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Static
No full textStatic was a solo exhibition at The University of Hertfordshire Gallery (2023). The exhibition continued Curran’s ongoing research into Paul Virilio’s concept of ‘grey’ ecology and his suggestion that the development of screen-based and communications technologies – through their compression of space and time - distance us from geographical expanse and deaden our senses, resulting in an ongoing loss of affect. Space and time are compressed, “everything arrives without any need to depart…” Using painting and textiles to move between small-scale intimate works and large-scale installations that responded to the architectural features of the gallery space, the exhibition included Curran’s ongoing body of work, A visible that never stops vanishing (2022). Based on the increasing distractions of screen-based scrolling and swiping, each work is assembled from fabrics that are stacked and stitched in place. On the surface, they appear as abstract paintings, however, closer inspection reveals the materiality of the layers of cloth including loose threads, frayed edges, and manufacturing glitches. The colours, sometimes flat and opaque, at other times transparent and delicate, show glimpses of evolving forms that are then played out throughout the gallery space at different scales and in different materials. When seen in isolation, each composition has a distinct identity of its own, but seen collectively, the eye struggles to focus or settle on a still point. The exhibition’s title, Static, referred to the paradox of our contemporary moment; we can travel anywhere at any time via the screen without the need to move from the same spot. This results in a form of inactivity and a reduction of our full sensory experience, condensed by the optical smoothness of backlit transmission. Curran’s transformation of the gallery using colour and materials asks us to move beyond the notion of static as a state of inertness
Fossils
No full textFossils is an immersive video exhibition. It presents three short vignettes addressing the interlinked logics of extraction at work in ecological collapse and the exploitation of human capital. The monologue of a decaying skeleton attempting to unionise his undead comrades interrogates class (de)composition. Two decoy trees, echoing the arboreal observation posts of the first world war, reflect on the way humans project meaning onto their natural environment. A many-headed oil spill mediates these perspectives: it is legion, a multitude at once demonic and pathetic, declaiming market values and anticipating their apocalyptic end. Together, these scenes from the near future explore the ways in which value extraction is intensified as new sources of growth become scarce. Displayed on headsets but forgoing the aesthetics of gaming associated with such devices, these Brechtian performances stage a demand for collectivity and solidarity in a diminished public sphere
People, place and purpose: Place-based approaches to ecological citizenship
Get PDFHumanity faces serious challenges in the coming decades: climate change, biodiversity loss, growing inequality, and more. We have a collection of rules and norms that reward some behaviours and punish others. In their current form, our systems seem to incentivise overconsumption, degrade communal bonds, and destroy natural wealth. The researchers in this project believe that place-based approaches and community engaged arts practices around the theme of sustainability, can enable a growing network of ecological citizens. In this paper we will explore how through creative arts practices, sharing ideas, thoughts, and questions and learning from best practices at a local, national, and international level from a variety of partners can create sustenance for a community-based network. Ways of building a network of new and existing place-based arts research and knowledge exchange which has the potential to include children and young people in the decision-making process, will be considered. We will consider how examples with embedded creative practice, such as community growers/larders/kitchens, forest schools etc., support partnership working within place-based projects. We will also discuss a people-centred approach to helping stakeholders, children, and young people, to make transitional choices, mitigate against negative consequences and empower local agency, in different localities. We will aim to show how diverse groups of people can begin to make impactful change through for example, community-focused approaches and community-led practices, activism and collective learning, advocacy, and design thinking in projects
A note on the door: Symbolic erasure and representational resistance in Rio de Janeiro
Get PDFThe chapter draws on the complex realities of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to explore the various forms of representational resistance enacted by residents. These forms of resistance respond to over a century of representational and material violence enacted on what are often described as ‘informal’ urban development. Most recently, the authors turn to the last 20 years that saw the intersection of favela upgrade programmes and militarised securitisation policies that hold the aim to integrate and pacify these territories in the service of a neoliberal mega-event driven city. Tracing the roots of symbolic erasure to the colonial legacies of forced removal and urban cleansing, and to the social and spatial control of favelas in the 20th century, we introduce contemporary cases of organised groups in favelas who are exercising ways to assert citizenship and the right to sovereignty. These insurgent practices include peace marches, collective meetings, writing manifestos, co-designing plans and policy advocacy campaigns with the aim of interrupting the state’s continued necropolitical agenda
e-S.K.I.N:Emergent Sensory Kinetic Immersive Network
