Jubilee Summer Retraite 2023 hosted by Zinneke, 5 July 2023

People present: Ronny, Ciel, Stijn, Katleen, Nina, Vincent, Max, Louise, Justin, Jesse, Filip Excused: Clémentine, Julie, Katya, Elene Members of the board join at 7pm: Saar, Sari, Katrien excused: Zeynep, Nav, Pascale

Minutes: Jesse, Ronny, and some of you...

Agenda of the day

9.30: arrival with coffee/croissant

10: short intro on ZInneke by Leen de Spiegelaer (Veronique was ill)

10 - 12: planning & program summerschool 22-26/09/2023 - https://ethertoff.caveat.be/w/activities::2023-06-07-Summer_School_Brussels.md

12 - 14: preparing and having lunch

14 - 16: project application Jubilee - 15/09/2023 - https://ethertoff.caveat.be/w/activities::Jubilee_collective_project.md       attached doc: article on Mapping tool

16 - 17: coffee break

17 - 18.30: practical questions we discussed in our first meeting: https://ethertoff.caveat.be/w/jubilee_meetings::2023_05_18.md

-take in new members in GA / membership fee / commission fee -new orientation of the organisation: define mission and vision based on our previous discussions       attached docs:       collective budget - abstract version 2024       job description Jesse 2024

18.30 - 19.30: preparing dinner with Nina

19: arrival board members and apero - extra general assembly

20: dinner

-presentation of our plans to the Board of Directors -formalize new GA and election of a new Board of Directors

23: ending

0/Opening of the day.

Leen de Spiegelaer welcomes us in the premisses of Zinneke. Zinneke is an organisation that started with Brussels Cultural Capital, 2000. For that event it organized a parade that was built with many different socio-cultural organisations spread out over the whole territory of the Brussels region (Zinnodes)... Because it was such a success, ZInneke continued and has since then organized a parade overy two years. Zie: https://www.zinneke.org/Historique Zinneke has had a nomadic existence until 2021 when the organisation 'landed' in Place Masui, the current building where we are. At this location, Zinneke wishes to develop a large, permanent meeting, creation, training and production location, adapted to the needs of the Zinneke project and, more broadly, the city and its neighbourhoods. This production center full of diverse potential is a laboratory, a breeding ground for socio-artistic actions, cornerstone of the partnerships that Zinneke creates with and between residents, associations, artists and other social, cultural, economic and urban ecological actors from the city and beyond.The project is also a large-scale pilot project for the renovation of infrastructure with the reuse of building materials and with maximum respect for the existing. Since 2013 when they introduced this proposal the Zinneke team, Rotor vzw, Ouest architecture and the engineering office for special techniques MATRIciel , but also you: artists, partners, residents, users, neighbors and other actors in the city and beyond, have been involved in setting up this project, which is currently in full development. Leen launches a call for ideas to help them realize this place as a production facility...

We thank Leen and ZInneke for their hospitality. It's an inspiring place which holds a lot of promise, maybe even for Jubilee...

1/Jubilee Summer School 2023 - 22-26 September

Locations: radical_house Orangerie, Bièrbais....but Zinneke might also be great? Filip's studio

International guests: Scott William Raby (f.eks).

Extensive Program Draft See pad: https://ethertoff.caveat.be/w/activities::2023-06-07-Summer_School_Brussels.md

Everybody around the tabe elaborates on what he/she would like to present in the summerschool. As of end of August and in September Jesse will coordinate the summerschool event.

Opening on 22nd September at radical-house with a presentation of a new Mapping tool that is developed by Atelier Cartographique on behalf V&H with Ciel & Max, Clementine, Nadine vzw. Scott would also like to be part of the mapping tool. We need a good name for the mapping tool!!!

Ciel: linked to that presentation Atlas of Ovens would organize a tour around cooperatives running bread ovens in Brussels, with the aim of participating in a firing that anyone is organising - date, time and location will depend on what happens in the city. Project collaborator Marion Aeby is a textile designer but also works at a bakery, can contribute about baking bread. The bread dough needs to be made the day before?

