Winter Holiday Camp is an artistic experiment in institutional democracy open to the collaboration of children and adults alike, including every worker of CCA Ujazdowski Castle and its visiting public. With its initial stages already begun last Spring, and scheduled to unfold during Winter 2013, it is now one of the projects favored for cancellation by CCA director Fabio Cavalucci due to the museum’s financial crisis. This suggestion was presented in Cavalucci’s letter to the Ministry of Culture, which was sent in the beginning of September.
The Working Group of Winter Holiday Camp is a collective of artists and activists from a diverse array of countries. We don’t exist singularly, but rather form a node in a series of networks that straddles political and artistic spheres. We stand in solidarity with Janusz Byszewski and the union of workers (KZ NSZZ Solidarność nr 677 w Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski) that published a letter on September 25th on the website of Obywatelskie Forum Sztuki Współczesnej and informed Gazeta Wyborcza about critical situation in their institution – expressing concerns about the current managerial process of the CCA [“Katastrofa finansowa Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej”; September 25th]. We recognize that these concerns of precarity and non-democratic decision-making are endemic of global labor trends: cut-throat corporate models that dominate institutional functioning. Through our art practice, we plan to enact a holiday from the stresses and inevitable conflict of undemocratic systems during the period of Winter Holiday Camp. Despite the initial withdrawal of support from the Director, we have not wavered in our commitment to Winter Holiday Camp or to the staff of CCA with whom we have already begun to work extensively over the past several months; in light of the current labor struggle, we now see our work as even more necessary. The following is an explication of the project’s relevance to the CCA’s political situation and a declaration of our current aims and proposed actions:
The primary goal of Winter Holiday Camp is to form a deeper understanding of the cultural institution and to transform it playfully–working with children as our guides into the future, in search of real solutions to satisfy the shifting fantasies and expectations of a society in transition. Our goals will be bolstered by two primary areas of research: firstly, to grasp the position of the CCA within the larger cultural-political context of a rapidly changing Europe and a global crisis of late-stage capitalism breached by trans-local social uprisings; and further, to understand the internal structure–hidden values and points of conflict–of this specific institution.
Originally a solo project of Pawel Althamer, Winter Holiday Camp will build from the pedagogical practice developed by Janusz Korczak, who worked with children as “little citizens” with full rights, respect and agency. Korczak’s work with children contained an ethical imperative that all people be included in horizontal decision-making processes that affect their lives and livelihoods. This visionary and functional model of democracy resonates with the democratic tools adopted and developed by the recent social movements, including general assemblies, non-hierarchical working groups and collective propositions.
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