//// RESIDENCY
By Lise Nellemann & PETER VAN DER MEIJDEN
___How to engage__19 'floor plans' for Sparwasser HQ
During its years of existence, Sparwasser HQ has worked to engage people in conversation. It has done so by all possible means: by giving people the possibility to converse with various artists, by organising happenings, events and concerts that somehow reach out to people, you name it. Sparwasser HQ can hardly be equated with a certain style, but, rather, with a certain method.
This seems to be a good reason to take a closer look at the method that has crystallised over the years at the old headquarters, and to formulate it in a way that is valid in other places as well, a way that does not take a specific location as its starting point or even needs a location in the traditional sense at all. It is a reason to reformulate the idea of a headquarters as a frame of mind, a place within which to think, rather than a space with a fixed location on a map. Something like the rules of a game, in fact, even though the game is just a metaphor.
A. Framework
• Physical space
Given: a physical space, defined as a place where people and things meet, mix and communicate with each other.• Local context
Given: a local context, defined, in part, as the inhabitants and users of the area surrounding the physical space, and, in part, as the network of the users of the physical space.• Networks
Given: a user network conceived as a series of exchanges; a network grows with every exchange and because of every exchange; a network that can reach further than the local context.B. Rules
• Symbolic space
You are asked to: regard the space and context as part of the art world in so far as it addresses it in terms of what it does and does not cannot do, or what it does or does not want to do.• Public space
You are asked to: regard the space and its context as a part of the surrounding world in so far as it addresses it in terms of what it can and cannot do, or what it does and does not want to do.• Operational space
You are asked to: enter the space and context via exchange, for the sake of exchange; to let your actions be those of an exchanging subject.• Transmission
You are asked to: regard the exchanges that are made in this context as public property.• Multiplication
You are asked to: regard the exchange as a means of multiplication, both of the exchanges itself (in multiple shades of meaning) and of the skills and experience needed to bring about the exchange (in a collective learning process).• Translation
You are asked to: enact and re-enact exchanges, but never to transform or translate them; to leave the original language of the exchange intact.• Research centre
You are asked to: consider the input for the exchange as research; to consider the research as material with communicative potential; to consider the exchange as a process that opens up the possibility for further research.• Working space
You are asked to: consider the exchange as a process that turns private thoughts into public thoughts and these in their turn into new private thoughts; a process that produces private thoughts that are informed by the public character of the exchange.• Process & realisation
You are asked to: consider the exchange, not as a product to be consumed, but as an action and a cause for further action; to consider the exchange, not as a final destination, but as a thing on the move and a potential mover of things.• Self economy (auto curating)
You are asked to: consider the public appearance of the exchange as one that is determined by the exchange itself.• Social aesthetic
You are asked to: avoid thinking of physical shape as a fixed thing; to consider aesthetics as something social.• Propaganda
You are asked to: consider the exchange as a way to make people think along new lines, and to consider the space that is staked out by this set of rules as a way to maximise the result of the exchange.• Process activity & re-enactment
You are asked to: consider the exchange as a way to re-use or re-enact social exchanges that take place (have taken place) elsewhere, in order to alter their meaning and content.C. Applicability
• Never be assigned a role in society
Within the space that is staked out by these rules, only these rules apply. In order to gain access to this space, it is necessary to disregard any other rules, and make this set of rules your own.• Pirate economy / parasite economy
The space that is staked out by these rules occupies the same territory as the art institution, but not necessarily by the same means or to the same ends.• Collaborative independence
The space that is staked out by these rules, grants those who participate in the exchange a certain independence, but in your independence, you depend on others; the rules create a collective platform that enables you to manifest yourself as an individual.
