Creative Resistance - An intersecting networks approach

Announcing the 2010 freeDimensional annual meeting ‘Creative Resistance – an intersecting networks approach’ on Wasan Island in Ontario, Canada from 11-14 July.

Historically, the freeDimensional annual network meeting is a time when we look for strategic opportunities and innovations to advance social justice by hosting activists in art spaces and using cultural resources to strengthen their work (our mission). This year, we are looking outside our own programs and activities to host a meeting of art space networks, artistic practice networks, mobility operators, and human rights organizations, some of which we have collaborated with and all of which have inspired us. The theme is ‘creative resistance’ because there are not many occasions for networks at the intersection of arts and social justice to get together and discuss common issues and consider their synergies.

We think this meeting is especially important at a time when global interdependence is increasing and new forms of collaboration are necessary to combat economic instability (which is linked to the social issues that culture workers often challenge through their work and which may place them in the same dangerous situations as other human rights defenders). The objectives of the meeting are fourfold:

- To learn about each others work and sectors and discover where our we overlap;

- To share examples of how social issues and instances of injustice impact our networks
and organizations;

- To share models and tactics and discuss their transferability across practices and
geography;

- To discuss the future of networks as an alternative form of organizing by sharing innovations and making space for collaboration.

‘Creative Resistance – An intersecting networks approach’ comes at a time when freeDimensional is changing the way it operates. To date, freeDimensional has built up a network of art spaces in 70 countries which willingly receive requests for use of their artist residency apartments by activists and culture workers in distress. We call this practice 'Creative Safe Haven'. This support network has been drawn upon in 60 cases over the past four years to help activist artists, journalists, musicians, writers, theater directors, and community organizers from more than 20 countries. As we move forward, we wish to forge stronger relationships with other networks and organizations in order to develop variations of support for people using creativity to fight injustice. We will focus our energies in the following ways:

- Providing technical assistance to any art space (regardless of network membership) wishing to provide support to an individual in distress;

- Providing technical assistance to networks that wish to include 'Creative Safe Haven' in their menu of network activities;

- Produce a ‘how to’ guide of the 'Creative Safe Haven' process in multi-media by working with New Tactics in Human Rights and other partners;

- Pilot the development of a rapid-response fund for people using creativity to fight injustice called the Creative Resistance Fund, which will help to pay travel and incidental costs when a culture worker needs to evacuate a dangerous situation or has a strategic opportunity to affect social change.

We look forward to sharing more on these new directions through the ‘Creative Resistance – An intersecting networks approach’ meeting and on our website. The ‘Creative Resistance – An intersecting networks approach’ meeting takes place on Wasan Island in the Muskoka Lakes of Ontario, Canada hosted by the Breuninger Stiftung. On the occasion of our fourth year meeting on Wasan Island we will also be conducting an experiment: In September 2009, freeDimensional selected Sümer Sayin from Turkey for its Artist-in-Community residency from the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe & the Mediterranean (BJCEM) in Skopje, Macedonia. The residency takes place concurrent to the ‘Creative Resistance’ meeting on Wasan Island, and Sümer is encouraged to participate in any of the sessions she finds of interest.

“It would not be unreasonable to argue that art has little potency in the face of violence and repression. But evidence to the contrary comes from some of our century’s most brutal despots. Historically, those intent on eliminating opposition and suppressing popular dissent have made a priority of quickly eliminating creators and thinkers from their midsts. [sic] It is highly ironic that these brutal regimes seem so much more aware of the potential power of artistic creativity than cultures we consider more “civilized”.

“I have come to know that if you scratch the surface of a human disaster you will find creators responding to the most difficult of circumstances, making art to live, to eat, to kindle the human spirit, to bring peace or to resolve conflict. In these circumstances, you will also find art makers manifesting beauty in the face of horror, and revealing the ugly truth in the face of denial. They are doing this to rally, or bring order, to educate and inspire, to entertain. And once revealed, the story’s telling is never in doubt whether told directly, obtusely, in code, as a joke, as a song in a pub, a poem or a painting on the wall, as a play unfolding in a cramped living room, or as a dance of angels on the dark and sinister streets.”