The first activities organized by this unofficial cooperative were gatherings every Thursday in the winter and spring of 2022 - In March, April, May. All those who had shown interest in the cooperative were invited along with their friends. The gatherings were supposed to allow us to gather enough information to be able to split into teams that could work on a season of performances, a treasury, a roaming network, and a collective space. Given that many workers in this field didn’t know each other, these encounters took the shape of parties in order to meet both professionally and artistically, read texts that were still in the works, improvise small acts, and play music.
All these gatherings took place in Mansion, an abandoned villa in Zuqaq al-Blat, which had since 2012 become a shared space maintained autonomously by its inhabitants and visitors. It housed a number of initiatives along the years and became a space from which artists, researchers, activists, curators, among others could operate out of its offices and studios. Mansion shared with the public a library, meeting rooms, film projection facilities, a silk-screen printing station, a sound studio, a communal hall, a kitchen, and a garden. It was also open for general use everyday and ultimately became an essential meeting point for various people, activities, and events. Mansion was “an attempt at creative reuse, the reclaiming of divested or “failed” spaces for new practices of habitation, public access, encounter, and production.”
The cooperative’s foundation and its very possibility was intrinsically tied to Mansion in part because individuals in the cooperative were tied to both projects. More so, since the cooperative began as an idea without any financial resources, the ability to organize activities, events, and meetings was invaluable. The intersection between members of the cooperative and potential members also drew heavily on Mansion’s centrality in our lives for the past decade. The drive to organize with Mansion also rests on the idea that in a world bent on individualising resources, the only way through is through building commons and supporting each other in collective endeavours.
The invitations for the gatherings were at first sent as individual messages on Whatsapp and then posters were made. Originally, the Cooperative was simply called the Performing Arts Cooperative until the summer of 2022 when those meeting weekly came up with the name Bahh. Throughout this time, the core group that formed was never exclusive and was always open for anyone to join. This core group, however, was able to commit to attending weekly meetings and invest time in the organizing of activities.
(To be continued in the First General Assembly)
