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--- ibex:radmin [2019-03-02 16:15] – katerich
+++ ibex:radmin [2019-03-04 18:07] – katerich
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 post-RADMIN reflections
-The ember of thinking behind [[https://cubecinema.com/pages/radmin|RADMIN]] was not so much a curatorial project as throwing up a tracer or perhaps lighting a bonfire. A wild sign to illuminate what is out there, &/or who/what would be drawn to the prospect of a festival of Administration. The topic of administration represents only a sub-category of a larger enquiry around how we might do business differently. But by nature being urgent, common, everyday (yet curiously segregated when it comes to creative practice), enveloping of both individual and collective situations (while going often unspoken / unacknowledged in each), socially awkward and determinedly anti-spectacular, it seemed like a good place to start.
+//Objectives//
-RADMIN was devised and delivered over a run-up of 4 months by a core team of two, alongside many others from our larger collectives the long-standing [[http://cubecinema.com/about|Cube Microplex]] and the recently formed Feral Business Network. The process embodied a rapid-fire materialisation of some decades of thinking. For me it was a space to lay out a tangle of burning questions, such as,
+The ember of thinking behind [[https://cubecinema.com/pages/radmin|RADMIN]] was less a curatorial venture than throwing up a tracer or perhaps lighting a bonfire, to illuminate what is out there, &/or who/what would be drawn to the prospect of a festival of Administration. The topic of administration represents only a sub-category of the larger enquiry into how we might do business differently. But by nature being urgent, common, everyday (yet curiously segregated when it comes to creative practice), enveloping of both individual and collective situations (while going often unspoken / unacknowledged in each), socially awkward and determinedly anti-spectacular, it seemed like a good place to start.
+RADMIN was devised and delivered over a run-up of 4 months by a core team of two, alongside many others from our larger collectives the long-standing [[http://cubecinema.com/about|Cube Microplex]] and the recently assembled Feral Business Network. The process represented a rapid materialisation of some decades of thinking. For me it was a space to lay out a tangle of burning questions, such as,
   * What can artists do for business?
-  * Why leave the experiments with business to Silicon Valley?
+  * Why leave the experiments to Silicon Valley?
   * How and where to collide the wealth of indigenous thinking from art with the intractable problems of business as usual?
-and in the longer term,
+and in the longer run,
-  * How to speak back into the spaces of business and enterprise with new business shapes for a genuinely sustainable economy?
+  * How to speak back into the spaces of business and enterprise with radically new business shapes for a genuinely sustainable economy?
-To put these ambitions in perspective, RADMIN could be viewed as an initialising public event at the the start of a 20-year project whose objectives include,
+To put these ambitions in perspective, RADMIN should be understood as an initialising event in a 20-year+ endeavour whose objectives include
   * To break down some of the consolidating associations of business and open up this territory to exploration;
   * To reconsider the 'dull' spaces of administration as not just something we are subject to but a site for politics, solidarity and change;
-  * In relation to art, to extend a critical and experimental attention from content to containers (the infrastructure in which the art work takes place);
+  * (In relation to art) to extend a critical and experimental attention from content to containers (the infrastructures in which the art work takes place);
-  * To assemble diverse experiments with business in this realm and hash out a vocabulary for naming them together. (Could these practices already constitute an economy?)
+  * To assemble diverse experiments with business in this realm, alongside a vocabulary for naming them together. (Could these practices already constitute an economy?)
   * At the same time, to provoke, dislodge or at least carefully consider the litany of scarcity in sustaining artist livelihoods - and consider how the above work might better resource us.
-  * And most likely as contentious, to invite thinking about business and economy at the psychological level into domains where it is not normally welcomed or trusted, bringing political autonomy, psychology, spectacle and modes of organisation into probable collision.
+  * And most likely as contentious, to invite thinking about business and economy at a psychological level into contexts where this approach is not always welcomed or trusted, bringing political autonomy, psychology, spectacle and modes of organisation into probable collision.
-RADMIN was also and specifically a festival in, of and about the Cube Cinema, crucible of much of this thinking. The Cube is programmed, staffed and governed by approximately 150 volunteers and is many different things to each. A founding intention for RADMIN was to open out the infrastructure, processes and organisation of the Cube, as programme content. In a sense, an internal operating memo in the form of a festival.
