WINTER UPDATE MEETING, december 26th 2013 - january 2nd 2014

WINTER UPDATE MEETING
- It's not about me -
26/12/2013-2/1/2014

PAF invites you to the 8th consecutive Winter Update Meeting: “It’s not about me”

Winter Update Meeting is seven days of conversations, sharing of commons, exchange of knowledge and social togetherness, only this time you won’t be talking so much about yourself.

You are invited to present, talk about, show, copy, misunderstand, teach or even fake other people’s work. It could be people or works you know about and you find important or it could be a good excuse to know something/someone you didn’t know before or a way to present others with unknown objects or theories.
Take it as a holiday from self-promotion and a chance to shortly be busy with other people’s work more than your own, as Einstein used to say.

PAF in the winter welcomes a wide variety of Christmas-fugitives who possess all sorts of different knowledge, competences and obscure references that would be a pity not to share around youtube fires on laptop screens.
Having said that, the end of the year always comes with a certain slowness and a need to recharge batteries, so you won’t need to squeeze knowledge out of yourself, rather gently release it while pressing or brushing against each other.

It is in fact up to each and every participant to determine what will happen and PAF’s facilities are there to be activated in all thinkable ways. WUM is also open for collective proposals and activities.

As usually and wonderfully Marcus and Siri will make life better by cooking all those good things and so much, that oh, nobody will suspect you haven’t spent Christmas at home.

You can participate for as many days as you want, reservation is as easy as sending an email with or without a proposal to Jan Ritsema: janritsema@mac.com

You can stay longer before and/or after these dates; PAF is open the whole year.

[As food will be served during WUM, self-cooking is not possible. Apart from the price for the room, 15 euro a night, one also pays 17 euro for the food&wine, together 32 euro for a full day. A membership, valuable for one year, is obligatory (12 euro)]
Jan

Practical information.
- you can come as many days as you want in the foreseen period of the Winter Update Meeting or stay longer, before or after.
- participation in the costs: per person 15 euros a night
- food is organised (only during WUM)and obligatory and costs 17 euros a day (tell us when you are a vegetarian or fish-vegetarian)
- total sum per day: either 32 euros per person per day
- reserve by email: janritsema@mac.com
- no application is needed, but make a reservation soon, as the interest seems to be quite big and PAF can only host 50 people
- general information about PAF and how to arrive there under the chapter 'How to get to Paf'.
- from january 2010 we introduced an obligatory membership of the association PAF for everybody who stays at paf, for security reasons, of 12 euro membership for 12 months. This is above the price for the room . Apart from how often one stays at paf one pays only ones per 12 months for the membership.

PAF is a open and relatively free site (and)
PAF is a nomadic space
PAF tries to stay cheap
PAF has almost no staff
(When PAF would have a staff, the prices would be much higher and the highly appreciated autonomy offered to the participants now would be strongly limited. PAF would no longer make a difference but would become a normal well organised artists residency, where space and material belong to the staffs responsability.)

The highly appreciated autonomy can only be maintained when everybody takes part in the every day maintenance organisation.
In other words: -Don’t leave traces and put things back where you found them.
To be more concrete: - clean up the personal and general dirt you and other guests left behind you/them. - do not colonize, space nor information (books, dvd’s etc.),(means do not keep this for yourself, in your room or such) - and keep information, materials, apparatuses and spaces available, organised and moveable.
To say it differently: -Make it possible for others, not by retreating, not by withdrawel, or by being modest, on the contrary, making it possible for others is thought as active participation. Through action one offers and opens spaces in which others can take part. One proposes participation in an open rehearsal, a lecture, a conversation, a film or documentairy showing and/or by cleaning up and maintaning general space.
In other words: one does. This makes that -the doer decides at PAF.

PAF has 3 no's.
-no partners (unless the partner has a project to work on), no animals, no kids. PAF wants to be a production place not a social one.

PAF has 3 principles.
1. Reversibility: The things in PAF ( whether they are objects, subjects or institutions/organisations) are there for you and you are there for the things as well. I.e. PAF or the coffee machine, the other or a corridor is there for you as much as you are there for PAF or the coffee machine, for the other or the corridor.
2. Exchange. Of whatever Knowledge, Machines, Expertise, Spaces, Times, Things
3. Liquidity. You are kindly invited to make fluid what is fixed, whether this concerns your mental (I am like this) or your material property.

To enhance the Taking Care For Yourself And For The Other, we experiment with a self-check-in. This is laid out in the entrance hall. Please respect the free (green) or occupied (red) sign, even when a room seems to be empty. This might have reasons of planning on our side. You find your sheets and towel in the laundry room, please respect orderly piles.
The mutual use of the available studios is discussed and negociated between the colleagues when you are in PAF. The principles and rules are the guidelines for this.

We wish you a fruitful time in PAF.

Jan Ritsema