D.I.Y. Skill Sharing Network

Bergfest meaning  “half way through” or a “middle point” … this was the second of three public space events  spread over March to punctuate the ongoing Czentrifuga exhibition, installation and workshop series  ROHKULTUR BONBON at the Neurotitan Gallery, Haus Schwarzenberg in Berlin.

CULTURE COMPLEX:  HAUS SCHWARZENBERG, BERLIN  (LINK)

The La Drucki printers from Bern occupied an area of the gallery space and set to work adding to the massive  cardboard, paper and plastic “urban mountain” landscape that was slowly mutating / upcycling  since its construction two weeks before. Here’s a great animation born out of an animation workshop made spontaneously at the location. Mr Robot shows us  some elements from the exhibition space  as well as the La Drucki ski lift in action! The video was put together by Claudia Fox and Katrin. with artworks by the Czentrifuga collective and co. The Robot was made by Susann and Karl Pönisch.

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WORKSHOPS GOING ON

Brosi Rosie and Ohm Noise from Czentrifuga and fellow Berlin Grundtvigians, Salon Bruit  presented “Speakers Corner – Open Mic. Make Your Statement!”  encouraging visitors at the event to “mach mit!” to air  their views,  tell a story,  read a poem etc.  on an improvised “euro pallet” stage.

“Verewigen und Verkloppen” drawing and painting sessions with Czentrifuga  Stine Lawine. Visitors to the last days of the exhibition were invited to tag the mountain spirits “bring your pens!” The deconstruction took a whole day with another two days to compromise and dispose of the enormous mass of cardboard we had acquired from the nearby expensive Berlin Mitte fashion shops. We upcycled some selected elements from the installation which were cut and sized to fit inside a commemorative large format screenprinted newspaper to mark and record the exhibition.

The live music and performance programme spanned the age groups  and genres with over a  hundred guests throughout the day and night and circa one  thousand   visitors spread throughout the month of exhibtion.

Altogether a massive Czentrifuga mash up of creative input-output !

Thanks to all the participants and organisations!

BERGFEST FOTO LINK

the Neurotitans | Unterdruck Theater | Czentrifuga Allstars | Anef  | Olivia Pils | Gabba Reifenstihl | Beat Gipp | Susann Pönisch | Nick Knapton | Stine Lawine | Ronald | GoGo trash | Vasja Greypfrut | | Schmacke | Katrin |  |  Henryk Weiffenbach | Marko Krojac | Brosi Rosie and Ohm Noise |  Sista Zoum | Raving Mad Carlos | Yuko Matsuyama | Miki Shoji | Element of Monkeys | Coost Lardy Cake | Bob Rutman and Dave Burda the Hurdy Gurdy Man |  Grundtvig Skill Sharing Network.

and last, but by no means least, the incompareable Senor Depressivo

D.I.Y. Skill Sharers Network  Meeting in Bern 07.02.13 – 10.02.13

The Reitschule in the Swiss  capital of Bern,  exists for twenty five years as a center for culture and, as the name suggests, the building complex  were once used as riding school. Despite five  public referendums  to evict the building (initiated by right wing or commercial  concerns)  the people of Bern always voted in favor to help maintain and support the project. Located  in the center of  the city  near the train station , the Reitschule  still maintains its original red brick, turreted, “fairy tale” flavour . The cobblestone courtyard  decorated with graffiti  and  street art ,  reveals  professionally  rennovated  interiors , that still capture indications of the buildings  former use, creatively combined with a modern functionality.

Dukane (Toucan) printed by Beat, Agata & friends from the original by Rosvita Pulver

The emphasis on this three day workshop  was on collectively creating and preparing designs, then printing  a large format book in four colours and  twenty four pages,  which the hosting partner La Drucki named   Cut and Connect . A large table was set up in the info shop and the Grundtvig group , together with people attending the workshop from Bern  set to work, mostly with pens, paints, scalpels  and scissors,  assembling templates on transparent paper  to develop on to  silk screens.  Parallel to this action,  Beat coordinated a D.I.Y. workshop with Agata Pulver and friends  , who realised silkscreen prints , photographed and converted  from  original traditional Swiss paper -cut designs inherited from her mother Rosvita.  Local gardner Urban and friends also came around and were shown how to print some  t shirts for promoting their  new green fingered enterprise.