Orangerie of Bierbais (walking distance from Louvain la Neuve) is run by people from the former Yugoslavia who were active in various collectives but mainly one called eimigrative art. Text by Ivana Momcilovic (dramaturg) here : https://transversal.at/transversal/1204/momcilovic/en - Vincent knows them from late 90s (War in Yougoslavia and NATO bombing of Serbia). Also graphic designers Skart are part of that constellation : http://skart.rs/ Contacts with Badiou, Zapatistas, Rancière. Possibly a presentation with Axel Pleeck (Molenbeek Academy) who has implemented alternative ways of learning. Long-time collaborator of Ivana & Jaki.

Ideas: -maybe invite people from UCL: David Aubin; Max knows people from architecture department (many architecture programmes use these kind of places like laboratories). We could end/start the day with a from from or to LLN? From La Baraque to the Orangeries? -Idea to invite them to cooperative breadmaking. Vincent wonders if it's a good idea to invite her to discursive moments...maybe not. -Vincent: linking to the Bierbais past of the site and specifically to Belgian passion for Orchids could offer an interesting way to speak about both colonial matters, ethno-botany and interspecies thinking. Maybe with botanic specialists or landscape architects, like the ones responsible for re-planting at the Botanique in Brussels. -raise and discuss the issue of fund-raising?

Proposal to organise a full day.

Tracks Louise: Thesis around legal underpinning of intangible art forms (collaborative, open ended). <-> Tracks & Mapping tool Proposal to use Tracks and Mapping as a case study for Louise to question how to open up Tracks & Mapping tool, and question the governing strategies that could guide those platforms to become relational instruments Proposal to invite TWIIID, Sari? as an external consultant to enter into dialogue (<-> Fostering Agreement, among other projects)

Justin: considering ways of connecting Tracks and Mapping tool. Mini workshop on how to program Tracks, make a walk together. How do we deal with the payment of artists whose work is on Tracks? Prepare a conversation with the Tracks partners by investigating the possiblities as a test case during the summer school. We could use the walk the Jesse developed around Meyboom at the Congress site as a collective work - people should be able to add.

Jesse: Proposal to organise a walk around the Congress station and its links to capitalism. Connections: federal adminstration; real estate (Panorama project, maybe invite urban planners of the area?); middle ages (Meiboomstraat, Cathedral); Botanique - Bièrbais (same architect, and Vincent knows landscape designers of renewed Botanique plan, Carbonifère, https://carbonifere.com/), orchids; also Congress park garden Pechère) ; towards Nieuwstraat: school Gatti de Gamond; National Bank

Library Filip: Fred Dewey. Founder of Baroque Poetry Centre (art centre for poetry in Santa Monica). Wrote The School of Public Life. Important Hannah Arendt scholars. Moved to Berlin, had issues with bureaucracy, moved to Brussels. Jeremiah Day invited Fred into a performance project with Simone Forti. Dewey was a close friend of Sue Spaid - who was in Filip's PhD jury. They wrote a text together to contest is PHD refusal. Went back to LA during covid and passed away there. Book collection could go to a university library but Filip thought it's not very interesting, will disappear from visibility - took it to Komplot and could go to Superdeal at Place Bethlehem (Dewey was very enthusiastic about Brussels and its bottom-up life, for instance SOTA Fair Arts Almanac). Collection will eventually have to get back to LA, but is in Filip's storage now. Invite thinkers and artists to work with it.

Fred Dewey Legacy project: Jeremiah Day, Sue Spaid, and other people...Christian Mooney, ... Jeremiah is also involved in HISK, where he is setting up presentations around the notion of Artistic Research (relevance, recent developments). Did a performance (words, improvisation) about Fred Dewey. It would be interesting to involve him for the summer school - public moment?

'School of Public Life' is a book he wrote on all different project he did throughout his life. Could be interesting to read some fragments from it? Find a part that has some connection to the theme of alternative learning? Perhaps also fragments from his book collection? An inventory exists. Would it be interesting to reinstall the library together on basis of the photos that Sue Spaid made? Could be subject of a film!