+RADMIN was also and specifically a festival in, of and about the Cube Cinema, crucible of much of this thinking. The Cube is programmed, staffed and governed by approximately 150 volunteers. A founding intention for RADMIN was to open out the infrastructure, processes and organisation of the Cube, how it is managed and administered, as programme content. An internal operating memo in the form of a festival.
-A more practical trigger was the Feral Business Research Network (FBRN) an unrealised academic networking project, that despite being unselected for funding, played out across two workshop gatherings in [[http://companydrinks.info/event/feral-business-research-network|London]] and [[http://laforesta.net/feral-business-research-network|Rovereto, Italy]] in 2018. RADMIN was to be the third and final network-building event in this series.
+A more practical trigger was the Feral Business Research Network (FBRN) an academic networking project for artists thinking with business, that despite being unselected for funding played out across two workshop gatherings in [[http://companydrinks.info/event/feral-business-research-network|London]] and [[http://laforesta.net/feral-business-research-network|Rovereto, Italy]] in 2018. RADMIN was the third and final network-building event in this series.
-Production/formatting
+//Production//
-The festival format loosely followed a rapid fire or Russian roulette setup wherein a volley of short events would act as diverse triggers for thinking, each event lasting not much over an hour, after which participants could be pinballed in another direction, and with enough surrounding space for striking up conversations. A scattershot approach, opening on the first evening with a [[https://cubecinema.com/programme/event/radmin-gala-dinner-the-shares-a-meal-hosted-by-the-viriconium-palace,10229|Gala Dinner]] in a mansion, with 3.5 minute dinner speeches to cast the terrain of what might be considered the subject matter of administration wide (in the business school, trade and logistics, monetary experiments, hitchhiking, heritage, plumbing and radical art history).
+The festival format loosely followed a rapid fire or Russian roulette design wherein a volley of short events would act as diverse triggers for thinking, each event lasting not much over an hour, after which participants could be pinballed in another direction, and with enough surrounding space for striking up new connections and conversations. A scattershot approach, opening on the first evening with a [[https://cubecinema.com/programme/event/radmin-gala-dinner-the-shares-a-meal-hosted-by-the-viriconium-palace,10229|Gala Dinner]], with a series of 3.5 minute dinner speeches to cast the terrain of what might be considered administration wide (the business school, trade and logistics, monetary experiments, hitchhiking, heritage, plumbing and radical art history).
-Day Two was designed as a more [[https://cubecinema.com/programme/event/radmin-convention,10584|conventional series of workshops]], followed by an [[https://cubecinema.com/programme/event/radmin-office-party,10585/|office party]] at the Cube; with Day Three opening out into delegate-generated content with the [[https://cubecinema.com/programme/event/radmin-professional-development-bonanza,10586|Professional Development Bonanza], radio show, raffle and Trade Show at the Cube, and [[https://cubecinema.com/programme/event/radmin-100-ushers-feature-film-tbc,10587/|staff training session]] before closing with the reassuringly familiar format of a feature film.
+The Day Two Convention was arranged as a more [[https://cubecinema.com/programme/event/radmin-convention,10584|conventional series of workshops]], followed by an [[https://cubecinema.com/programme/event/radmin-office-party,10585/|Office Party]] at the Cube, with Day Three opening out into delegate-generated content with the [[https://cubecinema.com/programme/event/radmin-professional-development-bonanza,10586|Professional Development Bonanza!]], radio show, raffle and Trade Show at the Cube, and [[https://cubecinema.com/programme/event/radmin-100-ushers-feature-film-tbc,10587|staff training session]] before closing with the reassuringly familiar format of a feature film.
-Participation
+//Participation//
-The programme aimed to work both as both a dragnet and a filter: to invite in a broad constituency of interests, and gauge where the concentrations and intensities might lie - and what topics could be fruitfully discarded. In the end, the event primarily self-marketed along ley lines of association as rapid word of mouth ticket sales kept attendance almost entirely within existing networks. This made for a strange constraint, combining the contiguous with the far flung, as attendee tickets were booked by close colleagues and distant friends of friends from Malta, Serbia, Belgium, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Hull and Glasgow. The fear of being wedding-like was in our minds. However these networks themselves I would be cautious to describe as homogeneous or coherent - even bringing an art crowd together with Cube staff/audiences made for an unwieldy and surprising collage.
