Well, well, WELL. Here we are, it’s been the best part of a decade and now

SqEK is dead. I have mostly enjoyed my time being part of Squatting

Everywhere Kollective (SqEK) ever since I popped up at the London 2010

meeting, having seen a post on Indymedia UK (RiP). On the whole, being a

member of the collective has been a productive and inspiring time. I have

written a few book chapters and journal articles about squatting, a couple

in collaboration with people, and none of these things would have happened

if I hadn’t got off my arse and taken that train up to London.

The annual conferences have been an amazing opportunity to engage with local

squatter and radical leftwing movements in places like Barcelona, Berlin,

Catania, Copenhagen, Paris, Prague and Rome. Disparagingly described by

someone leaving the collective back then as “just people meeting up to go

visit various squats,” these meetings have actually been amazingly fertile

encounters between us as SqEK and social centre participants in places like

Klinika (Prague, recently evicted), Can Mas Deu (Barcelona), New Yorck im Bethanianen (Berlin), Candy Factory and Trampoline House (Copenhagen), Poortgebouw (Rotterdam), Studentato Occupato (Catania), La Gare XP and Transfo (Paris).



After an unintentional(?) misfire in Barcelona where we ended up doing an

academic conference sponsored by Antipode in a university setting and were

mostly ignored by the local scene, I was very pleased to organise a DIY no-

budget meeting in Rotterdam which was based in a legalised squat and whilst

using venues of differing institutional status, also had a self-organised

(and anti-gentrification) theme.

Overall, the conferences, the books we produced, the conversations with

people have informed my activism and writing, as well as giving me

intellectual stimulation and the impulse to carry on when little else does.

Sometimes we dropped right in on massive local controversies and perhaps (!?)

our interventions made a small positive contribution to these inevitably

acrimonious debates eg artists versus anarchists (see “I’ve painted myself into a corner” in Using Space 8), or an unpleasant internal power

struggle at Klinika, or the eviction meltdown at the Foundry in London

(I don’t think we helped much there) or the big Cox 18 versus Leoncavallo

debate (in Milan). I possibly and inadvertently stoked the fires of the la

tter when I gave our ‘fresh off the press’ Pluto book The Squatters’ Movement in Europe: Commons and Autonomy as Alternatives to Capitalism

to the Cox 18 library, not realising the book comments on the debate in a

postscript I hadn’t yet read. Luckily I don’t think they realised it either, but I did get a hilarious lecture about self-organisation:

-Did you write this book yourselves?

-Yes I wrote that chapter

-Did you edit it yourselves?

-Yes I copyedited the book myself actually

-Did you print it yourselves?

-No we got it printed by the publisher

-Ha! Take this book – we printed and published it ourselves. Now that’s self-

organisation!

Our collective never defined its politics too much beyond supporting

squatting and being antifascist and I was quite happy about that, there’s

really no point in having abstract doctrinal issues ripping us apart (let’s

leave that to the Marxists), especially since ideological formations depend

a lot on local contexts, for example legalisation is/was controversial in

Spain, it’s not controversial in the Netherlands and in the UK, most

squatters can only dream of a place existing long enough to legalise it.

Through SqEK, I met some really cool anarchist-minded folks from all over

the world. Also of course, there were the more liberal-minded people and

ironically for a collective interested to compare and contrast how squats

institutionalise in different places, there was always the fear for me that

SqEK would itself institutionalise. I really did worry about that for a few

years, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t happen, because things were so

great. And somehow we did preserve our marginality and radical nature for a

while, despite having a core of older white male academics running the shop.

Through my relatively early membership and my gender and my skin colour, I

appear to have joined this inner clique in some ways. I picked up on the

frustration of younger female and/or queer participants and was disheartened

that they often came once and never returned, yet my addiction to the

central matter (namely sitting around with a bunch of intelligent people of

all nationalities, disciplines, genders and ages to discuss squatting

movements) always won out, since I simply could not have found such a high

level of discussion elsewhere.

