The last decade has witnessed a metamorphosis in terms of the co-development of a new definition and practice of conviviality as a positive, affirmative act of doing in the form of change. However, the pandemic in the form of social distancing, contagion and isolation presents a new obstacle to conviviality. We want to engage in a practice of living together through shared learning in the format of convivial working groups and workshops.
Conviviality as a social practice is characterized by an intrinsic dynamic. As we will show, the global capitalist world and its processes of racialization and neocolonialism systematically oppose the possibility of conviviality, placing it in constant danger of dwindling or collapsing.
The aim of our work is to explore and develop artistic practices that have the potential to intervene in these disrupting dynamics of conviviality. We start from the assumption that arts-based research can function as an affirmative metamorphic force to deepen and strengthen convivial practices.
This exposition will present the artistic scientific research line, which is connected to the FWF-PEEK Project “Conviviality as Potentiality: From Amnesia and Pandemic towards a Convivial Epistemology” funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)(AR679). The project takes place and is hosted by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from May 2021–May 2024.
As part of our three-year research project, 3 Convivial Study Workshops will be organised in cooperation with our partner maiz – Autonomous Centre of and for Migrant Women in Linz; two will take place in Vienna (AT) and one in Linz (AT).
In the first year, we are planning the first workshop to explore the global narrative of the pandemic and the social order of distance, contagion and isolation. This condition has impacted numerous NGOs, artistic grassroot collectives and art students, migrant organizations and LGBT*QIA+ communities in the context of the anti-migration and anti-refugee regime in Austria.
Therefore we intend to hold the first workshop to investigate the aftermaths of the pandemic. We will scan, discuss and archive the impediments to conviviality in collaboration with these specific collectives, groups, and individuals.
In preparation for the actual workshop and in cooperation with the workshop participants we will create the 1st Convivial Script — an exposition as a digitally produced performative story of learning and living, which will function as an archive of linguistic, visual, audio, textual interrogations/representations of obstacles to conviviality.
A brief introduction to the structure of the 1st Convivial Study Workshop and the 1st Convivial Script:
The Convivial Script acts as a mobilizing base, open to an ongoing process of metamorphosis that we will develop in the research, and is made available to the public as a dispositif.
To establish new practices of convivial learning and epistemologies, we will use grassroots (bottom-up, easily accessible, low-threshold) modes of documenting and sharing experiences and knowledge; this is a methodology for collecting, presenting and disseminating collaborative research.
WHERE: Vienna (AT)
WHEN: 2021
DURATION: 2 days
WITH: artistic grass-root collectives and art students, migrant organizations and LGBT*QIA+ communities
BACKBONE WORKSHOP: “Conviviality as Potentiality” (CaP) team and maiz – Autonomous Centre of and for Migrant Women in Linz
SCHEDULE
Introduction
Exercise: getting to know each other
Discussion: on strategies of a necessary metamorphosis to survive through and in the post-pandemic period.
Task: scanning, discussing, producing and archiving linguistic, visual, audio, textual interrogations/representations of obstacles to conviviality.
Objective:
- Learning with and through the (experiences) of others
- Production of 1st Convivial Script as an artistic scientific archive of the first scan of obstacles to conviviality today, with particular attention to diary-like texts (such as blogs), podcasts, poetry, performativity, or other experimental and grassroots forms. With this assignment, we want to collect/produce a set of texts/images/sounds that you think are notable indicators of obstacles to conviviality today. Who are the actors discussing/writing/pointing out these obstacles? How do they speak? What concerns do they bring up? What is the common thread of these obstacles?
- Discussion on organizing and publishing our documentation.
Guidance:
Work collaboratively, search, read, comment, collect, photograph, document, draw, collage, record, experiment with material, discuss. The texts/videos/images you choose or produce should use grassroots (bottom-up, easily accessible, low-threshold) forms of documentation and represent a point of view you find important.
