A hearty Welcome by Harm Lux
The project meer teilen : share more found its inspiration in the ancient Andean culture Sumak Kawsay, where the spiritual and material were constituted through solidarity with community and respectful human exchange in harmony with the natural environment. This practice of the Sumak Kawsay was translated to Spanish as buen vivir. The whole concept of a monetary system was unknown to their culture.
Buen vivir, the so-called good life, was gained through supporting each other through social contributions. It was a spiritual culture with a strong belief in the collective qualities and acted here accordingly, and was not ve-ry flexible. Circa 550 years ago the first conquistadors demanded the Sumak Kawsay to commodify their lives to shift to a monetary system. This was foreign to them as they could not classify environment, plants, animals and themselves by financial standards. Now – today – the Sumak Kawsay culture is once again active in Latin American countries, in Ecuador it has entered the constitution, with each citizen contributing a few hours of their skills each month for the community. This current revised practice of buen vivir does not ignore the influence of capitalism but rather incorporates it with a critical view and a priority to engage the community.
As the curator of meer teilen : share more project, I invited 18 artists from Colombia, Croatia, Peru and Switze-rland to first begin exchanging ideas on buen vivir locally in Bogota, Lima, Thurgau and Zagreb. In the following months, the exchange of ideas expanded to intercontinental discussion with artists in weekly Skype sessions in four established groups. Through this collective process and their individual art practices, they are rethinking the qualities of the buen vivir culture, wondering which fragments are valid today and in the near future.
The artists gather at the end of July in Zagreb, Croatia at the MSU Museum for Contemporary Art, and continue on to Thurgau, Switzerland to develop the project there in both small collectives and as a large group, presen-ting the results of this process mid-August. The project conference is August 12–13 at Kunstmuseum Thurgau and videodays on September 1–3 at Cinema Luna, Frauenfeld. The constantly evolving ‘lively installation’ (as the weekly workshops also contribute to this evolution) will be on show August 14–October 7 at the Shed im Eisenwerk, Frauenfeld.
Harm Lux, independent curator
Good Information by Zsuzsanna Gahse
On first hearing the term buen vivir, many surely think of a land of plenty, where milk and honey flow and all problems disappear. Later after more thorough consideration, (in the worst case, after years), the honeyed perspective may return. In between there is grumbling and reluctance, as soon as the word sharing arises in connection with buen vivir. Who’s supposed to share what with whom why? And why should one hand over one’s own ideas to strangers? Such visions of community conflict with reality; they’re the province of past utopias. (Is there even such a thing as past utopias?)
Nowadays, people band together in groups only in order to prevail against other groups; afterwards they all go their own way again. The ancient Amerindian community structure is well known (documented in television programs watched by individuals, as soon as they leave their groups), but there are other words for the intact relationships that are meant by buen vivir. Dancers, mimes, painters, thinkers, poets, singers, and musicians are part of these ancient communities – all artists are. Buen vivir is an art. It belongs to artists (to many, but not all of them), who stretch their tentacles and pass on what they have. They often count on things that are false, from a market economic perspective, things that are contrary to popular opinion – but still this art has been bravely carried on across the ages, keeping buen vivir alive. Teilen, ein Teil sein, mitteilen. Beautiful linguistic logic (in German). To be part of, to impart. Formar parte de algo, impartir algo. Probably one can trace the relationship between commu nity, participation, and com mu nication in every language. The langu-age renders the meaning, the participation. A flourishing state of affairs, a work of art, a land of plenty.
Zsuzsanna Gahse was born in Budapest in 1946, and has lived in German-speaking countries since 1956. Currently she lives in Müllheim. She writes texts that fall some where between prose, essay, theatrical literature, and poetry. She has published around 30 books, most recently JAN, JANKA, SARA und ich (JAN, JANKA, SARA and I, 2016) with Edition Korrespondenzen, Vienna.
see: zsuzsannagahse.ch