No common is possible unless we refuse to base our life and our reproduction on the suffering of others, unless we refuse to see ourselves as separate from them. 

Deepening the practice of and research conducted within our Who Are We initiative, over the course of two weeks we had the possibility to stretch our tentacles in many directions; confronting the neo-liberal system based on scarcity with an activism of abundance (Valeria Graziano and Giulia Palladini); staging a Common Wallet – imagining how to unlearn negative associations between money, precarity and taboos, and replace them with practices of radical trust…

In autumn 2021 Who Are We participated in a series of events convened by the Research Training Group Minor Cosmopolitanisms at the University of Potsdam entitled ‘Approaches to Decolonial Work During a Pandemic’ that deals with a postcolonial approach to ecologies, inequalities, bodies, indigeneities and alternative genealogies.

To trigger a discussion on sustainable, healthy and fair working conditions Who Are We spoke to Magdalena Ziomek, managing director of the cooperative for freelancers – SMartDE eG, and Anna Mareike Holtz from Kulturbüro ehrliche Arbeit. We would like to pragmatically shed light on cooperative and solidary working principles and legal forms, but also on how to organise and discuss collaborative work more politically.

Cultivating the small seed that we planted, a seed of a different working culture, based on non-violent communication and solidarity, on joyful self-criticism, on care for (our) bodies and minds…

With a nod to artist Mierle Ukeles Laederman’s 1969 Maintenance Manifesto with the much quoted question of “After the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?”, the following questions can be asked: Who writes e-mails over the weekend? Who is active on twitter? Who keeps the facebook account alive? Who cleans the space for the next meeting? Who organizes timelines and resources? Who writes the grant applications?