Decisive here is the idea of an inessential commonality, a solidarity that in no way concerns an essence.
Taking-place, the communication of singularities in the attribute of extension, does not unite them in essence, but scatters them in existence.

- Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community (1993)


Ambiguity
Central is (re)thinking: how do we live together, how do we work together? How do we shape our 'togetherness'? It is a tension between, on the one hand, the social process of working and living together and, on the other hand, the material and formal, autonomous qualities of the outcomes of this process. These two aspects, the social and the autonomous, seem independent, however in fact they constantly interfere and do not exist without each other. Our work is always a proposal on this interaction. We seek resonance in the broadest sense of the word. Working across various disciplines, within diverse contexts, spheres are overlapping and intertwining organically. These overlaps are the ambiguous spaces we create.

Assemblage
As a collective composed of individual voices, we listen to each other, we accommodate each others' ideas and we learn and unlearn from and with each other; all along producing collective knowledge - or un-knowledge - that we unleash in the world. This is caring and acceptance of otherness in any form. Friction and friendship. Together we do residencies and organize projects, make exhibitions, performances, publications and teach, develop theater plays and record music. We sometimes literally live together, we cook and eat together, we paint, print, draw, film, jam, we read and discuss texts, visit exhibitions or take long walks.

Becoming
If we look at the collective as an assemblage, our collective body is always 'becoming', containing both the human and non-human. Rosi Braidotti taught us that 'we are connected to multiple 'others' in a vital web of complex interrelations that influence each other'. We exist through artworks, food, audiences, plants, frequencies, etc. The attention to what happens in our points of contact (gatherings) are our departing point. 'We work from an affirmative vein and the awareness that one is the effect of irrepressible flows of encounters, interactions, affectivity and desire, which one is not in charge of'. We create 'zones of sentience', where anything is possible.

Carrier bags
We see actions as bags, we bring bags full of materials to act. These are metaphorical bags full of different stories, but also literal bags. Handmade bags with fabrics; knitted, embroidered, painted, printed bags. Big bags to be hung on the wall and from the ceiling and unpacked on different moments in different spaces. Ursula K. Le Guin says: "So, when I came to write science-fiction novels, I came lugging this great heavy sack of stuff, my carrier bag full of wimps and klutzes, and tiny grains of things smaller than a mustard seed, and intricately woven nets which when laboriously unknotted are seen to contain one blue pebble, an imperturbable functioning chronometer telling the time on another world, and a mouse's skull; full of beginnings without ends, of initiations, of losses, of transformations and translations, and far more tricks than conflicts, far fewer triumphs than snares and delusions; full of space ships that get stuck, missions that fail, and people who don't understand."

Context
Many disciplines, contexts and methods that we employ are often designed to fuel collectivity, to encourage, but at the same time to question. Authorship is not abolished, but a tension is created. Not everything is conceived and created together horizontally and democratically. This dynamic combined with the organic nature of collectivity brings about an agile but sometimes (almost) uncontrollable process that lands differently in different contexts. In recent years we have worked within an academy, a commercial gallery, a museum, an artists' initiative, in self-organized projects, public space, virtual space, residencies, art fair and theater. Presentations are often culmination points of the process and the methods and research questions employed. Some infrastructures are more suited to embrace forms of collective work, in others it chafes and clashes. The history, program, intentions, but also the future of a place, gentrification or museumization for example, can play a role in this.

Ensemble
We are a multitude in the form of a collective. We are It is part of an ensemble (FKA Networked Collective). Our numbers fluctuate. We are artists, performers, dancers, actors, students, theoreticians, in different stages of development, different ages, different cultures, all walks of life. We wear the complications and contradictions of this multitude on our sleeves. Today we are: Bernice Nauta, Carmela Michailidis, Mattias van de Vijver, Bas van den Hurk, Jochem van Laarhoven, G.C. Heemskerk, Lotte Driessen, Samieh Shahcheraghi, Reinout Scholten van Aschat, Marijn van Kreij, Maxim Ventulé, Marcia Liu, Kim David Bots, Hussel Zhu, Loran van de Wier.

Index
A support structure that helps us organize our thoughts and ideas while keeping a level of fluidity. The fluid backbone of a shared body. The framework of our common practice.

Latent commons
Anna L. Tsing says: "latent commons are hidden, fugitive moments of entanglement between living beings in a complex world. These commons may not be directly visible, as they structure themselves and develop in interaction, cooperation, competition and desires between different beings and environments."

Layer sessions
An example of a collective way of working are the layer sessions, based on the simple principle of the overdub. Someone improvises a live performance, a set or a run. This can be done with a classical instrument, but also with one's own voice, a painter's brush, an onion or the floor. A stage is created, in which others capture the performance, with camera, sound and light. Group concentration occurs. In the next recording, someone adds a new layer, plays on top of it. Cameras, costumes, instruments and recording equipment: all media, attributes and roles rotate. Resulting in video clips in which all participants play or create together through different layers of time and sound. This principle invites both to follow the rhythm and tempo and to go against it. The non-dogmatic, indefinite interplay in which you have fun is for us related to Agamben's whatever being. It is radically open, anything can happen and everything is extremely important. You listen to each other, you add something, you are silent but present, you join or form the dissonant, you are on stage, off stage.