Get PDFRP2-9 presents an initial prototype of e-S.K.I.N - an immersive, physical embodiment of three simultaneous coding systems: semantic, spatial and sensory/tactile. This pioneering research goes beyond the usual concept of ‘input-output’ in physical computing design. In this early stage, you will observe how a water tank with a network of conductive steel hairs and a floating latex skein in communication with a 3D projection engages in an emergent, complex and adaptive exchange. It is driven by and interacts with different forms of digital inputs that are sourced by latticed AI networks acting as a perception matrix. Functioning both as a representational display of complex, adaptive intelligent interaction, whilst simultaneously a living pseudomorphic ‘interface’, e-S.K.I.N. mimics the common octopus’s intelligent form of information data gathering, with emphasis on ecological camouflage. Wide commercial application expected: from textile design to re-thinking policy on human-machine-interspecies co-evolution
Weather stop fiction stop
No full textThe Fiction Group – Adam Kaasa, Nicky Coutts and Jessica Wiesner – writes to prompts as its art fiction method. Weather Stop Fiction Stop, is a durational fictioning that will take place during a research week at the Kallio-Kuninkala Residency. There will be two devices to navigate the week as generative research in progress: the impulses of punctuation and of weather. Both devices open up means of crossing, connecting, extending, eliding, containing, and spilling out and in through the multiples of the seemingly disparate and individuated fictionings. Fiction in this context is a foggy technology of scale, transgressing relations of size, distance, volume, or comparison through the climatic conditions of punctuation. The Fiction Group writes to prompts as its art fiction method. We recognize that the question of the ‘prompt’ acts as a metaphor for both being ‘puzzled together’, and the act of puzzling. Each member suggests a text, image, sound, place (the prompts are always evolving) and the group participants respond individually in writing. The texts are then collectively discussed. We approach this as a radical archival gesture for thinking about how knowledge exists, is presented, animated, reconfigured, and how we might expand the process through altering the conventions of knowledge. Language and its deployment are key, and the group use the language of fiction to write syntactically to the possibilities of ‘found’ objects and beginnings. We would like to expand the language of fiction from text to new experiments in voice and gesture
Design for social imagination
Get PDFThis paper reports findings from a research project, ‘Connecting Roots’, funded by the AHRC UK. Based on the learning from delivering six co-creation workshops to local communities, this paper discusses how design can be applied to support communities to collaboratively imagine future possibilities of health and wellbeing. It sits within the context of scaling up nature and nature based activities (e.g. park runs, community gardens) as a non-clinical approach for better health and wellbeing. These workshops aimed to address the challenge of inequality of access focusing on Walsall, a metropolitan borough in the UK exhibiting some extremes of deprivation, a lower than average life expectancy, and ethnic and cultural diversity. Findings from the workshops suggest that social imagination is central to addressing inequality, where people are empowered and supported to imagine what is possible for health and wellbeing, and communities. The design-led creative approach adopted in running these workshops has become a catalyst of new possibilities within social reality, through engaging people at a deeper emotional level and forging a collaborative culture and mindset, which has allowed people to express themselves openly and creatively, and to negotiate and develop shared community values collaboratively. The positioning of design in the context of community imagination and transdisciplinary research is emerging at present and it is suggested future research focuses on evaluating the longer-term impact of this kind of design-led approach for a better understanding of its potential
Critical (spatial) dialogues
No full textWhat is the space of critical dialogue – metaphorically, and literally? Phonemes and vibrations and gestures? The materiality and sociality of air, of breath, of mouth, of tongue, of body, of hands, of signs, of smiles, of utterance, of noises, of glances, of blinks, of walls, of chairs, of audience, of fans, of interviews, of motions, of walking, of movements, of meaning, of value, of reciprocity, of names, of in-common, of translation, of biographies, of lost futures, of desire, of I’m sorry, of can you repeat that, of I understand, of I know what you mean, and of, and of, and of. Within this and of, and of, and of that expands with each breath, this 2-day workshop explores what might be at stake for research within and across art, design, architecture, and the humanities in its relation to critical (spatial) dialogues
From unwieldy pile to more or less organized book
No full textThis short essay reflects on the drawn-out process of turning, sifting, discarding, revisiting, pulling back in, discarding once more, labeling, re-labeling, ordering, re-ordering, giving shape, and reshaping a vast amount of documentary material and critical reflections into a more or less organized book that offers a range of different entry points in Kathrin Böhm's difficult to categorize practice
Co-creating architecture education through residencies in Calabria
Get PDFDenicke-Polcher, S. and Adamo, R. (2023). Co-creating Architecture Education through Residencies in Calabria. In: Productive Disruptive Spaces of exploration in-between architectural pedagogy and practice, AAE Conference Proceedings, pp. 172-185. Studio South introduces an innovative pedagogical model, immersing London-based architecture students in a Calabrian village through residencies with the local Non-Profit Organization Le Seppie. Since 2016, the program has addressed migration, depopulation and societal issues, fostering a community of practice with locals, refugees, and newcomers. Since 2020, the residencies have disrupted traditional pedagogy, emphasizing students as research partners, fostering hybrid roles, and transcending boundaries between research and practice. The findings reveal a convergence of students' goals and Le Seppie's concerns, endorsing residencies as a pioneering model, bridging academia and practice to have a societal impact