MASSIA Residency Programme (Massiaru, Estonia)

MASSIA is located in an old school in Massiaru, a village in Häädemeeste Parish, Pärnu County in southwestern Estonia. The location is about 180 km from Tallinn, and about 140 km from Riga (Latvia).

MASSIA is a platform for any individual or group, artists, scientists, and any individual or group that wants to think change radically. What does it mean to change things radically it means to change them into something else, whether this concerns the arts, politics, education, prisons, hospitals, society, economy. Changing something radically is different from reforming things.

We aim it to be a platform for experimentation, for taking risks with your own work or with needs that cover a bigger ambition than only for yourself.

MASSIA tries to stress the notions of self-organisation and autonomy in an hospitable and easily accessible building in order to survive prosperously in the absence of authority and surveillance.

Not so far from MASSIA, at about 5km into the Nature Protected Area is a cabin, with next to it a sauna, empty, available for the visitors who visit the Nigula Reservate, where bears and birds and plants find a safe heaven. This cabin functions like these free accessible cabins for mountaineers in the mountains, safe heavens, places for protection and rest. There are no instructions for use, nonetheless they are always left clean even maintained. Not by the mountain administration but by the mountaineers themselves. Because they all understand that these cabins make sense, are useful, even life saving.

MASSIA tries to experiment with these notions of making sense, being useful, even life saving. It wants to be a building full of potentiality, never defined, never belonging to a specific idea or specific group, hospitable, easily accessible, an instrument for making work, for rethinking one’s work, reinventing it, and for rethinking, reinventing society or aspects of it.

MASSIA is a platform for individuals and groups who are able to keep every cubic centimeter of space permanently available for everybody else (even when these are not yet there) unless they themselves use it, like their room, the table they eat from, the gas they cook on. Like in the cabins in the mountains the users leave it as if they have not been there. They erase their traces, have no need to flag their territory, no need to leave signs of belonging, but on the contrary give the building, this instrument back to itself that it is can be used by others and stay in this mode of constant becoming.

MASSIA has no staff. The building is alone. Strong and alone, independent and happy.

MASSIA does not want to be a social experiment, does not want to experiment with alternative modes of living together. MASSIA is a working place, not a place to recover, nor for short holidays, but a place for creation and study and a place for conferences, events, expositions, festivals and such.

MASSIA has no selection. No need to write an application. You are welcome. Just send an email with the dates of your reservation to infomassia(at)gmail.com and we mail you back to tell you if rooms or beds are available. For now we have sleeping accommodation for about maximum 20 residents.

MASSIA offers single or double rooms, beds, sheets, covers, towels, Wifi, a washing machine, dryer and dishwasher, a fully equipped kitchen and multiple working places of different sizes, a sound installation and a beamer, a 2ha garden. The building has central heating through wood burners. The sand beach of the Baltic Sea at 10km westwards and the Latvian border at 10km south. A busstop in front of MASSIA (see for travel information under ‘How to get to Massia’).

MASSIA has no subsidy whatsoever. To enter the space you have to become a member for 10 euros, valuable 12 months. Staying prices are 9 euro per night per person when the stay is more than 4 nights (under 5 nights the price is 10 euro per night per person). To stay for one full month is 250 euro. To stay for several months is 225 euro. Payments in cash upon arrival or through banktransfer before arrival.

More information: infomassia(at)gmail.com

http://www.massia.ee

Source:

http://www.massia.ee