Naturally, most housing activists are interested to talk about squatting,

many of them squat themselves, yet in my experiences of squatting and

activism in the UK and the Netherlands, I always found myself both able to

have good chats with anyone but also at a certain point needing to look

elsewhere for stimulation. SqEK scratched that itch. It was such an amazing

feeling to go to that meeting in London and realise I was in a room of ten

people and everyone liked talking about squatting just as much as I did! We

seriously could go on discussing issues for days without stopping and of

course the breaktime conversations were always superinteresting too. The

SqEK format was way more relaxed, informal and interdisciplinary than the

standard academic fare which is ring-fenced, super formalised and boring.

Let’s take the Catania meeting as an example. We had a lovely airy, light

room in a squatted student project where we sat around and discussed

different presentations. Some food was provided by university catering

thanks to our connections, some we cooked ourselves. At night we hung out

with the people we were staying with and they took us off to show us stuff

in town. We went to this longterm social centre (with a crazy backstory) for

a gig and there were our hosts from Spazi Sociali Catania, doing everything:

the door, the tickets, the bar, selling the Tshirts!

Another evening we had an amazing gathering, where SqEK people were sitting

on one side of the table and the other side slowly filled up until the room

was bursting with waves of local activists, by which I mean all the way from

those squatting in the 1970s up to and including the present generation. A

long scroll of paper with a handwritten timeline of events was unfurled and

stuck to the wall. People who were actually there told stories about how

they interacted with mafia and owners, how they dealt with hard drugs in the

scene, how their group didn’t really get on with other groups, why they

squatted a certain building and so on. Tireless translators went between

Italian and English. It seemed like everyone who wanted to speak got to

speak. It was an incredible experience!

And then afterwards the local SqEK people said they were a bit frustrated

because we heard so much about Catania but we didn’t get to tell them about

our local projects so the engagement had only gone one way!!

SqEK spans different disciplines, we don’t talk about it much because that

is simply the way it is, but that in itself it is really an amazing

phenomenon and rather unusual. We have sociologists, architects, hardcore

activists, historians, geographers, journalists, anthropologists and so on,

all mingling and for the most part respectfully communicating. That’s really

incredible! Especially when we consider the participants are from places as

diverse as Sao Paolo, Lausanne, Brighton, Madrid, Stockholm, New York City,

Middlebury, Rome, Rennes, Potsdam, Prague and Ljubljana!! And as I suggested

before, these informal meetings are so much better than usual academic

conferences where 3 papers are presented in 2 hours and then there is

supposed to be a discussion but there is never time. SqEK meetings were

nothing like that. The informality was created by the mindset of the people

and I love how there wasn’t much hierarchy of knowledge: a professor can

talk on an equal level with a student since in the field of squatting

studies everyone is welcome to give an opinion (assuming the opinion is

based on some knowledge of course, not all hierarchies are bad, sometimes we

had to suffer way too long from ignorant architects blathering about their

bullshit).

There has often been the complaint that we are talking about squatting

instead of doing it. Some activists seem to find that simple statement 100%

damning, despite the severe risks which would be entailed practically

anywhere in the world by expecting a group of 30 people who only know each

other vaguely to take and hold a building for a week. For me it’s not a

problem, I’ve been squatting the last five years and I like to talk about it

too. It would for sure be good to have more people in SqEK who are actually

squatting but I don’t want to get caught in the deadend of identity politics

here.

Another general complaint which seems to rear its ugly head often is people

telling us to stop studying squatters and putting them in boxes. I see some

merit in this but it mostly comes from people unaware of the sort of books

we have actually written AND from people who are actually themselves

academics, nursing some twisted guilt for their own positionality.

My complaints come from different angles. And I’ve cut out the really fruity

bits.

So what went wrong? Why am I now at the moment of throwing up my hands and

walking away from the collective? As you will have seen, I have found much

for myself to nourish and enjoy in SqEK, but there have also been issues,

which after not being dealt with for so long have festered and become ill-

smelling boils. People tend to just leave when they get fed up, but I feel

like saying my piece, since my affection for the collective and most

importantly what it could be motivates me to do so.

