BASIC INFORMATION ABOUT PAF
Submitted by jan ritsema on Mon, 2019-01-14 05:55
PAF is based in St Erme, 150km north-east of Paris, France, between Reims and Laon.
PAF (=PerformingArtsForum) is a place for professional and not-yet professional practitioners and activists in the field of performing arts, visual art, literature, music, new media and internet, theory and cultural production, and scientists who seek to research and determine their own conditions of work. PAF is for people who can motorize their own artistic production and knowledge production not only responding to the opportunities given by the institutional market.
Initiated and run by artists, theoreticians, and practitioners themselves, PAF is a user-created, user-innovative informal institution. Neither a production-house and venue nor a research center, it is a platform for everyone who wants to expand possibilities and interests in his/her own working practice.
PAF is
- a forum for producing knowledge in critical exchange and ongoing discursive practice
- a place for temporary autonomy and full concentration on work
- a tool-machine where one can work on developing methods, tools and procedures, not necessarily driven toward a product
- a place for experimenting with other than known modes of production and organization of work, e.g. open-source production
Most importantly, PAF offers all these possibilities without imposing them. In other words, PAF depends on how you affect and are affected by taking an active part in shaping your own activity in your workplace.
PAF is an 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 artist's residency, where space and material belong to the staff's responsibility.)
Sliding scale prices in 2024
This is a new experiment as part of a wider effort to make PAF more accessible. We encourage you to pay as much as you can so that we can start addressing structural asymmetries among PAF users, and all contributions above 18€ per night will go to The Mattress.
* The minimum price is 18€ per night if you stay more than 5 nights; 20€ for less than 5 nights and 16€ if you stay more than 30 nights. Combined with the volunteer efforts of all PAF users, it has enabled PAF, as a project, to stay afloat for the last few years. You can keep paying these prices if your financial situation is fragile and a higher nightly price would prevent you from coming to PAF.
* 20€ is the advised base price for more than 5 nights; 22€ for less than 5 nights, 18€ for more than 30 nights.
* 22 - 25€ (or more) for any duration if you have stable income, institutional funding, property or family wealth.
+ 20€ membership fee for all, valid 12 months and a form to sign that PAF is not liable for any damage done to you.
PAF will not ask you about your financial situation, you will evaluate the price to pay by yourself.
Payment is only in cash or french chèque. There is an ATM machine in the Supermarket.
As we have no staff anymore we can't pick you up at the train station, that means that you have to order a taxi.
The taxi brings you for 6 euros to paf from St Erme station and for 35 euros from Laon. The same price for a 3/4 person taxi as for a 7/8 person one. Before 7h and after 19h and the weekends 7 euro and 42 euros. They only speak french. Call them on beforehand as they have to come from St. Erme. Inform them when you have a lot of luggage. Taxi Leblanc (St Erme) tel +33(0)323226909
PAF is a place for production; it is also produced and maintained daily by the people who stay here. PAF tries not to exclude, instead, it wants to encourage all sorts of differences in resources, capacities, interests, backgrounds and knowledge. To avoid policing and hierarchical structures, PAF tries to create safety and care from within – this is an ongoing practice to be carried by all.
Whatever project you’re working on, PAF can only make it possible for you, if you make it possible for PAF too. The things in PAF are there for you and you are there for the things as well ( i.e. PAF or the coffee machine, a lecture, or a corridor is there for you as much as you are there for PAF or the coffee machine, the lecture or the corridor).
PAF wants to be an easily accessible and self-organised space. It has no selection, it is relatively cheap, its doors are open, it has no staff and is guided by four rules:
- Don't leave traces
Clean behind you in order to leave every square centimeter, that is not your private room, all the time available for everybody when you are not using it. Traces are unwanted or uninvited marks (material or immaterial) left in the space or in others.
- Make it possible for others
Think of this as an opportunity to open up space(s) by showing a rehearsal or a movie, giving a lecture, starting a discussion, cleaning a corridor, or helping somebody.
- The do-er decides
But not alone! Things are decided by the ones who do, more than the ones who talk. However, the opportunity to do is not without limits and action should be taken in consideration with others.
- Mind asymmetries
PAF is made of asymmetries. People come from different places, inhabit different bodies, have different experiences, are situated differently in power structures and have different boundaries. Take this into account, challenge your own position and let it be challenged, while respecting other people’s boundaries.
Think of those rules as interrelated.
PAF aspires to be a space where intersectional, anti-racist and trans*feminist analysis inform practice. Sexism, racism, classism, LGBTQ+phobia, ableism, ageism and any other form of discrimination or aggression are not tolerated. PAF fosters a practice of collective accountability and considers it everybody’s responsibility. More info available here.
Please contact mediationpaf@gmail.com if you experience any incident which you feel needs a mediation process, or speak to the mediation volunteers (their names will be on a board in the hallway). The email address can also be used to share feedback around accessibility issues—any experience that has made you feel vulnerable or made the space more difficult to navigate on a physical or psychological plane. The email address is confidential, and read only by Lyor and Corin who are responsible for mediation this year.
PAF is a place for production and concentration. For this reason it is not an ideal place to bring your children or pets. Please inquire with us to see if an exception can be made.
PAF's relationship with the village is fragile. Paf is in a way semi-legal. Careful and positive relations with the villagers are necessary for its existence. PAF organises concerts, English conversation, and a knitting group for the villagers. Please refrain from arty interventions or site-specific events in the village and avoid loud noises in the night in the garden or the building.
New! PAF classifieds is a site for apartment swaps, ride-sharing, and object exchange. It’s aimed to enable people to travel for less and/or not to pay two rents when coming to PAF. Give it a spin!
