[resource-net] Fwd: WH!PH!2018 - invitation to participate

Diana McCarty diana.mccarty at gmail.com
Tue May 8 14:33:53 CEST 2018


Hello resourceful people,

This is not really Berlin, but not that far away: if you have the
time, resources and interest, check it out!
The people are fantastic!

bestest,

Diana

፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨

Work Hard! Play Hard!
http://workhardplay.pw/en/

25 June – 1 July 2018
Minsk, Belarus
26 – 28 June, Sanatorium close to Minsk

This year WH!PH! invites you to navigate along the axes of several
"parameters" – physical and conceptual spaces, the logics of temporality
and themes. The system of parameters is rather flexible, something like
cross pollination, a cube-rubik or kaleidoscope: you can use them
directly or indirectly, or connect several. We focus on performative,
conversation-based, dance, walking, screening and online formats.

፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨

⚡ Extensions
Extensions as add-ons; hybridity; improvements; deteriorations;
tractions; expansions; cyborgization; disconnection of the body,
collectivity, space. Extensions automate everyday life, they give the
body new feelings, break the established and distribute collectivity. Do
we want to be self-sustaining, self-motivating, self -repairing and
replicating? Do we want to develop extensions of different levels? What
is left by the board of biotechnology? Whether non-human queerness possible?

⚡ National Academy of Sciences as Witch
In the era of universal rationalization  the National Academy of
Sciences (http://nasb.gov.by/eng/organizations/) produces collective
knowledge, whose production methods are soup from bureaucracy, market
reforms, the Soviet legacy, science, understood as "satisfaction of
one's own curiosity at the state expense" and purely administrative and
economic activities. WHPH offers to recode this place in the very city
center, referring to it as something that brings us healing, where
neoliberal norms of human rights are suspended, where one can smoke at
the corridors, and and you can see the reflection of steam from the
boiler in the wrinkles of an academician – a collective dinosaur looking
at us from the billboard – in which he cooks his formulations. There is
a museum of achievements, satellites on a red carpet; they produce wine
and a "formula of tranquility" – tablets "tryptophan". It is a witch
house, free from the pressure of society.

⚡ HTP
High-Tech Park
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus_High_Technologies_Park)  is a
special economic zone that has grown itself out of science campus. A
place squeezed between a forest with ticks, museum of stones, institute
for geophysics and the Minsk belt-road. It is an outsourcing plant, an
incubator for profitable forms of collective knowledge production, a
breeding-ground for inhuman imaginaries and forms of production of the
future that could be characterized as the financially reliable
"techno-determinism". The way how this lump is mounted to the rest of
society is the source of dozens of painful effects, from "why am I not a
programmer?" to "You know, Viber is a belarusian company!".

 ⚡ Pharmachoreography
Have you ever taken any substances to affect your condition while
working or resting? What are the feelings associated with this
experience: euphoria, depression, other strong or weak feelings?
Describe how the perception of your own body and your motor functions
changed before and after you took them. Describe how you felt inside a
group of people before and after taking the stimulant. We invite you to
take a closer look at your neuroses, diseases and pleasures that you
share with others, through which you socialize, and those, which, on the
contrary, push you out of groups. Do they correspond to the contemporary
capitalist formation? What substances nourish / suppress them? What is
their pharmacodynamics?

⚡ Places of transparency
Characteristics of the environment (optical, acoustic or other):
transparency, fluidity, crystality, glassiness.
The places of fragility: shatters of the  VDNKh, national library of
Belarus, slepyanskaya water system, the institutions disappearing before
your eyes, collective production as aesthetics,  "Liner"  restaurant at
the National airport, skeletons of uncompleted hotels, under-utilised
malls with deserted corridors and hollow boxes.
Transparent environments like new residential complexes, hotels,
casinos, business centers, whose outlines and glass flesh are meant to
signify modernity and economic growth; through the transparent bodies of
which shine the skeletons of capital and corruption schemes; the
dazzling glare of their surfaces does not allow to peer and hold the
gaze, reflecting the ghostly piles of the (post-socialist) city,
obscuring the places of memory. Transparency like exposure and
possibility to see the inside.

⚡ Political dancefloor
What political dimensions does the sound or the body moving on the
dancefloor have? The affect generated by music and distributed in the
space is the strongest tool of shared collectivity. "Gender of sound"*,
material conditions of music production, depression after discoteque,
night as queer-time, music and political protests, spoiled party and
aural engagement: "political dance floor" invites to DJ sets, sessions
of collective listening, performances, etc.
* The name of the research project of Сara Tolmie and Susanna Jablonski

⚡ Protocols of self-organisation
Protocols are formed as systems of rules. However, this model is not
immutable. To the contrary, it is intrinsically multilayered, the system
of rules could be re-established and redesigned. There are affects,
emotions, attractions and neuroses that invisibly or visibly grow in the
process of acting out those sets of rules. Protocols as scenarios,
procedures or algorithms, as a formalisation of certain logics and
operations. Along with their flexibility. What is to be controlled and
programed and what to be kept spontaneous or “unsafe”: failures and
breakages, transparent zones and blind spots, open and “closed” calls,
emotional and political relations, desires and discipline?