Max visited a library of an art book collector in Sitterwerk, Switzerland (https://www.sitterwerk.ch/). Did performances with the books, making associations on basis of books' content. Now people are encouraged to take books and put them back where they want - a robot makes an inventory of the reordered library twice a day.

Activate the library in an accessible form with a reading room? Perhaps at Maxima, across the street from Filip's studio.

Scott mentioned an interest in teaching methods of his teacher John Knight (who was also teacher of Michael Asher). Perhaps applying it to a specific situation.

London-based sound (walking) artist Lucia Farinati is following Dewey as well. More concrete link?

Stijn is undecided. School of Equals worked with LUCA's cleaning staff. Sarah wrote about it, Stijn can share it. <-> Le Balai Liberé.

Interested in Axel Pleeck and his Laboratoire Pedagogique.

2 types of audience: 1) peer participation (young graduates, our own network) we may charge a daily fee to participate, should (at least) cover lunch and dinner. Let's communicate publicly about it, specifically & personally with people like School of Love, Gilbard/ERG, ... this group needs to receive an email on the upcoming program before the summer break (15 July).

2) public program, evenings: regular audience

(Un)availabilities over summer to prepare the summer school:

Max is not there 29 July - 11 August

Jesse is working until end of June. Jubilee will be rehiring him from 16 August until 15 December, until further news of projects. 2ne half of July and 1st half of August away and in principle not availabe. 2nd half of August he's working on a local project but available for some work.

Justin on holidays 7 July - 3 September, available online

V&H availabe Bxl all summer, but busy with exhibition and walks in Zwalm (end of August), and exhibition and walks with Nadine (end of September) and a lecture for Finance & Society conference (14-15 september)

Clementine is in France all summer, but available online, back end of August

Stijn: away for first two weeks in August

Louise: holiday till 15 july, weekend 25/08 summer in BXL

Katya: from 8 july to end of july to PAF. August away??

Vincent 15 - 22 August

Ciel foresees to give birth on 15 August and has a busy working schedule before that - no writing

Calendar / Planning Programme should be communicated no later than end of August. Try to have most things planned by then. Reach out to peer participants mid July latest.

To do list: -Max is the spokesperson for Atlas of Ovens: Priority to fix a date for the use of a collective oven!! That date will decide when the rest of the Atlas of Ovens program can role out. -Filip: contact Maxima - possibility to host the Fred Dewey project -Stijn: check with Sarah -Ronny: screening Le Balai Libere & program Orangeries; planning with radical_house -Vincent: orchid program - contact garden designers Botanique

2/ Mapping Project - input for project application proposal

Introduction of the mapping tool to the meeting based on a series of images. Then a round table with everyone's comments

The tool could generate a federated space - projects not only relate on a content & research level but also on the people that are behind them. That way the map becomes a visualisation of (how?) we work as an organsiation. Collaboration between Jubilee artists with the mapping as a relational tool.

The shards in the tool are based on a finite number of caramel pieces.... if they're all used we're obliged to physically come together again to forge a new slate of caramel and smash it -> occassions to reconsider how we're working together.

Max: Prototype is an essential notion when speaking about the mapping tool - also in this application

For Stijn it is about shaping a collectivity. How to shape its positioning? Who should be part? Why would anyone want to join? Working out a shared language -> evolving Jubilee polyphony

Like Tracks: technical questions, but more than that a tool to create shared narratives (open source genealogy software used for Vincent's Cosmograph piece(s) from 2010). What curatorial plan for this new format? Not just a website...-> lived, performed, organised.
Jubilee story has been lacking a tool of shared intelligence

How to relate a practice to others, if it's not connected to many others? A generative tool? Generative potential: group of single islands -> potential of finding autonomous related islands to establish an archipelago of practices.

Partnership with AC is interesting - they said that they've been commissioned (unusal for them), but artists didn't have a very precise initial idea. Collaboration has required a lot of effort. Now mutual understanding: co-developing the functionality of the tool. Money for AC is almost finished. They probably have been working more than the budget permits. They consider the project as added value to their knowledge that they build further on for their future projects.