+The programme aimed to work both as both a dragnet and a filter, to invite in a broad constituency of interests and gauge where the concentrations and intensities might lie. In the end, the event swiftly self-marketed along ley lines of association, as rapid word of mouth ticket sales kept attendance almost entirely within existing networks (even if these did reach as far as Hong Kong).  This made for a strange constraint, overlapping close and far flung neighbourhoods and the fear of being wedding-like was on our minds. However I would still be cautious to describe these networks as homogeneous or coherent - even bringing an art crowd together with the Cube staff/audiences made for an unwieldy and effective collage.
-The call for participation was to bring your own business, which was successful in attracting small delegations, but allowed a minority to register under their own names as self-employed business entities. All delegates were asked to submit an organisational bio, which together made up the [[https://feraltrade.org/radmin/RADMIN_Delegations.pdf|printed programme]].
+Most [[https://blog.cubecinema.com/2019/02/18/radmin-2019-documentation/nggallery/thumbnails/page/6|delegations]] took up the invitation to register as organisations and many attended in pairs or small groups, although some registered under their own names as self-employed business entities. All delegates were asked to submit an organisational bio, which appeared on their  [[https://feraltrade.org/radmin/radmin_plumbmaid.jpg|lanyard]] and together made up the [[https://feraltrade.org/radmin/RADMIN_Delegations.pdf|printed programme]] which was the event's primary [[https://blog.cubecinema.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/nggallery/radmin-2019-1/RADMIN_9.jpg|treasure]]
-Reflections
+//Organising through a RADMIN lens//
-Organisation through a RADMIN lens.
+The container of RADMIN had the fun side of rendering the usual stumbling blocks and dull administrative grooves vivid and poignant, even if just a performance to ourselves. This included getting caught in each others' spam filters, the online ticket-seller software hardcoding Valentine's Day into the event description, and our out of business hours email habits triggering a starburst of out of office autoresponders.
-The container of RADMIN had the fun side of rendering many of the usual stumbling blocks and dull administrative grooves as info-rich sites of special interest, even if as a performance to only ourselves. This included getting caught in each others' spam filters, the online ticket-seller software hardcoding Valentine's Day into the event description, and our out of business hours email habits tripping a host of out of office autoresponses.
+Questions of //how to be handbuilt and powerful// were vividly rendered in the sub-project of the [[https://feraltrade.org/radmin/RADMIN_READER_FINAL.pdf|RADMIN reader]], a zine-like collection of short texts and  a DIY endeavour by design. Graphics students from the University contributed the design and layout as part of their professional practice module. However when it came to print, fold and staple, not passing the 70-unit job over to University Print Services (a design decision, not budget-driven) caused an operating logjam played out in the art department printer queue, where I spent almost two entire days negotiating with (supportive) IT support technicians, network log-in protocols, office supply enclaves, line-management protocols, irate institutional hierarchies, beneficial staplers and the whole situated process of production which was really the entire point.
-The Money
+//Logistics//
-While not an overt focus, money surfaced with persistence in the programme as an organising technology. Of which to observe,
+Working across two venues served to extend the concept of the Cube, its operations, administration and self-image, well beyond the building. It also stretched our organising capacity and human energies to the limits. As a determinedly all-volunteer workforce with a proud tradition of attention to detail, this work was woven into and around other occupations (painting and decorating, lecturing, telephone sales, archiving, public speaking, parenting and not ironically admin roles). Fpr the 3-day event, Cube ushers took days off well-paid jobs elsewhere to work back-to-back shifts, involving a lot of cleaning.
+//The Money//
+While RADMIN steered away from economy as its main focus, money surfaced with persistence in the programme as an organising technology. Of which to observe,
 I
 The budget is the content.
-[[https://feraltrade.org/radmin/RADMIN_Budget_V4.pdf|The budget]] was both an organising input and a featured programme output of the event, printed and distributed as an A3 poster. In accordance with the economy of the Cube, the event was run entirely on ticket sales and substantial personal/organisational resources. This budget decision was central to the event design.
