seminar

ÔCOMMUNARTSEMINARÕ KARAOSTA, LATVIA, March 3-8

The study of intentional communities is more than a fascinating pursuit of the human quest for the implementation of high idealism utopia. At its best it has the potential for questioning the arbitrariness of our own local or national community and the ways we identify ourselves. To what extent do we choose or influence our neighbours? How is the often fraught relationship between the group and the individual negotiated in society today? The seminar will be focused on the contemporary visions of the phenomenon, but its scope will also include the historical discourse, thereby marking the disputable field of overlay between commune as an utopia and commune as an efficient kind of social activism.

The programme will provide an academic look on earlier forms of communal living: Quakers, Oneida and Hernhutter communards of the 19th century; the influence of Peter Kropotkin's anarcho-communism on the early Zionist Socialism and its still lasting Kibbutz movement; artists cooperative institutions like Hellerau near Dresden, among the proponents of which were Emil Nolde, Frank Wedekind, Vaslav Nijinsky and Max Reinhardt. A round-table discussions will be devoted to the memories of the soviet time underground youth communities in Latvia and artists squats in St.Petersburg. And there will be a possibility to hear insiders' opinions about the radical shift in notion of alternative communities after the massive failures of experiments, which were inspired by the year 1968: Kommune 1 and Otto Muehl's AAO at Friedrichshof .

Mainstream media typically promote the popular myth that shared living began with the "hippie crash pads" and died with the arrival of "yuppies" in the late '70s and early '80s. The truth, however, is quite different. As comprehensive surveys by Fellowship for Intentional Community (USA) and "Eurotopia: Dictionary of European Communities and ?ko-villages" (Hamburg, 2000/2001) show there are detailed entries for 161 different groups or networks of intentional communities that represent about 3,980 separate communes.

The seminar is aimed to raise discussions about the role of small-scale communities in the social activism movement, and its impact on the political and cultural restructuralisation of the society from below.

The participants in the seminar will be culture practitioners interested in arts and communal policy, environmental movement activists willing to develop projects based on the concept of sustainable living, graduate and post-graduate students working on related topics. As specially invited guests on the list are the local municipality of Renda district, the only green self-government in Latvia, representatives from the intentional art-communities Und_ne (Jurmala), Karaosta (Liep_ja), nekacs (Kuldiga), Parupe (Vilnius), Dachniki (St.Petersburg).

Week long seminar will be set in the Culture and Information Centre K@2 in the west cost of Latvia. To facilitate interaction between the participants of the residency programme and the local community, workshop will offer photo exhibition hosted in the K@2 gallery and film programme on related topics.

Communart seminar is part of wider European network project www.republicart.net. organised by art bureau OPEN and Contemporay Center for Art in Latvia