where we discussed a manifesto for the ‘nomadic hive’…
The Nomadic Hive Manifesto
Written in Room 43, National Gallery London on 9 December 2010, 16.45 – 19.45.
A spectre is haunting Europe- the spectre of debt slaves refusing to pay. All the powers within Europe have entered into a holy alliance to regenerate a failing economy, to realise a lethal dream of returning to business as usual, and to level education and culture, so as to transform the educational and cultural sectors into a consumer society success story.
Their dream is of an education system in which education means obtaining skills to sell in the marketplace, a system in which to produce research means nothing more than making the country competitive in the global market. The vandalism of arts and humanities in this country is designed to produce a new definition of knowledge, defined as that which an individual can bring to the economy or marketplace. Where is the space given over by the architects of this extreme-make-over for those who have ideas and habits different to those favoured by the holy alliance? Where is the space given over to those who believe universities have a role in thinking and reflecting upon life, and what life can be?
If you listen carefully, a humming can be heard, the noise of dissatisfaction becomes dissent. The Holy Alliance fears that this noise has become a song on the lips of all?
Those who have demanded a space apart from this extreme-make-over have been painted as dangerous spoilers or parasites?
Two things need to be said about all this and the existence of the nomadic hive:
I. A nomadic hive is an aesthetic practice, not just a means of survival but an aesthetic mode of existence that manifests through producing networks, means of communications, protest, relations and assemblages: collective machines and situations for thinking and acting.
II. A nomadic hive has a queen (or two or more). The sole role of the queen is to facilitate the reproduction and maintenance of the hive. If the queen becomes more than a facilitator she must be killed.
III. The nomadic hive must declare its aims, way of life and values, to meet this nursery tale of the holy alliance that leads to nothing but debt slavery.
A manifesto has to be written.
1. The hive redefines public space. The hive reclaims public space and public spaces in private ownership (museums, shopping malls, streets).
2. Wherever the hive camps is our home.
3. Movement is imperative – keep moving – but to move or stay is our decision, and our decision to move or stay is our right.
4. The practice of questioning and critique is central to our movement and this questioning goes beyond the discursive.
5. The hive has a commitment to dissemination of information.
6. The movement is an emotional journey – involving thinking and affects.
7. The hive claims the right to happiness and rejects life as a debt slave until death.
8. The hive recognises the struggle for happiness is an international struggle.
9. The hive is a catalyst for change and for difference; it is a spark of light produced by the movement of the hive. The spark of light illuminates a situation for others.
10. This spark of light, the art of the hive, is produced in and presented within the spaces and situations of everyday life and not just in specialist institutions.
11. The movement of the hive expands beyond education, beyond the universities, the students and lecturers.
12. The hive does not preserve the status quo.
13.The hive does not oppose individualism to the collective.
14. The hive does not make anything for sale, the hive does not make ‘works’ for he market. The hive aims to change how the art world operates.
15. The hive is fluid and reassesses itself.
16 The hive speaks – ‘act now!’
17. The hive is open on all levels. The hive needs open access at all times for the purposes of exchange, it is interactive and interdependent.
18. The hive actualises the power we have now.
19. The hive agrees to disagree and use disagreement as a platform and a starting point for action.
20. The hive addresses the problem of pedagogy.
21. The hive does not patronise, but it brings its art to the people.
22. The hive is not a meritocracy but a passionocracy: a passionocracy of skills, values and intentions.
23. What can we do? We can produce actions in public and private space to grow the hive.
24. The internet is a hive – through the internet the hive can cut out the middle man of the mass media corporations.
25. The hive is viral and online but the hive is an embodied practice – it exists in the spaces we occupy and the way we relate to space and others in space.
26. The hive exists in opposition to prevailing circumstances. In this, the hive produces a political imaginary – an affirmation of what we can do.
27. The hive has a honey pump, like Beuy’s honey pump, for energy production.
28. The honey pump powers different forms of communication – songs, talk, noise.
29. The hive knows how to get things done, individually and collectively.
30. The audience for the songs, talk and noise of the hive is everybody – how we communicate is important.
31. We communicate through language but also without using language, by dancing and pheromones
32. Trust in the hive. And for people to trust in the hive there must be trust within the hive.
33. The hive reaffirms solidarity with all occupiers, with all taking action on the streets, with all public sector workers, and all workers, and all involved in labour that produces the social (students, carers, school students).
