Photo by Anna Siggelkow
The Soil Model of Co-Organization at Massia
Reflections on Massia by Anne Waggot Knott
Reside/Sustain research project article on MASSIA by Adel Kim
QUICK LINKS
> For reservations and price info, click here.
> To know more about MASSIA’s facilities and equipment, click here.
> For info about how to get to MASSIA by public transport, click here.
ABOUT MASSIA
MASSIA is located in a heritage school building in Massiaru, a village in Häädemeeste Parish, Pärnu County in southwestern Estonia. The location is near the coast (12 km), about 180 km south of Tallinn, and about 140 km north of Riga, Latvia.
MASSIA is a residency space for the professional and not-yet professional and welcomes individuals or groups from any field – artists, practitioners, scientists, activists, etc., who seek to research and determine their own conditions of work.
MASSIA is for people who can motorize their own artistic and knowledge production, not only responding to the opportunities given by the institutional market. Initiated and run by artists, theoreticians and practitioners themselves, MASSIA is a user-created informal residency. It is a platform for everyone who wants to expand possibilities and interests in their own working practice, a place for creation and study, connection and exchange, for organising events and more.
MASSIA is busy with notions of self-organisation and making alternatives possible.
With the garden, invested in herbal medicine, these ideas extend to the living surroundings and the notion of thriving in co-existence with differing others. Massia Officinale generates exchanges for people within the intersections of art, ecology, environmental studies, plant and common practices.
MASSIA does not have a selection process and is open to anyone as long as there are rooms available and as long as they agree with the basic principles laid out in MASSIA basics.
MASSIA is
– a place for temporary autonomy, enabling focus on work
– a tool-machine where one can work on developing methods, tools and procedures, not necessarily driven toward a product
– a place for experimenting with other than known modes of production and organization of work, e.g. open source production
– a place inviting to question concepts like work, production and reproduction
– a forum for producing knowledge in critical exchange and ongoing discursive practice
Most importantly, MASSIA offers possibilities without imposing them. In other words, MASSIA depends on how you affect and are affected by taking an active part in shaping your own activity in your workplace.
MASSIA is an open and relatively free site
MASSIA is a nomadic space
MASSIA tries to stay cheap
MASSIA has almost no staff
If MASSIA had staff, prices would be much higher and the autonomy offered to the participants would be strongly limited. MASSIA would no longer make a difference, but would become a normal well-organised artists residency, where space and material belong to the staff’s responsibility. The condition for you to stay in MASSIA is to actively participate in the self-organisation, including care and maintenance work.
MASSIA has no subsidy. It is maintained through membership and accommodation fees.
Check out the MASSIA basics for more.
MASSIA is a partner organisation of PAF, Performing Arts Forum, St. Erme, France.
MASSIA is member of the Estonian Creative Residencies Network LOORE.