Despite the open nature of the collective and its many good points, it has

become painfully obvious to me that for a certain minority the collective is

nothing more than a blood-sucking organisation designed to facilitate

academic knowledge extraction. With all the oneupmanship that comes with

that. Attempts for more activist discussions are brushed aside – witness the

person who wanted to add fairy tales to a project being brusquely rebuked,

or the younger people pushed away by older white males, or the consistent

refusal of those with access to academic funding to allot this money towards

radical projects such as translating the SqEK books into other languages

aside from English.

For me, SqEK has run its course. It was fun, it lasted longer than I could

have hoped, but now it’s over and should dissolve. SqEK never really became

useful for social movements in the way I had hoped it could and now I would

argue the opposite, it’s becoming useful for agents of repression.

Not too long ago, someone sent a superinteresting link to the sqeklist

about how studying migrants can only harm them. I don’t agree with what it

says 100% by the way, but it’s an important (and open published) article

which deserves a read and has obvious implications regarding the study of

squatters.

I think the article makes some very astute points but also becomes a bit

dogmatic. Of course research can benefit participants, of course there are

cracks. Was there a discussion about this on the list? Was there fuck. Maybe

it cut too close to the bone, that’s what I thought at first. Now I think

people will only actually engage in things which will result in beefing up

their academic scorebook.

Speaking of which, now I see a callout for a SqEK in Madrid. This is nothing

more than a desperate attempt to keep the dying parasitical organism alive.

It needs more blood! Social centres in Madrid have already rejected the

parasitism of Miguel Martinez, who wants to organise this “10 years of SqEK”

meeting. He was explicitly called out for his behaviour in a book, in which

he was called a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” («lobos con piel de cordero» page 66 of Reformismo y Okupacion) for his methods. Patio Mariovillas refused to talk to him again after he published Okupaciones en

Movimiento. He also steamrollered a friend who lives in Madrid out of the

collective. And now the proposal is to do a SqEK in Madrid… This is

bringing the good name of SqEK into disrepute. Remember this is a name I

(amongst others) helped to create with my activist connections and my

preference for freely accessible and high grade academic work. I hope you

can understand my anger here.

Martinez also contributed an article to our journal, got lots of fine-

grained advice and then published it elsewhere without giving credit to the

unpaid labour. And of course this person talks a lot about collaboration,

washing the dishes, feminism and so on. This talk, with all these buzzwords,

don’t count for much when you look at the actual behaviour. OK, one time you

might give the benefit of the doubt, but how to explain away all these

incidents?

Sure, this is how it goes in the cutthroat world of academia, but I thought

our collective wanted to do things differently. It won’t surprise you to

learn that this person’s name is plastered all over our supposedly communal

projects.

I have the feeling that my time and activism willingly spent promoting SqEK

as a collective and also the books in which I contributed articles (as one

of the few independent researchers amidst a glut of academics I might add)

is now supporting a project which I no longer endorse. Although I have made

my opinion quite clear on multiple occasions (Copenhagen, Barcelona, Prague,

Catania) the new path is the commons … not practicing the commons of course

which might make some sense, but studying it for personal academic and

financial gain. Despite the many amazing experiences I’ve had in SqEK, I no

longer feel welcome since I dislike the structural problems. I’m staggered

that these patriarchal dynamics are replicated after so much hot air has

been spoken precisely about not doing that.

It really bugs me that these fruitful conversations I’ve had and amazing

encounters might now be legitimating SqEK and allowing it to enter other

squats, only for the academics to take what is good for them and give

nothing back. We stayed in some wonderful places, but let’s take Klinika for

example, when it was under eviction threat we did nothing to help.

I was thinking previously to go to the next conference and organise a

session on academic (ir)responsibility, but this collective is already dead.

SqEK for me is now just another part of the academic sausage factory and I

sincerely regret helping few people’s careers out. For me it was always a

political struggle in support of squats and social centres. Now some people

in the collective support Colau in Barcelona. And she is evicting squats..

