De Meent: liberating space through purchase
Date uploaded: May 14, 2012
De Meent: liberating space through purchase
13th May - 8th July, 2012
Opening: May 13th, 2012 from 3 - 6 PM
Location: De Inkijk and www.meent.nu
Most responses to the current crisis and related funding cuts are conservative in nature: “Stop the budget cuts!”, “Say No!”, or the recent campaign against budget cuts on culture “Cry out for Culture”. While these protest-actions and slogans clearly illustrate people’s dissatisfaction with the current policy, it is unlikely that they will have any actual effect on the intentions of the policy-makers.
The current political situation seems divided into two dominant views: either you are an individual more or less successful in the free market or you make an appeal on the continuously shrinking amount of public funding. Cultural initiatives can opt between trying their luck on the instable market or applying for equally fickle subsidized funding. The challenge is to find an alternative to these two positions - private ownership and state regulation - a new form that combines the independence of private ownership with a shared cause that moves beyond individual interest.
De Meent
SKOR propose to re-boot an old-Dutch concept De Meent. This concept - the Dutch version of what in English is called The Commons - was traditionally understood as a field or area that belonged to everyone and no-one. It addressed the capacity of people to manage property commonly.
This project, De Meent: liberating space through purchase, entails the purchase of De Inkijk through crowd investment. In recent years, this tiny house was used by SKOR as an exhibition space. Due to the recent national cut backs within the cultural sector, SKOR may need to find alternative housing. As a response SKOR intends to purchase this 20 m2 - house with a large, heterogeneous group of participants, and subsequently run it democratically with all shared-owners. In this manner the project aims to use the protection offered by the acquisition of private property to set up a Meent, a Commons.
The underlying motivation for this initiative is not to conserve previously state-funded organisations, or to criticize authorities for their policies nor is it a capitulation to the logic of the market. This project simply suggests adopting and alternating principles of purchase and private ownership in order to establish a new permanent common space that hovers between private and public property.
This is how it breaks down
Through the crowd-funding campaign, run at De Inkijk and on www.meent.nu, everybody is invited to invest in De Meent. All investors are equal co-owners. Regardless of the amount you put in, you’ll have an equal part in defining and managing the space. The sole rule is that all decisions will be taken according to general consensus.
Open House Days
As part the campaign De Meent, SKOR are organising a series of Open House Days. Each Sunday afternoon in May and early June, SKOR will host lectures and workshops about the value of creative commons-licences, crowd-investment and grass-roots democracy. Confirmed speakers include: Nachoem Wijnberg, Aetzel Griffioen, Sacha Geffen, Justus Uitermark, Gideon Boie, Jaap Draaisma, Henk Ovink and Bik van der Pol.
The full programme of the Open House Days will be provided soon. For questions, click here to check the website or contact: [email protected].
De Meent opens on May 13, 2012 from 3 - 6 PM at De Inkijk and online at www.meent.nu. Visit one of these locations for the latest information about the project, and invest in De Meent!
OPENING HOURS
Wednesday - Sunday, 2 - 6 PM
