Freie Theater Article (2008)

gift Juli-September 08
PerformingArtsForum – PAF By Jan Ritsema

Paf does not do a lot about networking.
People come by spreading the word. By word of mouth.
People fi nd PAF more than that we look for them.
We are not well organised.
Even the socalled „paffers“ are not organised.
PAF is organised through the principles of self-organisation
and self-education, which is basically no-organisation,
or better to speak an ever changing organisation,
or even better to speak an ever-changing WAY of organising.
And it is this that we like:
a high level of liquidity in professional and social contacts.
No contracts.
You stay as long as it makes sense for you,
even when you announced to stay much longer.
Things should work for the residents.
The residents should not work for the residence.
Mostly the residents are the traffi c and the tools to make a residency work.
No territorialization.
No appropriation.
No propriation.
Unbound.
Liquid.
Independance.
It works as long as it works.
And it has as little rules as possible.
There are three main rules:
1. don‘t leave traces
2. make it possible for others
3. the doer decides
and three no‘s
1. no kids
2. no animals
3. no partners (who come for some kind of holiday)
PAF is a working place
not a social place,
let alone a relaxing/holiday place
PAF has almost no staff.
Staff is dangerous,
as they will set rules and occupy little territories.
The maintenance of a network needs a staff member.
PAF is a liquid organization,
better to say some kind of gas organization
it evaporates all the time
a temporary autonomous zone
Networks would fix and clue.
Networks establish highways and preferences.
Are tools for inclusion and by this for exclusion.
Networks knit webs finally.
PAF is a no-code area.
But PAF at the same time doesn‘t want to be usurped,
lived out, used, consumed.
It needs maintenance and care.
But it does not organize this.
It‘s up to the users how long an area like PAF will exist.
It works as long as it works.

Additional Information about PAF:

PAF is a place for the professional and not-yet professional practitioners and activists in the field of performing arts, visual art, new media and internet, theory and cultural production, who seek to research and determine their own conditions of work. PAF is for people who can motorize their own artistic production and knowledge production not only responding to the opportunities given by the institutional market.

Initiated and run by artists, theoreticians and practitioners themselves, PAF is a user-created, user-innovative informal institution. Neither a production-house and venue, nor a research-center, it is a platform for everyone who wants to expand possibilities and interests in his/her own working practice.

Contact & Information:
Jan Ritsema / PAF 15, rue Haute, F-02820 St Erme Outre et Ramecourt
T/F +33 323801846, mobile: +33 637031645
e-mail: janritsema@mac.com,
skype: janritsema
www.pa-f.net

[SOURCE : Freie Theater ]