STAY-AT-HOME ACTIVITIES | INTIMATE ECOLOGY #3

Cornelia Sollfrank’s exhibition took the shape of COMMONS LAB, which exists online here: http://artwarez.org/projects/commonslab/. The exhibition-lab describes commons as “resources created or maintained by a community for their joint use value. Commons are characterized by modes of ownership beyond the private/state dichotomy and by collective ways of dealing with the respective resources. The concept refers to common goods, but a special emphasis is put on the social relations and negotiations necessary to produce and protect them.” We are watching rapid shifts, brought on by the health emergency, in how public money circulates, who is visible as an essential contributor to collective health and survival, how private and public space are understood, who relies on income assistance, and much more. 

1.
How are we creating or maintaining resources beyond the limits of the state? What spaces are now either more or less accessible as potential commons?

2.
What types of commoning do you participate in? Where did you learn these practices?

3.
What does cleaning have to do with intimacy? What does policing have to do with intimacy? What is necessary for a transformation of social relations?

4.
In a time of physical distancing what does it look like to continue prioritizing harm reduction, communal care, and other forms of autonomous intimacy?

 

Meet the artist!

Hear from Cornelia Sollfrank in her interview with the XX Files:

and as part of their Techno-Feminisms audio documentary:

More from our files!

See photos of the COMMONS LAB space set up during Cornelia’s residency, and read about some of the workshops that were hosted. 

 

FROM OUR FILES

Each week, explore projects from our archives through two series of conversation starters and DIY experiments. Our series for families introduces projects which help us imagine new ways of being together and being at home during this period of physical distancing, with activities to try and questions to ask each other. Our series for the general public brings together projects from our archives which have explored various kinds of intimate ecologies, and prompts reflection and conversation to nourish our collective imagination.