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Pierre Bal-Blanc, FerranBarrenblit, Alexandra Baudelot,Binna Choi, Eyal Danon, MariaLind, Pablo Martinez, SanneOorthuizen, Emily Pethick,

Nata!a Petre!in-Bachelez, TadejPoga!ar

How to BeginLiving in theTrees?

Cluster is a network of eight contemporary visualarts organizations located in residential areas onthe periphery of European cities (with onemember organization in Israel). Each is highly invested in engaging with its particular locality.The network was formed in summer 2011 with the

goal of facilitating an exchange of knowledge onhow the different member organizations operateand how they relate to their local contexts, to

funders, and to the media. Most of theorganizations are situated in underserved or impoverished areas with large immigrant

populations, and where many languages arespoken. It is the first network of its kind.

The member organizations of Cluster arefocused on commissioning and producingcontemporary art. Their programs are oftenexperimental, process-driven, and research-based, and the organizations work with both localand international artists. Although theorganizations vary in size, they all produce work

that is deeply invested in their local contexts.Cluster believes there is a strong need to build adialogue around this work, not least because theactivities of art institutions in peripheral citiesare hardly covered in art publications, but alsobecause these spaces play a small but very important role in the constitution of the publicsphere Ð they are physical spaces for unusualforms of assembly, experience, and exchange. TheCluster network is dedicated to exploring such

possibilities, especially in the light of nationalisttendencies across Europe.

A symposium on the artistic, social, and political implications of this work will take place June 13Ð15, 2014. Subsequently, a bookdiscussing the Cluster network and its concernswill be published by Sternberg Press. The member institutions of Cluster are: Casco Ð Office for Art,Design, and Theory (Utrecht); Centre dÕartcontemporain de BrŽtigny (BrŽtigny); LesLaboratoires DÕAubervilliers (Paris); TheShowroom (London); Tensta Konsthall(Stockholm); CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo(Mostoles); Israeli Center for Digital Art (Holon);and the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary

Art (Ljubljana). This discussion took place at theP.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum in Ljubljana onSeptember 28, 2013. Ð Cluster Maria Lind: I have recently been thinkingabout the main character in Italo CalvinoÕs bookBaron of the Trees Ð the aristocratic boy ineighteenth-century Italy who decides to live intrees. This is such a powerful image of livingdifferently. It doesnÕt involve inventing aspaceship or some fantastic new device. It justinvolves shifting the terms we have right outside

the window. The Cluster network is now twoyears old, and my questions are: What has

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a r c h 2 0 1 4 P i e r r e B a l - B l a n c , F e r r a n B a r r e n b l i t , A

l e x a n d r a B a u d e l o t , B i n n a C h o i , E y a l D a n o n , M a r i a L i n d , P a b l o M a r t

i n e z , S a n n e O o r t h u i z e n , E m i l y P e t h i c k ,

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Cluster actually done? Why did Cluster emerge atthis point in time? Why not ten or even five yearsago? Binna Choi: It partly came out of thefinancial crisis Ð that may have necessitated ourway of working. Maybe there is also skepticismabout what culture can produce or generate. Byforming this network, youÕre creating some kindof circuit that galvanizes a new force.

Pierre Bal-Blanc: ItÕs very difficult toproduce ideas or even to produce contentthrough a network. With Cluster, we try toexperiment with our shared practices, sites, andknowledge, and then we take time to understandthe differences and similarities among ourrespective situations. We are isolated. Wesometimes feel like weÕre working in hostileenvironments. We are confronted with indifferentaudiences, with people we have to continuallyconvince to participate in our activities. Thedifferent parts of our practice as small-scale