Vincent finds it generous to extend the use to other users but it is at this moment also a bit an idealized proposal because it requires a lot of work (and money) to feed, to develop and to maintain

Critique: - comparing to Tracks which is a tool has been designed but is somehow not so much used and distributed. It took also quite a some time to have the tool operating due to being dependent on technical developers and so the collab was not always easy. Here it is a new collboarative tool. What lesson from the past experience are applicable to this new project? - Technicality is a true topic of discussion for the future programmation and "daily" use. To what extent are the participants depending on the programmers/cartographers? -club of peers make a tool - becomes very inside // the question of access is central, should be connected to 'positioning'/'curating' -The tool needs a curated dimension: new research; inventing together; lacking in Jubilee so far is the deep level of content exchange between members's researches. Could this tool offer this ? Maybe not if every online content is not previously linked to something shared / lived experience / presentations online or to peers. The online content would not be be dropped online and "consume" like information

Good example to compare with (a tool developped by OSP) is the Sarma research platform in which Vincent took part. There an open source software has been devlopped and a fee was reserved for the artist (around 2500 eur) to develop a research project on line. The artist was trained by a collaborator (paid also by Sarma) also to be able to use the soft and program by himself. But this is somehow difficult as many tehcnical issues have to be solved. http://sarma.be/pages/Index Sarma vzw - Myriam van Imschoot (new way of dealing with sources) - how does our tool go beyond what we know now, apart from that it looks a bit different Other site mentioned, new tech/media platform reflecting on the future of critique : New Models https://newmodels.io/

This raises two important question: 1/How to go beyond the provincial/club working of the tool, and how does it stay generous, open, and accomodating for outsiders? How to avoid being self-referential? (International) institutional partners are valuable here.

2/How can it be accomodating for our practices in the future, without becoming extra work? When would we consider content becoming part of this platform? It's a model of commoning, after all... But in a federated way -> "financially speaking, everyone takes care of their own problems"

How can this be a bridging tool (including bigger institutions?) rather than a micro-resistance? How can this tool co-produce a new way of interacting between participants ? We need to invent a discourse in coll with thinkers / writers/// Transdisciplinary practices, broad ranged collabortations -> large basis of support.

Cartography as we know it as product of exploring, controlling, appropriating....capitalism. If capitalism has been partially formed by this tradition of mapping, what kind of mapping could be helpful for a way out of capitalism? Relations with institutions on the field.... Emptor showed that institutions almost categorically do not make enough space for us in their calendars and agency - also not for each other.

Courtauld scholar Katie Scott wrote an essay on this: https://books.openedition.org/obp/1080

Bruno Latour's lecture-performance: a new representation of mapping. Our representation of the blue planet...

Max mentions publication Terra Forma by Frédérique Aït-Touati, Alexandra Arènes and Axelle Grégoire, with foreword by Latour https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262046695/terra-forma/

Justin mentions 3D military maquettes in Lille of different towns (in Flanders), on tables on wheels

Institutions are over-demanded. We need their money for this project, but do we need them as such, if they don't have time to commit? We need to take the lessons from what's been (un)successful in the past - not necessarily have the same hopes. Caveat, Emptor, Tracks Institution as entonnoirs (funnel) for support of practices? Institution as presentation partners for the tool? Organise something in the context of... Activating the tool?

A shift in how to present practices - not only digital but also physically? mapping platform - not only upload a doc, also activate it: ex. come with a discursive practice Filip likes the physical aspect of it - how can this be elaborated on in its relation to the map we're not planning to move into the digital - create agency for these situated practices

Keep in mind the physicality of the work (situatedness <-> presentability in analogue contexts)

Swiss platform for research in arts: https://recherche.sik-isea.ch/en Originating in the Netherlands, but international: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/

Legal framework: how is labour valued, social practices defining legal practices, qualitative parameters rather than quantitative. Scarcity works inversely with knowledge (especially digitally): the more knowledge is exchanged, the more (non-monitary) value is accumulated. Louise: creation / content / how to manage these? from practice to find new solutions intentions of the platform - entitlement of who can use / linked to positioning and curating related to the Tracks exercise how to value the work already done? IP / Licencing / social dynamic can play a role as to the legal definition of where something is going is not written down, fixed - but something that can be developed from social practice - feeds into the legal definition (also the topic of her master thesis) knowledge commons is inexaustabie - is this also the case here?