Culture is the hook with which journalists and academics are trying to

recuperate our struggles. There is a world of difference between attempts,

whatever their limitations, of people involved in struggle to reflect on it,

to theorize their practice, and the efforts of academics and journalists to

write about such movements. Whether hostile or sympathetic, as expressions

of the fundamental division of labour in capitalist society – that between

mental and manual labour – these specialists in writing and in ideas are

forcing a praxis that is escaping this division back into it. For those of

us engaged in the collective project of getting out of this world and into

the one we all feel and know is possible, a critique of the category of ‘DiY

culture’ and the recuperative project which lies behind it is becoming

imperative.

Hilariously, this quote is from Aufheben (The politics of anti-road struggle and the struggles of anti-road politics – the case of the No M11 link road campaign). It’s probably written by the sellout who ended up thinking it was OK to advise the police on riot control. It just goes to show how much shit people can spout while not

looking at their own behaviour.

And all that glitters is not gold.

Let’s be honest from the outset, it would have been weird if there had never

been any flareups concerning ethical or political issues with a collective

like SqEK that researches squatting. In the time I have been involved with

SqEK, squatting has been criminalised (totally) in the Netherlands and (in

residential buildings only) in England and Wales. Therefore working on this

topic can (and should) raise huge ethical concerns not least in the sense

that providing evidence to the forces of repression about things that they

deem criminal and/or a threat to public order. And I know that at least for

the people I consider comrades it does raise these worries. For me this

probably explains why having tried to study how criminalisation was being

achieved in order to stop it, I have now veered off into historical studies

since studying the past avoids these issues to some extent, like I’m not

going to get anyone arrested for writing about squatting in Rotterdam in the

1970s. Another reason would be the hope to inspire future squatters by

documenting all the hidden, inspiring stories from the past. And another

reason would be that sadly in both the UK and NL,squatting movements are

really winding down. To the extent that the places I work on are pretty much

gentrified to fuck nowadays.

Most people in SqEK are from the same sort of activist milieu as me, in

which hatred for the police, refusal to snitch, support for social

movements, solidarity with prisoners are so normal as to not even be worth

mentioning (and if this makes you raise your eyebrows, congratulations you

are the sort of person who fucked up the collective).

When meeting a new person in SqEK, I would always have to check if they were

politically aware or merely some academic parasite. For sure we did have a

few masters students focusing on squatting as an interesting and trendy

topic before spotting the next trend with which to continue on with their

academic career and in addition we did have a few horribly perverted career

academics who wanted to suck all the energy they could out of the nearest

available movements, using the cultural cachet of SqEK to gain access to

groups they would otherwise not be able to reach, BUT overall most people in

SqEK are really sound. Just as I found out when talking to scholars of

adverse possession in the UK, it seems that rightwingers are interested in

other things. We are generally an amicable left-wing bunch.

The problem is that suggestions to collaborate on projects are only

interesting for people if they can make money from them and/or further their

academic career. Now if people want to do that, fine, although it’s not

interesting for me and I would hope there would be some sort of ethical

evaluation regarding how to treat the “objects of study.” If some SqEK

people want to do that and find it morally justifiable to earn loads from

studying the commons whilst giving very little back, well it’s their life I

guess, but then I would also expect more activist projects to have a look-in

too. But the idea for translations has gone nowhere, and my proposal to

interview squatters locally and pool resources generated no interest at all

except for the parasites whose eyes lit up when they realised they could use

the interviews for their own projects (it’s free real estate).

Within SqEK I have tried to discuss these issues several times, with various

degrees of success. Regarding academic (ir)responsibility, in Copenhagen, I

made a short presentation about Aufhebengate (referred to above, total bunfight, would def recommend looking into it if you don’t know it and like a lonely evening on the computer with the popcorn), then opened up the

discussion with the intention of generating a debate about academic

responsibility. And for once the collective was silent! That doesn’t happen

very often.

