Rhyzom

PS2

A collective who work loosely together, it's own Rhyzom. Set up by Peter, brought together Fiona, Sarah, Brionnie and Dominic. creating a cross border activity between northern and southern ireland. Each participant is involved in different projects. PS2 currently have quite a fluid outcome for what they are producing at the moment. Thinking about whether they want to produce and umbrella presentation.

Fiona Woods project

is producing a work in response to Rhyzom using the network as a form of local production and dissemination. Small sample publication. Working with Ece + Dominic (would like to work with more, but requires more budget) exploring the 'commons'. and what commons means: Ece the relation between commons and public, Dominic looking at knowledge production. reflects on doina & constantin's idea of the city as commons. Looking at self made publications, using home made materials/binding.

Project is called 'Collection of Minds' and is about working with people she's not worked before, to explore shared concepts. Fiona would like to work with the full network but is dependent on budget, is trying to find more funding.

Works being produced are part of it are connected to other projects. Opportunity for more co-operation would be helpful.

Publication should be distributed via network. Who pays for translations? Language is a difficult question.

Circulation of physical product is meaningful, as opposed to looking at it on a website. Is it a reflection of the network? Website is a representation of the network, publication is an editorial voice with it's own point o view.

Sarah Browne project

Publication project based in Litram which predates Rhyzom, developed as part of a residency in a sculpture centre, will use local spaces such as libraries and local history groups for distribtuion, rather than art spaces. Looking at life reform and the influence of that on idealism and practises. Looks at spaces between fiction and dissemination.

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Brionnie Reid developing a text.

Dominic Stevens ... unknown?

public work and PS2 working together on a joint project summer 2010

For PS2 rhyzom is a project individuals are dipping in and out of. And umbrella within and umbrella.

Projects are either side of the border.

Anne-Marie developed a local cultural center in a caravan.

Workshops: media production, sculpture, locality and products.

Brought people together who are interested in working in rural spaces, despite PS2's urban background and history. So works in response to rural issues.

Agency

Doina/Florian

Agency is a research unit within the university of sheffield schoo of architecture.. Informtive research into practise and education. Non hierarchial group. Core group and expands with project. Membership is through active participation within it. Group is an experimental and transformative network. A Jam session of mutual understanding and interest.

Student project is important, and they extend the projects and get involved with the projects. The intention was to extend the network of Rhyzom when they joined. Initiation of Agency was the European Platform for Alternative Research and Action in the City (PEPRAV), a non-heirarchial network project based on project workshops from an AAA project, and looking at collaborative working. The point of Preprav was to create a collaborative tool. The end production was a book which is used in schools. The other question: how to represent other positions, points of views and different contexts, to offer a stronger position for discourse.

School creates live projects which are part of the 5th and 6th year course. 6-10 students working on a real project with a client who has approached the school, not replacing a real architect, but doing a research project with schools etc. 10-12 projects per year.

3 live projects as part of Rhyzom:

• Project with Istanbul/Cultural Agencies as client
• Project with PS2 as client, looking at production along the border and conflict zones.
• Project with AAA producing an Ecoroof for Le Cent self organised cultural center, in Paris

Projects are documented in a fanzine format which is literally wrapped with a critical text to produce an end text. The publication is distributed internally to students & faculty, to other schools, to clients and to future clients, helping develop knowledge exchange.

Questioning how the live project involvements can go further within their live context without waiting for the new 'live project' phase with new students. Issues of continuity.

In working with process instead of formats there are a different set of formalities and end production, and a different set of issues around where completion comes.

Self printing vs downloadable formats. Desire to create a 'physical' version, not just publishing PDFs but allowing print on demand.

The need for visual tools created as research to be important tools for the subjects of the research to create discussion point, not just as tools for the academics. The perspective provided by mapping images, and the images providing a communication outside of the publication context.The problem of the results of the mappings of neighbour hoods created, showing the hubs and points that police/developers/maniuplators can infuence/affect/remove.

Militancy and illegal issues make some of the activities of the investigators difficult. By observing and documenting the underground it's making helpful invisible networks vulnerable. The language of communication needs to be adjusted for context of presentation to engage the audience.

AAA - Rurban

A strategy for ecological thinking/action in urban environments. Trying to show differnet ways of living when people return home.

• Rurban is trying to develop collective ecological spaces.
• Local culture
• Local economies
• Urban agriculture

Created a publication to communicate with potential partners.

One example project which reflects there attempts Passage 56, St. Blaise, paris:

How to create a space which will change the neighbourhood in which it was created. Closed passage which became a dumping ground rather than a public space. No opportunity to build because of the projecting windows, so AAA are invited to do something with the space and do some consultation to try and use the space and test uses. Individual works are produced by different groups to test and use the space in different ways. The construction of the space is open, as construction is a creative process, but the legality of this had to be worked round to allow public access.

Process:

• Created use
• Discussed the construction, construction as cultural act
• Use - instigating ecological practises, self containing, producing meetings etc.

Participants are 50 local residents, artists etc who use it for gardening, parties, performances, exhibitions etc.

Publications for local dissemination, and website to allow communication for the project. Meetings in the space to discuss issues raised by the user and creates a publication, and knowledge is disseminated.

Rurban is about extending the scale of this, by creating a network of these kind of projects. So that they can start to develop an alternative lifestyle based upon alternative social spaces as a starting point. Create a network of space which can be access via bike. Interconnect all services provided by a city but approached with the idea of distributed network not mass area regeneration/development.

