Collectivity / artist residency
Nina Möntmann interviewed by Irmeli Kokko
IK – Can you elaborate a little on this collectivity? In what ways do you see collective production as potential for transformation?
NM – A major topic several disciplines are doing research on and are experimenting with at this moment is figuring out what forms of collectivity could matter or have an impact on future societal developments. Even with a left populism as defined by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, the model of commons or solidarity as a basic principle seems to be the central value of how to live together.
But living together doesn’t seem to be sufficient at this crucial moment in history, when the world system of neo-liberal finance capitalism is collapsing and the terms of another are still to be negotiated. As Immanuel Wallerstein has put it, a new world system will be installed by 2050, and we are facing violent times until then. The question is, how can we participate in these struggles in a non-violent way? How can it matter what we are doing as artists, curators, researchers, when it comes to negotiating a new world system not based on profitable economics and nationalisms, but on equality, well-being, and ethical relations within micro as well as macro systems?
Collective residencies and collective work in general can give us a frame not only to negotiate but also to practice more ethical models of relations: exchange instead of competition, solidarity and respect for others. This might sound a bit of a heavy load for an artist residency to deal with, but what I mean is more about building a consciousness and a practice of sharing as it can happen within a safe space and an open situation. So that when you make political claims you know what you are talking about.
Kokko, Irmeli (2019) ‘Residencies as Programmatic Spaces for Communality: An Interview with Nina Möntmann’. in Contemporary Artist Residencies: Reclaiming Time and Space. Antennae-Arts in Society Series n°27. Amsterdam: Valiz page 109, 110