How do we minimalize the work that needs to be done in order to have a good working interesting tool? How do we enter/upload/introduce a project in the tool? Stijn - the map is a lot of work and then does the work itself - generative / narrative tool

Visual <-> sonic mapping. Exciting possiblility. Model for a organisation? We were making organigrams and diagrams, but this is much more interesting. Connections with Tracks

Kunstendecreet function: -reflection? The tool is almost developed - last technical phase. But once the tool is active, the real work starts and that is the reflection traject we could propose. Who can have access, how do we govern it, who does the invisible work, how is this work valued, do we need to ask a contribution to participate in it and how is the work and investment that is already done valued. How can we create agency through this tool, how to use it as a form of commons and how to avoid new enclosures. These questions could become part of this project (reflection) application. the trajectory can be set up alongside the projects of artists that are already programmed? with institutions that people already work with?

-development: curatorial project : the outcome is a program presentation or development function -presentation

-production: Production of a series of projects , with presentations on the Mapping tool, and physically at the partnering presentation institutions? how to make situated pracitce more visible do this in relation to institution wo are interested in this tool

3/presentation of our plans to the Board of Directors At 7pm board members arrive This part of the day is called together as a extra General Assembly Present: Justin Bennett, Sari Depreeuw, Saar Geerts, Ronny Heiremans, Vincent Meessen, Katrien Reist, Katleen Vermeir Excused: Nav Haq, Zeynep Kubat, Pascale Viscardy.

The agenda: 1/new members of the general assembly 2/new board of directors?

1/ After an extensive introduction of the day and the plans that were developed (see above: Summerschool and proposal project application VG) we address the question of the enlargement of the general assembly.

On membership our statutes say: Working members are: 1. the founding members 2. the signatories to the statutes 3. any natural or legal person who sends a written motivation to the board of directors and whose candidature is accepted by the general meeting with at least two thirds of the votes present.

On 18 May and 23 June we had organized prepatory meetings to discuss the motivation of invited artists to join the general assembly of Jubilee. These meetings have been reported: https://ethertoff.caveat.be/w/jubilee_meetings::2023_05_18.md https://ethertoff.caveat.be/w/jubilee_meetings::2023_06_23.md

These reports have been shared with the Board of Directors and can thus be considered as a collective written motivation of all non-members who particpated in those meetings. It concerns: Filip van Dingenen, Helene Meyer, Katya Ev, Stijn van Dorpe, Ciel Grommen, Louise de Bethune, Maximiliaan Royakkers, Jesse van Winden

The question is raised if this will only become real once published in the Staatsblad? After verification it seems that this is not necessary. What is necessary: the new members need to be inscribed in the official membership list that needs to be kept, together with all reports and acconts, in the registered office of the organisation. This membership is a digital list, of which we keep a print out in the office in the VZW folder.

The current general assembly has enough members present to vote about the acceptance of the new members of the general assembly. All new members are accepted and welcomed in the organisation. The list of members will be adapted in the next week and added to the VZW folder.

The new general assembly has a task to redefine the mission of the organisation, and rewrite the internal rules document. If deemed necessary the new general assembly can appoint a new board of directors.

In view of the urgencies around the organisation of the summerschool program and the project application (deadline 15 September) the general assemblies agrees to accept as a temporary version of the new mission the points that were mentioned in the report of 18 May 2023: focus is on knowledge sharing and exchange. The internal rules document will be reconsidered towards the end of the year. Until then the current version applies. The discussion about a new board is also postponed till the end of the year. Until then the current board will keep its responsibilities.

Membership fee: All new members are held to pay a yearly membership fee of 250,-/calender year. The meeting did not discuss the issue of membership fee for the running year 2023. In a next email communication the proposal will be introduced to pay half of the fee for the year 2023, being 125,-

The general assembly closes the day with a drink and barbeque.