There, There working group is an open collaboration that connects and shares ideas in a decentralized way, focusing on playful public engagement, care, and experimental working practices.
For the School of Commons program, There there proposed a series of listening experiences to be developed. The project is envisioned to be launched on lumbung radio and is released in 2024, after a year of collaborative work in 2023.
The format is defined as a listening experience that explores cultural practices of radical inclusion and openness to various voices and perspectives driven by the notion of solidarity and care while addressing complex topics of migration, struggles under oppressive regimes (institutional, social, and political), and surviving under the conditions of climate change and late capitalism. Given that these downing paradigms overlap, the project finds its positionality on terrains of what could be referred to as “optimism in despair.” With the project, we hope to create a virtual space where productive discussions and artistic experiments could drive constructive forms of gaining agency and participation/ taking political action.
With various interpretations at hand, the project of radical openness to diverse voices and stories, and engages with the following themes:
1) There there – as a form of repetition and the power of sonic expression – is open to various contributions through sound pieces, sonic arts, field recordings, sonic explorations, and commentaries.
2) There there – as a temporal aspect and projection of the future driven by “optimism in/over despair” – is open to conversations and reflections on forms of futurity.
3) There there – as a reference to spatial, planetary, and geographic conditions – is open to stories and explorations about migration and transitioning.
4) There there – as a form of relational work and practices of care – addresses participatory forms of engagement as a form of decolonial project, immanent critique, and decolonial thinking through art and practice.
On a regular basis, There there releases episodes that take on contrasting formats (addressing specific interpretations of “There there” mentioned above), organizes public events and fosters collaboration. This is aligned with the lumbung radio’s values by proposing the format of radical openness, with only one predicament of accentuating care and solidarity notions. By thinking and testing various non-hierarchical formats for experience sharing and knowledge dissemination, There there aspires to learn through practice.
Driven by all the values mentioned above, the project also incorporates various local and trans-local sub-programs: collaborations, community workshops, shared listening sessions, educational projects, discursive formats and more.
