LUMBUNG PRACTICE

The temporary master's in Lumbung Practice will build on the gained knowledge and experimentations in lumbung-documenta fifteen. Participating collectives will practice and learn about lumbung, self-organization, and sociopolitical artistic and curatorial practice, as well as producing alternative art institutions and economies for the future. The master's is a collaboration between Sandberg Instituut, De Appel (Curatorial Programme), and Gudskul (Collective Study Program).

The failures of neoliberal society are clearly manifesting themselves, compelling the art scene into practicing paradigms of growth, competition, and extraction. We must find artistic and economic ways of being and working that are anchored inter-locally and within communities, and that are based on values such as sharing, regeneration, humor, independence, and sufficiency.

Lumbung is a rural pre-colonial practice where the village stores the surplus of the harvest for the future wellbeing of the community. It is where the surplus is collectively governed and celebrated. Art and life are not separated in the lumbung. Lumbung was the starting point for the artistic and curatorial practice in documenta fifteen, where a practice from the experiences with lumbung in Indonesia was built, as well as other collective practices around the world, such as Maaya (Mali), Agraw (Morocco), Buen vivir (Latin-America), Kalaka (Hungary) and De Meent (The Netherlands). Through ruangrupa's practice and other documenta fifteen collective practices it has come to mean more than that: a collective of collectives, a set of self-organized practices, a discourse about art, and an aesthetic quality.

In this two year master's program we build on the knowledge gained in the first lumbung from 2020 to 2022 (documenta fifteen) to extend this journey of artistic and economic experimentation to others. We work with artists' collectives whose practice is embedded in sociopolitical movements, and whose art is an extension of their communal lives.

Participants in this master's are artistic, curatorial, and interdisciplinary collectives. Together they will build a lumbung and experiment with the development of a commons-based arts discourse and economy.

During the program the participants and their collectives will build a lumbung together that will connect to the cosmology of lumbungs that already exist (interlocal, Indonesia, Kassel, and others). They will participate in existing lumbung working groups such as Lumbung Land, Lumbung Gallery, lumbung.space, Lumbung Kios and Lumbung Press. They will also start their own working groups to build collective structures that reinforce their local work.

On a theoretical level, the program contributes to the further study of cosmologies of diverse commoning approaches and their application in contemporary artistic practice. Participants will also learn about and experiment with how commons-based approaches like lumbung can operate next to a market economy, and how to "transvest" value from the market to the commons and specifically the tensions this caused in the political, institutional, and media realm during documenta fifteen. With a strong emphasis on a variety of hosting and harvesting skills, participants will acquire the mindset and skills to operate in a collective lumbung art practice and economy.

Lumbung Practice is developed and hosted by Lara Khaldi and Gertrude Flentge (both members of artistic team documenta fifteen) in close collaboration with Gudskul and lumbung artists and collectives. The majority of tutors will come from the lumbung ecosystem.

The program is a partnership between Sandberg Instituut, De Appel (Curatorial Programme), and Gudskul (Collective Study Programme). The participants of the programs work in close collaboration with each other, and organize a harvest festival (exhibition, public program, screenings, etc.) at the end of each academic year. The seminars and working group workshops take place at Sandberg Instituut, De Appel, and other Netherlands-based initiatives. In addition participants will travel to each others' localities to learn about contexts and create relationships among other members of the collectives and ecosystems.

More information about applying for the master's can be found here https://sandberg.nl/temporary-program-lumbung-practice. Early applications are welcome, please send an email to lumbungpractice@sandberg.nl if interested.

We encourage artistic and interdisciplinary collectives to apply with minimally two members of the collective. Selection will happen based on the collective's future plan and a vision on how the master's and the lumbung can contribute to this, as well as what the collective can bring to the lumbung.