+[[https://feraltrade.org/radmin/RADMIN_Budget_V4.pdf|The budget]] was both an organising input and a featured programme output of the event, printed and distributed as an A3 poster. In accordance with the economy of the Cube, the event was run entirely on ticket sales, supplemented with substantial personal/organisational resources. This budget decision (keeping the ticket price low and not seeking project funding) was central to the event design.
 II
-As a whole, the festival performed a demonstration of a wealth of resources which ran counter to a litany of scarcity that surged through many of the conversations. Quite literally: a feast, various repositories of cash, a mansion, the richness of innumerable projects and lives' works. I would also observe that life rather than money loomed over the event as the scarce resource. A number of largely health-related shocks meant a swathe of last minute cancellations as delegates were felled by illness, family and a sobering shadow of bereavements. Conversely, two vivid days of sunshine set the scene well beyond our ability to stage-manage.
+The festival performed a demonstration of a wealth of resources which ran counter to a litany of monetary scarcity that surges through many conversations in the arts (as elsewhere). These included a feast, a [[https://feraltrade.org/radmin/radmin_ashton_court.jpg|mansion]], several repositories of cash and the richness of innumerable projects and lives' works. In the end, life rather than money loomed over the event as the scarce resource. A slew of largely health-related reasons caused a number of last minute cancellations. Conversely, two days of brilliant winter [[https://feraltrade.org/radmin/radmin_convention_lunch.jpg|sun]] set the scene well beyond our ability to stage-manage.
 III
-The Viriconium Palace money experiment, which opened the event, inflected procedings more than expected. Reactions to it, some of them quite [[https://www.less-stuff.co.uk/bucket-cash-radmin-2019/|strong]] ran a pervasive line of discord and distrubance through the event - in part a reaction to a decentring impulse in its organisation, Not speaking on behalf of RADMIN or issuing explanation of reassuring commentary.
+The Viriconium Palace money experiment, which opened the festival, inflected proceedings more than expected. The reactions, some of them quite [[https://www.less-stuff.co.uk/bucket-cash-radmin-2019/|strong]] ran a pervasive seam of discord and disturbance through the event. In part this responded to a determinedly decentring impulse in its organisation, where organisers did not seek to issue explanations or reassuring commentary.
 IV
-The Business Experiment Raffle
+The Business Experiment Raffle, announced at the gala dinner, a [[https://blog.cubecinema.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/nggallery/radmin-2019-1/RADMIN_33.jpg|raffle]] with one ticket available to each RADMIN delegation. A manouever in dissociative funding: entry was gated by requirement to be present at the Day 3 draw and to deliver a 30-second plan or dream for a business experiment to the assembled rom, after which the £2,500 prize was randomly drawn and issued to the [[https://feraltrade.org/radmin/RADMIN_Raffle_winning_ticket_39.jpg|winner]] with no strings attached.
-The other money game was the raffle. Announced at the gala dinner, a [[https://blog.cubecinema.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/nggallery/radmin-2019-1/RADMIN_33.jpg|raffle]] with one ticket available to each RADMIN delegation. Entry was gated by requirement to be present at the draw and deliver a proposal for a business experiment, the £2,500 prize [[[[https://feraltrade.org/radmin/RADMIN_Raffle_winning_ticket_39.jpg|issued]] with no strings attached. The format of a pitch with the ambiguity of no reporting/accounting conditions for the winner, and a random draw.
-Logistics
+//What was learnt//
-Working across two venues served to extend the concept of the Cube, its operations, administration and self-image, well beyond the building. It also stretched our organising capacity and human energies to the limits. The Cube has an inhouse tradition of attention to detail. As a determinedly all-volunteer workforce, this work was woven into and around other labours (painting and decorating, lecturing, telephone sales, archiving, public speaking, parenting and not ironically admin roles). Cube ushers took days off well-paid jobs elsewhere to work back-to-back shifts, involving a lot of cleaning.
+From the hindsight of debriefing, the following points came into focus.
