Episdoes of TRANSMISSIONS are broadcast at 9pm on Wednesdays and 10am on Fridays. Episodes may contain mature content.
Watch TRANSMISSIONS here and find a subtitled stream here.
Access information: The Transmissions chatbox will feature on both the TRANSMISSIONS website and the Wysing Broadcasts website. Viewers of the subtitled stream and the main stream will be able to easily chat together. Please note if you watch the subtitled stream directly on Twitch, the main chat will not appear.
TRANSMISSIONS returns for Season 2 comprising eight episodes with contributions from BBZ TV, Juliet Jacques, Ignota Books, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Kat Anderson, Plastique Fantastique, Legacy Russell and many others!
Season 2 of TRANSMISSIONS will run as eight weekly episodes screening every Wednesday at 9 pm BST and repeated on Friday at 9 am BST on Twitch. The 1st episode will air on 9th of September 2020. Each artist included in TRANSMISSIONS is paid a fee in return for their contribution. In some instances, artists have waived their fees in order to donate the money to a charity of their choice. With a sense of community, all the money used to pay artists in season 2 has been kindly donated by established art institutions and commercially stable artists.
Episode 1 | 9 September | 9PM BST
REPLAY | 11 September | 10AM BST
Kat Anderson: Bad Man Nuh Flee
Episode 2 | 16 September | 9PM BST
REPLAY | 18 September | 10AM BST
Plastique Fantastique Communiqué:
Beware Mars with Earth in Ascendance
W/ Plastique Fantastique / Arianne Churchman &
Benedict Drew / Christopher Kirubi / Gentle Stranger
Episode 3 | 23 September | 9PM BST
REPLAY | 25 September | 10AM BST
Juliet Jacques: Spectres of Socialism
W/ Bill Morrison / Colin Newman / Deimantas Narkevičius /
The Duvet Brothers / Erica Scourti / Igor & Gleb Aleinikov /
Jasmina Cibic / John Smith / Kerry Tribe /
Octavio Cortázar / Oleksiy Radynski / R W Paul /
Santiago Álvarez
Episode 4 | 30 September | 9PM BST
REPLAY | 2 October May | 10AM BST
Lawrence Abu Hamdan
W/ Maryam Jafri / Maan Abu Taleb & Others
Episode 5 | 7 October | 9PM BST
REPLAY | 9 October | 10AM BST
BBZ TV: Past, Present and Future
Episode 6 | 14 October | 9PM BST
REPLAY | 16 October | 10AM BST
Ignota Books: Deep Deep Dream
Episode 7 | 21 October | 9PM BST
REPLAY | 23 October | 10AM BST
Curated by Anne Duffau, Hana Noorali and Tai Shani
W/ Anaïs Duplan / Carolyn Lazard / Hardeep Pandhal / Imran Perretta / Jordan Lord / Sung Tieu / Tabita Rezaire / Lloyd Corporation / Rehana Zaman / Isabel Waidner & Others
Episode 8 | 28 October | 9PM BST
REPLAY | 30 October | 10AM BST
GLITCHED NARRATIVES curated by Legacy Russell
W/ Georgie Grace, Tony Cokes & Others
TRANSMISSIONS was established by Anne Duffau, Hana Noorali and Tai Shani.
Season 2 is funded and supported by BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Chisenhale Gallery, DACS, Grazer Kunstverein, Matt's Gallery, Studio Oscar Murillo, Netwerk Aalst, Somerset House Studios and Wysing Arts Centre.
Image: Adam Sinclair.
6pm, Thursday 23 July
FREE CASH PRESENTS: Welfare to (Art) Work Part 3, the third in a series of investigations into the role of the benefits system in Britain's art, music and subcultural histories from Wysing residency artists Ruth Angel Edwards and Adam Gallagher.
From Thatcher's Enterprise Allowance Scheme to Tony Blair's New Deal for Musicians, ‘Welfare to (Art) Work’ looks at how welfare policy has affected the lived realities of 'cultural producers' in the UK, and considers what, if any, horizon is left for artists and musicians in today's punitive, broken benefits system. This show includes an interview with experimental musician Stephen Mallinder from Cabaret Voltaire, and was produced at Wysing as part of our 2020 broadcast residencies. The series was commissioned by Montez Press.
Ruth Angel Edwards explores the dissemination of ideology through pop culture, drawing from sub and counter cultural movements both past and present, as well as the conditions which give rise to them. Individualism, the body, gender and sexuality, consumerism and spirituality are recurring themes in her work; hedonism, spectacle and dissent are deconstructed and reformed to create communicative works across a variety of media. For the past few years her 'ENEMA' series of installation works have used fan fictional narratives staged within dense augmented spaces, to explore personal cycles of consumption and waste and the ways these things are politicised as they connect with global capitalist economies. She is interested in how ideology is communicated, consumed, internalised, rebelled against and regurgitated.
Ruth Angel Edwards works across a wide variety of media, showing works in a range of contexts both inside and outside of traditional art settings. She studied on School of the Damned, an alternative postgraduate art course and protest, run by and for its students in 2014. She has exhibited in the UK and internationally including at Arcadia Missa, Auto Italia South East, Almanac, Peak, London; Bonington Gallery, Flo Skate Park Nottingham; FACT, Royal Standard, Liverpool; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Mathew Gallery, New York and Moscow Youth art Biennale. She has produced radio for NTS, Resonance, Sunflower and Comet Radios in London, Montez Press Radio in New York, Berlin and London, Cashmere radio in Berlin, KChung Radio in Los Angeles and WCBN Ann Arbor in Michigan, US.
Adam Gallagher is an artist and writer from and based in London who works mainly through performance, sculpture and publishing. He works against the performative artist ego; disassembling its reliance upon the myopic context, history and industry of art to produce new meaning. He self-publishes a series of pamphlets called ‘E.A.R.F’. The series transposes original fictionalised biographies that aim to dramatise instances in which disparate subjectivities appear, relate, contradict and attempt to coexist, forming a picture of the fallout, failures and flatulence of global capitalism. Recently he has been working in collaboration with Curtly Thomas on his music and performance act, clubcouture and with him and Ruth Angel Edwards on The Unwelcome Collection, a collaborative performance. The project aims to provoke and challenge art’s inherent injustices, its tokenisations, professionalism and cleanliness. Recent exhibitions, performances and projects include: Free Cash Radio Hijack, Cashmere Radio, Berlin (2020), A group show at 3236RLS, (2020), Seminar: Working Title, Black Box Theatre, Oslo, (2020), ‘The Unwelcome Collection: We the Upsetters: Executive Plunge’, Peak Gallery, (2019), ‘What can Robert do next? Where is Roberto going?’, Piper Keys, (2018), ‘Divine Cargo’, South London Gallery, (2018), ‘CC, Klein presents’, with clubcouture, Somerset House, ‘The Unwelcome Collection: An Incendiary Costume Drama’, Auto Italia South East, (2018), ‘Words fail me’, Auto Italia South East. (2018) and ’Polly Anything’, Lima Zulu (2017). Commissioned writing include The Happy Hypocrite issue 11: Silver Bandage, ‘Helpful tips/Call me when you see this!’, ‘Tuna Temperature’, The Tube #3: Loosing, ‘Special Category Status’ and ‘Trust’ for The Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (2018), ‘Extra Judicial Killing’ and ‘What did I do to deserve this?’, Montez Press, Interjection Calendar (2017).
Ruth and Adam started the Free Cash radio project at the beginning of 2020.
14 July to 16 August
Open Studios 2020 brings together Wysing’s studio and associate artists to share their practices. This year we host Open Studios online to provide a platform for the artists to share how their studio practices have changed during 2020 so far and the recent months of lockdown.
Bringing together 15 artists over 5 weeks plus the young artists working with Circuit Cambridge, Wysing Open Studios 2020 will showcase online works, panel discussions, live performances and more.
The event on 21 July will be held on Zoom and the events on 22 July, 30 July, 5 August and 12 August will be streamed live on Wysing's Twitch channel, here.
You can book a space for the events via Eventbrite. Please follow the link below the event. Instructions on how to join the event on Twitch will be emailed to you before the event.
You can also visit Wysing Open Studios 2020 in the 'Explore' section on our new broadcasting website here, for experimental videos, ongoing research and retrospective showcases from Wysing studio and associate artists.
