ELEPHANT IN A TENT

Grundtvig D.I.Y.  at Divo Institute Kolin Czech Republic

Europe Days 6–9.05.11                     

The Divo Institute house is conceived as a living museum, each room has its own particular styling, with many paintings and installations made by Sonja and Mark ortheir invited guests. From the ten partners, Czentrifuga, Fleda, Slam, Kulturpark 3000, Divo, Non Grata managed to take part.

Open Workshop

Sonja from the Divo Institute produced a great blog to hype the occasion elephantinatent.blogspot.com. Hopefully the video clip we made about this meeting explains the significance of Elephants and all things Europe (Since then Peter Rampazzo from Interflug Galaktika recognised the connection with Hannibals elephant invasion of Europe.) Czentrifuga invited streetartist, screenprinter and subculture all rounder Urs “Mad Cows” from Bern, to coordinate a stencil making workshop and various stencils were produced throughout the day in the beautifull Divo garden. The large elephant cut-out shown in the video above was a spontaneous site specific idea made from cardboard , conveniently found in the trash from Divos brand new kitchen!

In keeping with theme of large animals Mark from the Divo Institute gave an informal workshop “Dance with the Dinosaur” - a reflection on curating alternative projects in large institutions. "be aware of the possibilities and loopholes, occupy and use holes in the system". He talked about his long experience in the squat scene in post -wall Berlin and then later, throughout Europe in "off-spaces" (non-commercial, non institutional, art spaces) One of Divos next projects will be setting up - a temporary autonomous space in Prague National Gallery in Oktober, installations, art, music, meeting, performance and party, the first time anything like this has been done in this prestigous location.

Activities

Audio/ Video documentary presented by o.s. Fléda from the last Grundtvig meeting on Stubnitz in Hamburg ... the brutal, comic truth about a Partnership still looking to find its feet.

Opening of the ”Around Background” (open for public)

Photo exhibition of 80´s Czechoslovak underground music scene with a presentation by Lenka Zogatová (o.s. Fléda)

Concert: Urband (CZ)  violin/guitar/double bass and vocal trio.

Dragan (Czentrifuga) made a great field recording and mixdown from this, you can

hear an excerpt in the video clip, and more at www.archive.org/details/kolin.

Followed by Djs Miki Disc - Jockey (CZ) & Cindy Wonderfull (USA/Berlin)

Internal Workshop/Meeting

The meeting was more of a series of many smaller exchanges, which seems to be the way the partnership is developing. New patterns and new alliances emerge – friendly organisations sitting in, taking part in the discourse, bring new ideas and proposals for other ideas outside of the existing Grundtvig parameters. “Our organisation is an organism” Stephan (Kulturpark 3000) More tips, tricks and words of wisdom from Gabba (Czentifuga) "wann du immer auf alle wartest kommst du zum nix" which also reinforces a more de-centralised, less rigid, process of interaction and exchange.

Gabba presented the first finished pages from the Grundtvig D.I.Y. Manual „Cosmic Hospital“ .It was an opportunity for the Partners to easily see how to create page designs. Screenprinting does not lend itself to a lot of fine text print so, in this sense, the manual is more about visual representation of ideas, together with minimal, essential texts, logos or slogans. The idea is to incorporate all the interesting visual elements (fotos, drawings, graphic design etc) that express best the individual Partners and what they do. Partners are asked to think of a sentence or a phrase that describes their organisation.We look forward to having a beautiful artefact to show to future generations and make old Mr Grundtvig chuckle from his grave!

Five members of Non Grata dropped by en route from Paris to Piotrkow Trybunalski (Poland) as part of their intensive Diverse Universe Performance Festival tour. Although Aaron from the Stubnitz could not attend (busy sailing the Stubnitz ship!) we talked some more about the idea of the ship coming to Tallinn. Also taking part in the discussions and the stencil workshop were three members from the Küme art association in Turkey: Zeynep Pehlivan, Burak Baskin from Ankara and Hakan Pehlivan who teaches at the faculty of arts at the university in Kayseri.

To help make the Partnership more transparent amongst ourselves Stine (Czentrifuga) asked "What does every Partner do (an example) in the context of social interaction.This also links up with our Grundtvig Manual work in progress...

Iza from Stowarzyszenie Wspólnota Mazurska explained about how the long running Jazz Club "Galeria" in Giżycko had a fire. This building is one of the oldest in the town. Those present offered support in case they need help with the reconstruction or benefit actions.

Evaluation

With a ten Partner network its problematic to get each organisation present at meetings because of conflicting commitments, also, theres often a chaos factor due to travel delays. It seems that we need minimum three months advance notice about a future meeting to have a chance to get everyone present. In this sense, it makes sense for the Partners who still have to act as host that they look now for setting future dates for meetings? We forgot to take care of the attendance (mobilities) protokol which makes for unnessessary and tedious backtracking work afterwards. 
Czentrifuga has already made an exhibition and performance in Zurich thanks to getting connected  through the Partnership, it looks like they will be taking part at the Prague National Gallery in Oktober. In fact its quite tricky to keep track of all the many smaller exchanges that are happening , so many different dialogues ...things are going positively viral!

Stephan(Kulturpark 3000) has recently participated in making the final report for another Grundtvig Partnership. Some points he mentioned:

European Shared Treasure – This EU database gives a comprehensive overview of all the Grundtvig Learning Partnerships . Czentrifuga sunsequently uploaded a logo (thanks Simone!) and the Grundtvig D.I.Y. project description.

It's more sensefull to spread out the travelling (mobilities) evenly over the two year period.

Every partner should fill out a final report at the end of the two years, which is

available online.

Future Meetings

17 July 2011  Gizycko /Gradzkie (Poland)  This is an opportunity for both meeting and holiday combined! . We are invited to stay in Gradzkie at Kasia and Sigas beautiful farmhouse /windmill for the week following the Grundtvig activities  to enjoy the Masuren countryside, swimming, horse riding and the amazing local corner shop! 

Here's the suggested itinerary from Stowarzyszenie Wspoinota Mazurska:

Fr.15 July Arrival

Sa. 16 July Wiatrak (Windmill) Poetry Festival . This magical event happens for more than 15 years now.

So.17 July Grundtvig D.I.Y. Meeting

Oktober 2011 Kosice (Slovakia) This is an opportunity for the Partnership to meet

and also present our organisation at the “Spots” conference . This meeting is in preparation for the European Capital avtivities “Project Kosice Interface 2013” 
The main themes for the conference :

-Decentralisation of culture, taking culture from the city to the outskirts

(for example the large Romany communities in this area).

-Long term transformation of the city through culture.

-Developing creative industries.

-Support for civil society participation and communities.

September 08 2011 Berlin : 20 Years Unter Druck e.V / 10 Years Rohkultur (Czentrifuga a.k.a. Fleischerei)

Unter Druck e.V. is the parent organisation of Czentrifuga. This will be both a celebration and an awareness day event held on Leopold Platz, Wedding, Berlin. We could use this chance for a small meeting in case anyone would like to come over or maybe even take part? Ideally we would like to use the “Grundtvig Tent” for this?!

some more Stencil examples from the workshop here