The workload to print the book alone was unrelenting , the project idea was to  finish before the participants left the city and , starting at ten in the morning and going late into the nite (every nite).,  this mixture of people from 6 years to 60 years,  combining   professionals, apprentices and absolute  beginners,  made for a positive, dynamic and productive experience.

To keep on track, Urs and Luki from La Drucki  talked the production schedule details through with the Grundtvig group daily  at evening mealtimes. These  meals were in themselves  fantastic culinary art sessions , WSPN  brought self hunted wild pig meat  from the Polish  Masuren and special thanks to Mama Zupa for providing an unending supply of sweet and savoury cupcakes and a delicious meal of chestnut “spaetzle”

The Grundtvig group took time out from the workshop  and were given a  comprehensive “Tour de Reitschule”  by  Luki of the Dachstock venue; Dojo,  Frauenroom,  Theater,  Cinema,  Info Shop,  Cafe, and the enormous Reithalle itself, as well as various other ateliers such as the Baki wood workshop which was also the temporary setting for our evening meals and temporary station for an WSPN initiated shadow drawing workshop with live music and poetry accompaniament. Each area within the complex has its own organisational group with weekly meetings and representatives from these groups attend larger regular Reitschule meetings to share in the overall administration.

Skill Sharers Meeting  08.02.13

ASSOCIATION SPIRAL TRIBE
Mark,Debbie

CZENTRIFUGA
Stine, Beat, Coost, Anef, Inga

KULTURPARK 3000
Susanne and guest teacher/expert Vasja from Metelkova, Lublijania

REITSCHULE
Urs, Lukas, Flo, Schanett

STOWARZYSZENIE WSPOLNOTA MAZURSKA SWM

Kasia, Tomek, Syga, Antek, Iza

We wanted to continue using the format of consensus meeting (using hand signals rather than voices) to work through the topics for discussion which we have covered in  more detail in our first blog entry.  Mark from Association Spiral Tribe introduced  the basic idea once more  for newcomers; Luki  volunteeed to act as facilitator and Urs helped to point out who wanted to speak next. Mark  explained that since the last meeting they  had visited the Czentrifuga workshop in Berlin again, this time  to produce  commemorative artefacts for their 23rd birthday celebration event co-organised with Coost from Czentrifuga on the Stubnitz culture ship, currently in London.

Our invited “guest of honour”  Vasja Lebaric  , working in a collective multi media project at the Metelkovo culture center  , in Lublijana and also teaching at the university there,  gave informal talks on his experiences working in  similiar “open source” collective projects   to the Reitschule as well as particpating in the workshop and producing some fine prints!  Urs , who is  coordinating the Grundtvig project  for La Drucki,  explained that he was relatively new to Reitschule screen print team and that he had learned the technique some years before in Berlin in the Fleischerei (ex Czentrifuga) . There was a go-round introduction where everyone spoke a few words about themselves.

Mostly the talk was about plans for  possible next meetings…

8 March till 01 April  “Rohkultur Bonbon”  Czentrifuga exhibition, performance and installation @ Neurotitan Galerie,  Berlin.   Part of this will focus on ongoing Grundtvig projects …. artworks, informations and presentations  in this context.

O2-04 April –  “Table of Contents” – Simon / Association Spiral Tribe   “Abelton” audio software skill sharing  workshops  at Ponte Carlo restaurant Berlin spread over three days ans seperated between  beginners, intermediates and advanced.

15 Mai – “Trip to Mars”   – to be in the  center of Marseille,  sharing  skills to create an end event.

ca. 21 July – “Wiatrak Poetry Festival”  Deep in the Polish Masuren with (so far) laminating and  wood workshops plus  two days of music and poetry.

Summer 2014  “Paintival” (working title)  We agreed to work towards making a spectacular last event (in the context of Grundtvig)  Where better than here? and what more spectaculat than  in the massive (size of a football pitch) Reithalle itself?. We talked about how we envisioned such an event and we agreed that the name and content would slowly define itself over  the coming year. As the space is so big we talked about inviting outside groups and experts and also look to make new link-ups. Luki – possible link ups with Zurich, Lausanne, Geneve?. Also a coinciding music event  in the Dachstock  venue?

Lukas made the wrapping up comments and went over the workload planning for the following days.. Stine proposed a second meeting before the particpants left to talk again about the Reithalle end event.