institutions are not natural, but rather the resultof clear decisions Ð not something that has itsown tradition and customs, but something thatinvolves a commitment to working to transformour environments. Maria: In many cases, we are the placeswhere people have their first encounter withcontemporary art. In the case of Tensta, thatÕsparticularly true when it comes to young people.ItÕs a huge responsibility. Tadej Poga!ar: Here at P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E., fromthe very beginning we organized a lot ofexhibitions, like first solo shows. For the majorityof young girls and boys, this is their firstencounter with an art space. They are totallylost. They have no idea what to expect. They aretrembling. How this initiation happens isextremely important, so we really try to workhard on it. Sanne Oorthuizen: Courage is important,having the courage to tremble. Pierre: They need that. Sometimes, childrenin the exhibition space are completely fascinatedby the space itself, even if there is nothing inside.Our role is to make clear for them that space is a

language. As Henry Lefevbre would say: ÒLapratique spatiale r•gle la vie; elle ne la fait pas.Ó Pablo Martinez: If the institution is locatedin a working class context, you are not supposedto do things that are intellectually oraesthetically challenging Ð youÕre supposed to dothings that are easy for the audience, becausefor working class people, this is their firstcontact with art. But I think being in this contextmakes it necessary to do quality things with thebest artists. This is the inverse logic followed byart professionals who have in mind an audience

that is more intellectual or sensitive to anestablished set of references.

Nata!a Petre!in-Bachelez: None of uscould do the same work if we were somewhereelse. We understand these institutions not asneutral places, but as always situated andreflected, as interacting with their surroundings.ItÕs not just that the institutions interact withtheir surrounding class environments;surrounding conditions also impact whathappens within the institutions.

Maria: ItÕs a radical specificity. Everythingwe do is tailor-made. If everything is tailor-made,itÕs much more expensive in terms of resources,time, labor, energy, and so on. ThatÕs a commondenominator. We put a lot of care into shapingsomething in relation to local conditions. I have aquestion about proximity. When youÕre close tosomething, ÒembeddednessÓ is a useful term Ðwe are perhaps organizations consciouslyembedded in our contexts, in our neighborhoods.What happened to the embedded journalists inIraq? They went with the troops; they were really

there when things happened, and they took lotsof blurry photographs with their mobile phones.The things they wanted to transmit were difficultto see, although they were the ones closest tothe real thing, true eyewitnesses. The situationweÕre facing is similar, in that itÕs hard for us totransmit what weÕre doing, because of thisproximity. Hito Steyerl has written beautifullyabout this Ð the closer you get, the moreabstract the visual output. I think weÕre in thatsituation somehow. The pixels are getting moreand more blurred. So we have to tell the story ina different way. We are all, in various ways, vitalparts of small and large art biotopes, but wedonÕt necessarily get covered by national mediaor international art magazines. In that sense, weare a blind spot. Eyal Danon: ItÕs not only related to how wetell the story to the outside. We also need thisperspective for ourselves. We need to see thatthe places we work in are unique, and that thereare similarities among them. We need this evenbefore we reach the level of communicating withthe outside. Pierre: Every art institution is embedded in

its local situation, even the big museums in the center of the city. In myview, the problem is understanding of oursituation in relation to the globalization of the artworld. The emergence of biennials andcontemporary art organizations everywhere onthe planet in the Õ90s shifted the center awayfrom the West. It is important to see us also as aproduct of this situation. Nowadays, we aresupposed to obey the forces imposed byneoliberalism (decentralization, dispersion,disproportion) without any of the advantages of

the previous situation Ð that is, liberalism(centrality, monopoly, scale). ThatÕs what we have

