Dreaming of the Commons. How can we keep collective practices alive?

For a year now, Agency has been busy "dreaming" its future: a list of "boundary things" and a "practicothèque", assemblies and excursions, working on the outer limits of the law, activism and art - these forms, processes and practices are the legacy of Kobe Matthys. But how do we keep them going?  

On this eventful day, we take our first and collective shot at "dreaming up" Agency by weaving together several strands. Together with Marie Moreau and the Bureau des dépositions, a structure committed to challenging repressive migration policies in France by attempting to redefine immigrants' rights through copyright and co-authorship, we imagine what might happen to the Bureau after a court ruling prevents its co-creation. With Erika Sprey we try to get a taste of what the future consultation and activation of Agency's practicothèque (library of practices) may look like, starting from a very real "dream scenario". Finally, we'll be using Tarot Souriau in a joint attempt to read and "dramatise" Agency, not theatrically but pragmatically.

The day is hosted by Agency, Rue Théodore Verhaegen 18, 1000 Brussels. Coffee is served from 09:30, with the session on the Bureau des dépositions starting at 10:00. Lunch is served at 13:00, followed by the Agency session at 14:00 and the Tarot Souriau reading at 17:00. The event is free and will be held in English and French. Please fill in this form to register. The first session (Bureau des dépositions) and the second session (Agency) are limited to 40 people, the tarot reading is limited to 20 people.

Marie Moreau is a visual artist and documentary filmmaker. Between 2001 and 2006, she co-activated Syndicat d'initiatives, which was exhibited several times and showcased at the Paris Biennale in 2006. In 2012 she created Atlas Local, a system for collecting (and peddling) erratic maps. In 2013 she co-created Crossing Maps, a research and creation platform for alternative travel maps which were made clandestine by the immigration laws. Between 2017 and 2023, Moreau continued to work with people concerned and/or segregated by migration policies. She is also one of the founding members of the Bureau des depositions, a creative cell for rethinking justice, co-authorship and cooperative action, whose ten co-authors have made numerous immaterial and performative works since. Moreau has just finished the film Paradis barbarie, which questions environmental law through the stories of a group of people who are ill or in remission, or cured of cancer.

Erika Sprey is a Dutch-Mexican artist, activist, researcher and curator who divides her time between Belgium, Mexico and the Netherlands. With a background in (plant) medicine, photography, critical theory, activism and the arts, she now focuses on dramaturgy, artistic research and systemic/dynamic coaching for artists and activists. As the former curator-in-chief of Studium Generale at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, she developed extensive educational programmes like Wxtch Craft and Earth Craft. Her current project, Dream Craft, completes a trilogy aimed at rewriting Eurocentric colonial histories and recuperating suppressed repositories of knowledge, such as witchcraft and ancestral and indigenous forms of earth care.

Agency is an international initiative and the generic name of an association registered in Brussels, founded in 1992 by Kobe Matthys (1970-2023). Collaborating with researchers, it revolves around a cooperatively owned and continuously growing list of "boundary things" that resist the radical split between the classifications of nature and culture. The list maps out various territories of integrated world capitalism and is mostly derived from controversies and juridical cases involving property, ranging from the start of the enclosures of the commons in the 17th century until the present day. The world’s ecological crisis has rekindled a growing interest in interdependencies and shared environments, based on the reciprocal adaptation to properties. This resurgent inclusive interpretation of property stands in sharp contrast to the exclusive ownership traditionally defined in law. The colonial concept of ownership assumes a fundamental split between culture and nature and consequently plies the logic of "between" − expressions and ideas, creations and facts, subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, originality and tradition, individuals and collectives, mind and body, and so on. Each controversy that is included in the list marks a resistance to these divisions. Agency conjures up these "boundary things" in various "assemblies", which can take the form of exhibitions, performances and publications. Each assembly explores the performative consequences of intellectual property mechanisms, aimed at creating an ecology of artistic practices based on inclusion and respect.