Mothership
For most projects, a mothership forms within the collective. Some members take on more responsibility without sacrificing substantive equality. For this application we are: Marijn van Kreij, Jochem van Laarhoven, Bas van den Hurk, G.C. Heemskerk, Kim David Bots.

Naipatta official
Both the discipline as the corresponding language. Using the latter as an overarching terminology detached from its original essence. Ensemble, (dis)harmony, (dis)sonant, jamming, chanting, rhythm. naipatta official

Networked Collective
In his now almost prophetic lecture The Artist as Producer in Times of Crisis (2004) the late Okwui Enwezor argued that our times are marked by several crises: economic, ecological, social and political. Claiming that during such crises more cooperation, participation, interaction and (new forms of) collectivity are needed. This need for collectivity can be seen as a counterbalance to contemporary (drifted) individualism. In his lecture, Enwezor defined two forms of collectivity. More conventional forms, according to Enwezor, have a structured modus vivendi based on permanent, fixed groupings of practitioners working over a sustained period." "In such collectives," he continues, "authorship represents the expression of the group rather than that of the individual artist." In addition, he mentions a second form of collectivity that became the starting point of our collective project: "a flexible, non-permanent course of affiliation, privileging collaboration on project basis than on a permanent alliance. This type of collective formation can be designated as networked collectives." While no longer using Networked Collective as our name, our whole presence as a collective body is shaped by Enwezor's words.

Presentations
Presentations attempt to bring together various elements of our research in a specific context. Social, formal, intellectual and institutional questions all play an important role in it. Here we evoke the tension between social and formal processes in a collective way and embody them together with the audience. As if spectators, the collective and performers slowly become part of and merge into a shared atmosphere during an event. Through the scenography, we both appropriate and keep space open. Literally but also figuratively. Collective space, institutional space, public space and artistic space. These presentations allow both ourselves and visitors to share experiences of, and question, notions of 'collectivity', 'entanglement', 'institution', 'authorship' and 'autonomy'. In that sense, presentations are experiments that allow us to reflect on the past and create space for new questions. Noortje de Leij says about our practice: "In an attempt to radically open themselves and the material to one another as well as to the influence of external visitors, ideas and theories, the process-based quality of forging connections, of relationships, becomes the basis for a continuously moving, organic gesamtkunstwerk (in the broadest sense of the word)."

Reading groups
Our work flow often begins with determining theoretical starting points. We enjoy reading and discussing theory, books and texts. Within the collective sometimes smaller reading groups are formed that will gather new insights that later can be shared. We read books as a suspension of answers to our central questions about collaboration and coexistence. ily cere- cahiers

Rhythm
To recognize and acknowledge each other's rhythm is important to us. Anna L. Tsing says: "patterns of unintentional coordination develop in assemblages. To notice such patterns means watching the interplay of temporal rhythms and scales in the divergent lifeways that gather." To feel and recognize these different patterns and rhythms is a crucial part of our collective learning process. Making music and creating together can help to raise our sensitivity for these rhythms and its communal affects. Every artist works from their own rhythm and introduces its pace to the collective rhythm. The collective rhythm is one that is disturbed or altered constantly. Rhythm is the part that is part of all parts of living and working together.

Occupy
To occupy a certain space for a certain amount of time with a group of people and make things. Each space being another container. Each encounter a contamination. Multiple actions that unfold in space and time, different spaces, different times. No distinction is made between the preparation time and the actual exhibition or performance. We work on a continuum, things add up, nothing goes to waste. Traces and left-overs become the actual work.

Onary, nor notice
Anna L. Tsing says: "These livelihoods make worlds too-and they show us how to look around rather than ahead." To be part of things Ad Reinhardt says: "To be part of things or not to be part or having been part of things as they've become, to part from that part that was part of things as they are or not to part? Part of life is more than life. Part of an artist is more than an artist." Videocamera Almost always there is someone with an old handheld videocamera present during our gatherings. On mini-DV tapes fragments of our time being together are captured and sequenced as an 'instant montage'. Different cameras circulate within the collective, creating a complex narrative, something in between a documentary and an abstract/structuralist film. A rhizomatic, multi-voiced and multi-focal document. onary, nor notice

Whatever
"The coming being is whatever being," writes Agamben at the beginning of The Coming Community. For Agamben, the word whatever within this context does not mean "being, it does not matter which", but the exact opposite: "being such that it always matters". With this coming community, Agamben agitates against tightly defined thinking about identity and reflects on a community beyond any definition of self. For us, this is an abstract but also exciting philosophical idea. Interesting, but also dangerous. Is it feasible, does it constitute a blueprint? Or will it remain a poetic question without an answer?



part@itispartofanensemble.com