The artists taking part in Wysing Open Studios 2020 are; Damaris Athene, Aliaskar Torkaliaskari, Philip Cornett, Emanuela Cusin, Lawrence Epps, Robert Foster, Bettina Furnée, Naomi Harwin, Penny Klein, Mae, Emma Smith, Soheila Sokhanvari, Lucy Steggals and Caroline Wendling.
More information about each artist's practice can be found here.
Circuit Virtual Social: Regeneration
21 July, 4–5pm
Get creative, meet with other people and be part of online collaborative activities around the theme of Regeneration with Circuit Cambridge, a group of 18 to 25 year olds who work with Wysing and Kettle’s Yard. Over the past month Circuit have been exploring the theme of Regeneration in relation to recent world events, highlighting inequalities and issues in creative ways, as a response to Wysing’s 2020 programme theme of Broadcasting.
The event is recommended for those aged 16 to 25.
Booking for this event has closed.
Studio Artists Panel Discussion (Part 1)
22 July, 5–6pm
With Damaris Athene, Lawrence Epps and Soheila Sokhanvari.
A panel discussion on studio practices during 2020 streamed via Twitch with: Damaris Athene, Lawrence Epps and Soheila Sokhanvari, moderated by Wysing Curatorial Assistant Hannah Wallis. The guest speakers will reflect on their studio practice during 2020 so far, looking at how this will have changed in response to the recent global health crises that led to several months of lockdown.
This event will be streamed live via Wysing's Twitch channel, with the opportunity to ask questions via the Twitch chatbox.
Booking for this event has closed.
an arealist's take on love performance
30 July, from dawn at 4.39am
With Mae and collaborators.
A live-streamed performance from Wysing Arts Centre as part of the Test Space programme with Wysing studio artist Mae plus collaborators.
would you change your rhythm for me is a sonic exploration of re-written rhythms, wave signals...oscillations, stretched frequencies, a moon, quantum whispers...an aerialist's take on love, made with found objects, lo-fi devices, voice and conventional instruments approached as alien.
Booking for this event has closed.
Studio Artists Panel Discussion (Part 2)
5 August, 5–6pm
With Emanuela Cusin, Robert Foster, Bettina Furnée and Lucy Steggals.
A panel discussion on studio practices in 2020 streamed via Twitch with: Emanuela Cusin, Robert Foster, Bettina Furneé and Lucy Steggals, moderated by Wysing Curatorial Assistant Hannah Wallis. The guest speakers will reflect on their studio practice during 2020 so far, looking at how this will have changed in response to the recent global health crises that led to several months of lockdown.
This event will be streamed live via Wysing's Twitch channel with the opportunity to ask questions via the Twitch chatbox.
Booking for this event has closed.
Aliaskar Torkaliaskari in Conversation: Contingency as methodology in contemporary art and beyond. How to risk it when there is nothing left to lose?
12 August, 5–6pm
With Marty Fiati, Travis LaCouter, Bahar Noorizadeh and Lukas Stolz.
A panel discussion streamed live via Twitch with: Marty Fiati, Travis LaCouter, Bahar Noorizadeh and Lukas Stolz, led by Wysing studio artist Aliaskar Torkaliaskari.
Booking for this event has closed.
Access
Please get in touch with us to let us know if there is something you need to be able to participate in our events. For example: transcriptions, subtitles, audio description, or short breaks. Email Ceri Littlechild, Wysing's Head of Operations on ceri.littlechild@wysingartscentre.org.
1 to 31 May
Trace: to find something or someone that was lost
New Geographies and the East Contemporary Visual Arts Network (ECVAN) are delighted to announce Tracing the East, a series of digital events and new audio-visual content that reflect on the traces of New Geographies.
New Geographies is a three year project which invited the public to nominate locations for ten site-specific art works across the East of England. 11 artists were commissioned to make ambitious new works. The commissioned artists were: Maria Anastassiou, David Blandy, Marcus Coates, Leah Millar, Cooking Sections, Ian Giles, Krijn de Koning, susan pui san lok, Studio Morison, Stuart Whipps and Laura Wilson. Each artist has worked closely on the realisation of their work with one of the New Geographies partner institutions.
Over the month of May 2020, Tracing the East will be an opportunity to come together with the artists and ECVAN to experience some of the works that were produced and discuss and reflect on three key themes that emerged from the ten commissions: Population, Landscape and History.
Tracing the East will include: ten podcasts, five films, one soundscape, one audio walk and a live online game. There will also be two live performances and three live panel discussions discussing themes of Population, Landscape, and History.
From 1 May 2020, material will be available to listen, browse and enjoy via the New Geographies website, here:
- The first 4 episodes from our series of podcasts from Studio Morison, Ian Giles, David Blandy & Maria Anastassiou
- Ian Giles’ Open Ramble East walking maps
- An audio walk by Cooking Sections, Moveable Estates, 2020
- Four films: David Blandy, The World After, 2019, Laura Wilson, Deepening, 2020, Stuart Whipps, Necessary Amendments: Homes for the People, 2019, Maria Anastassiou, Way My It Did I, 2019
- A poem by Mervyn Linford, The World After, 2019
Three live panel discussions will take place on Zoom on 4 May, 14 May and 28 May. In order to view live, you will need to book before the event via Eventbrite. Please follow the link below the event. Instructions for connecting to the discussion via Zoom will be emailed to you before the event.
Online Panel Discussions
Population
4 May, 6–7pm
Discussing the changing communities of the East in relation to the LGBTQ+ community, immigration and population change, how do communities adapt and respond to change? With Maria Anastassiou, Ian Giles, moderated by Dr Amy Tobin, Curator of Exhibitions at Kettle’s Yard.
Landscape
14 May, 6–7pm
From local to global, the effects of climate change in the landscape of the region is addressed through storytelling with David Blandy, Studio Morison (Heather), Cooking Sections, moderated by publisher, writer and curator, Sarah Shin.
History
28 May, 6–7pm
How can the past that inform our future? The use of symbols and references to histories, storytelling and myths – with Laura Wilson, susan pui san lok, Marcus Coates, Leah Millar, Krijn de Koning, moderated by independent Curator, Kate Phillimore.
David Blandy's The World After live role-playing game on Twitch
Saturday 16 May, 1–4pm
Join us on Twitch to watch David Blandy and 6 participants play The World After table top role-playing game live. The game is part of the exhibition originally commissioned by New Geographies and Focial Point Gallery.
Studio Morison Performance:
MOTHER-SHIP...
20 May, 6–6.30pm
Reconfigured quarantine version of MOTHER-SHIP - a performance presenting a mythic reading of MOTHER... as transformational vessel through a dancer’s characterisation of the ‘guardian’, with Sam Amos and Jacken Elswyth.
Access
Please get in touch with us to let us know if there is something you need to be able to participate in our events. For example: transcriptions, subtitles, audio description, or short breaks.
Season 1: 23 April to 29 May
Join us on online for the first season of TRANSMISSIONS, a new online platform established by Anne Duffau, Hana Noorali and Tai Shani. TRANSMISSIONS will be broadcast weekly via Twitch, on Thursdays at 9pm and Fridays at 9am. Each broadcast will last approx. 1 hour and 30 minutes. Watch the live stream:
On our homepage, click here.
On Twitch, where you can comment and chat, click here.
With subtitles on Twitch, click here.
Our collective isolation highlights that all forms of community are now more important than ever, and it is vital that we find mechanisms to support each other through this precarious time. In this extraordinary landscape that we have found ourselves in, it is clear that many artists, writers and thinkers are having exhibitions, opportunities and subsequent fees cancelled for the foreseeable future. In response to this, Anne Duffau, Hana Noorali and Tai Shani have established a new project called TRANSMISSIONS. This is an online platform which will commission artists to share their work within a classic DIY TV show format.