Visited rural ecological/alternative developments started by people with urban backgrounds. Could connect with other workshops/spaces

Public Works

Works based around space and interaction with informal spaces, run a collection of academic

Cultural Agencies

Project in a very specific physical space, but coming to it with approach of agency which is not typical, playing with typologies that may occur in cultural institutions. Working with 'collections' 'archive' 'office' etc.

Each category is a metaphor for the type of communication, and a separate strand which they wish to represent as an individual publication so that it stands up for it's own importance without fighting for attention with other content.

Looking for ambiguous formats which work between different cultural contexts within Istanbul as well as trans-locally. The feeling that the work would be lost within a 'rhyzom bible' from a local perspective.

Empowering the community by giving a cultural context to it to grow their confidence and worth as a community and give them a stronger position to argue the place and worth as they exist, without masterplan regeneration.

No alternative planning in place, was a historic project but now taken off the card.

Lack of language to express the cultural significance and the more parties that are involved the more the language becomes swayed by the controlling parties, so publishing as a group become debilitating to the activity at hand.

EC funding, the use of the EC logo is creating resistance and should be questioned, as the provision of money makes the motive a concern.

Dorian Moore - rhyzom.net

Website developed to represent the process of project production and to provide a starting point, and reference point, for internal conversation and an initiation and reference point for other parties.

Trying to avoid a standard blog format which is 'backwards' in presenting an argument, and trying to represent the connections between the contributors, actions, projects and outcomes.

Space for sharing experiences of the partners during the project events, as well as connecting the output of the projects via syndication.

Should there be topics/keywords? Against is that they don't represent the project (the current keywords are arbitrary, based upon minimal content tagged by Dorian). Keywords are one way of navigating, and different people navigate in different ways. The keywords bind together underlying themes within all of the work, allowing for a subset of relevant content to be browse easily, and allowing for the main contexts to emerge.

Zak Kyes

Concepts for publications, and how to conceive a publication

A book broken down into parts.

Dick Higgns private press, unified 'box' format. William Morris, thinking of books as a new work and a work of art.

Barbican work, conversation snippets inserted into leaflets and placed in bundles of publications.

Architecture Association (School/charity) -> AA publications --> Bedford Press.

AA Print studios established in 1970s as The Communications Unit. Work a book, not built form.

Class trying to re-establish connection with works of the past.

Connect content and design with technology of production. Editors/Designers in one room, but publications sent out to print.

Units below 500 not necessarily economical - private press established for small editions.

Trying to document the editorial publication production process. Stencil Printer/Rizograph printer. Possible to do four colour by overprinting 4 times.

Inquiry as open ended investigation.

Forms of Inquiry: Growing exhibition which adds contributors and curators as it moved between exhibition spaces. Started with a specific invitation, to consider relationship between design and architecture and refined to a single point of reference where they write a short text on it and a print based on this. Thereafter the same invitation, but slightly different in response to the existing body of work.

Discussing the publication

Publications are created by different parties in a standardised set of formats, then are collected together with a trans-local contribution into a 'box-set'

Important to create the trans-local document to discuss the commonality between projects which shows how the network improved the project outcomes, or helped it grow.

Issue of creating a superstructure or creating a support structure for each publication. How do we gather together and share the outcomes of the publication trans-locally in a manageable format.

Insert is edited by the local producer, based upon another partners work(s) and facilitated within a template to support the local publication.

What is the purpose of the 'transversal' publication? Each topic can be rethought in a different context/perspective.

Could the individual publications be published digitally via the website/print on demand? argument against is that CA's audience don't have internet access - but that's handled by the local. The locals also don't have access to art bookshops as easily as to internet, and the internet is a more powerful and accessible tool for knowledge sharing than an 1000 edition critical text.

Collaboration has to be made aware to all parties prior to initiation in localities. Problems with the local contributors not being aware they are collaborating trans-locally.

Should not be trying to apply a managed structure to an informal network of projects.

Does there need to be a unification of objects? Is the International Village Shop a unification factor, bringing together the distribution and encouraging shops to be set up at points across the Rhyzom network?

The tranversal is always a post-rationalisation.

It's not possible to do the contribute properly to another partners project without enough time to dedicate to it, but it is a requirement of the network to produce something from the network - not just as a funder requirement. What is the shared vision?

Should collaboration become representation?

Output

Assets being produced

Cultural Agencies - 6 x unknown publications representing each of the themes office, events, library, action, collection, communication. Blog. DVD, Posters, Index Cards, Flyers.

Agency - Reports based on 3 live projects, reflections on these, blogs, user manual for ecoroof.

Public Works - Products (Abbey Gardens, Belfast) Economic mapping of product productions, product stories. Website. On-line shop fronts.

PS2 - 3 fanzines + posters, publication, neswpaper format, text (Brionnie but not known), product (with Public Works)

AAA - Rurban - small book, web/blog, DVD. Seminar - Rhyzom, report.

No desire to jam all the work together, can we work on developing something collectively based upon our knowledge sharing?

Not be a reflection on Rhyzom, but a reflection on the projects that we have carried out as part of the network.

How to move forward - how to develop the content, content depends on format. Do project partners ask each other questions? What do we want to know about each other project? Can the Rhyzom website can function to allow us to share and get to know each others work to help build a critical framework?