Meanwhile, back to work!  the race was on to the finalise the product! Video clip by WSPN

Second Meeting – Discussing the Reithalle event in 2014

We had all had a couple of days to digest this idea and it was a productive brainstorming session. Heres a list of some of the ideas and comments

– Summer 2014  it could  be a week long cultural event. Avoid planning it in or around middle July because of a clash with the Polish poetry festival. Perhaps sometime in second week in June? First weekend July ? (in July theres a lot of free space)

– Skill Sharing Network activities/workshops – invite others for the weekend.

– How to best use the space? divide? delegate? …

–  expert old plastic upcycler and performance director/artist Stine Lawine (Czentrifuga) had the idea for a Five Kilometer
Costume – a large workshop with everyone dressed in self made costumes.

– Mark (SP23)  talked about his idea “Commoners Fayre” – helping Communities to organise their own events, encouraging  a feeling of belonging  as opposed to simply spectate and consume.  Workshops could preceed performances “Start with the Seed”

– Co-ops with (for example) Refugee art space in Basel “Black Bock” also “Bleiberrecht”

– What about involving special  needs groups? , possible co-op with “Freiraum”

– To what degree people participation? How large should the event be?

–  Invite specialised / related artists and experts  for example , Yann Keller (LINK), Berlin based D.I.Y. artist and musician or Russian environmental artist Sergey Korsakov and “Cardboardia” (LINK)

– The space in front of the Reitschule could be available…

– Link up possibiliites with other ateliers at Reitschule ?

– Entry fee?  not for workshops but yes for selected concerts and performances, for example ,combine with  the Dachstock  venue for a pay party to help funding? Balance of tikketed actions and free to pay in order to help with costs.

– Funding possibilities in general?  Fundraising events? a central fund for covering basic costs and artists…

– Work on a list of the people/ groups interested and their resources,  see how that connects and how these  connections suggest the shape of the event.

– Yodelling and Traditional Swiss “Scissor Schnitt”  workshops ? Could be fun!

– Maintain the timeline and check back in a few weeks!

– Luki agreed to compile a list of ideas.

Book is Ready!  et Voila!

The paint was hardly dry, as the first  books were cut and bound and the first Skill Sharers had to leave..

Check out some of the finished pages in a small GIF animation HERE

LINK TO CUT N CONNECT FOTO ARCHIVE

Beat travels from Berlin to Bern to prepare for the second main meeting of the DIY Skill Sharing Network at the Reitschule culture center.  Click on our SOUP LINK  to  see Beat and members from the centers screenprint  workshop “La Drucki”, speedily preparing promotional posters  for the Grundtvig open workshop …

LINK TO MORE FOTOS

and so it came to pass… 600 people assembled and celebrated on the former East German “Future Culture” ship MS Stubnitz, docked in Londons East end Docklands…

FIRST MEETING AT CZENTRIFUGA HOMEBASE OSTKREUZ BERLIN 14-17.09.12

In the summer of 2012 , Czentrifuga suggested to the new partnership that the kick off meeting coincide with the opening presentation of the new Czentrifuga workshop and gallery space, which was to coincide with a much larger local event „Lange Nacht der Bilder“involving almost a hundred galleries and off spaces throughout East Berlin Lichtenberg and Friedrichshain.

Although we still wait for news about five other prospective organisations who have applied to join the skill sharing partnership, we felt it important to meet and start the dialogue as soon as possible and get the creative juices flowing! We held the meeting in the Czentrifuga gallery space, next to an exhibition of Grundtvig print works from our previous Grundtvig experiences. Later this day would be the first opening of this space to the general public.

A few hours before the meeting, Coost from Czentrifuga talked about how with meetings its sometimes difficult to achieve group focus . Issues such as timekeeping, group concentration (more people talking at once) and those that talk the most dont necessarily have the most to say 🙂 … can be a bit frustrating, time wasting at the least. Mark, representing the French partner Association Spiral Tribe, explained how consensus meetings had worked well for them – an effective system for achieving group agreement (consensus) on work schedules and proposals allowing for more fair participation. We decided on the spot to try it out!