Content warning: some broadcasts contain adult themes and content
Episode 1
23 April, 9PM GMT
(REPLAY, 24 April, 9AM GMT)
w/ Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg / Bruce Bickford / CAConrad / Salvador Dali / Brice Dellsperger / Tessa Hughes-Freeland / Juliet Jacques / Sam Keogh / Jiji Kim / Quinn Latimer / Mark Leckey / Kalup Linzy / Sade Mica / Laure Prouvost / Christopher Soto / Patrick Staff / The Cockettes / TV party / Unarius Academy of Science / Su Hui- Yu /// Curated by Anne Duffau, Hana Noorali & Tai Shani
Episode 2: w/ Sophie Jung
30 April, 9PM GMT
(REPLAY, 1 May, 9AM GMT)
Sophie Jung, Leadeyes and Gentlament,
please put your ands together and and and, 2020
Not Not Hot (Annie Goodchild and Legion Seven) / Alexa Barrett / Carl Gent / Rebecca Lennon / Oisin Byrne / Alice Theobald / Dana Michel / Lindsay Seers / The Nicholas Brothers / Benedict Drew / Basil Brush / Jesse Darling with Isa Toledo / Perple Celotape / Tommy Cooper / Sarah Duffy / Inspector Columbo / Jenny Moore with F*Choir / Andy Kaufman / The Socialist Magician... and your hosts Sophie and the Monkey Cat.
Episode 3: w/ Tarek Lakhrissi – Your world is already ending
7 May, 9PM GMT (duration 45 mins)
(REPLAY, 8 May, 9AM GMT)
Tarek Lakhrissi is a visual artist and a poet based in Paris. His works have been exhibited in Auto Italia South East (London, UK), Hayward Gallery (London, UK), Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, AU), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France), Grand Palais - FIAC (Paris, FR), Lafayette Anticipations (Paris, FR), CRAC Alsace (Altkirch, FR), Artexte (Montreal, CA), Šiuolaikinio meno centras/CAC (Vilnius, LT), Espace Arlaud (Lausanne, CH), among others. He is a featured artist in the 22nd Biennale of Sydney NIRIN (2020).
Episode 4: w/ Johanna Hedva – Tom Cruise Studies with expert guests Vivian Ia and Matthew Miller
14 May, 9PM GMT
(REPLAY, 15 May, 9AM GMT)
Tom Cruise Studies is a meander of curiosity. There is no driving inquiry other than the question, "What's, like, up with Tom Cruise?" Hedva considers the various roles Cruise has played onscreen and in public, from religious zealot, to cocky upstart, to a man oppressed by his own masculinity, to couch-jumping love-nut, to an exiled actor who clawed his way back into Hollywood via a maniacal obsession with doing death-certain stunts. Joined by two expert guests, Hedva and Vivian Ia will consider the astrology charts of Cruise and L. Ron Hubbard, while Matthew Miller will share his theory that the Mission Impossible franchise is Cruise's vehicle for making public apologies to his ex-wife, Katie Holmes.
Episode 5: w/ STRAWBERRY JAM: A LITERARY HOUR with Mykki Blanco
21 May, 9PM GMT
(REPLAY, 22 May, 9AM GMT)
Join musician Mykki Blanco for an hour of music and poetry readings. Spoken word, lyrical breakdowns, a presentation on two 20th century American literary figures Bob Kaufman & Mina Loy as well as a first time listen to new unreleased musical project.
Episode 6: w/ CAConrad with invited poets
28 May, 9PM GMT
(REPLAY, 29 May, 9AM GMT)
CAConrad's latest book JUPITER ALIGNMENT: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals, is forthcoming from Ignota Books in 2020. The author of 9 books of poetry and essays, While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books), won the 2018 Lambda Book Award. They also received a 2019 Creative Capital grant as well as a Pew Fellowship, the Believer Magazine Book Award, and the Gil Ott Book Award. They regularly teach at Columbia University in New York City, and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam. Please view their books, essays, recordings, and the documentary The Book of Conrad (Delinquent Films) online at http://bit.ly/88CAConrad
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AV Support: Lori Allen
Trailer: Adam Sinclair
Music: Maxwell Sterling
Each artist included in TRANSMISSIONS will be paid a fee in return for their contribution. With a sense of community, all the money used to pay artists in season 1 has been kindly donated by established UK art institutions and commercially stable artists.
Season 1 is funded and supported by, ArtQuest+DACS, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Oscar Murillo Studio Somerset House Studios and Wysing Arts Centre.
ACCESS
A subtitled version of TRANSMISSIONS will be live streamed on Twitch, here.
If you have questions about access needs, please email Wysing’s Head of Operations, Ceri Littlechild, on ceri.littlechild@wysingartscentre.org.
2020 Programme Launch
Saturday 29 February
Join us at Wysing and Wicken Fen on
29 February for the launch of our 2020 programme.
Helen Cammock – They Call It Idlewild
Naomi Harwin – Encounter
Studio Morison – MOTHER...
Click on the titles above for more information about the exhibitions.
Across the day, from 2–4pm and 5–7pm, we will launch three new projects: an ambitious structure by STUDIO MORISON at Wicken Fen nature reserve; a new commission by Turner Prize 2019 winning artist, Helen Cammock and a new installation by Wysing studio artist, Naomi Harwin, at Wysing.
Schedule:
2-4 pm Launch of STUDIO MORISON at Wicken Fen with refreshments
5-7 pm Launch with drinks and refreshments for Helen Cammock and Naomi Harwin exhibitions at Wysing
Join us for the whole day, or for part of it. The launch events are free to attend. If you require transport from Cambridge there are are paid ticket options available.
To book transport via Eventbrite, please click here.
Wicken Fen Directions
To find MOTHER... please go to the main car park at Lode Lane, Wicken Fen, Ely, Cambridgeshire, CB7 5XP. There will be information at the visitors centre on how to find the structure. Access to MOTHER... is free and does not require entry payment. The car park costs £3 per day. For more information, please click here.
Travel Information
You are welcome to make your own way to each of the events, or there are 3 transport options available from Cambridge.
1. Wicken Fen and Wysing plus return travel - £16
12.50pm - Departs Cambridge train station to Wicken Fen
2pm - Arrival at Wicken Fen
4pm - Departure from Wicken Fen to Wysing
5pm - Arrival at Wicken Fen
7pm - Depart Wysing to Cambridge Train Station, arriving by 8pm
2. Wicken Fen plus return travel - £12
12.50pm - Departs Cambridge train station to Wicken Fen
2pm - Arrival at Wicken Fen
4pm - Departure from Wicken Fen to Cambridge Train Station, arriving by 5pm
3. Wysing plus return travel - £8
4.20pm - Transport departs Cambridge Train Station
5pm - Arrives to Wysing
7pm - Departs Wysing to Cambridge Train Station, arriving by 8pm
Please note that transport bookings will close at 4pm on Friday 28 February.
Access
If you have questions about access needs please contact Wysing's Head of Operations, Ceri Littlechild, on ceri.littlechild@wysingartscentre.org.
Please note that unfortunately the paths leading to MOTHER... at Wicken Fen are uneven and very muddy in places at the moment due to recent weather, so are not suitable for wheel chairs or scooters. There are disabled car parking spaces in the car park on Lode Lane.
An access guide for our 2020 Programme Launch is available here as a PDF, here as an HTML page, and here as a Word Document.
Boundary + Gesture Closing Event
Saturday 7 December, 12–4pm
To book tickets for the closing event, including return transport from Cambridge station, please click here.
Exhibition open: 12–5pm daily, 7 October to 8 December
On the final weekend of Boundary + Gesture, curator Taylor Le Melle and invited guests Sarah Keenan and Imani Robinson convene an afternoon of reading, walking and discussion.
Researcher and academic Sarah Keenan will lead a seminar that considers Le Melle's exhibition through their own academic research and writing. Following a lunch which we will provide, a meditative walk led by writer and art practitioner Imani Robinson and Le Melle will take in the routes and public footpaths surrounding Wysing that are referenced in the PSS text 'Untitled', which is included in the exhibition.
This event is free and open to all.
Schedule:
11.45am - Arrivals and welcome
12pm - Seminar – reading and discussion led by Sarah Keenan
1pm - Complimentary lunch and opportunity to view the exhibition
2pm - Walk – led by Taylor Le Melle and Imani Robinson
3pm - Closing comments and discussion
A copy of text that will read and discussed together can be found here.
Biographies
Sarah Keenan works at Birkbeck Law School, University of London, where she co-directs the Centre for Research on Race and Law. Her research and teaching are at the intersection of legal and political theory, geography and post-colonial studies. Her monograph Subversive Property: Law and the Production of Spaces of Belonging was published in the Routledge Social Justice series in 2015. She has recently completed a Leverhulme Fellowship on her current project “Making Land Liquid: The Temporality of Title Registration”. To go to Keenan's book click, here.