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to change with Cluster, using our knowledge ofthe margin. Maria: It is also about atomization: thingsgot very dispersed at one point, with plenty ofrelative peripheries or relative centers,depending on how you saw it. But this very muchinvolved the structural changes of neoliberalism.The effect started to become more palpable incertain places around 2005, and it has escalated

in terms of the conditions of production fororganizations like ours. Now it is time to connectthe dots, maybe even to mobilize. Eyal: Speaking from our perspective, wealways felt that we were working in isolation Ðglobally, but also in our region. So we neededdifferent kinds of networks, like the one we triedto establish with our project Liminal Spaces. Itwas all about trying to overcome this kind ofisolation. Pierre: As organizations, are we analternative, or are we producing the same things

as the market? The legitimization of value isdominated by the market, and we are also underthis dominion of value. Maria: What do you think? Pierre: ItÕs a bit like FŽlix GuattariÕsÒexistential territoryÓ Ð the alternative is thetemporary coalition.1 Our network is just atemporary coalition. It cannot become aninstitutionalized network because it will lose theenergy that is currently has. The question is howto constantly mutate in our activity, because themission of the market is to institute value, tofocus and condense everything into the samevalue. How do we produce a situation in whichwe can provide another kind of legitimization,other kinds of values? Neoliberals try to convinceeveryone that there is just one market, but thatÕsa lie: there are different markets. The drugmarket, the weapons market, even the artmarket is not completely inside the neoliberalmarket. At the same time, we all strive to takeour activity into the market. We are all concernedwith seeing the artists we work with recognizedin the market. Markets are not the problem perse. The problem is the monopolization on

legitimization. Maria: I am not sure if we are concernedwith making the artists we work with becomerecognized by the market. Sometimes thathappens anyway. If it is true that we workaccording to a tailored logic, that we tailor-makeeverything, this also means that weÕre infinitelyflexible. Which means that we exhibit one of themain characteristics of neoliberalism. Emily Pethick: The way we work withflexibility is quite often on a timescale Ð we givea lot of time to things, slow things down, and that

runs counter to the market economy, which isbased on efficiency and shrinking down

processes. We give a lot of time to artists andstretch the timescale if it feels like somethingwill go further. ItÕs a kind of slowing down. Themodels of the biennials or larger institutionshave a lot more problems with enabling thesekinds of processes. WeÕre actually stretchingthings out and enabling something to grow on itsown. Binna: If we look at ourselves from an

economic or productive perspective, weÕre likeorganic produce, an organic shop. The things thatwe produce or sell are often cultivated locally,not mass-produced. Although they might beexpensive, theyÕre tasty for those who payattention. Emily: The risk of that analogy Ð the tailor-made or the organic vegetable Ð is that itÕs notsomething that everybody can afford. ThatÕswhere public funding comes in Ð weÕresubsidized so that everyone can afford us. Thebenefit of flexibility is that you can change the

rules. At the Tate, they have a whole visitorservices team that controls how people movethrough the institution. The baby crawling acrossthe floor doesnÕt fit into the system at Tate. Wehad a program devised by artist Andrea Franckecalled Invisible Spaces of Parenthood. Some ofthe people involved said they used to feeluncomfortable taking their children to galleriesand museums, so we put a little notice on ourwebsite saying, ÒChildren are welcome at all ourevents.Ó We got an amazing response. There areunspoken rules or invisible structures withinevery institution. ThereÕs a discomfort in how youinhabit the space. Ferran Barrenblit: For me, the question is,how can we be relevant without pretending to beleaders? In London, during our publicconversation with Chris Dercon and Ralph Rugoffat The Showroom in May 2013, Dercon askedwhat our biggest achievement was. I said:surviving. Ralph Rugoff replied that maybe weshould have disappeared, because in the artworld, the idea is that you can only be relevant ifyou are the leader of something. How do weintroduce another system of relevance?

