I’ve had the opportunity to work at GC Het Huys in Ukkel over the holidays, preparing for a load of new projects in the making. One of them is the Survival Social Club, a new project that builds further on the Extinction Survival Archive: this time we’re really preparing for the apocalypse.

The Survival Social Club is a participative project that gathers people around the idea of how to survive an impending climate apocalypse and how does that help us to create a better society today.

I took on the idea of the ‘Social Club’. Whether from the western capitalist elitist view like the British gentlemen’s clubs or from the socialist approach like the Cuban social clubs: we gather around food and drinks, discuss the matters at hand and concoct ideas to address the issues. 

In a first development phase, I’ll start up from my own network and setup gatherings, inviting a group of 8 to 10 people that should bring the ingredients for a meal. (A first test to see if and how they will prepare). I will cook their meal on a simple camping/boat stove setup and confront them with the ‘extinction survival archive’. I’ll have them go through the scenario of possible apocalypses and their contribution to the solutions. Their conversations will be taken down in sketch-note drawings that serve as an archive and output for the work to follow. Concrete plans might be made, but the idea is to gather and instigate new connections. The physical artistic output of the project are the plans drawn out, ideas taken down and actions to be taken. These also serve as a basis for a further refined artistic work, by myself or others.

In this first phase, one of the issues to address is also how to organise and setup these groups, in order to create the structures needed. In the second phase the network should spread out and grow. With the gathered knowledge and a working strategy that is set, the Survival Social Club needs to go on the road and tour different locations and social backgrounds. A travelling kitchen and crew will setup wherever they can to gather new groups, idea’s and create an ever growing network of people, skills and knowledge. A third phase should connect and interconnect different social clubs that have formed and find ways of communicating and reflecting on several (sub)issues that arise through these gatherings.

Through these phases, the Survival Social Club will be nomadic but with the intent to also find a location that can serve as a hub and an example for those other social clubs to be setup. It should be a place to gather, collect, store, experiment, reflect and disclose all the results. It should serve as a laboratory as well as a library, as a place for individual comfort as well as commons and, why not, also to serve and protect.

If you feel like you want to join the Survival Social Club, don’t hesitate to get in touch…