from the book of: www.uncovered-cyprus.com
Ways of Common-ing
Nicosia International Airport (NIC) as a site and as a conceptual frame for the research based contemporary art project UNCOVERED, is not a simple formalist interventional art practice into/of a building. It is a “discursive” intervention where analysis of memory, shared knowledge and power structures are involved. NIC as a “ruin” which I would describe in the sense of Jalal Toufic’s philosophy is a symbol of a traumatic space, a destroyed or damaged building. For Toufic, even if a building were to be reconstructed physically it would always remain a “ruin”. The question of how this space under exceptional conditions functions as “common knowledge’ and a practice of commoning is important to consider.
I think the meaning of “commons” is not what we own or share or produce as property, ownership, economic means and accumulation but ‘ways of common-ing’. It could be defined clearly as Condorelli states: “…a way of asking how we might find ways of building and sustaining social relations, not through economic transactions, but by establishing relationships to ownership and context in everyday life, through action, labour, and in duration”.[1] Furthermore, according to De Angelis’s clarification: “Commons are a means of establishing a new political discourse that builds on and helps to articulate the many existing, often minor struggles, and recognizes their power to overcome capitalist society”. [2] He defines three notions of commons in order to explain that the commons are not simply the resources that we share but a way of commoning: common pool/non-commodified means, communities and the act of it “to common” (the social process of commoning). Also today, food sociologist/activist Raj Patel focuses on how we define commons: “Commons is about how we manage resources together”. [3] His argument is not only about managing and sustaining the food share but also about how food movements should be in solidarity with other movements.
“Commons” is not a simple concept about collective share or ownership. It has a difficult relation within a defined community and public. Especially in a contested territory such as Cyprus, this concept becomes difficult to define and to create its collective practice. Negotiation and the conflict of values are basic in such practices. Claiming the commons based on the idea of collective use of property would not be the practice of collective claim of commons. As Stavros Stravrides argues rather than affirmation of a share, a ground of negotiation is more important[4]: “Conceptualizing commons on the basis of the public, however, does not focus on similarities or commonalities but on the very differences between people that can possibly meet on a purposefully instituted common ground. We have to establish a ground of negotiation rather than a ground of affirmation of what is shared’.
In claiming commons, the ethics of hospitality/encounter/face is immanent. Therefore, the unconditionality based on the diverse narratives of communities and memories, that are in becoming in such territories, which are actually inhabited by Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots. This shifting uncanny process in in-between territories such as Nicosia International Airport, commoning could be a practice of a collective gesture, of an archive. In such way UNCOVERED can function as an event-based, research-based archive of a performative site.
Pelin Tan
[1] Condorelli, C. ‘Life Always Escapes’, e-flux journal 10, November, New York, 2009, www.e-flux.com/journal/view/92
[2] An Arckitektur, 2010. On the Commons: A Public Interview with Massimo De Angelis and Stavros Stavrides, e-flux journal 17, NY. www.e-flux.com/journal/view/150
[3] Patel, R., “The Hungry of Earth”, Radical Philosophy, No.151, Sept/Oct., 2008, London.
[4] An Arckitektur, “On the Commons: A Public Interview with Massimo De Angelis and Stavros Stavrides”, e-flux journal 17, June, 2010, New York. www.e-flux.com/journal/view/150
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