Binna: Many of us are talking about thecommons and the practice of commoning. Howwe can multiply and broaden the commons? Howdo we see the future of our organizations,especially in terms of scale Ð perhaps in twentyyearsÕ time? Stavros Stavrides has talked aboutthe problem of the avant-garde as an ÒalternativeenclaveÓ that is doomed to fail in achievingutopia, because in order to achieve this, youneed to multiply the passages linking individuals,groups, and different open places.2 Canleadership, or better Òinitiatives,Ó center around

creating passages that amount to more than justthe sum of many small minorities? This might

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help us grow in a way that is not mere expansion.We shouldnÕt see small spaces like ours as just arung on the hierarchical ladder, and we shouldnÕtpursue expansion just for the sake of survival. Pierre: Recently, I finally came tounderstand that I could not convince the Ministryof Culture in France that small-scale institutionsare sometimes much more relevant than bigones. The Ministry regards small institutions as

merely local or regional entities Ð they donÕtunderstand that a small institution can have avery relevant existence in the global situation.We have proven with our network that in factsmall institutions are relevant, if you take alarger view. Maria: One of the problems is that too often,funders think about small-scale organizationsthe same way they think about large-scaleorganizations. Standards based on what the TateModern, the Centre Pompidou, or the ModernaMuseet do trickle down and are supposed to

serve as the principles for assessing what we do.However, we have less in common with thesenational organizations than we do with, forexample, a small publisher or record label.Moreover, in economic terms, we are efficient. Ifyou think of us as part of the research anddevelopment branch of society, and if youconsider that the things we develop willeventually be put to use for economic profit, thenthe public money we receive is probably quite agood investment. Ferran: Maybe we have to find a differentword than Òefficiency,Ó because thatÕs aneoliberal concern. ItÕs true that we want tomake the most of our money and our budgets,but I donÕt think we can be measured in terms ofefficiency. I insist in thinking about ourselves andour work in terms of the butterfly effect. I knowthat the next revolution will start in a Clustermember organization! Maybe it will be Casco. Ifwe insist on thinking of efficiency in neoliberalterms, we will always lose the battle, because itwill always come back to haunt us. Emily: But I think we are a very efficient. Wedo a lot with very little. We are a good value for

what we deliver. Ferran: Yes, but then somebody else willcome and do more with less. We shouldintroduce a different element for evaluating ourwork, one that is linked to something other thanbudgetary efficiency. When I try to explain ourmuseum to our officials Ð weÕre mostlydependent on a single source of income Ð I saythat starting a museum was a good idea, thatweÕre building something sustainable for them. Itry to demonstrate that we have 0.01 percent ofthe general budget of the Madrid region. This way

of thinking works for them. But it doesnÕt for us,and maybe it doesnÕt work for our artists either.

Emily: I think the Silent University was agood example of the limitations of a largeinstitution like the Tate. They set up a reallyamazing one-year project with Ahmet …gŸt Ðthey developed a group of asylum seekers whowerenÕt allowed to work, and who voluntarilykept coming to the project, taking part, andgiving a lot of time and knowledge. At the end ofthe project, they had an amazing body of

relationships, which is a treasure for anyorganization Ð a group of people who areengaged and committed to something. But theTate couldnÕt sustain it, and so the artist askedus at The Showroom if there was anything wecould do to continue the network, because itwouldÕve been a shame to lose it. ItÕs a projectthat should go on for another two years.Something really incredible could come out of it. Maria: ItÕs a different sense ofaccumulation. IÕd also like to talk about quality .Each of us has a rather precise way of

articulating what we do. We have a precise wayof selecting the artists or the artworks weengage with, and of selecting the combinations,the methods, and the timing that figures into ourwork. This specificity generates a sense ofquality because it is based on many distinctions;you have to cut away a lot, you have to negate alot, you have to put aside a lot. For me this isurgent, because we are flooded with art that isrubbish! I want to talk about this idea of havingmore exact formulations of why weÕre actuallyengaging with what weÕre engaging with, and howwe do it. We insist on quality. This is certainly nota monolithic notion, but rather something thathas to be reformulated and negotiated in eachsituation. Pierre: I understand what youÕre saying, butI think we are concerned with building somethingas a general idea over time, which is not likeproducing one project after the other. I think thecommon way to work is to be attentive to theoften overlooked parts Ð what is in between twoprojects, how you pass from one project toanother, how you negotiate two projects at thesame time, how you proceed in a general way.