We started the meeting on time – everyone present and a good start to the partnership! First, we decided on the length of the meeting and agreed that we limit it to one hour, which meant that the issues on the agenda had to be discussed relatively quickly and efficiently. Armed with an improvised flip chart, Mark, together with Coost and Beat from Czentrifuga drew up a a list of suggestions for the meeting agenda. Before the actual meeting we hung up a large blank piece of paper and asked the Grundtvigians to write any more points for inclusion. First we made a go-round introduction . Each person at the table introduced themselves: Name, Location, Idea…

Association Spiral Tribe (France/Marseilles) artist collective of musicians, technicians , djs & graphc artists „we like to make people dance“
Representing: Mark / graphic, theory and organiser based between Totnes, UK and Marseilles; Simon and Ixi / sound designers and musicians; Debbie /graphics and video art and Simone- singer and organiser, all based in or around Marseilles. http://sp23.org/

Czentrifuga (Germany/Berlin) a transnational collective of people of all ages, shapes and sizes. Czentrifuga is a part of Unter Druck Kultur von der Strasse e.V. Its a complex of screenprint, multi media and upcycling ateliers based at Ostkreuz and built on the idea of helping people to help themselves People have the opportunity to participate in various open workshops or plug- in some other way…
Representing: Beat and Gabba /silkscreenprint and organisation; Coost / organisation; Damien / printer and musician and Frank / illustrator, painter and recent screenprint apprentice.
Czentrifuga.de

Reitschule Silkscreen Printers Collective (Switzerland/Bern)
Representing: Urs / street art, screenprinting and joint coordination at “La Drucki” / printworkshop at the Bern Reitschule. This “Riding School” was squatted and now its officially recognised and has a cinema, restaurant, music venues and a whole spectrum of other cultural activities www.reithalle.ch/reitschule/info-en.html

Kulturpark 3000 (Germany /Bad Salzufen)
Representing: Stephan / gallery curator at Premarts in Berlin. www.premarts.de

Stowarzyszenie Wspólnota Mazurska [Association Masurian Community] (Poland/ Gyzyzko) Representing: Iza / organising at Gyzyzko jazz club and Eva , also from Gyzyzko, but lives in Berlin working as translator. www.wspolnotamazurska.org

Our D.I.Y. Skill Sharing Partnership combines groups with Grundtvig experience and some not. To bring everyone up to speed, Stephan from Kulturpark 3000 gave a talk about the Grundtvig initiative.

the key points –

– the magic word is “mobilility” and skill sharing and showing work practices to each other

– presenting a theme that connects the partners

– orientated on the process not the product

– an educational fringe grant , where informal adult learning can be almost anything from reading a book to organising a concert, gallery exhibition or a workshop. Another focus is on teacher-pupil exchange, which in our case, can be an alternating relationship.

– after the application is accepted there is a pretty straight forward online progress report to be written after the first year and a final report, which is more sophisticated, at the end of the 2 year funded period.

– European Shared Treasure “EST” database – each partner uploads the results from their experiences including a logo and a self descriptive text for public access.

Coost and Gabba presented Czentrifugas previous Grundtvig experiences in words and pictures.Everyone was presented with thee most wonderfull screenprinted Cosmic Hospital DIY Manual – a legacy of our previous “Grundtvig DIY” Learning partnership. http://cosmic-hospital.org/ ; http://foto.poetaster.de/grundtvigart

AGREEMENT THROUGH CONSENSUS
With the basic introductions and project info exchange . Mark volunteered to explain about consensus decision , that it is an alternative to commonly practiced adversarial decision making processes, about open source transparency , participatory democracy and educating the community with consenus politics. Rather than a usual voting system with minority and minorities, agreement is found by a simple-to- learn set of hand gestures. Its possible to get a sense of how people are think ing about the issues being discussed. This system can help for better group relationships: A cooperative, collaborative group atmosphere can foster greater group cohesion and interpersonal connection.
The modern popularity of consensus decision-making in Western society dates from the women’s liberation movement and anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s, but the origins of formal consensus can be traced back to the Iroquois Confederacy Grand Council as early as 1142 , indigenous tribes have supposedly been using similar group decision reaching methods even further back in history. The Quakers adopted the technique in the 17th century, also influencing the views of other pacifist Protestants, including the Anabaptists (Mennonites/Amish). In particular it influenced their distrust of expert-led courtrooms and to “be clear about process” and convene in a way that assures that “everyone must be heard”.
The consensus decision-making process often has several roles which are designed to make the process run more effectively. Although the name and nature of these roles varies from group to group, the most common are the facilitator, a timekeeper, an empath and a secretary or notes taker. Not all decision-making bodies use all of these roles, although the facilitator position is almost always filled, and some groups use supplementary roles, such as a Devil’s advocate or greeter. Some decision-making bodies opt to rotate these roles through the group members in order to build the experience and skills of the participants, and prevent any perceived concentration of power.

At this first meeting the partnership needs to establish a road map; who we are and what are our resources; what do we want to do and where do we want to go..

