Sprint/HistoryOfSprinting

As a critical voice, as a practice of sharing and reciprocity, 6 years of sprinting continues. It started of in 2017 with a reading group to dive into the understanding of the concept of commoning and how to bring this into practice in the arts. Can we design a common artistic program, run by artists and supported by Timelab? (un)commoning residencies was about issues of ownership in co-creation, livelihood in an open source/free resources environment, art institution and the need for production support. What would art as a commons look like today? What would be the effect on the individual, the network, the value system and the institution?

Quickly after that, we understood the relationship between the artist and the host is crucial to develop a commoning residency. So we started developing a matching tool for artists and institutions. And the following year, 2018, we continued with drafting an agreement based on the open space principles. The sprint in 2019 was all about getting a grip on the AIR beyond a service. In that moment, as a group, we developed a prototype of a cycle of self-sustainable peer support, on which the group agreed to commit to a test run of another type of residency program during the fall of 2019. Reclaiming artists' residencies was the name of the statement of a group of artists taking over the artistic budget, decisions, selection, support and reporting in 2019. By taking over the artistic program of the organisation, the group decided to organise an 'introduction week' to make sure the residents were onboarded properly. The sprinters selected the artists, decided on how many and divided the budget.

During the introduction week, where the sprinters invited 6 artists to enter the program, from which 3 would be selected. Timelab has a history of inviting 2 artists a year because of funding restrictions. Following the assumption we could support more artists within a peer network than in an individual artist/host relationship. The group of artists defined this new type of residency as a scaffolding in which the sprinters all take part in being the supportive structure for the 'building' to emerge.

"One of the goal of our program is to reshape artistic residencies through the idea of commons. But we quickly agreed on the fact that the word “residency” was too known, and too connoted. Therefore this word was “in the way”, and was probably blocking our way of thinking and at the same time the possible understanding from an external audience. After a brainstorming session we decided to pick the word “scaffolding”. The original idea is that we don’t start our process from the scratch, we take support from the residency-idea and concept and try to improve it, just like a regular scaffolding goes around a building to maintain it. A scaffolding doesn’t have a pre-determined shape, it starts by adapting to a context. And it’s quiet easy to put together, in a “construction toy” spirit.But at some point the scaffolding, once it is big and strong enough, could “escape” its original building. The scaffolding can grow in its own direction, becoming its own entity and have its own shape. It can easily remodel itself, experiment with itself, move backward or forward, re-use part of itself to keep going, or just growing indefinitely, while connecting all its previous elements. Of course, the image of a scaffolding is also linked with the idea of a perpetual working-site where we can all be workers and users at the same time." Towards the residents, the sprinters defined their manifesto on arts and commoning :

To enter the residency the artist climbs the ramp of De Schuur.

By doing that he/she agrees to redefine his/hers state of being as a maintainer within the context of a collective commoning practice. The maintainer is aware/cognisant of the effects of slow apocalypse (social and environmental) and able to recognise/divine it's cracks within the confines of the given field of practice that is the community and environment around De Schuur.

The maintainer is not focused on output and producing quick results but rather on small gestures and “doing life”. His or her artistic practice is a set of tools instead of an external/main focus and through this practice the resident foregrounds parts of activity that normally fall out of the artistic scope.

He/she stimulates vulnerable encounters and practices through an extended citizenship. Instigating a small shift within a given territory, he/she opens her/himself to risk.The protocol of the residency is that of an ongoing dialogue of re-inventing care and creating an alternative value system that is based on peer exchange and awareness. The Residency experiments with and creates collective knowledge around the potentials of commoning within an artistic context with a particular emphasis on the value of a relational commons. The resources are not predetermined, fixed and scarce, but emerge through an open ended process of transactions, dialogue and exchange. This process of sustainability produces places as “back doors'' with the possibility to enter, leave, disappear and reappear again. Within this frame there is also a place for adopting – the role of the maintainer can be passed on and taken over by others.

The resident agrees upon maintaining the hygiene of the organizational model and agreements within and beyond their time at De Schuur. This led to the development of the project 'onderhoud' in which all six artists would be involved and 3 sprinters took up a coaching/mentoring role and 3 other sprinters took up a logistic supportive role. The role of the hosting organisation had shrunk into funding, network and location support. During the period of time, Timelab operated as De Schuur, which was the name of the temporary state of the building being under construction. (2019-2021)

The participating artists in residency experienced the combination of an artificially created group and the pressure of self-organisation as an unsafe environment to work in. The group asked for a more present and explicit role of the host. Sprint 2020 was a collective evaluation including the artists in residency 2019 and all sprinters in which we defined the 8 patterns of the School of Commons game as a scaffolding instead of the sprinters group as a support system. This lead to a long period of self-reflection of the organisation folding back to the initial sprinters group and sprinting concept as a way to reflect instead of operate.

The failure of the Reclaiming artists' residency experiment had a huge impact on the artistic program of Timelab which gradually started to shift towards a plea for a radical presence residency shifting AIR to CARE.

In 2022 Timelab started with the presence residency with Illia Gladstein and Alaa Abu Asad for which the agreement started to form towards a mutual inspiration. This also influenced the sprinting activities, by now folded back to sprinters with not only artistic practice experience but also organisational knowledge and interest. During the sprint 2022 the wikimedia platform was introduced which distributed the accountability towards the group. At this point, we also decided to open up the development of the whole process by publishing notes, comments and unfinished thoughts that led to where we are today.