Who Steals the Goose From Off the Common /
Who Steals the Common From Off the Goose
Fall 2022
Junior Product Studio Award
Who Steals the Goose From Off the Commons /
Who Steals the Commons From Off the Goose is a narrative based project exploring the means by which commoning practices occur, and the actions and tactics used to [re]gain these spaces. Through studying commoning movements through history [most notably the Charter of the Forest, the Solidarity Movement, Mai 68, Zapatista Movement, and the Hong Kong Protests], common narratives were investigated, where recurring situations between actors [commoners and oppressing powers] could be identified. A narrative was produced from surveyed said common[ing] situations to enact a speculative publication in which situational tactics could be examined in a derived world. Physical artifacts from the narrative were produced as a means of both telling the story of commoning, as well as a means of further research into the subject. These artifacts work in tandem with the publication to fully explore commoning as a practice. All artifacts were produced using only materials found around the studio space as means of being true to the nature of commoning and commons practices.
How can the tactics of spatial commoning movements of the
past guide a spatial reclaimation movement today?
Brief
Commoning is the act of creating commons, challenging existing
socio-spatial frameworks, facilitating the emergence of differential forms of social and political subjectivity. It is the art of sharing and managing resources, cultural and natural, with minimal reliance on the market or state, where each stakeholder has equal interest.
The literature of Silvia Federici, Peter Linebaugh, and Stavros Stavrides were
the principal sources used to understand commons and commoning.
Studying the Charter of the Forest, May 68’, the Solidarity movement, the Zapatistas and the Hong Kong Protests shows a trend in motives and tactics used in order to facilitate these new worlds. The key of these commons is the reclaimation of the means of production, the space or tools which brings subsistence, both cultural and natural. Commoners in the Charter of the Forest and the Zapatistas both created new worlds through the reclaimation of their natural subsistence (Charter of the Forest in the forests where they relied upon wood as a fuel, as well as agricultural need. Zapatistas regaining agricultural lands which would be given back to the commoners), while also finding cultural subsistence through more reclaimation of cultural liberties.
Through occupying their spaces of production, commoners in May 68’ and the Solidarity movement, created new worlds which would produce their subsistence away from state control. The commoners of May 68’ built their new worlds through erecting barricades and occupying existing infrastructure, ensuring their subsistence. Studying past commoners (those who practice commoning), as “citizen designers,” brings forth new perspectives on the tactics of these movements, seeing commoners as those who are designing new worlds.
The goals of this project are to convey, reimagine, and synthesize the tactics learned from these commoning movements and apply them to designing a new world. The experience of these commoning practices will by exhibited and felt. Found materials will be used in order to recreate the practices used by these citizen designers. The “experience” will be manufactured using these found materials, with the goal of creating the effect of reality to this production. Manufacturing methods will be contrived from the tactics learned from the citizen designers of past commoning movements. Space will be a key factor in the final outcome. The use of drawing will be applied to create a fuller picture of this new world, mapping space and experiences within it.
Commoners
Students who require print services
to convey ideas.
Force in Power
An official in the education ministry. Selected by the government without
input from the students.
Means of Production
Plotters / Printers. A print or plot allows commoners to convey ideas, pass information, and meet standards. These tools allow commoners to physically track and record specific things.
Space
A plotter / print room. Exists within a university. Open to all students at any
point in the day. Can use freely without cost. 20’ x 20’ room. One door.
Scenario
The new education minister deems the plotter room to be excess space and no longer needed. The space is to be taken away from commoners and given to the education officials. Laws are put in place which prohibit students from printing on their own. All prints must be preapproved by education officials.
Subsistence
Commoners must have the ability to fulfill their needs without the
impediment of external or internal powers. Needs must be considered in
both materiality and sociality.
Means of Production
The means of production must be within the control of the commoners.
The means of production must be controlled by the commoners, not a
singular commoner, who would then be the actor of power. In times where
decisions must be made about the means of production, democratic
centralism, in which a majority of the commoners must be maintained
after open discourse, will be used to make such a decision.
Reproduction
Commodity cannot exist within the commons as the commodity is about
production, a tool of the capitalist state to place control over the
commoners. Relations cannot be controlled by the commodity. The work
of the commons is reproduction. Commoners must have access to their
means of reproduction, and have the ability to produce their own
reproduction. All commoners must have equitable access to reproduction
in both materiality and sociality. Tools, materials, discourse, literature,
ideas, must be shared and understood throughout the commons. Through
these aforementioned items, the production within the space can scale.
Commons
The commons is an activity. Commoning is the redefinition of work and
labor as a human mutuality, rather than as an exploitation as the capitalist
state has used before. The commons exists in the presupposition of a
classless society. The commons exist only as long as the commoners
continue their act of commoning. The commons exist only as long as it is
protected and continuously reclaimed. The commons exists enclosed
within a capitalist world, and must defend itself from being invaded and
controlled by capitalist forces. The commons exist only as long as the
commoners have the ability to fulfill their subsistence. Subsistence can be
met only as long as the means of production are fully within the grasp of
the commoners. In times where decisions must be made about the
commons, democratic centralism, in which a majority of the commoners
must be maintained after open discourse, will be used to make such a
decision. The commons are ever occurring due to the nature of the
commons. Action must be taken in order for the commons to be
maintained. There shall be no commodity within the commons.