Imani Robinson is a London-based writer, live art practitioner, plant lover and prison abolitionist. They are one half of Languid Hands, a curatorial project initiated with their Very Close Collaborator, Rabz Lansiquot. In 2019 Languid Hands presented two projects: Towards a Black Testimony at Jerwood, U.K. and Stroom, NL.; and away, completely: denigrate at Narrative Projects, U.K. Imani was a member of sorryyoufeeluncomfortable (SYFU) Collective 2015-18 and completed an MA in Forensic Architecture at the Centre for Research Architecture in 2019. Recent personal projects include: Ditto & Ditto Take a Trip to Port Authority, a moving image work made with Halima Haruna; WELCOME NOTE IN A WELCOME SPEECH, a
collaborative performance with artist Libita Clayton; and The Black Drift, an ongoing series of workshops and performances exploring Black geographies and the psychic afterlives of transatlantic slavery. You can find some less academic and equally abstract writing by Imani in Dream Babes 2.0.
Taylor Le Melle is a curator and writer based in London who has programmed at: Serpentine Galleries, ICA London, Cafe Oto, Chisenhale Dance Space, Arcadia Missa, and Assembly Point (all London), L’IceBergues with Contrechamps Ensemble (Geneva) and McKenna Museum of Art (New Orleans). Taylor’s writing has been featured in: Art Monthly, Flash Art. Taylor is the Autumn/Winter 2018 Writer in Residence at Jerwood Visual Arts. Taylor also co-runs PSS with Rowan Powell. Together they have published projects by Daniella Valz Gen, Victoria Sin and Rehana Zaman (upcoming, 2019). Since April 2018, Taylor has been co-director of not/nowhere, an artist workers’ cooperative that hosts workshops, screenings, exhibitions and other events. not/nowhere’s mission is to ensure that local artists who use new media in their work can access film and media equipment, acquire skills to nourish their practices, and take pleasure in expressing themselves creatively.
Access
If you have questions about access needs please contact Wysing's Head of Operations, Ceri Littlechild, on ceri.littlechild(at)wysingartscentre.org.
Boundary + Gesture
Exhibition Launch: Saturday 5 October,
4–6pm. Curator's Tour: 3–4pm
To book return transport from Cambridge station for the Curator's Tour and launch, please click here.
Exhibition open: 12–5pm daily, 7 October to 8 December
Join us for the launch of our next exhibition Boundary + Gesture, curated by Taylor Le Melle. The exhibition features works by Aslan Ġoisum, Derica Shields, a major new commission by Dominique White, and publications from PSS.
As part of our 30th birthday programme, Le Melle developed the exhibition during their Art Fund supported residency at Wysing earlier in 2019 during which they convened a series of public events that explored notions of property and monetisation.
Boundary + Gesture presents works that situate explorations of gesture and property within landscapes of ‘the rural’. Developed as exhibition-as-research, this experimental exhibition format brings art works in conversation with archival material and texts.
A new commission by UK artist Dominique White will encompass the entirety of Wysing’s gallery and responds to research on Black subjectivity, shipwreck and the Sargasso Sea, navigating a dialogue between the body and material. Repurposing sails, combining fabrics with kaolin clay and galvanised steel, White’s sculptures channel the aquatic landscape as a site of possibilities, and a way of ‘escaping the body and destroying what was held captive’.
Aslan Ġoisum’s video works 'Volga' (2015) and 'Scythian Journey' (2019) will be presented in separate screening rooms, and consider the idea of testimony as well as proprietary law in relation to intimate and state histories of forced migration.
In Wysing’s reception, a polyvocal work by writer and researcher Derica Shields uses archival material surrounding 18th century court cases to create speculative histories. Reconfiguring museum display through sound, Shields will present three fraying, divergent oral fictions that examine property law as debated and lived during what is called Britain’s era of abolition.
PSS, Le Melle’s publishing project with editor/researcher Rowan Powell will present three new pamphlets that further expand on ideas within the exhibition. Rowan Powell presents a new text that links the history of land enclosures in Britain with a story recorded by French surgeon Ambroise Pare in his 1573 text On Monsters and Marvels. A joint new text by Le Melle and artist Aslan Guaimov frames his works in the context of global colonial histories. Using Le Melle’s preferred methodology of foraging existing content, the final text will excerpt writer, curator and artist, Imani Robinson’s essay and ongoing film project “Black Testimony” to accompany Dominique White’s new commission.
Biographies
Taylor Le Melle is a curator and writer. Recent writing has been featured in publications including: Sad Sack by Sophia al-Maria (Book Works); Che si può fare, Helen Cammock's exhibition catalogue (Whitechapel Gallery); Gender, Space (Macmillian) ed. Aimee Meredith Cox; as well as in periodicals such as Art Monthly and Flash Art. Taylor is a member of not/nowhere, an artist workers’ cooperative. Taylor was writer-in-residence at Jerwood Visual Arts in 2018 and curator-in-residence at Wysing Arts Centre in Spring 2019.
Aslan Ġoisum (Chechnya, 1991, lives in Grozny and Amsterdam) employs various artistic media – mainly the moving image, sculptural installation and paper-based techniques – that articulate the collective and individual upheaval marking the North Caucasus history. This inevitably entails analysis of the colonial legacy of the Russian Empire, in all its guises. Recent exhibitions include: Blood and Soil: Dark Arts for Dark Times, Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius, LT, 2019); All That You See Here, Forget, Emalin (London, UK, 2018); How To Live Together, Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna, AT, 2017) and People of No Consequence, Museum of Contemporary Art (Antwerp, BE, 2016).
Rowan Powell is a writer, editor and PhD Candidate at University of California, Santa Cruz. Alongside Taylor Le Melle, Powell co-runs PSS, a publisher of printed material which has recently launched Daniella Valz Gen’s poetry chapbook Subversive Economies, Rehana Zaman’s Tongues and Victoria Sin’s Dream Babes 2.0.
Derica Shields is a writer and cultural worker from London. As part of a Triple Canopy commission, she is completing a multi-format oral history project centering on Black people's accounts of the UK welfare state. Bad Practice, her book project commissioned by Hannah Black is forthcoming from Book Works.
Dominique White (b. 1993, UK) weaves together the theories of Black Radical Thought with the nautical myths of Black Diaspora into a term she defines as the Shipwrecked; a reflexive verb and state of being. Her sculptures demonstrate how Black life could extend beyond its own subjective limits and act as beacons or vessels of an ignored civilisation defined as the Stateless; a realm in which the past, present and future have converged into a Black Future. White's research reaches back to the sound of Detroit's techno scene, where she continues to reference narratives (situated in space and underwater) depicted by Aux 88 (Tom Tom
and Keith Tucker), DJ Stingray (Sherard Ingram) and Drexciya (Gerald Donald and James Stinson). Recent exhibitions and presentations include Abandon(ed) Vessel at Kevinspace [solo] (Vienna, 2019), a solo booth presented by VEDA at Art-O-Rama (Marseille, 2019), Fugitive of the State(less) [solo] at VEDA (Florence, 2019), Flood-tide, Love Unlimited (Glasgow, 2018); The Share of Opulence; Doubled; Fractional, Sophie Tappeiner (Vienna, 2018); °c, Clearview.ltd (London, 2018); The Conch (April), South London Gallery (London, 2018); Signs | Beacons, Caustic Coastal (Manchester, 2018). White was an artist-in-residence at Curva Blu (IT) June to July 2019.
Access
If you have questions about access needs please Wysing's Head of Operations,
Ceri Littlechild on ceri.littlechild@wysingartscentre.org.
17 August, 12-5pm
Wysing's Annual Open Studios returns on Saturday 17 August when artists who are based at Wysing open their studios across the site.
To book return transport from Cambridge station for Open Studios, please click here.
Nineteen artists work from Wysing's 11 acre rural site, fourteen of whom will be opening their studios to visitors: Damaris Athene, Philip Cornett, Fiona Curran, Emanuela Cusin, Lawrence Epps, Robert Foster, Bettina Furnée, Naomi Harwin, Penny Klein, Mae, Lucy Steggals, Shawn Stipling, Aliaskar Torkaliaskari and Caroline Wendling.
Come and have a look inside these artists' workspaces to see what goes on at Wysing every day in studios. Media includes painting, sculpture, video, photography and installation.
During Open Studios you will also be able to have a look at our current group exhibition 'All His Ghosts Must Do My Bidding' which is located in our gallery and across the site. You might also wish to attend a discussion between Wysing studio artist Bettina Furnée and producer and writer Laura Purseglove at 2pm at nearby All Saints and St Andrews Church, Kingston, where Bettina has a newly commissioned installation.
