>>>Epicenter | Periphery
Exploration of rural conditions of creativity and social change - does the city have to be the norm?
Autumn 2008, Dale i Sunnfjord, Norway,
Research phase 20 September - 3 October 2008
Conference spring 2009
by Roomservices and Nordic Artist Center Dale, NKD
Epicenter Periphery is a research project+conference trying to redefine the parameters by which we understand the relation between urban and rural, middle and margin, epicenter and periphery. By trying to map and understand the dynamics of an off-center location in a new way, different forms of interventions can be made to plug into intensify local flows and energy sources, vitalizing crucial lines and nodes to trigger further local change.
The event will take place consecutively in September 2008 and spring 2009. The research phase will be executed between 20th September til 3rd October in collaboration with Elísabet Gunnarsdóttir from Nordic Artists' Center- NKD. The conference will be realized in spring 2009, in Dale, Norway by Nordic Artists' Center- NKD, United World College in Fjaler and Fjaler Municipality.
As periphery being defined and redefined through the constitution of the center, its identity is destined to be framed from a series of limitations. These are usually seen as heavy traditions, conventional thinking, non-dynamic environments, homogeneous and bordered spaces. Epicenter is, on the contrary, where everything seem to happen and where all nodes meet and in a state of flow. It is the attractor point and magnet for all different sectors, where all feed from the synergies of a critical mass; people, ideas, money, culture and energy. But is it really so? What are the connections between center and periphery, and how can these interfaces be further explored and renegotiated? Which are the small scale, local tactics that create vibrant collisions, multiplies input into rural amplifiers and centripetal creative cycles for massing development densities?
Epicenter | Periphery aims to open up a hands-on discussion platform around the survival strategies of the periphery, and to tune, amplify, and reconnect them into emergent processes for social change.
The first step is a two week research and development period performed by roomservices and invited experts, Karl Palmas and Tina Giannopoulos, where parameters and mapping techniques will be explored to reveal the local energy flows and hidden assets of Dale. The project will also practically investigate how interventions in these mapped flows can change the conditions of the rural, local, and periphery. The aim of this research is to better understand how small scale interventions can reveal, mobilize and amplify hidden structures and currents in a small peripheral community.
These small change interventions can trigger multiply existing forces and motivate social orchestration for pooling and intersecting the existing flows in a community and embrace the existing creativity rather than feeling a need to "fly in" new resources.Tools for such interventions can be anything from local currencies, innovation protocols, open source interfaces, architectural practices, intervention processes, social entrepreneurship, incubators and NGO initiatives, combined with relations to locality issues and social practice within contemporary art.
During the whole event there will be radio broadcasting (proxy radio Dale) every evening with discussions concerning the issues in the workshop. The studio will be located at NKD and engage locals and workshop participants.
>>> Epicenter | Periphery Issues for research
Three main problems of Dale are chosen as workshop assignments:
Flows of energy: How do we understand and map with better accuracy and imagination what is happening in-between people, institutions, and events in a small milieu, and how can we practically tap into these flows to intensify them? What can be the interventions for amplifying local initiatives and energy sources?
Lines of energy: How can we amplify the channels of communication and organization of local synergies? We usually think that a new event, building, community center, or festival will trigger larger movements by converging existing lines and inviting outside ones, but how can we bend everyday small flows and their communication channels to connect into larger creative turbulences?
Nodes of energy: What are the places through which the local energies flow, and how do we locate them? What can be done structurally and architecturally to make these functions better through small scale interventions?
>>> The Research focused on network analysis and emergy flow charts.
sociogram made by students from the United World College in Flekke and in Dale.
emergy map of the networked eco-system of Dale.
>>> Some of the suggestions from the research: +full catalogue of concepts [pdf 2.5 mb]