 ⚡ Sanatorium
We will spend two days and two nights in the sanatorium close to Minsk.
>From the socialist contemplation and regeneration of the body via the
vaucher to exclusivity of health and post-Soviet rituals: in this way
the development of sanatorium and health institutions in Eastern Europe
could be described. WH!PH! wants to use the infrastructure of the
post-Soviet sanatorium (oxygen cocktails and pearl baths) and to discuss
rest, laziness and non-productivity, physical and mental health, illness
and toxicity, physical and cognitive regeneration practices,
pharma-industrial complex.
Information about the place will be sent separately. We are counting on
a sanatorium near Minsk where you could stay at a low-budget price or
come during the day.

⚡ Self-destructing structures
The action takes place in the landscape, where the material for
ideological constructions is plasterboard and banner fabric stretched
over the frame for the press-wall. Where self-destructing new buildings
coexist with (self)liquidating cultural institutions.
Planned self-destruction is a tool for competing uncertainty, an
integral part of the strategy of unrestrained prototyping, appropriating
areas that used to be similar to places of eternity arrangement.
Our question is how to survive, when someone is engaged in a planned
self-destruction? How to expropriate the slogan of a startup culture
"Fail fast and cheap. Fail often. Fail in a way that doesn't kill you"?
How to learn manoeuvring between radical destruction and rebuild, when
together with dropping back from our homes and dance floors we are
looking for resources to create new ones.

⚡ Speculative synthesis
What can form the future agenda apart from science fiction? Where is it
possible to peep or invent politically grounded methods of production of
the future? Trader's techniques, disaster programming, problem solving,
computer games, predictions of futurologists, stress tests of employees,
 appropriation of holidays
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paCqiY1jwqc), friendship with non-human
actors, use of random generators, collective dreaming?

⚡ Terror of relationship
Terror of the non-blood relationship is a practice of re-coding
simultaneously directed inside and outside of the collective, subject,
community or network. It is a symbolic gesture that speculatively
unfolds from the future and acquires its materiality through the
performance of the collective.
When unfolded inward, it is the answer to the question of how to saddle
the corporate "we" so that after being fired it would be not so
intolerably painful (practice of "de-we-fication"). At the same time a
non-blood relationship is an antidote to the professional failure that
turns into the personal insult. It comes into light in a situation where
friendly networks are intertwined with professional ones, when
affectivity is our means of production.

When unfolded outward, it is the way to embody the desires, the
immobilization of the enemy by a sister kiss. This is the opacity of
transparency regimes that pierce us.

⚡ Tongue and teeth of creativity
The language of creativity is being increasingly occupied by neoliberal
logic and capitalist precarity. We hear more and more mantras of
creativity: touch me, sense me, more requests for free volunteer work,
while losing decent working conditions (were they good once?). What
forms of criticism, self-organization, understanding of creativity can
we use? Do we need to defend the concept of creativity or, re-using the
title of the essay by Audre Lorde, "the master's tools will never
dismantle the master’s house"? WH!PH! wants to discuss inventiveness (
izobretatel’nost ), criticism and exploitation through the creativity,
history and practice of associations of cultural workers, forms of
revitalization (gentrification?) and censorship, radical and collective
creation. Can the sweet tongue of creativity hurt itself by a sharp tooth?

፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨፨

We expect your suggestions of any forms of participation at
work.hard.play.0 at gmail.com by May 21 2018.

You can share this invitations with your colleagues and friends, who
might be interested in it! Please, write in the email:

⚡  A description of how would you like to participate. In the subject,
please, put WH!PH! 2018 and your name.
⚡  One picture that resonates with your idea
⚡  Which parameter/s does your suggestion resonate with?
⚡  What equipment / materials / tools would you need? *
⚡  Place and time of your event (if relevant)
⚡  Approximate duration
⚡  Some words about you
⚡  Dates of your stay in Minsk
⚡  Would you need a place to stay in Minsk? (what dates)
⚡  Would you need a room in the sanatorium (1 or 2 nights, 26-28.06)?
Unfortunately we are not able to cover the costs for accommodation,
travel and health procedures. The costs of the rooms are approximately
15 to 23 euro per night per person. The availability of rooms is limited.

* WHPH will try its best to provide you with all necessary things, but
our capabilities are also limited.

Please, tell us if you have any inquires about visas. Now, you do not
need visa for a 5 days stay in case you travel to and from Minsk
Airport.  Here  is more detailed information:
http://mfa.gov.by/en/visa/visafreetravel/e0ced19bb1f9bf2c.html

Work Hard! Play Hard! is a self-organized initiative. Unfortunately we
do not have the budget to provide financial assistance to participants,
but we try to provide all the desired conditions for your non/work and
to find you accommodation with the help of our friends. We also warmly
welcome any help and support!

Working group:
Aleksei Borisionok curated series of exhibitions and events, connected
to the issue of the event and writes for magazine KALEKTAR.

eeefff (Nicolay Spesivtsev and Dzina Zhuk) works with emotional effects
of new economic regimes, driven by computation. The group combines
artistic practices with research, sociality of computer science,
science-fiction of critically understood startup culture, software and
hardware hacks. More info here: https://eeefff.org/

Olia Sosnovskaya works with text, performative and visual practices;
develops interest in the problematics of celebration, pleasure and the
political. More info here: http://oliasosnovskaya.com/



in touch,
working group of WHPH
http://workhardplay.pw


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