabited, or rather, if concrete plans for (re-)development, sale or other kinds of uses can be presented in front of court. There are contemporary cases of squatters’ housing rights having been successfully defended in front of court.

Since the illegalisation of squatting in October 2010, so called ‘anti-squatting’ companies have flourished. Their business model is to offer property owners the service of ‘guardianship’ of their properties by strategically placing inhabitants in empty buildings. These companies are paid from the side of property owners as well as ‘guardians’. Guardians are not renters. At the beginning of their engagement with an anti-squatting company they sign a contract with relieves them of any rights common renters have: eg. a reasonable period of notice - anti-squatters are often forced to move within two weeks of notice. The decay of squatting culture and the rise of anti-squatting businesses is notable not only in Enschede but everywhere in the Netherlands.

During our talk, we’ve mostly tackled speaking about the uses of space and used the map of squatted spaces in Enschede to illustrate the emergence of cultural squats and squats for housing. Imagine if space was not a rare commodity, quantified by monetary value, accessible exclusively to those with sufficient financial means - what would these ‘free spaces’ be used for? At least in the case of Enschede the answer is simple: culture.

A: A

B: a

C: A

D: A

E: A 😔

F: Ah

G: A

H: a

I: Hello, I vote for A.

J: A

K: I guess A since it benefits most ppl in the group, personally im not sure, cheers.

L: I’m also for a.

M: It feels futile to fight for something which the majority of the group doesn't support. Therefore, whether A ('taking the offer'), B ('doing something else') or C ('discussing what else do to') - the group wouldn't have chosen fight when a seemingly easy option is at hand.

Still, I feel opportunistic taking the city council's offer.Others before us have struggled and made it possible for us to be here, have taken personal risks and made the step to publicly discuss squatting as a viable practice, independently of legality.

From my perspective, it feels hypocritical to take advantage of a squatted space when things are going well but to fail to stand up for the rights of squatters (which we all are by inhabiting and using this space) when things become challenging.Nobody gave this group a space when it needed it in the first      place. People just took what they felt they needed. This is why we could grow. Otherwise we might have not gotten this chance.Fortunately, we've managed to be known as 'valuable' and, therefore, have been offered an alternative space.

Others who are not deemed worth supporting, who have not gotten and might not get the chance to prove themselves to the city council might not get an opportunity to be. It doesn't feel right to make freeculture dependent on the 'goodwill' of political bureaucrats. Squatting is empowerment and by giving up squatting it feels like we're giving up a vital part of this place's culture and of the general cultural landscape around us.

I would have hoped for the group to stand for to their kind and to take a step away from priviledge and dependency rather than towards it.

Nevertheless, I realise that I'm able to think about this more altruistically since I'm personally and professionally less dependent on the city of Enschede and its political environment. I don't see my distant future in this city and don't need political institutions to back me up. I understand that others within the group choose to be much more dependent on local politics than I do. Although I don't wish to be in this position, I respect the ways of others.

I wish to continue being part of Studio Complex. Therefore, I go along.

E: Times have changed.

N: Hey everyone, i commit to vote for option A but actually just because i think my opinion shouldn't stand in the way of others.    

Anyway i'd like to write down what's been going around in my head the last days.

I'm really disappointed that most people don't want to "fight" for our space. I don't mean to riot but there's legal ways, court-cases, publicity work, petitions and so on...    

The possibilities we all had in our (last) space(s) we're just existing because in history people were willing to fight for the right to squat. The culture that flourished in the Netherlands because of this initiative build a basis for most of our personal development, be it artistic, political, social or musical and that most of us wouldn't be the person they are today without the "free spaces" we created in our history.    

I totally understand that people get older, want more security and comfort but we still shouldn't forget why we have been able to do the things we wanted to do during the last years. Especially the use of the term "freedom" which have been used during the last meeting to describe the state we could achieve when we would buy or rent a building is totally opposed to the way I interpret it.

It's one of the false promises of capitalism. As soon as you own a building there are new rules and laws that have quite an impact on your "freedom". Squatting has always been providing quite a good basis for not having to play along the rules (be it housing/working, taxes, allowances etc.).    

I totally understand that in case of just "work and produce as you please" you could call this "freedom" but to me there's a different connotation. And i think we all experienced this "glimpse of real freedom" in a certain way at studio complex or other spaces we've been involved at.    

In her seminar on Art Mediation at ZHdK on 6 December, Prof. Carmen Mörsch shortly spoke about different levels of engagement of visitors in the context of art mediation. Although this part only made up a small fraction of the seminar since the students had already talked in depth about concepts of visitor engagement in the first class of Mörsch’s module the differentiation between the terms ‘collaborative’ and ‘participative’ stuck to me.

Mörsch emphasised that there’s nothing wrong with any level of involvement, that also a ‘receptive’ approach (”One speaks, the others listen”) can be of use, eg. in a class or a lecture where a group of individuals aims to learn from the knowledge and experience of one. She advocated for consciously choosing the level of engagement one deems appropriate in a situation. Sometimes, monologues have their place when in other situation a non-hierarchical discussion might be more appropriate.