The Gooses Commons is a speculative publication used as a method to deliver the story of commoning within a derived world.
The publications each deliver a story based on the research conducted on commoning movements in history. Each publication represents one day within this speculative commoning movement, telling about actions and reactions taken by commoners and powers of the state (culturally dominant power groups). The publications present drawings and photographs showing the events articulated within the articles. The publications are written from the perspective of commoners within the space which is being enclosed.
There are five days of publications to lay out this speculative story of commoning.
The model of space was created as another effort of world building, a way of physically drawing a scene. The model depicts an occupation within the space, with manifestos and publication placed upon the inner walls and a barricade made of stools blocking the entry of the space, regaining the space as a commons.
The model is used as a vehicle to create the images displayed here. The photos are shot as though the scene was occuring at full scale as a way of drawing the viewer into this speculative world.
The model walls were constructed of cement and acryllic, with the stools, tables, and plotters being 3D printed. The model is at 1/15 scale.
Final Presentation
Manifestos [around 200] were laid out across the space in which the presentation took place. Upon the
wall were two 42”x72” boards explaining the project.
Next to the window a table contained bundled publications and the model of the space. As the
presentation commenced, commoners built a
barricade out of stools and a table [the same ones
used for the earlier artifact] to block the entrance to
the gallery. Two commoners went around to the
viewers and passed out publications while another
airdropped goosescommons.page.
Three tactics from the research were used for the
presentation, barricades, publications, and
airdropping information. All three tactics were
intended to be disruptive, which they were successful
in doing. The goal of the disruption was to create an
atmosphere for the viewers in which they could feel
as though they were a part of the project, as though
they were experiencing a commoning movement. It
was also carried out in this way to be true to the
practices which were carried out throughout the
project, a practice of critical making. Production as a way of research and a way of understanding.
Research
The research process began with writings on the commons from Silvia Federici,
Peter Linebaugh and Katharina Moebus,
as well as selected pieces from Design Commons: Practices, Processes, and Crossovers. The articles created a framework from which to carry out the rest of the research for the project.
From defining commons, the subject of commoning, as discussed by Federici and Linebaugh, among others, was further investigated, pulling case studies from history as a method to understand the subject of the commons. Tactics used within these commoning movements were studied and recorded, as well as the causes and actors within the situations.
The case studies researched were narrowed down to five particular situations, the Charter of the Forest of England in 1217, Mai 63 of France in 1963, the Solidarity Movment of Poland in 1980, the Zapatista Movement of Mexico in 1983, and the Hong Kong Protests of 2019.
Commons
Commons are both the product of labor and the means of future production, not just the earth but the languages, social practices and modes of sociality. They are an essential entity of subsistence, collectively managed and embedded in social relations.
Commons can function as large scale social formations, not simply as local occurences.
Commons must be looked at as an activity.
They express relationships in society that are inseparable from relations to nature.
Commons are dependent on their own reproduction.
Commoning
Commoning is the art of sharing and managing resources, cultural and natural, with minimal reliance on the market or state where each stakeholder has equal interest.
Commoning is an obligation rather than a shared identity or interest. It is the principle by which human beings have organized their existence.
Commoning is a redefinition of work and labour as a human mutuality, rather than as an exploitation and exchange.
Commoning challenges existing socio-spatial frameworks and facilitates the emergence of differential forms of social and political subjectivity.
Primitive Accumulation
Commodification and privatization deprive
populations from their means of subsistence in order to create exploitable wage labor and surplus wealth.
Capitalism creates an accumulation of disposession, where money and commodities are no more capital than are the means of production and of subsistence.
The capitalist system presupposes the complete seperation of the labourers from all property in the means by which they realize their labour.
Alterglobalization
Alterglobalization is anticapitalist, neo-marxist movement. It views commons as an essential entity of subsistence, collectively managed and embedded in social relations.
Alterglobalists seek the reclaimation and defense of commons.
Alterglobalists recognize the dynamic relationship between commons and enclosure that points to the social nature of commons as an activity, not as a resource.
Subsistence and the Commons
Peter Linebaugh describes the commons as the place of subsistence, the place of labor. In his examination of the Charter of the Forests, Linebaugh describes the forests as being the place of subsistence for the peasantry. The space was necessary as a common in order for the peasants needs to be met.
A similar line can be carrried through history as factories became the place of subsistence, making them the commons.
Historcal Struggle For the Commons
Capitalism funtions as reactionary move to subvert rising tides of communalism and retain basic social contrast.
Accumulation is the strategy the capitalist class resorts to in a time of crisis.
Capitalism and feudalism are deeply linked, with capitalism being a continuation of the same pervasive tactics used by those in a power class against those in a proletariat or labor (”lower”) class.
Capitalist development requires the destruction of communed properties and relations.