Tea, coffee and cake will be available to purchase onsite.
Visit our studio artists page here.
Visit the exhibition page here.
18 May – Coppice and Drought [offsite in Cambridgeshire]
23 May – Fuel and Property [online]
30 May – Network and Contact [Wysing Arts Centre]
We wanted to take the opportunity of our 30th anniversary to ask what Wysing’s role might be in addressing the urgent societal issues of our time. Taylor Le Melle has been in-residence at Wysing over the spring and has been developing a series of events as part of our anniversary programme.
“What is the nature of the resources at your disposal? What is the value of your labour? What is there to yield from an investment in depth? What is extracted from a transaction that is considered productive? What are the assets held within your networks? How do the material conditions of work structure intimate contact?”
The events will take place offsite in a nearby wood, online, and across Wysing’s site. We would like to invite you to save the dates.
For more information on 'Coppice + Drought', please click here.
For more information about 'Fuel + Property', please click here.
For more information about 'Network + Contact', please click here.
The 2019 Curator in-Residence is supported by Art Fund.
Biography
Taylor Le Melle is a curator and writer based in London who has programmed at: Serpentine Galleries, ICA London, Cafe Oto, Chisenhale Dance Space, Arcadia Missa, and Assembly Point (all London), L’IceBergues with Contrechamps Ensemble (Geneva) and McKenna Museum of Art (New Orleans). Taylor’s writing has been featured in: Art Monthly, Flash Art. Taylor was the Autumn/Winter 2018 Writer-in-Residence at Jerwood Visual Arts.
Taylor also co-runs PSS with Rowan Powell. Together they have published projects by Daniella Valz Gen, Victoria Sin and Rehana Zaman (upcoming, 2019).
Since April 2018, Taylor has been co-director of not/nowhere, an artist workers’ cooperative that hosts workshops, screenings, exhibitions and other events. not/nowhere’s mission is to ensure that local artists who use new media in their work can access film and media equipment, acquire skills to nourish their practices, and take pleasure in expressing themselves creatively.
Sold Out
20–22 June (20 & 21 June in London, 22 June at Wysing)
The Rural Assembly will take place at Whitechapel Gallery, London, and Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge.
The Rural Assembly draws on a series of public programmes and research that developed throughout 2018. It looks at contemporary artists and creative practitioners who are challenging the assumptions made about rural life and culture, providing a new vision of the countryside grounded in everyday experience and a critique of the rural-urban binary. This culminating assembly considers how artists respond to the established and imposed divides between the rural and the urban. From re-imagined farming practices and food systems to architecture, community projects and transnational local networks, this three-day assembly brings together artists, curators, historians and critics to discuss the role of art in a rural context, inviting a critical outlook at our relationships with the rural today.
For more information about the programme and for bookings, please click here.
Keynote Lecture: Whitechapel Gallery, Thursday 20 June, 7pm
The Rural Assembly will open with a key note lecture from Taiwanese artist and curator Wu Mali. Wali has developed a distinctive approach to working with communities across Taiwan, in projects that consider rural culture, land use, environmental concerns, and the shifting relationship between the rural and urban in Asia. .
Day 1: Whitechapel Gallery, Friday 21 June, 11.30am – 6pm
A full day of panels and seminars on embedded artistic practice in the rural, translocal networks, decolonising the rural and rural representations. To see the full schedule at Whitechapel Gallery, click here.
Day 2: Wysing Arts Centre, Saturday 22 June, 11am – 7.00pm
With a focus on artistic practice and experience in the rural, the second day provides a slower pace with walks, a collective lunch and performances, screenings and seminars.
Coach Departs Kings Cross. Arrives at Wysing 10.30am
11am Welcome and Introduction by Donna Lynas, Director, Wysing Arts Centre
11.15am Walks and Seminar (choice of three)
A) Open Ramble East - Ian Giles A walk led by artist Ian Giles and members of the Open Ramble East Project, considering the complex and often invisible experience of queer identities in rural places and landscapes. Open Ramble East members contributing to the Wysing walk include: Rachel Pimm, James McDermott, Alison Graham, Alice d'Lumiere and Graham Innes.
B) Caroline Wendling Together with locally based farmer William Bevan, Wendling leads a tour of his farm and other sites in Bourn, connecting to local histories, exchanges and experiences.
C)Seminar: Farmer to Farmer - Artist Asunción Molinos Gordo shares her project "De Campesino A Campesino " (Farmer to Farmer), in dialogue with farmer Simon Diss, to address questions of agroecology and peer-to-peer agricultural innovation across informal global networks.
1.30pm Lunch
2.30pm Artistic Utopias? Experimental practice from the Rural
This panel invites artists who self-organise projects from and for rural places, challenging the idea that the rural is a site for artists to ‘escape’ to. From an artist-run space in a remote part of Indonesia, to an experimental farm, to alternative communities around the world, how do artists experiment outside of ‘cultural centres’? Panelists: Ismal Muntaha (Artist, Jatiwangi Art Factory), Léonore Bonaccini and Xavier Fourt (Artists,Bureau d’Etudes) - Grace Ndiritu (Artist), chaired by Lotte Juul Petersen.
4pm Break (15 mins)
4.15pm Possibilities of Rural Belongings: Embodying Liminality
In advance of their performances later in the day, this conversation between artists Jade Monserrat and Harold Offeh, considers critical approaches and practices from the position of being Black British artists in rural environments. Chaired by curator Hansi Momodu Gordon.
5.30pm Performance – Jade Monserrat: Love. Love?
Developed as part of Montserrat’s ongoing Rainbow Tribe project, Love. Love?, emphasises renewal and a renewing of energy and materials against the backdrop of the rural. The works seeks to unsettle representational space, physical privilege, gendered connections of sexuality and empowerment. A somatic response to trauma and healing, the performance is a continuation of Montserrat's work to create transitional spaces and strategies of survival for the body.
6pm Performance – Harold Offeh: BodyLandscapeMemory
The second performance focusses on the presentation of Black bodies in the landscape. Moving away from stereotypes of the labouring or victimised body, the work will explore leisure, play and connections to the physical environment. Taking source material from popular culture: fashion photography, album covers and advertising, the piece presents a series of poses and gestures. Harold Offeh will be performing with collaborators Ebun Sodipo and Samra Mayanja.
6.45pm Coach Departs – arrive at King’s Cross at 8 – 8.30pm
The Rural Assembly is in collaboration with Whitechapel Gallery, th University of Aberystwyth, Manchester Metropolitan University, Myvillages and Istanbul Biennial. The Rural Assembly also forms part of the East Contemporary Visual Arts Network’s project New Geographies, chaired and coordinated by Wysing Arts Centre and supported by an Ambition for Excellence grant from Arts Council England.
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2–7:30pm, Thursday 30 May
Wysing Arts Centre
'Network + Contact' is an afternoon of talks and discussion hosted by curator-in-residence Taylor Le Melle, with artist/ composer free.yard and poets Momtaza Mehri and Dorothea Smartt.
Book your free place via Eventbrite here.
The event’s title references novelist and critic Samuel Delany’s Times Square Red, Times Square Blue and the adjacency of its two essays – the first mapping the displacement of a community which organised itself around sex and cinema, the second considering the varying qualities of social interaction within a niche group of cultural workers.
Inaugurating a period of study, 'Network + Contact' is borne of a desire to augment the existing arts and labour discourse with considerations on: intimacy, migration, workers’ rights, activism, culture, London, grief, film and performance, celebrity, friendship, collectives, boundaries.
By co-mingling examinations of dispossession and networking as it relates to class, (queer) sex, and labour (in the arts), the aim is to ruminate on questions of:
Why a paradigmatic understanding of historical movements might necessitate a study of the desires that circulated through those networks?
In what ways do the conditions of ones work life set parameters for the terms of one’s intimate exchanges?
How can the affects circulated within a group, unofficially, be traced within canonical studies of the work produced collectively by that group?
Invited guests have been asked to share an offering that will allow the group to reflect on boundaries in both professional and intimate contact.