• Simon (AST) – tie in meetings with events e.g. skill sharers cabaret where everyone presents their skills on a stage and invites live audience and other partners to try them out…
• Gabba wishes to coordinate the screenprint documentation of this partnership. Upload any related photographs onto obin.org which has proven an important image / ideas pool for Czentzrifuga as well as serving as public archive.

Common Digital Platforms

• Mark proposed , and we all agreed, that we should share and cooperate info and material from our projects.
• Coost proposed to start a with a simple blog (this one!) website? Other platforms? Wiki?
• Maybe its good when each partner should have a go at making their own documented web report
• Simon proposed and we agreed to use dropbox for data exchange. Continue using the online foto archive Obin org? = yes!
• Urs suggested we try Doodle to communicate online. He promised to send us the infos and suggest we try it out.
• There was some mixed feelings about Facebook – the only time, in fact, when sevetral of the group started shaking their hands in disapproval – consensus meeting stylee….The general feeling was not to use this as a main platform.

Next Meetings

23.11.12 SP 23 – 23^rd Birthday party on MS Stubnitz /London

The German culture ship Stubnitz has been a previous Grundtvig partner with Czentrifuga and is currently involved in another audio-learning related Grundtvig programme. We agree to continue the cooperation and integrate with them if and when possible. Coost helps maintain this by making frequent visits – living and working together with the ships crew.

If the ship is officially recognised as German Territory does that mean that travelling to Stubnitz (currently) in England (where our network have no official Grundtvig partners) is a legitimate mobility for our partnership? Whatever the answer to this interesting crossing-the-border question , Coost offered to facilitate in securing the date on the ship and Beat , Gabba and Stine from Czentrifuga agreed to help Mark and Debbie prepare a series of artworks to celebrate this special birthday event in the heart of Londons east end docklands.

As final point, Beat and Coost were interested in a „seminarium“ idea in Switzerland – a location where we could work collaboratively on formalising a manifesto.

Extra Time

Beat asked for any other thoughts and ideas and Mark proposed we go round the group again to check. We first gave ourselves a 10 minute break . Some of the closing thoughts and comments

• Gabba – im happy so far ….we can discuss ideas further and informally during the ongoing Czentrifuga event over the next 2 days.
• Ewa – “i like the organsation so far, very proffessional.”
• Ixi – as a musician, the possibility to travel and meeting new partners helps creative new levels of inspiration and is a chance to engage with places where normally we wouldnt get the chance to.
• Stephan liked the group – its good when every partner can use their contacts to involve other like minded organisations , perhaps inviting experts from these contacts to future meetings. For example Urs from the Reitschule was invited by Czentrifuga to host an open stencil making workshop a year ago in Kolin (and now his organisation is in this new network!)
• Urs talked about the idea to make a final larger scale meeting at the Reitschule where we would have a chance to use one of the large spaces there for an art and music fair. A point for the Skill Sharing Network to focus on to present the partnership. Stephan thought to invite other partnerships to get involved and Simon talked about the idea of making smaller “run-up “events in Bern.Coost –
• Coost “really excited”

Exhibition Opening – Public Grundtvig Presentation – Concerts – Party!

Foto Archive

Bob Rutman (LINK)

There were approximately two hundred visitors over the weekend exhibition period. Because it was linked in with a massive east Berlin initiative “Long Night of the Pictures” a lot of people that visited were there for the first time. There were also people there from the new Stubnitz Grundtvig partnership which Czentrifuga and Kulturpark 3000 helped set up, so it was a good chance to pre  talk with them  and  share some experiences with them.

There were two nights of live music , performance and djs – Simon and Ixi from Association Spiral Tribe made a memorable 5 hours “live set” between them , using the latest audio software which Simon is developing for a company in Berlin. Czentrifuga also invited grand master of the Berlin avant garde scene Bob Rutman to perform on his analogue self made instruments , improvising together with Dave Burda on hurdy gurdy and throat singing. Performances were made by Unterdruck Theater and Go Go Trash. Michael Schmacke and Katrin Rothe representing the trick film animation studio within the Czentrifuga complex, made live audio video presentations , inviting the general public to try out simple but effective intuitive drawing software “Tag Tool”  , which was projected in real time onto a large screen. Altogether, the long weekend of activities was a very fulfilling and creative time which helped to both energise the new partnership and also disseminate the Grundtvig blueprint to a larger audience.