‘Gathering In, Gathering Around’, the third event in the ‘Come Alive!’ series, takes place over a two-week period. It focuses on the unearthing of Casco’s own archive, and will host various meetings with visitors interested in the archive as well as with special guests whose practices hinge on the idea of the “common”, which resonates—or dissonates—with the history of communism. Our idea is to reflect broadly on Casco’s practice, but with particular attention being given to the future of the institution in light of the idea of the common, of open sources inviting communal uses. Against the tide of accelerating deregulation and privatization processes, renowned philosophers such as Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou or Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have recently attempted to renew the concept of communism and the idea of common wealth, and artists and other practitioners likewise look into such possibilities. It is in this vein that Casco’s archive might be performed.

Both the archive and the meetings will be centered around a circular steel ring designed by NY based architectural collective common room for this occasion. The circular boundary is meant for gathering “around”, rather than gathering “in”, and engages with different ideas of what the “circle” could be. The multiple functions of Casco’s space—whether it be for research, meetings, presentations, construction, or performance—will be fully activated. Projecting as much as reflecting, and collecting new sources and references as much as archiving, will shape events in these two weeks. You are warmly invited to join us in this process.

‘Come Alive!’ is a series of discursive events organised for Casco’s twentieth anniversary, that looks into the social and artistic initiatives and movements of the recent past and their related historiographical processes, alongside Casco’s own. For the third event, questions and issues that have arisen from the two previous events in this series may reemerge such as the performative use of the archive and institutional responsibility; questions on the authority of historiography and the momentum for historical processes and methods; the frictions and contradictions between individuality, collectivity and social movements; and the position of art, or other cultural practices, and the tension with multiplicities of political action.

Event, 21 Jun – 04 Jul 2010

http://www.cascoprojects.org