Event Schedule
Timings may be subject to change on the day
2:00 Doors Open
2:10 Introduction by Taylor Le Melle
2:15 Dorothea Smartt
2:35 Discussion led by Dorothea Smartt / Taylor Le Melle
Break
3:00 Momtaza Mehri (Essay reading)
3:30 Q&A with Momtaza Mehri
Break
4:00 Group reading of Rizvana Bradley "Black Cinematic Gesture and
the Aesthetics of Contagion"
Break
5:00 free.yard
Dinner
6:15 Taylor Le Melle (Response)
6:35 Discussion led by Taylor Le Melle and free.yard
7:30 End
Due to unforeseen circumstances Professor Rizvana Bradley will no longer be able to participate in the event. The group reading session scheduled at 3.00pm will focus on one of Professor Bradley's essays'.
The programme has been devised with readings and presentations interspersed with breaks. Refreshments and food will be provided as part of the event.
'Network + Contact' is the last in the ‘False Economy’ series of events developed by Taylor Le Melle as part of their curator-in-residence period at Wysing Arts Centre.
The 2019 Curator in-Residence is supported by Art Fund.
Bookings
Places for the event are free but booking is essential. Travel tickets are available from Cambridge station on a pay-what-you-can basis (suggested contribution: £8), and should be booked along with the event ticket if required.
To book your place, please click here.
Access
If you have questions about access needs, please email Wysing’s Head of Operations, Ceri Littlechild, on ceri.littlechild@wysingartscentre.org.
Travel Bursaries
There are a limited number of travel bursaries avaialble up to £30.00. If in need of a bursary to cover your journey to Cambridge station, select a free ticket on eventbrite and email Amanprit Sandhu at amanprit.sandhu@wysingartscentre.org with a few sentences to voice your interest in the programme (we are not looking for you to detail your need). Bursaries will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.
Biographies
Adam Farah is an artist and composer born-n-raised in London and is a Capricorn Sun, Cancer Rising, Leo Moon. They also practise under and within the name free.yard.
Momtaza Mehri is a poet, essayist and meme archivist. She is the co-winner of the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize. Her work has been widely anthologised and has appeared in Granta, Artforum, Poetry International, BBC Radio 4, Vogue and Real Life Mag. She is the former Young People’s Laureate for London and a columnist-in-residence at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Open Space. Her chapbook sugah lump prayer was published in 2017.
Dorothea Smartt London-born of Barbadian heritage, is an internationally respected poet/live artist. She was formerly an Attached Live Artist at London’s ICA, and her most recent residencies were in Scotland and Barbados. Her collection Ship Shape (Peepal Tree Press), is an ‘A’ Level English Literature title. In recognition of her contribution to British cultural life, she was nominated for a Barbados 2016 Golden Jubilee Award. Her most recent publication, Reader, I Married Him & Other Queer Goings-On (Peepal Tree Press) is described as “…subversive, radical, and surprisingly panoramic...”. She is working towards a new collection, where she continues to rework standard narratives, this time re-imagining same-sex relationships and traditional religious practices, among the ‘West Indian’ workers constructing the Panama Canal.
Taylor Le Melle is a curator and writer based in London who has programmed at: Serpentine Galleries, ICA London, Cafe Oto, Chisenhale Dance Space, Arcadia Missa, and Assembly Point (all London), L’IceBergues with Contrechamps Ensemble (Geneva) and McKenna Museum of Art (New Orleans). Taylor’s writing has been featured in: Art Monthly, Flash Art. Taylor was the Autumn/Winter 2018 Writer-in-Residence at Jerwood Visual Arts.
Taylor also co-runs PSS with Rowan Powell. Together they have published projects by Daniella Valz Gen, Victoria Sin and Rehana Zaman (upcoming, 2019). Since April 2018, Taylor has been co-director of not/nowhere, an artist workers’ cooperative that hosts workshops, screenings, exhibitions and other events. not/nowhere’s mission is to ensure that local artists who use new media in their work can access film and media equipment, acquire skills to nourish their practices, and take pleasure in expressing themselves creatively.
Image credit: Image courtesy of free.yard
6–9 pm, Thursday 23 May
Online
'Fuel + Property' is an online symposium comprised of mostly found footage and will be broadcast on Thursday 23 May from
6–9 pm GMT.
The symposium reflects an attempt to use agriculture as a metaphor, a way towards finding clarity about the working conditions within culture.
Because fuel can be used in the process of performing work, and work itself is a transference of energy, the quality of what fuels any given instance of work should contain information about what we can expect to yield in any particular industry.
Fueled by content that has already been generated (where possible), this symposium contains reflections on the legal and ideological mechanisms of property, insights into what powers a performance, and assessments of the quality of possible work in the UK arts industry.
Excerpts are selected for both the content of the exposition and the characteristics of the voice delivering the message. Sonic recordings are spliced in between talks and lectures for auditory refreshment. The symposium is ultimately intended to be experienced as a gathering that doesn’t require the work of leaving the house; the invitation is to instead channel your energy toward attentive listening.
With thanks to Rowan Powell and Shenece Oretha.
New contributions from Amal Khalaf, Devin KKenny and Ima-Abasi Okon.
Contributions foraged from the previous work of Maya Angelou, Brenna Bhandar, Anne Carson, Cheryl Harris, Gail Lewis with Hortense Spillers, Marina Vishmidt.
Hosted by Taylor Le Melle with Jay Parekh.
Broadcast schedule
Introduction:
Outro:
'Fuel + Property' is the second part of ‘False Economy’, a series of events developed by Curator in-Residence
Taylor Le Melle.
The 2019 Curator in-Residence is supported by Art Fund.
Biographies
Taylor Le Melle is a curator and writer based in London who has programmed at: Serpentine Galleries, ICA London, Cafe Oto, Chisenhale Dance Space, Arcadia Missa, and Assembly Point (all London), L’IceBergues with Contrechamps Ensemble (Geneva) and McKenna Museum of Art (New Orleans). Taylor’s writing has been featured in: Art Monthly, Flash Art. Taylor was the Autumn/Winter 2018 Writer-in-Residence at Jerwood Visual Arts.
Taylor also co-runs PSS with Rowan Powell. Together they have published projects by Daniella Valz Gen, Victoria Sin and Rehana Zaman (upcoming, 2019). Since April 2018, Taylor has been co-director of not/nowhere, an artist workers’ cooperative that hosts workshops, screenings, exhibitions and other events. not/nowhere’s mission is to ensure that local artists who use new media in their work can access film and media equipment, acquire skills to nourish their practices, and take pleasure in expressing themselves creatively.
Image credit: Image from ‘Training For Exploitation? Employability and Reclaiming Education’ by Precarious Workers Brigade, 2017
3–6pm, Saturday 18 May
Hayley Wood, Cambridgeshire (pick up at 2pm from Cambridge Station)
Join us for the first part of ‘False Economy’, a series of events curated by Taylor Le Melle.
From various encyclopaedic entries on coppice and drought:
Coppicing is a traditional method of woodland management which exploits the capacity of many species of trees.
The widespread and long-term practice of coppicing has been of significance in many parts of lowland temperate Europe.
In a coppiced wood, which is called a copse, young tree stems are repeatedly cut down to near ground level, known as a stool.
Typically a coppiced woodland is harvested in sections or coups on a rotation. A regularly coppiced tree will never die of old age; some coppice stools may therefore reach immense ages.
Drought is a shortage of water over an extended period of time. Droughts are a normal part of a climate cycle. They occur in all climate zones. Drought can be short or span years.
Socioeconomic definitions of drought associate the supply and demand of some economic good with elements of meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural drought. Its occurrence depends on the processes of supply and demand.
Drought definitions are of two types: (1) conceptual, and (2) operational. Conceptual definitions help understand the meaning of drought and its effects.
Mentioned in the 1086 Domesday Book, Hayley Wood was the first site to be purchased by the Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely Naturalists' Trust in 1962. There are many ancient coppice stools in the wood; coppicing was practiced from at least the 13th Century.
The afternoon will feature a visit to Hayley Wood and readings from Daniella Valz Gen,
Evan Ifekoya and Priya Jay.
A bus will pick guests up from Cambridge station at 2.00pm and take them directly to Hayley Wood. You are invited to explore the wood at your own pace. Readings will begin at 4.30pm. The bus will pick guests up from the wood at 6pm and return them to Cambridge station.
Practical Information
You are encouraged to bring snacks and water, comfortable footwear, layers and waterproof clothing. The ground at Hayley Wood is flat, but uneven in places. This event will take place entirely outside and will proceed rain or shine. There are no toilet facilities in Hayley Wood.
Bookings
To book your place, please click here.