Commodification and privatization deprive populations from their means of subsistence in order to create exploitable wage labor and surplus wealth.
State terror relates very often to the expropriation of people, craftsmen or otherwise, from their means of production, from their materials of production, and
from the products of their own labor.
Citizen Designers + Social Banditry Katharina Moebus’ coined the term “citizen
designers,” describing those who redesign worlds
and create worlds but who do not work or who were
not trained as “professional” designers.
Eric Hobsbawm’s coined the term “social banditry” to
describe a form of lower class resistance deemed
illegal by the law (created by those in power) but
moral and supported by a wider oppressed society.
“Citizen designers” and “social bandits” function
within the dynamic relationship between commons
and enclosure that points to the social nature of
commons as an activity, not as a resource.
“Citizen designers” and “social bandits” work in the
ongoing emancipatory struggle against the
continuous enclosure and commodification of our
material, immaterial, and social world.
“Citizen designers” and “social bandits” experiment
in self provisioning and the seeds of an alternative
mode of production in the making.
“Citizen designers” and “social bandits” create and
exist in “invisible worlds,” as described by Peter
Linebaugh. This is to escape the commodification of
their world. They are not going to give away their
knowledge to the intelligence officers from the
powers of surveillance.
Linebaugh ascribes “excarceration, the story of
escape,” as being the fundamental story of human
freedom. Escaping from confinement. This is the goal
of “Citizen designers” and “social bandits.”
“Citizen designers and social bandits” will be observed and studied as those who practice commoning, that is, those who defend and reclaim the commons from the accumulation of capitalist powers. The goal of “citizen designers and social bandits” is excarceration, escaping enclosure. The goal is to design and create commons through the act of commoning.
While the group of power may create laws which deem these “citizen designers,” or commoners as criminals, the struggle for the commons continues as it is obligation. The struggle for subsistence, both physical and cultural is the path followed.
Drawing, working as a political act, may be a tool used by the “citizen designers and social bandits.”
Citizen Designers + Social Bandits
The “citizen designers and social bandits” may use the act of space commoning as a set of practices and inventice imaginaries which explore the emancipating potentialities of sharing.
Spatial Dimensions of Commoning
Commoning challenges existing socio-spatial frameworks and facilitates the emergence of differential forms of social and political subjectivity.
Space must be seen as a means of establishing and expanding commoning practices.
The act of space commoning as a set of practices and inventice imaginaries which explore the emancipating potentialities of sharing. Community and space as processes always in the making.
Space commoning is the resistance of enclosure, the act of setting up and sustaining infrastructure, an act of co creation. A performance.
The tools of space commoning include drawing as a political act. Drawing together shared matters of concern so as to offer to political disputes an overview of the difficulties that will entangle us every
time we must modify the practical details of our material existence. Modes of this can move past the two dimensional space.
Charter of the Forest
Causes
+ loss of forests (means of productions)
+ privatization of lands
Tactics
+ occupying land in large numbers
Mai 68’
Causes
+ government held control over everyday life [media, curriculum]
+ education ministry controlled curriculum and messaging]
Tactics
+ occupation of spaces [universities and sections of the city]
+ impromptu barricades
+ working population moved the lever of power for themselves
+ reorganization of university spaces
Solidarity
Causes
+ rise in prices while wages remained stagnant
Tactics
+ ooccupying the factory [means of production]
+ worker publications
Honk Kong Protests
Causes
+ fugitive offenders amendment
Tactics
+ public assemblies
+ public statements
+ physical artifacts
Bibliography
Clouier, Vass, Sylvia. Design Commons: Practices, Processes, and Crossovers. Springer International Publsihing, 17 May 2022.
Federici, Silvia. Re-Enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. PM Press / Kairos, November 2018.
Linebaugh, Peter. The Magna Carta Manifesto : Liberties and Commons for All, University of California Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.utah.edu/lib/utah/detail.action?docID=345552.
Marx, Karl. Das Kapital. 14 December 1867.
Mason, David S. “Solidarity as a New Social Movement.” Politicalm Science Quarterly, vol. 104, no. 1, 1989, pp. 41–58. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2150987. Accessed 21 Sep. 2022.
Moebus, Katharina. Design Commons: Practices, Processes, and Crossovers. Springer International Publishing, 17 May 2022.
Reed, Ernest. “May 1968: Workers and Students Together.” May 1968: Workers and Students Together | International Socialist Review, https://isreview.org/issue/111/may-1968-workers-and-students-together/index.html.
Tang, Thomas Yun-tong. "The Evolution of Protest Repertoires in Hong Kong: Violent Tactics in the Anti-Extradition Bill Protests in 2019." The China Quarterly (London) 251 (2022): 660-82. Web.
Vidal, John. “Mexico's Zapatista Rebels, 24 Years on and Defiant in Mountain Strongholds.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 17 Feb. 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/feb/17/mexico-zapatistas-rebels-24-years-mountain-strongholds.
Volont, Louis. (2019). Who steals the goose from off the common? An interview with Peter Linebaugh.