When I worked as an independent curator atother institutions, I was sometimes surprised athow people just produced one event afteranother without any connection. They just lookedstraight ahead. Here, we have something that isthe complete contradiction of that. Maria: One way of putting forth a notion ofquality is by paying attention to many thingsthat, in the process of curating and running aninstitution, are often ignored. This is what Iwould call Òworking curatorially.Ó This is themajor difference between institutions whose

purpose is to construct a canon, and those thatare more interested in investigating a cultural

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condition in a way that requires some attentionto methodology and context, whether synchronicor diachronic. Ferran: When you talk about quality, Iunderstand you as talking about what we workwith in combination with how: maybe the qualityshould come more from how we develop theprojects we present. Maria: I would insist on what as well, as

there is so much that is really substandard. ItÕsconstantly used in arguments by politicians inSweden: they say, ÒIsnÕt it great that you havemore art.Ó No, itÕs not. I only want more great art,not more art in general. We are drowning in badwork and even worse curating. Binna: In the Netherlands, there was abehind-the-scenes argument going on in relationto budget cuts. Some argued that we in factneeded the cuts Ð there are many ÒbadÓorganizations and many ÒbadÓ artists, so weneed to cut them out. To a certain degree, one

could agree with this. Some sort oftransformation, reinvention, and reorganizationprocess was necessary, since the public subsidysystemÕs dominance brings stagnation. Yet,nobody could say this officially, because itinvolved the big question of ÒhowÓ: How do youdecide what has quality and what doesnÕt? Thisproblem exists on every level. Why are so manyartworks produced each year? Why are so manyart festivals and temporary projectsinstrumentalized for marketing purposes? Whatdoes art serve, if it serves anything? Maria: But precisely because there is somuch care going into this in the Clusterorganizations, that generates a very specific ideaof what I think is quality . I might not like thesame things as you, but thatÕs not the point. IÕmnot ready to let go of the notion of quality yet. IÕmnot prepared to raise the white flag Ð letÕs find away to reclaim quality! Binna: I tend to agree, but there cannot bean absolute quality. Quality is a term that has tobe debated, while differences and a certaindegree of diversity must be embraced. Emily: I also think that there are

organizations that have passed their sell-bydate. They hang on because theyÕre part of thelandscape. By contrast, thereÕs energy in anorganization that is sustained by those who runit. If an organization runs out of energy, I donÕtthink it should continue, because there arealways other forms Ð always new things thatneed room to arise. In the end, itÕs about thepeople who are sustaining these things andmaking them alive, relevant, and challenging. Maria: With Tensta, IÕm still obsessed withthe idea of creating stability, of being agile, of

being able to offer continuity in a context whereso many things are in flux. This continuity is

necessary in order to present art in aconsistently high-quality manner Ð to be able tomaintain a certain standard of working. Apartfrom that, location and staff structure canchange. In twenty years time, I would like to beable to say that there is a contemporary artspace in Tensta that has a long history of high-quality work. ThatÕs what I would like to see. Butthat would require us to develop real skills to

survive very rocky conditions. Binna: I think IÕm a bit different, maybebecause I started in another field, in philosophy.The goal is not art. Art might be dissolved andtransformed into something else, assuming thatwhat we pursue is value Ð not a field or adiscipline. Maria: If art is a form of understanding, theshape might change, but the function wouldremain. Emily: ThatÕs what I mean: certain formsbecome redundant and others take over.

