Wok The Rock: Parasite Lottery

Parasite Lottery
A collective experiment proposed by Wok The Rock and Casco

Parasite Lottery is initiated by Yogyakarta-based artist and cultural activist Wok The Rock, and was developed in collaboration with Casco. It is a pilot version of a collective lottery system for art organizations in the Netherlands and their communities. Parasite Lottery adapts and fuses a lottery—a model for art funding that has remained stable, despite dwindling cultural funds in the Netherlands—and a commons-oriented micro-crediting system popular in Indonesia, arisan. It invites arts organizations to be bidders through a lottery drawing system. The winners will receive a sum of money to be used as a “fee for deviation,” whereby the funds can be spent on something that the organization would not ordinarily be able to achieve. For example,  “the art of not working,” or funding a project that would be impossible without extra financial resources.

Beyond the prize itself, Parasite Lottery is a collective exploration of chance effects, not just in the thrill of winning, but also through a series of gatherings that will take place around it, including talks, food, and music. The latter will be produced by Wok The Rock in collaboration with Berlin and Yogykarta-based musician Frau (Leilani Hermiasih), and the lyrics will be written in collaboration with several Dutch art professionals. These invoke key issues relating to cultural policies and their effects on art organizations, ranging from austerity measures and precarity to the debt economy, and questions concerning sustainability and solidarity.

For more information on the experiment, event program and collaborators, please read here.

Wok The Rock is an artist and cultural activist, active across the fields of contemporary art, design and underground music. He is a member of artist collective Ruang MES 56 in Yogyakarta, runs the music label Yes No Wave Music and initiated the Indonesian Netlabel Union. He was the curator of Biennale Jogja XIII in 2015. His work in the Netherlands was first introduced in The Demon of Comparisons, organized by Electric Palm Tree in 2009, and later in Made in Commons organized by KUNCI in 2013, both co-organized by SMBA, respectively in collaboration with and with contribution by Casco. Parasite Lottery is the first major solo project by Wok The Rock in Europe.

“on un/common ground”
INLAND Nederland Gathering
Convened by artist Fernando Garcia-Dory, a collaboration between INLAND, Casco and the Dutch Art Institute
Sonsbeek Park, Arnhem
Taking place as part of the Dutch Art Institute’s off-Sonsbeek program during the opening week of SONSBEEK ’16: transACTION

“on un/common ground” is the first gathering of INLAND Nederland. Initiated by artist Fernando Garcia-Dory, INLAND is a “para-institutional“ art praxis that aims to understand and interact with the ecological and territorial dynamics between the urban and rural, with a particular focus on agro-ecological knowledge, farmers’ struggles and art practices in such contexts. Since 2014, Casco and Fernando Garcia-Dory have been working in close collaboration to form INLAND Nederland, the Dutch landing of INLAND. The gathering will mark the launch of INLAND Nederland, and will form an occasion for all those involved to address questions revolving around the countryside, agriculture and territories specific to the Dutch context, as well as their relations to art and culture.

As part of the gathering, the current participants/artists of the INLAND Class at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) in Arnhem will share their artistic research in the framework of INLAND both in individual and collective forms. There will be a sparkling launching moment of the publications INLAND Volume: Publishing Class V, in which various rural and cultural action points across the world are mapped out as the collaborative outcome of previous year’s class by Casco and INLAND at DAI with Werkplaats Typografie.

For more information on the contributors and the program, please read here.

Registration is obligatory as the seating is limited and the program consists of workshop and plenary sessions at different locations. For registration and inquiry, please send an email to coordination_nl [​at​] inland.org.

Fernando García-Dory is an artist and agro-ecologist engaging with conflict and cooperation from microorganisms to social systems through expanded sculpture, collaborative agro-ecological projects, pedagogy and actions, across the urban and the rural and global-political geographies. García-Dory set up INLAND in 2009, which is now being extended into different local contexts in Europe, in particular the Netherlands. His work in the Netherlands has been introduced at the exhibition Confessions of the Imperfect at Van Abbemuseum but is also known through the larger international occasions such as Documenta (13) and the 14th Istanbul Biennale. He received the Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change by Creative Time, New York, in 2012 and has been working with Casco since 2014.

Casco’s program is made possible with financial support from the City Council of Utrecht, Mondriaan Fund and DOEN Foundation. Casco works as part of Arts Collaboratory.

For questions concerning Casco’s activities and program, please send an email to Steyn Bergs via steyn [​at​] cascoprojects.org.