Output:
From the material collected/produced, we will make use of the Research Catalogue as a publishing platform to create an artistic scientific archive of the first scan of obstacles to conviviality, in the form of a digitally produced performative story of learning and living.
The exposition will follow an artistic and participatory grassroots logic that offers multiple points of access – linguistic, visual, audible and textual.
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Excerpt from a workshop discussion held on 12 October 2019 on the 25th anniversary of maiz, Altes Rathaus, Linz. The recording was made with the consent of all participants.
On Conviviality
The concept of conviviality was introduced into the vocabulary of the humanities by the Viennese theologian and philosopher Ivan Illich (1973). His book Tools for Conviviality was inspired by the movements of the 1960s Third-Worldist that incorporated elements from African decolonial movements as well as the diverse voices in support of the oppressed that were spreading at the time throughout Latin America (Costa 2019). The “tools for conviviality” were developed to negotiate industrialization by taking control of the tools and production processes that shaped people's lives.
Since its introduction, the concept of conviviality has been used in various fields that either applied it within themselves or expanded and revised it. In this regard, Paul Gilroy (2004, 2006) made an important contribution by linking convivial culture to colonial pasts, amnesia, and denial, arguing that these create unique political and social fields in which we must navigate and organize (2006, 2).
This is the reality that Europe must also face in order to have the opportunity to understand its present circumstances and plan a life and community for a convivial future.
Gilroy extended the notion of conviviality not only to a context of “living together in real time” (Gilroy 2006, 6), but to a culturally complex, mobile global world; as argued by Amanda Wise and Greg Noble (2016, 424): “It is with Gilroy that cultural differences arising from the long-term consequences of post-colonialism, mass migration, multicultural policies and transnationalism are foregrounded.”
As such, the concept of conviviality stands in opposition to normative narratives of multiculturalism, integration, and assimilation, and it is this understanding of conviviality that we build upon to update and expand. Following Gilroy, it is central to understand the obstacle of amnesia to the potentiality of conviviality and convivial futures. Amnesia represents a closure of experience, memory, and history.
The combination of ignorance, denial, and guilt creates a unique context that must be constantly challenged. We actualize the discourses and practices on conviviality by moving from amnesia to the notion of pandemic.
If conviviality is a starting point, the new analysis for the elaboration of the final outcome of the exposition proposes a following diagram of capitalism and the reproduction of white supremacy. This diagram shows the processes that oppose the possibility of conviviality. As can be seen from the research by Marina Gržinić (forthcoming [2021]), the essential thing is that these processes do not leave out the social. On the contrary, for extraction and dispossession through racialization to really work, the space of the social must also be racialized, which is blasted by racist and class ideologies. These ideologies support and feed liberal individualism (a hyper-self), liberal market ideology (that everything can be "freely" exchanged and therefore freely sold), and obscure the fact that democracy functions exclusively through violence (democracy is only promoted and recalibrated through the constant use of violence) (Gržinić, forthcoming [2021]).
Works cited:
Costa, Sérgio. 2019. “The neglected Nexus between Conviviality and Inequality.” Novos estud. CEBRAP 38, no. 1 (January/April), Epub 6 May 2019. https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S010133002019000100002&script=sci_arttext#B26.
Gilroy, Paul. 2004. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Cultures. London and New York: Routledge.
Gilroy, Paul. 2006. “Colonial Crimes and Convivial Cultures.” Transcript of a video letter screened at the Public Hearing “Debating Independence: Autonomy or Voluntary Colonialism?” in Nuuk, Greenland on 22 April 2006. http://www.rethinking-nordic-colonialism.org/files/pdf/ACT2/ESSAYS/Gilroy.pdf.
Gržinić, Marina. Forthcoming [2021]. “Ps. Capitalism, Geographies, and the Racial/Colonial and the Imperial/Colonial Divide.” Connections. A Journal for Historians and Area Specialists.
Illich, Ivan. 1973. Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper & Row.
Wise, Amanda, and Greg Noble. 2016. “Convivialities: An Orientation.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 37 (5): 423–431.