Interestingly, ‘collaboration’ and ‘participation’ have become buzz-words in the fields of art, design and education. In her seminar, Mörsch drew up a fundamental distinction between the two:

‘Participation’ is described as a situation within which individuals act within a given frame. As an example Mörsch introduced an educational concept within which pupils re-enacted a classical paining and captured their contemporary interpretations of the painting’s characters in the form of a photocollage. The art educators had presented the kids with the general idea of the project, the kids chose a painting from the collection of Tate Britain and enacted its characters from their personal perspectives with a contemporary twist. The frame was given but the individuals acting within it were free to shape their participation as they pleased.

‘Collaboration’, instead, puts all parties on equal levels of engagement. Here, Mörsch brought up the example of art educators approaching a group of individuals who they’d like to work with laying out that they had been commissioned a project by a particular institution with a certain budget and that, together, they could come up with what to do. Collaboration, therefore, doesn’t presuppose a given frame, it rather aims to produce the frame together with all collaborating parties.

Through my studies in Design I’ve learned to appreciate Semiotics, the analytical science of signs and their signifiers and have, then, grown fond of language. I’m particularly interested in the meanings of words and their definitions, while I’ve come to realise that definitions are never impecable and cannot but fail to describe the meaning of a word accurately since language forms itself through the subjectivities of the individuals giving it significance.

The distinction between ‘collaboration’ and ‘participation’ introduced by Mörsch doesn’t only refer to the context of art mediation but can be extended to think about any practice which involves two or more individuals doing something together. What ‘participation’ and ‘collaboration’ have in common is that in both cases individuals ‘do something together’, but the important difference between them is ‘how’ individuals engange.

The Fckn Bstrds had played at our venue, the Loch in Enschede a few months before I met them again at ADM Festival in October (https://admfestival.nl/).

It felt as though the organisation and technical support were abandonning the band as they made sure to have them play last and without a sound engineer; as if they’d been expecting an act of terror and had wanted to have the chance to flee from it. As it turned out, the performance measured up to these expectations.

At the Loch, the act consisted of three performers who had used their synthesizers to make Harsh Noise and produced a mess with props of plastic trash they had brought and implemented in their show. They ripped up pillows and scattered the filling, threw packaging waste around and generally distributed trash in the space. Most of the visitors in Enschede watched the chaotic spectacle with fascination and disblief but didn’t really get involved themselves.

Here in Amsterdam the atmosphere was completely different. The audience which had been attentive and observant though rather passive during previous performances had suddenly taken to dancing wildly. Soon this turned into moshing and throwing the band’s props into the crowd. Far from a conventional show where the performers are in focus of the audience, here, the band had almost completely stepped into the background of focus and rather accompanied the madness going on around them with harsh, uncomfortable, disturbing noises that matched the ongoing scene perfectly.

Imagine this: A group of seven individuals dressed up in colourful fluffy though extremely trashy costumes plays their nightmarish sounding instruments on one side of the area giving space to about 100 individuals. The space was filled. Now and then, one of the performers dressed up in all sorts of packaging waste would leave their instrument, enter the crowd and throw some random object around: pieces of bubble wrap, expanded foam or plastic sheets which the crowd would pick up and continue throwing around. As an, initially, rather passive member of the audience I was continuously busy with removing pieces of trash from my face which were circulating above the crowd. At some point, the enthusiasm for violent interaction caught on and I found myself moshing, throwing trash around, dancing and thoroughly enjoying the chaos. Seemingly mindlessly people pushed each other, ran into oneanother - gave their physical energy way and moved expressively and violently.

As you might imagine, it’s easy to feel disadvantaged in such a situation being a rather petite human and it requires courage to engage. The experience of moshing at punk concerts in London in my early twenties had taught me though that within this kind of chaos and violent madness people look out for each other. If I fall to the ground I can be sure that I’ll be immediately picked by the next best person - instantaneous solidarity.

I started playing with this element of applied solidarity and went beyond the pure physical interaction of chaotically pushing and pulling to establishing subtle, more intimate connections with a few individuals around me. This felt like creating awareness for each other’s agency, eg. by leaning heavily against someone standing next to me who was busily pushing others violently and kept unconsciously leaning back against me until they noticed the action. Small things. For me, moshing is not about anger, it’s about direct physical contact.

I’m not sure how long this scene continued, maybe for an hour, maybe longer. While I was entangling myself more and more in the scene, thoughts about crowd control and ‘letting off steam’ crept into my mind. If all the energy which was being released during this performance would be channelled into something the crowd could actually achieve great things. Or, were we actually producing ‘something’? Did the chaos we produced count as ‘something’? Why did I have thoughts about being ‘productive’ instead of valuing the undetermined and loose?

The booker of Hiro Kone enquired whether we wanted to host a show with the New York-based musician at the Loch. We’ve become picky with our selection of acts since the work in preparation to the shows had been on the shoulders of three individuals who made their work accessible voluntarily, in the past years. Since a few months, we’re two.