-Questions of //how to be handbuilt and powerful// were vividly rendered in the sub-project of the [[https://feraltrade.org/radmin/RADMIN_READER_FINAL.pdf|RADMIN reader]], a zine-like collection of short texts and  a DIY endeavour by design. Graphics students from the University were happy to contribute design and layout as part of their professional practice module. However when it came to print, fold and staple, not passing the 70-unit job over to University Print Services (a design decision, not budget-driven) caused an operating logjam played out in the art department printer queue, where I spent almost two entire days negotiating with (supportive) IT support technicians, network log-in protocols, office supply enclaves, line-management protocols, institutional hierarchies, beneficial staplers and the whole situated process of production which was really the entire point.
-Delegations
-Large-print [[https://blog.cubecinema.com/2019/02/18/radmin-2019-documentation/nggallery/thumbnails/page/6|lanyards]] made organisational entities vivid to each other across a crowded room. Attending as organisational entities had the effect that afterwards people were referring to each other as TOFU or PlumbMaid, rather than catching names. The programme was the treasure.
-What was learnt
-From the hindsight of the day-after debrief breakfast the following points came into focus.
 A general sense that some felt fed with a vast array of inspiring inputs while for others that the programme was nowhere near hard, deep or business enough, crystallising a desire for deeper work to follow.
 Converging desires, how to still speak to the street, bring in business, not alienate those already 20 years in to the the process and still keep the peripheries open.
-And a challenge to be less white.
 How to engage (or not) with lines of conversation that circled back to 'privilege', 'struggle', ' exploitation', 'clique', body, money and politics.
-How the psychological/ spiritual level for many tripped up politics. Irritation with the body level - what does that tell us?
+How the psychological/ spiritual level may trip up politics (and aesthetics) and how that could be valuaed.
-The omission to emphasise to all (not just to speakers and workshop hosts) that the programme constituted actual research, not content delivery for an audience. So the process is contributory and where it doesn't work is the engaging space for learning.
+A programme constituting actual research - not content delivery for an audience - is contributory, where it doesn't work smoothly is the open opportunity for learning.
-Next steps
+//Next steps//
-Primary that the workshops were too short, the frameworks were just being played with.
+A switch from a network/spectacle phase to deeper workgroups for day long investigations.
+Lines of enquiry to include:
-This calls for a switch from a network/spectacle phase to deeper workgroups, day long investigation
+a) Legal
+b) Administrative
-The valuable interdisciplinarity here is in bringing these enquiries into the same hosting space / the same page / into physical/social relationship with each other by hosting the interfaces between them. Time and other resources for breaking down frameworks.
+c) Vegetal
+d) Pscyhological
-a) Legal (teresa's crew + other radical lawyers)
+e) Enterprise imaging
-b) Administrative (angela/CUPS. university and institutional administrators)
+f) Creative accounting (not present at RADMIN, but critical)
-c) Vegetal organisation (ingrid / foAM)
+g) Activities for translating administrative thinking into other realms
-d) Pscyhological level (peer coaching training / network)
+h) Artist and tradesperson
-e) Representational angle (ellen's enterprise imaging, could be explored much further as a group)
+i) And critically the role of artist/practitioner in all this. How to both be resourced and have agency, which brings the scarcity and abundance questions together.
-f) Creative accounting (not present at RADMIN, but critical. need to find someone to lad it)
-g) Physicalising admin (intimacy encryption / heath, administrative postures / guy. translating administrative thinking into other realms)
-h) Artist and tradesperson (Sovay/ Plumbmaid)
-i) perhaps closely related with h), the role of artist/practitioner in all this. how to i) be resourced and ii) have agency. bringing together scarcity and abundance. the incidental person may or may not be a role model - despite clumsy IU workshop there is still something super interesting there. Practitioners and interdisciplinarity.
- Actions
 An immediate task to organise around, the post-RADMIN reader
@@ Line 113: / Line 102: @@
 An annual retreat
-An annual counter-capital raffle
+An annual counter-capital raffle!
-keeping open at the edges. the more surface area in the edges, the more can go on.
-Something compelling to articulate in the inversion between handing personhood to a river - a better than nothing anthropomorphising - and the reverse, that a stone can be a business doesn't comercialise a stone, but stonifies commerce. Work for Ibex.