Fair Arts Almanac 2022: Homes and Hosts
State Of The Arts (SOTA)’s fifth event within the Fair Arts Almanac programme focuses on the issues surrounding housing, studio spaces and educational spaces
29/05/2021
In 2019, SOTA finished the first Fair Arts Almanac. The content of the book was generated during a week-long summer camp in 2018 with about 70 contributors. The result was a bundling of tips & tricks, statements & demands, visions & ideas, dates & data, testimonies & voices, addresses & announcements on fairness within the complex relationships between the artistic, political, and economic sphere. The compilation of various contributions in this first edition was deliberately associative and open for debate, full of contradictions, loose ends, and inconsistencies.
Since the publication of this almanac, many things have changed: a new cultural minister, drastic cutbacks, many protests, the corona crisis, recovery of culture, a second wave, etc… It is time to prepare for a second edition of the Fair Arts Almanac. For the next edition, the editing process will be taken care of by the various reflection and working groups active within SOTA.
The almanac 2022 will be created in the monthly rhythm of one complete year. Throughout 2021, these events will take place every last Saturday of the month, each time at a different location, addressing a different topic, prepared by a different group, and open to questions that live among practitioners these days, taking the sensibilities of the various seasons into account.
The material gathered in these 12 meetings will be transcribed, transformed, and made public on SOTA’s website. Based on these materials SOTA will then publish a physical Fair Arts Almanac in 2022.
The May session will be organised at Onder Stroom, Antwerp and is titled Homes and Hosts.
Artists have not only been the victims of gentrification processes in the large cities worldwide, but for decades (unconsciously) functioned as a driving force from within this scheme. How are artists dealing with this responsibility? Is this a catch22 we can escape?
The session Homes and Hosts deals with possible alternatives and will open the discussion around co-housing cooperatives, socially sustainable ways to occupy temporary spaces and models for more permanent solutions, in which commonly owned grounds become zones for mixed social infrastructure as a combination of affordable artist’s studios, housing and educational spaces.
Onder Stroom
Tavernierkaai 11
2000 Antwerp
Read more here