Over time, we settled on the policy to only invite individuals whose music we ourselves thoroughly enjoy and whose political mindset we choose to support. Both of our musical interests are quite wide-spanning, so the program of the Loch has been quite diverse - ranging from noise to punk to wave to folky pop. Nevertheless, both of us particularly enjoy rather noisy, wavy, dark electronic music. Therefore, we might judge requests from electronic acts more harshly than others. Nevertheless, I was immediately thoroughly impressed by the sound of Hiro Kone. I listened to the music uploaded on the project’s Soundcloud account (https://soundcloud.com/hirokone) for months before the show and it became my ‘go-to’ sound after work towards the end of the summer.

A week before the event, I screenprinted posters for the show and described Hiro Kone’s music as “Ambiguous Electronic Industrial Minimalism“. I got used to describing acts on posters in a descriptive, yet, slightly cryptic manner since Madame Macario (https://madamemacario.wordpress.com/) had endorsed the sound of Zoo as “Tribal-Transe Brutal-Drone Ethno-Noise” in preparation for a show with us in beginning of the year which felt like an accurate though, nevertheless, open and playful depiction. Describing Hiro Kone’s output I couldn’t help but think of the word ‘ambiguous’. Funnily enough, this word struck Nicky from Hiro Kone immediately when seeing the poster before the show.

Looking the word up in a dictionary, ‘ambiguous’ is described as “open to more than one interpretation; not having one obvious meaning” and “not clear or decided.” In a literal sense, ambiguity translates to ‘Vieldeutigkeit’ in German - something which can be interpreted in various manners, something which points in multiple directions - complexity.

I’ve just spent a couple of days in Zurich on the occasion of having been invited to guide a seminar at the ZHdK on art mediation at documenta 14 together with fellow members of the editorial team of ‘Dating the Chorus’. I enjoyed the experience of ‘teaching’ in a ‘lesser-hierarchical’ context as Carmen Mörsch’s class on art mediation provided. After the class, fellow invitees and I went to see Stefan Sagmeister’s ‘The Happy Show’ at the space of the Museum für Gestaltung/ Design Museum located in the same building as the art school.

I walked independently of the other three who joined to see the exhibition. I knew of the exhibition as I had followed Sagmeister's work for some time. I had seen his TED talk online and knew the kind of visuals he created. In the exhibition, I found myself confronted with thoughts on 'Happiness', starting in a space exhibiting statistics: on how much money one (Sagmeister) needed to feel ok, or, numbers which pointed out that on average couples without children were happier than those with kids, or, where in the world people were statistically the happiest (North-America and Europe). I'm generally not a fan of statistics and quantifications of human experiences, so this element of the exhibition didn't interest me much from the start. Nevertheless, I can appreciate that others believe in the reality of numbers and, therefore, didn't mind this much. So, I made my way to the following room, where Sagmeister displayed visual experiments based on specific ideas, advices and strategies on how to be happy. These took the shape of typographical experiments, documentations of performative actions, free candy, an interactive drawing space and a video documentation of a meditation retreat Sagmeister attended.

In this video he interviewed fellow participants of a seemingly well-received meditation retreat and asked whether meditation made them happy. Apparently, all interviewees confirmed that meditation played its part in their path towards spiritual wisdom and a sense of happiness. All of the five individuals whom I watched speaking described meditation as a path towards what they call enlightenment. Others might just call this contentment, or, happiness. Interestingly, the film also showed Sagmeister speaking about his experience at the retreat. He confessed that he didn't believe a single person about their spiritual awakening through meditation.

While staying at the flat of a friend in Zurich, I chose a book from his vast collection of literature, political writing and philosophy. I chose to read Siddhartha from Hermann Hesse. Never having read a book from this author, the tale of Siddhartha captured me. I finished the book over two nights. Towards the end of the book, Siddhartha explains to his friend Govinda that he couldn't follow anyone's teaching. He wouldn't believe in the lessons and doctrines of scholars and spiritual leaders. Therefore, their path split as Govinda decided to join the votaries of spiritual leader and philosopher Gotama. Siddhartha, instead, decided to find his own path based on his intuition and became a salesman, a vagrant and finally a ferryman where learned the language of the convolutions of the river, learned to love and feel compassion.

When encountering his old friend Govinda as an old man Siddhartha tells him that he learned to develop his own mind through doing things instead of talking about them. He had learned the craft of being a ferryman from a man who had taught him to listen to the river when, instead, Siddhartha was looking for concrete answers to issues and thoughts. The river and allowed Siddhartha to see into himself and to develop his own thoughts and desires instead of replicating those of a teacher.

I feel similarly about The Happy Show. Although I'm glad to see that Sagmeister has apparently found a manner to develop happiness for himself, his 'teaching' doesn't give me much. It feels hard to dive into critical self-reflection when being confronted with Sagmeister's typographic experiments coming across as semi esotheric, semi motivational slogans. I can't help but feel similarly about the exhibition as Sagmeister describes his impressions from the meditation retreat. I can't help but feel like Siddhartha when encountering Gotama and his followers. Although I undoubtedly admire Sagmeister's inventiveness and apparent creative effort I feel the show being subverted by superficiality, honest as it might be from Sagmeister's perspective.