https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/firsttimesdonotexist

"First times do not exist." [1]

These three days start from a commitment to feminist and intersectional politics of re-use. For me, this means to assume that ideas are "always already situated within the communities with which we exist" [1], to remember that creative work does not start from invention, but from re-use. 

In her essay "Footnotes (books and papers scattered on the floor)", Black feminist theorist Katherine McKittrick writes, “By observing how arranging, rearranging, and collecting ideas outside ourselves are processes that make our ideas our own, I think about how our ideas are bound up in stories, research, inquiries, that we do not (or should not claim we) own.” [2] McKittrick's interest in thinking with the arrangement and rearrangement of "ideas outside ourselves" could be read as an invitation to care for them and for the persisting presence of (un)known genealogies through making them your own rather than owning them as such; through re-use rather than by celebrating authorial invention.

But how to practice re-use in ways that considers and challenges power relations, that make communities thrive, and that contributes to the pool of common knowledge? How do we move beyond the ideological framework of conventional intellectual property law, beyond the conventions of academic citation and their normalized assumptions about individual authorship, exclusivity, and originality?


FOOTNOTES
[1] Rivera Garza, Cristina. The Restless Dead: Necrowriting and Disappropriation
[2] Mugrefya, Elodie, and Femke Snelting. “Collectively Setting Conditions for Re-Use.” MARCH International, 2022. https://march.international/collectively-setting-conditions-for-re-use/. The preparation for this workshop is part of the intense plotting, thinking and reading together with Eva Weinmayr in the context of the project Ecologies of Dissemination. https://parsejournal.com/research-themes/#ecologiesofdissemination
[3] Mckittrick, Katherine. “Footnotes (Books and Papers Scattered about the Floor).” In Dear Science and Other Stories, 14–32. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2021.


READING
Rivera Garza, Cristina. The Restless Dead: Necrowriting and Disappropriation. Vanderbilt University Press, 2020, p46-p54 (9p)
Blanga Gubbay, Daniel. “Being Danced by the Dance.” In DiVersions V2, edited by Elodie Mugrefya and Femke Snelting. Brussels: Constant, 2021.  (5p)
Ahmed, Sara. “Authorship.” In Differences That Matter: Feminist Theory and Postmodernism, 119–125. Cambridge University Press, 1998. (6p)
Chen, Ken. “Authenticity Obsession, or Conceptualism as Minstrel Show,” June 11, 2015. https://aaww.org/authenticity-obsession/. (1-8, 8p)
Bonus: “Some Things We Thought With.” In The Hundreds, 157–73. Duke University Press, 2019. (16p)

Download materials here: https://cloud.constantvzw.org/s/ZYt54yCBd4Q6m5x 


SCHEDULE (times confirmed)
Monday 30 September: Contingent relations
09:00 on-line check-in for those that cannot join in person https://meet.greenhost.net/firsttimesdonotexist
11:00 Introductions I
12:00 Introductions II https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/firsttimesdonotexist.introductions
13:00 Break
14:00 Input https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/firsttimesdonotexist.words
15:30 Break
16:00 Reading: Mckittrick, Katherine. “Footnotes (Books and Papers Scattered about the Floor).” In Dear Science and Other Stories, 14–32. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2021.  
17:00 End

Tuesday 31 September: Affective infrastructures
10:00 Conversations on reuse and conditions https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/firsttimesdonotexist.reuse
13:00 Break
14:00 Input https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/firsttimesdonotexist.words
15:30 Break
16:00 Listening
17:00 End

Wednesday 1 November: Conditions for reuse
09:00 on-line feedback for those that cannot join in person https://meet.greenhost.net/firsttimesdonotexist
11:00 Conversations on reuse, reusing reuse https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/firsttimesdonotexist.cases
12:00 sharing cases
13:00 Break
14:00 Input https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/firsttimesdonotexist.words
15:30 Break
16:00 Reading
17:00 End