Places are offered on a pay-what-you-can basis with contributions going towards travel bursaries for the upcoming ‘Network+Contact’ symposium on 30 May (suggested contribution: £5).
For information on the other events in the series, please click here.
Travel Bursaries
There are a limited number of travel bursaries up to £30.00 available. If in need of a bursary to cover your journey to Cambridge station, select a free ticket on eventbrite and email Wysing’s curator John Bloomfield at
john.bloomfield@wysingartscentre.org with a few sentences to voice your interest in the programme (we are not looking for you to detail your need). Bursaries will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.
Access
If you have questions about access needs for the performance, please email Wysing’s Head of Operations, Ceri Littlechild, on ceri.littlechild@wysingartscentre.org
The 2019 Curator in-Residence is supported by Art Fund.
Biographies
Daniella Valz Gen is an artist and a poet born in Lima and living in London. Their work explores alterity and liminality with an emphasis on embodiment. Daniella practices tarot and ritual, and teaches Expanding Writing workshops. Recent publications include Subversive Economies (PSS Press), E.R.O.S Journal, SALT. Magazine, Montez Press Calendar Series, Paperwork Magazine and The Happy Hypocrite.
Evan Ifekoya’s practice explores ‘multiple scales of space and time’ through moving image and sonic installations. Blackness in abundance, a queer reconstituting of the body and the reparative potential of art propels their thinking.
Ifekoya’s recent work has been presented at: De Appel Amsterdam, La Casa Encendida Madrid Somerset House London and Tyneside cinema Newcastle (2019), Gasworks London and Camden Arts Centre (2018) Contemporary Arts Centre New Orleans as part of Prospect 4; Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh, KW institute, Berlin; New Art Exchange, Nottingham; Plymouth Arts Centre; ICA and Serpentine Galleries, London; Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire; (2017); Transmission Gallery, Glasgow; and Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town (2016). This year, Ifekoya was awarded the Kleinwort Hambros Emerging Artist prize.
Priya Jay is a researcher using curatorial, artistic and herbalist methods to develop a practice that is healing and experimental. She facilitates spaces of co-inquiry, honours embodied knowledge and is interested in non-linear pedagogies. Priya was most recently part of Arts Catalyst and The Otolith Collective's Undisicplinary Residency for her project 'co-scripture', and is currently a recipient of the 2018 Peer Forum at Camden Arts Centre. Priya has worked with Autograph ABP, Iniva, Barbican and Wellcome Trust, and is currently based in London.
Taylor Le Melle is a curator and writer based in London who has programmed at: Serpentine Galleries, ICA London, Cafe Oto, Chisenhale Dance Space, Arcadia Missa, and Assembly Point (all London), L’IceBergues with Contrechamps Ensemble (Geneva) and McKenna Museum of Art (New Orleans). Taylor’s writing has been featured in: Art Monthly, Flash Art. Taylor was the Autumn/Winter 2018 Writer-in-Residence at Jerwood Visual Arts.
Taylor also co-runs PSS with Rowan Powell. Together they have published projects by Daniella Valz Gen, Victoria Sin and Rehana Zaman (upcoming, 2019). Since April 2018, Taylor has been co-director of not/nowhere, an artist workers’ cooperative that hosts workshops, screenings, exhibitions and other events. not/nowhere’s mission is to ensure that local artists who use new media in their work can access film and media equipment, acquire skills to nourish their practices, and take pleasure in expressing themselves creatively.
An opera by artist-musicians,
Ravioli Me Away.
Live Broadcast: 30 March, 12 noon, ResonanceFM
Performance: 30 March, 6–8pm (sold out)
Join us for the performance of The View From Behind The Futuristic Rose Trellis, a bold and ambitious immersive live work and exhibition by Ravioli Me Away (Sian Dorrer, Rosie Ridgway and Alice Theobald). The performance will premiere on Saturday 9 February 5.30–7.30pm (sold out) and will be repeated on Saturday 30 March 6–8pm (sold out).
The surrealist, multi-media opera will take the audience on an audio enhanced journey as The Protagonist (the soul of humanity) searches for a body that can give it meaning. The Protagonist expresses the paradoxical sentiment that everyone is the main character in their own life. The View From Behind The Futuristic Rose Trellis is a colourful, comi-tragic take on individual and collective aspiration, explored and expressed through a genre-diverse score and the ever-present voice of The Narrator, a soprano singer situated amidst the audience.
Access
If you have questions about access needs for the performance or the exhibition, please email Wysing’s Head of Operations, Ceri Littlechild, on ceri.littlechild@wysingartscentre.org
Under 12s will not be admitted into the performance. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult ticket holder who is responsible for them at all times.
24 November, 12pm–5pm
Artists Joe Moran, Tessa Norton, Rachael Rosen and collaborators invite you to join them for a presentation of new work and in-progress research. To book a place, including options with transport from Cambridge, go to our Eventbrite page here.
Schedule:
12pm: Gallery exhibition Warm Worlds and Otherwise is open. Lunch is available to purchase.
1pm: Welcome from Wysing Curators John Eng Kiet Bloomfield and Lotte Juul Petersen.
1.10pm: Tessa Norton with poet Lucy Mercer. Tessa Norton has been visiting Wysing throughout the year with her family, working on a publication inspired by the rupture to time that accompanies early parenthood. She will be joined by poet Lucy Mercer, winner of the White Review Poet's Prize, for a reading and a conversation. Among other things, they will be considering time, space, ghosts, grief, the limitations of the figure of the mother as imagined by contemporary literature and auto-fiction, and to what extent the parent and child relationship intersects with mysticism.
2.30pm: Break with coffee and light refreshments available from Beanissimo.
3pm: Rachael Rosen with Henry Rodrick. Rachael Rosen will present a live performance of pOrtals with collaborator Henry Rodrick. pOrtals is a collaborative world-building and storytelling exercise that has progressed through many iterations. For this presentation, Rosen will invite Roddick to explore the world of pOrtals, triggering an ever-evolving sound collage.
3.45-4pm: Break with coffee and light refreshments available from Beanissimo.
4pm: Joe Moran with Tora Hed, Moronfolouwa Odiamayo and Oihana Vesga. Joe Moran presents Before We Are Dead, a work-in-progress performance performed by Moran and dancers, Tora Hed, Moronfolouwa Odiamayo and Oihana Vesga, in counterpoint to new drawings and spray paint works. Throughout the year Moran’s research has dealt with expanded notions of choreography in drawing, extended and non-performative temporality in performance, and how a visual art framing may help unfix and disrupt dance’s historical linearity.
5pm: Event ends
The gallery exhibition Warm Worlds and Otherwise will be open throughout the event. The exhibition is artist Anna Bunting-Branch’s first major solo exhibition, staging an ambitious, experimental new work in Virtual Reality.
If you have questions about access needs, please email Wysing’s Head of Operations, Ceri Littlechild, on ceri.littlechild@wysingartscentre.org
For your information, when purchasing food, we only accept cash.
Joe Moran is a British-Irish choreographer with a wide-ranging practice incorporating touring theatre and gallery works, lecture-performance, works on paper and curatorial projects. His work tackles contemporary propositions in dance, performance and critical thought. Recent commissions and performances include Bluecoat (2018), Kettle’s Yard (2018), Sadler’s Wells (Sept 2017), Whitechapel Gallery (2017), Delfina Foundation (2016), Block Universe/fig-2 at the ICA (2015) in collaboration with sculptor Eva Rothschild, David Roberts Art Foundation (Frieze 2014), Nottingham Contemporary (2014), and The Place Prize (2013). Joe is Artistic Director of Dance Art Foundation through which his performance and curatorial work is produced, Dance4 Associate Artist, Sadler’s Wells Summer University Artist (2015-2018) and was a UK Associate at Delfina Foundation (2016). He curated Dance Art Foundation’s two-year research programme Why Everyone Wants What We’ve Got and organises its ongoing Dance Critical Theory Group. As a dancer Joe worked with many distinguished choreographers including Deborah Hay (USA), Siobhan Davies (Bank project UK), Florence Peake (UK) and Pontus Pettersson (Sweden). His adaptation of Deborah Hay’s solo At Once and lecture-performance on the work has toured widely in the UK and internationally.
