PROTOCOL
SWTEP does not operate through one fixed format.
Each production begins with a proposition and a set of conditions designed for that situation.
The protocol may change.
The principles remain.
PRINCIPLES
DIFFERENCE
Participants are not brought together because they agree, resemble one another, or belong to the same discipline.
Difference is part of the working material.
SHARED CONDITIONS
The conditions of each production are defined before it begins and apply for the duration of that production.
Status, reputation, seniority, or market value do not determine authority inside the working situation.
NO FIXED OUTCOME
The protocol creates conditions for production. It does not prescribe what must be produced.
Failure, disagreement, interruption, collaboration, and unexpected outcomes are valid parts of the process.
NO REQUIRED CONSENSUS
Participants may disagree.
Agreement is neither the objective nor the measure of a successful production.
BUILDING A PROTOCOL
A production may begin with a question, relationship, conflict, location, material, duration, or other condition worth testing.
SWTEP then defines what that situation requires.
A protocol may establish:
participants
duration
location
physical or remote presence
materials and disciplines
public access
modes of exchange
authorship and ownership
economic conditions
documentation
distribution
These conditions are not universal.
They belong to that production.
DURING PRODUCTION
Once a protocol begins, its agreed conditions are protected.
The protocol establishes the frame but does not direct the work.
No participant, curator, host, or institution has automatic authority over the outcome.
ECONOMY
When a production involves sale, ownership, or distribution, its economic conditions are established before production begins.
SWTEP does not use reputation, seniority, or market status to establish hierarchy between participants within a production.
DOCUMENTATION
Each production leaves a factual record:
location, dates, participants, conditions, and what was produced.
SWTEP documents what happened.
It does not explain what participants were supposed to mean.
OUTCOME
A SWTEP production does not exist to prove a thesis.
It creates a situation.
What happens inside it is the work.