Survival Strategies III: Exercises in Pirate Care

Exercises in “Pirate Care”

The Space of Opportunity organizes the winter edition of its artistic seminar series for the third time, with the thematic frame of “pirate care”.

One of the deficiencies of contemporary societies is the abandonment of care. While mutual dependence and solidarity are key to the coexistence of humans, states embracing global neo-liberal economics place the responsibility of care on the individual or the immediate family, which may or may not function. Increasingly, the welfare state fails to properly perform its duties in health, education, culture and social care. The gap is partly filled by for-profit organizations, and occasionally NGOs, which leaves many without access to adequate care and services.

“Pirate care” denotes independent, grass-roots, solution-driven projects by NGOs or activists who dare to infringe the law if need be. The term was first applied in a broader sense by a transdisciplinary and transnational research project and network, formed in 2019 for the creation of a common, independent care infrastructure. The project includes initiatives that seek to counter general abortion bans, segregated education or the criminalization of homelessness. States often do not recognize such care practices, or even criminalize and persecute them.

For our part, we consider critical culture as yet another expression of care, which is capable of articulating contemporary problems and questioning the status quo with the aim of restoring and strengthening the capacity for change and action. At the same time, the neo-liberal world order, which disclaims social sensitivity, is another phase of capitalism in which the role of critical culture, and within it, of progressive art, is called into question. They are snubbed while the culture that receives support favours mass entertainment and such institutions that refrain from experimentation.

With this year’s Survival Strategies seminars, we invite you to join us in our attempt at pirate care in culture through the sharing of ideas and the experience of community—inclusive and accepting events that can inspire solidarity in other fields as well. We will be given a helping hand by artists who will propose subjects for the workshops and will host the joint exercises.

2. ZSÓFIA GYENES- FERENC GRÓF

March 15, 2025.

10.00-17.00 workshop based on former application

https://forms.gle/ztYYGnPzsWX3VWpc9 (apply here until 10th of March)

18.00-19.30 public presentation

Meanders of ice

The starting point for the workshop led by Zsófia Gyenes, a color and textile designer, and Ferenc Gróf, a visual artist, is Maria Mies’s iceberg metaphor. The German sociologist co-authored the book The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy (1999) with Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen. One of its most famous diagrams depicts the iceberg model of the capitalist-patriarchal economy. The smaller, visible part of the iceberg represents capital and legally regulated labor governed by contracts, as well as the world of gross national income. The larger, “underwater” and invisible part comprises all those economic processes that fall prey to unregulated and ruthless exploitation.

During the workshop, we will reinterpret this diagram, which illustrates the economic oppression of the invisible majority, using one of the favorite graphic tools of administration: stamps. The workshop provides an opportunity to collectively explore Maria Mies’s ecofeminist critique and its emancipatory potentials. With the help of stamps and printing blocks, participants will create textile- and paper-based graphic works that reflect on the questions raised by the iceberg metaphor.

Zsófia Gyenes (born 1977, Budapest) is a textile designer and visual artist. She studied in Budapest and Paris, graduating in 2004 from the textile department of ENSAD (École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs). After nearly twenty years of working as a textile designer in the fields of fashion, interior design, and the automotive industry, she launched her independent artistic practice in 2022.

Ferenc Gróf (born 1972, Pécs) was a founding member of the Société Réaliste collective, where he developed a distinctive artistic language using linguistic and typographic elements, statistics, and cartographic symbols to examine social processes and reveal connections between the past and present. Following the dissolution of the collective, Gróf retained its analytical approach. His works focus on ideological imprints situated at the intersection of graphic design and spatiality.