TRACK 1 > a BLIND DATE with the MANY a track to be listened to just as you are about to step out onto the street to start your journey to the assembly

TRACK 2 > the ASSEMBLY of ABSENTEES a track to be listened to somewhere along the way to the assembly

TRACK 3 > RIGHT NOW is almost HERE a track to be listened to when you have almost arrived at the assembly (about six minutes before your arrival, to be more precise)

TRACK 4 > BETWEEN is where it’s AT a track to be listened to once you’re back on your own after the assembly

Download or stream via The Art of Being Many∞.

There’s no assembly without the journeys that all participants have to undertake to get there. These journeys are the precondition of any assembly, yet they are usually not considered part of the assembly itself. The journey to the assembly, then, is an ideal occasion to ask how the assembly is framed, or, put differently: when it begins and ends, how it relates to the rest of the world and who will actually be able to participate. This is what these four tracks invite you to do – while you are travelling. Since the journeys of different people will necessarily be different, we have decided to make different tracks available for different moments on the journey rather than one continuous soundtrack. There are three tracks for your way to the assembly and one for your journey back.
We have made this soundtrack on the occasion of The Art of Being Many∞, an assembly of assemblies in Hamburg in September 2014, and thus with a specific context in mind, but we have nevertheless tried to keep it open for other journeys to other assemblies. So you might as well try it on your way to, say, a local beekeepers convention. Because all these assemblies and journeys will be different, some things will make more or less sense in different contexts, and some assumptions will be wrong. For instance, the whole format assumes that you will be travelling with relative ease, that you have some sort of mobile device ready to use, and that you have nothing more pressing to do than listen to these tracks on your way.

Maybe it helps to think of this as a rehearsal: the repetition of something that has not yet happened.