Why do you call this project SUMMIT?
Answer:
SUMMIT is neither a conference nor an informal forum or open space. It is designed as a gathering that borrows the grammar of the dramaturgy of meetings of heads of state -- just a few days before the G-8 meeting in Heiligendamm near Rostock is taking place.
SUMMIT is an experimental setup designed to find out what happens if individuals, agents and protagonists of a multitude of projects and initiatives come together as delegates but can no longer speak on behalf of an institution, an interest group, a professional organization or a branch, let alone a nation state.
SUMMIT ignores the logics of representation and replaces them with certain notions of access, self-authorization, and collaboration, which we analyzed as main characteristics of emerging new subjectivities that are constitutive for the concepts of "activism" and "participation".
The question is: How can we find new ways of analyzing, recognizing, decision making and working together without a common ground from where to operate? Across the wide range of delegates and contributors to SUMMIT from migrant labor organizers to art school teachers, from precarious workers in the creative industries to curators and even museum directors it seems rather improbable to identify a shared set of beliefs and aspirations.
Nevertheless we see an enormous potential for all sorts of unlikely encounters, possible links, connections and collaborations precisely because of such diversity, singularity or heterogenity which ultimately refers to the very conditions under which we are working today.