‘Equal political rights for all living beings’.
This is the radical demand at the centre of Club Real's ‘Organism Democracy’ project series. Since 2018, Club Real has been working at various locations (including Vienna, Berlin and Gelsenkirchen) on projects that test the inclusion of all living beings in the political process as real political field trials.
Club Real report on their project in this issue:
‘We call organism democracy a political system in which all power emanates from all living beings in a national territory. All living beings in the territory of an organism democracy are citizens, with equal rights and equal entitlement to political participation. Organism democracy involves all types of living beings that colonise a common habitat, from trees and other plants to vertebrates, invertebrates and fungi to bacteria and viruses.’
What does participation mean in the arts and culture sector? (Participation means involvement). In the series Open Space: Participation! (Open Space means open space. In other words, it is a space for exchange and participation), we will gain insights into the work of people who deal with participation in a keynote speech. Afterwards, there will be space for an open exchange with each other. We will talk about needs, structural barriers and what it means to create something together.