34. We oppose the methods that oppress our collective movement.
35. The manifesto of nomadic hive is in constant development.
36. The manifesto is drafted through action.
37. The hive works together, stings and makes honey.
38. The hive stings but does not die.
The Hive 9/12/2010
Brilliant manifesto!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/10/tuition-fees-vote-teach-in
beeautiful
This is poor.
Keeping the remaining staff there for 2 hours, was selfish and unthoughtful. Not to mention contradictory to the leaflet which stated solidarity with the public sector workers of the National Gallery!
And for what?…This???
This is a mix up, mash-up, absurdity based on and abstracted from the communist manifesto. ” a spectre is haunting Europe”.
There needs to be some Reason injected into this.
Just because we are Artists doesn’t mean we put Art first then politics. We are citizens. The teach-ins are a good form but should be strategically executed.
Mulchy interpretations of Hardt & Negri aside (you know who you are)
The “Nomadic Hive” was already busy at work yesterday.
They didn’t seem to need your manifesto in parliament square where a raw energy, far removed from your grey university lecturer rhetoric, was manifesting …
Your role is to empower students to speak for themselves, not continue to subjugate them under the hierarchical sign of the same old pedagogic doxa (teacher/student as master/slave).
Rip up your manifestos.
Enunciate in a new language.
Shut up old men.
Speak up kids.
hi,
here is a link to some video clips i did in yesterday’s National Gallery sit-in.
i don’t have the full e-mail list of everyone, but please let me know if any of you are uncomfortable with being in the video. if so i will cut out the parts of the video you are in..
otherwise, please distribute …. pollinate …
and please add me to this e-mail list.
video link:
all the best,
Eline McGeorge
.. and ‘apple seed’, maybe it is not ‘one or the other’, – ‘raw energy’ against ‘grey university lecturer rhetoric’… recon we need a bit of whatever people have to come with..
.. i mean, you don’t get very far just fighting with the police. they are also in the public sector, as the workers in the National Gallery…
There needs to be less complexity here and we need to instigate simple language. For the most beautiful manifestos and purposes are the most complex ideas explained in simple language. You want to liberate the people not confine them to a lack of understanding. Education leaves us in fear of the arts as an abstract concept. We need to allow people to embrace abstract thinking and know that musing on life; is a viable to construct to a free-thinking society!
Creating a socialism for the arts! Communal art: for the people, by the people. That is all that is needed. For art to be the voice of a generation; the language of the oppressed against the opulence and profit seeking vanguard. The dichotomy of the profit obsessed: should be ripped up and thrown out. There is a new book; a new law. The law of the oppressed.
Agreed that the manifesto is pretty fucking stupid as it stands, but it was written as a communal activity, and is designed to be an open source manifesto which will evolve over time.
Apple Seed, it’s alright slagging off the pedagogic relationship out of hand, but you should actually try interrogating that relationship and see why it still stands. In my opinion the pedagogy is still completely valid, but there are also other, more fluid forms which can be useful also. Possibly more useful. Like those forms which will be used to ratify and elucidate the nomadic hive manifesto.
John Greene, agreed that the barbaric destruction of government interest in funding the arts, humanities and social sciences will breed the opinion that (even more so than now) these subjects are ‘not important’. But lets be honest, communal art for the people, by the people is a shitty idea. The public are rubbish and when they get together to make art (or as usually happens, are directed toward making art by an artist or group of artist), we are usually left with a pile of horrible turds. This is a good reason why an artistic, cultural education should be made massively important. Instead of being completely smashed up by this stupid government.
The government wants to cut down costs and raise the fees for university students. With this in mind, it must be said:
Your manifesto justifies it both by being dangerously naive – as if a crisis in the educational system was a ‘call to arms’ for a new system of collective organization (if the day before the crisis was not enough of a reason for that, the day after surely shouldn’t be: the only new thing is that it concerns you personally, and personal concerns are not a political category) – and by being utterly irresponsible with your references and presentation.
You throw your Cause into ridicule by not taking yourselves seriously enough, getting stuck between a language that is too complex, but does not say anything more than ‘you are not the boss of me’, and a bunch of references which end up themselves ‘tainted’ by the meaninglessness of what is being said.
I wonder: with authors that instigate students to write a manifesto that pleas for ‘happiness’ and ‘haive-minds’, and students who actually invest their intellectual capacities in it – wouldn’t the government think itself to be justified in charging more for education?
Read Jeu-Jeu? A year of work and a critical situation appropriated by those whom we invested with trust.