WINTER UPDATE MEETING, december 24th 2007 - january 4th 2008

WINTER UPDATE MEETING AT PAF
24/12/2007-4/1/2008

At the “Summer University” of 2007, at which 70 people took part, we decided to rebaptize the “Winter University” into a “Winter Update Meeting” (WUM).

What is in the name? We will see what is in the name. But the Winter University of 2006 contained less (workshop) proposals and functioned more as an updating and exchange of each others artistic and/or scientific activities. So we decided to call it accordingly.
Still proposals for collective activities/projects are welcome.

“Winter Update Meeting” [=WUM] is a project initiated by the participants of the Summer University held in PAF in August 2007. A number of practitioners (artists, theoreticians, cultural workers, informationtechnologists etc.) who gathered for this Summer University in the house in St. Erme.

The main interest in organizing WUM is to exchange, experiment and test the practices participants of PAF are developing and/or will develop in future: types of projects, areas of research, modes (methods, procedures, techniques) of production, frames of collaboration, discursive engagement by all interested participants. In other words: all activities that make up knowledge production in the arts, theory and cultural practice, open and specific.

WUM isn’t another international gathering, offering workshops, lectures, panels etc. under a representative topic for which participants apply. WUM isn’t based on the principle 'pay to learn and teach to earn'. Every participant pays the same fee (the equivalent of food, lodging and technical organization) to take part no matter what competence or specific knowledge he/she can offer.
WUM can act as a minimodel of PAF: an intensification, a furthering, a confrontation and an intereference-plus-cumulative-effect of all projects, activities, concepts and initiatives, which are either in progress, or about to take off in future, or subsist in potentiality.

Practical information.
- you can come as many days as you want in the foreseen period of the Winter Update Meeting or stay longer, before or after.
- participation in the costs: per person 10 euros a night (unless one stays less than 5 nights, then the price is 15 euros per night).
- food is organised (only during WUM) and costs 15 euros a day (tell us when you are a vegetarian or fish-vegetarian)
- total sum per day: either 25 or 30 euros per person
- reserve by email: janritsema@mac.com
- no application is needed, but make a reservation soon, as the interest seems to be quite big and PAF can only host 50 people
- general information about PAF and how to arrive there on
www.pa-f.net

PAF is a open and relatively free site (and)
PAF is a nomadic space
PAF tries to stay cheap
PAF has almost no staff
(When PAF would have a staff, the prices would be much higher and the highly appreciated autonomy offered to the participants now would be strongly limited. PAF would no longer make a difference but would become a normal well organised artists residency, where space and material belong to the staffs responsability.)

The highly appreciated autonomy can only be maintained when everybody takes part in the every day maintenance organisation.
In other words: -Don’t leave traces and put things back where you found them.
To be more concrete: - clean up the personal and general dirt you left behind you. - do not colonize space nor information (books, dvd’s etc.), - and keep information, materials, apparatuses and spaces available and moveable.
To say it differently: Make it possible for others, not by retreating, not by withdrawel, or by being modest, on the contrary, making it possible for others is thought as active participation. Through action one offers and opens spaces in which others can take part. One proposes participation in an open rehearsal, a lecture, a conversation, a film or documentairy showing and/or by cleaning up and maintening general space.
In other words: one does. This makes that the doer decides at PAF

Jan Ritsema

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