In Barcelona we got into things in our evaluation meeting at Can Mas Deu,

sitting in the shade of a beautiful elder tree. My initial point was that

not everyone gets to live in a place where there’s a lot of activism and

radical culture, so there’s no need to judge people purely on their

anarchist points. People don’t need to be squatting to have interesting

things to say about it. I do even think there is a place for quality

abstract academic work, this can be hugely influential. But I also think

people need to have their heart in the right place. If you think squatters

need ‘guidance’ or that you know better than them because you are more

intelligent/ cultured/ whatever, then your work will no doubt be shit and I

won’t help you with it. That’s my opinion.

On another tangent, it always surprised me how much we published in English.

Sure I’m a native English speaker and so hohoho I’m alright, but it’s

strange how dominant English is in the academic world in the disciplines

favoured by most SqeK scholars. I was always hoping we could generate some

cash through grants to translate stuff or indeed do it ourselves since the

many people in the collective were producing texts (short and long) in

English which presumably would be fairly easy to create again in their

mother tongue(s). It’s even possible the texts already existed in another

language!.

With our last book, Fighting for Spaces, Fighting for our Lives: Squatting

Movements Today I was actually quite disappointed that we didn’t make a

website for crowdsourced translations, by the end it felt like I was banging

my head against a brick wall for six months just to get the fucking thing

published so I gave up. Should I have just done it? Well yes maybe but we

are talking about a collective here. Anyway it took us the best part of a

decade just to make the damn thing.

It is also interesting to note that with Fighting for Spaces,the academics

basically weren’t interested to contribute to something which would not be

counted for their CV. Meanwhile, it’s also worth noting activists often

talked a lot about websites, interactivity, blabla and then disappeared

again. In any case, I can’t say I like the final product very much but I am

very happy it exists.

Another thing we could have done much better is radical solidarity. Of

course everyone (?) is busy in their local scenes and signing petitions is

fairly pointless, but sometimes places we had stayed in and interacted with

were under threat and we (two hundred people on the mailing list) could have

done more to help out.

So having not dealt with these issues and demonstrating a notable reluctance

to organise the next meeting before this bullshit offer from Madrid, the

SqEK collective is now dead in my opinion.

Vroeger was alles beter. Now SqEK is being pulled in new ridiculous

directions as people grow older and want to talk about legalization and

fucking commons instead of supporting radical projects and putting the

spotlight on how the Colau administration can evict a project in Barcelona

and then leave it empty for eighteen months until it’s resquatted. And

Salvini says he’s going to close down all the freespaces and we are just

going to watch? That’s exactly what we did while the French state focused on

closing down both the ZAD and the Calais Jungle after explicitly recognising

them as threats to its authority.

If I say these things in the previous paragraph without the full context

they may sound weird, that’s because they come from hours of prior debate.

Am I against the commons? No of course not, it’s what we are all fighting

for. Squats are an amazing example of the commons being implemented in

everyday life.

Am I against PhD students getting paid loads of money to

study commons projects and giving very little back? VERY MUCH SO YES.

Am I against SqEK valorising bullshit politicians like Colau who have sold out

the people they should support? FUCK YES.

Bonus question: Am I against lame academic conferences? YES A THOUSAND TIMES

YES

So let’s pull the plug and let the parasites die inside the decayed and

braindead organism.

So I started with the good and then went to the bad. Hopefully it is quite

obvious why things are not good any longer. Things have changed. Everyone

grows old. Projects grow old. This is part of life. SqEK has been in

existence for over a decade now, which is pretty cool for an informal

academic group. Finally the inner tensions seem to have ripped it apart and

finally, I’m OK with that. I guess I had reasons to go down the academic

path for a while and those reasons have expired and/or collapsed under my

disgust at the way this collective is heading.

There’s a lot of clever people trapped in academia who could do a lot more

for the world if they cared to. So why don’t they?

I hope the next project can learn from these things instead of reinventing

the wheel.

And I look forward to continued collaborations with the friends I’ve made

worldwide through this collective.

Source

Using Space 13 as an A4 pdf