Binna: The special kind of work we do isoften enabled by personal relationships. A whileago, I noticed a woman who sometimes came toour events. She looked totally different from anyother professional audience member. Sometimesshe was weaving while listening. During winter, Isometimes noticed that she didnÕt wearstockings. We wondered, who is this woman?One day I talked to her, and she said she ran anorganization called Stichting LOS.3 She wasextremely articulate and knowledgeable aboutimmigration policy in the Netherlands. At thetime, we were preparing an archival presentationof Martha RoslerÕs project If You Lived Here. Inthis context, we felt we could support thewomanÕs work. We hosted meetings for herorganization. We provided design in collaborationwith a local design school. We helped publish abook of the organizationÕs research, and wehosted the launch of the book. But then, after,we worked with her again and again Ð we hadbeen working with her for three projects. Forexample when working with Lawrence AbuHamdan, contact with her was extremelyimportant: she brought Somalian migrants who

were living in asylum, but they are in factactivists who shared their knowledge on Somalihistory and language that in turn enabledLawrence to create an aesthetically andintellectually exceptional map that counters therelevance of language analysis to identity theorigin of a refuge. ItÕs really about caring, givingunprejudiced attention to small things, andtrusting in the possibility of resilience and long-term cultivation. Maria: The WomenÕs Center in Tenstarecently needed a few extra tables, so they

borrowed three tables from us. Then we wantedcatering for a board meeting, so we ordered food

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from them, and eventually they get involved inPetra BauerÕs current art project. This led themto ask if we could help them recruit somesupporting members to generate more funds. Emily: I think thatÕs how a communityoperates. You become friends and you sustain arelationship on many levels. Alexandra Baudelot: I think weÕve all hadthis experience Ð turning the public into a

community. Pierre: But we also feel we have to producean audience for each project. You neveraccumulate an audience Ð in ten years, I havenever accumulated an audience. This particularconcept of audience is not relevant anymore. Itried to show this in the exhibition ÒThe Death ofthe Audience,Ó using scores by Cornelius Cardewand Anna Halprin, and displays by RasheedAraeen and Nicola L. The role of the protagonistin the art field moves, and we have to recreate atemporary collectivity for each project. A cluster

community, we could say, in which anyone canadopt any position Ð a reversibility of positions,which offers an escape from the fixed valueimposed by commodification standards. Maria: But you accumulate relationships. Pierre: Yes, but you also lose thoserelationships Ð they are very temporarysituations. For most people, it doesnÕt makesense to be constantly in an art center! Alexandra: For sure. The only way to involvethe different communities we work with is tohave them be part of artistic projects. We did ahuge project with a specific community where Ilive, but when the project was finished, we neversaw them again. Maria: What happens if we think of it not asgroups or individuals coming together in acommunity, but instead as producing spacetogether, like Simon Sheikh has suggested. Weare producing something that happens betweenus Ð a field of radiance or force. It loses intensityonce the project is over, but it isnÕt completelygone. It can shift and be reenergized and grow inanother direction. "

Cluster is a network of eight visual arts organisationsthat are each located in residential areas on theperipheries of major cities, all within Europe (with theexception of Holon). Each of these organisations areactively involved in their local contexts, fostering theirembeddedness within their surroundings. Themembers of Cluster are: CAC BrŽtigny, BrŽtigny s/Orge,France; CA2M Centro Dos De Mayo, Mostoles,Spain; Casco, office for art design and theory, Utrecht,The Netherlands; Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers,Aubervilliers, France;Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm,

Sweden; The Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon,Israel; The Showroom, London, UK; ZavodP.A.R.A.S.I.T.E., Ljubljana, Slovenia.

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1See FŽlix Guattari, ÒThe ThreeEcologies,Ó trans. Chris Turner,New Formations no. 8 (Summer1989): 131Ð147.

2An Architektur, ÒOn theCommons: A Public Interviewwith Massimo De Angelis andStavros Stavrides,Ó e-flux journalno. 17 (June 2010) http://www.e-flux.com/ journal/on-the-commons-a-pub lic-interview-

with-massimo-d e-angelis-and-stavros-stavri des/

3Landelijk OngedocumenteerdenSteunpunt, a foundation thatsupports the undocumented.See http://www.stichtinglos.nl/

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