Tessa Norton works primarily with text and events. Past projects and events include Marriage is Punishment for Shoplifting in Some Countries (Flat Time House, London), The Pure Ideology Personal Brand Workshop (Legion TV, London) and Lustre Fabrics (Saltaire Arts Trail, Yorkshire). Her art writing has appeared in various publications including The Wire, LAUGH, Hoax and Art Licks, and recent readings include Shady Todmorden and Liverpool Biennial.
Rachael Rosen Ltd Ed. is a transmedia artist from the UK who makes use of sound environments and possible play spaces to explore the fissure between author/ reader and online/offline environments. Rosen is known for her atmospheric live sound collage, as well as her ongoing project pOrtals, a world-building and storytelling exercise, which began in 2014 and has included collaborative output with Quantum Natives and Werkflow. She is currently studying an MA in Computational Arts at Goldsmiths; has previously been an artist in residence at Rupert, Vilnius LT (2017) and Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada (2016); performed commissioned work at HeK, Basel (2018), Issue Project Room, New York (2017), New Forms Festival, Vancouver (2016), and the ICA, London (2015); and presented work as part of group show, Vaporents, at VOIDOID Archive, Glasgow (2016).
Movement for Different Bodies:
An Inclusive and Accessible Workshop with Lou Coleman
Saturday 27 October, 12–3pm
This workshop is now full up. To join the waiting list, please click here.
Artist Leah Clements and collaborators Rebecca Bligh, Uma Breakdown, Elena Colman, Alice Hattrick and Lizzy Rose have formed a new network of art practitioners who identify as ‘crip’, disabled, or otherwise non-conforming to standard ideas of good health.
The group has invited Lou Coleman, a Feldenkrais Practitioner and performance artist to lead a public movement workshop open to everybody, particularly those who often feel excluded from dance and movement workshops. This movement workshop is intended as a safe space for all bodies and needs.
The Feldenkrais Method is a gentle yet powerful through-the-body movement approach that respects the incredible abilities of the nervous systems and the plasticity of the brain, helping the brain and body to work together. It is grounded in the belief that everybody can learn, grow and develop, regardless of abilities. The workshop will be embedded in these principles and those of inclusive practices.
If you have access requirements and would like to discuss these before the workshop, please contact Lou Coleman by email, loucoleman@yahoo.co.uk
The workshop will be held in a space that has level access with an accessible toilet. Personal Assistants are welcomed to join.
Please wear warm, layered clothing and bring a yoga mat or blanket for the workshop.
Lou Coleman has been involved in the design and development of inclusive and accessible ways of working since 2009. Among her portfolio she has worked with Candoco Dance (2010-11), StopGap Dance (2014, developing inclusive Feldenkrais practices). As inclusive arts based consultant for FanSHEN Theatre (2015) and Oily Cart (2013-14) on developing more ways to be inclusive for a wider range of audiences. Recently as Diversity Officer for We are Epic (2017-18), the consultancy included setting up of best practices around in inclusion and access within the structure of the organisation. As a qualified Feldenkrais Practitioner, Lou has a lively practice that includes children, teenagers and adults of all abilities, ages, access needs and backgrounds. Inclusion. It’s vital. It works better when it’s inherent in everything we do.
For more details on the crip theory group, click here.
Saturday 28 July, 2.00–4.30pm
Rachael Rosen is in residence at Wysing in 2018, working with a small team of coders and performers to develop a performance and playable archive for pOrtals; an ongoing collaborative world building and storytelling exercise.
As part of her residency at Wysing Arts Centre, Rachael is looking for 12 participants to take part in a mapping workshop. The workshop will share a number of listening, mapping and game techniques that have been used within her practice, especially in the case of her longstanding project, [pOrtals].
Starting from a memory map of the Wysing grounds created by Rachael and her guest collaborators, participants will work together and in smaller groups to playfully negotiate and translate descriptive sensory data in order to build on, explore and share new imaginings of the area. Participants will be asked to take on different roles similar to those found in role-playing games such as Games master), Player, Map maker, before discussing their findings with the larger group.
To give some additional context to the process Rachael will also encourage use of the workshop as an open forum, which may ask participants to consider questions such as, 'preconditioned approaches to gaming environments', 'subjective interpretations of text-based worlds', and 'transitions and the act of merging realities'.
At the end of the workshop, all participants will receive a digital hand-out including links to materials discussed, as well as an invitation to take part in a one-hour 1-2-1 session in the pOrtals world hosted by the artist.
The workshop does not require any previous experience or knowledge of these subjects, but an interest in collaborative storytelling and an inquisitive approach to exploring environments is a plus. To register your interest in participating in this workshops, please create an account, or sign in, here to complete a very short questionnaire. Capacity is limited so pre-registration is required.
Biographies
Rachael Rosen Ltd Ed. is a transmedia artist from the UK who makes use of sound environments and possible play spaces to explore the fissure between author/ reader and online/offline environments. Rosen is known for her atmospheric live sound collage, as well as her ongoing project pOrtals, a world-building and storytelling exercise, which began in 2014 and has included collaborative output with Quantum Natives and Werkflow. She has recently been an artist in residence at Rupert, Vilnius LT (2017); performed commissioned work at Issue Project Room, New York (2017), New Forms Festival, Vancouver (2016), and the ICA, London (2015); and presented work created during residency at The Banff Centre as part of group show, Vaporents at VOIDOID Archive, Glasgow (2016).
Henry Rodrick, a Swedish computer programmer and DJ. He studied Computer Science at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and electroacoustic music at EMS (the centre for Swedish electroacoustic music and sound-art). Before relocating to London, he spent several years connecting the dots between electronic dance music and experimental sounds on the Stockholm club scene. He has previously released music on labels such as Studio Barnhus, done a live mix live for Rinse FM, and is currently developing software systems for unconventional DJing and sound art, such as http://sourceofsomecertainty.com, a collaboration with Corinna Triantafyllidis, which was performed New River Studios.
Eimi Okuno is a Software Engineer from Tokyo. She completed her Fine Art studies at Central Saint Martins and the Slade School of Fine Art, before turning to Computer Science at University College London and accepting a position at the BBC. Having taken an untraditional pathway that joins robotics, multimedia arts and installation, she explores relationships between form and expectation. She has had work presented at The Meenan Sisters gallery in London (2011), and was shortlisted for Neil Gaiman's Calendar of Tales project. Since then she has been participating in hackathons across the UK and the US, bridging journalism with engineering.
Saturday 14 July, 12–5pm
Wysing studio artists invite you to visit their studios to see new work and to hear about projects in development.
Eighteen artists will be opening their studios and showing work in Wysing's reception and we also have a range of outdoor sculpture across our eleven-acre site.
Damaris Athene, Jack Cornell, Philip Cornett, Fiona Curran, Emanuela Cusin, Ben Doherty, Lawrence Epps, Robert Foster, Bettina Furnée, Naomi Harwin, Laura Hindmarsh, Paulette Mae, Soheila Sokhanavri, Shawn Stipling, Wilf Speller, Lucy Steggals and Caroline Wendling will all be showing work.
In additon, ARTIST at RISK (AR)-Residency artist, Tito Valery, who is at Wysing across the summer from Cameroon, will be presenting new work in our onsite Wysing Polyphonic recording studio.
The day is free and open to all.
Find out more about Wysing studio artists here.
thecafe@wysing is open for hot food plus a selection of sandwhiches, paninis and cakes will be open from 10am to 4pm.
The exhibition 'Making Everyday' for which Wysing's gallery has been transformed into an expanded pottery studio and from which Korean artists Hyunmin Chin, Jina Lee and Jungyou Choi have been working every day, is open from 12 to 5pm. More information about the exhbition is here.
The full list of permanent on-site works is here.
16 and 17 June, 1-5pm
Free
From 16 June Wysing’s gallery will be transformed into a space for making things; products that are easy to make, useful, and pleasing. Book your place to help us make things to be fired in our rare Anagama, wood-burning, kiln. Book your place at the workshops here.
If you'd like to help with the 48 hour firing, register your availability here.
The ‘in common ownership’ designs for the products have been developed over the past year and combine ideas and skills drawn from an UK-Korea exchange co-ordinated by Grizedale Arts and Wysing Arts Centre. Master potter Gyung-kyun Shin, black bamboo master Seonhui Choe, and chef Gae-hwa Lim, developed initial designs with UK designer/maker Tom Philipson and Grizedale Arts. These designs will be further evolved into a ‘family’ of products at Wysing by Korean designer Jungyou Choi, and potter, Hyunmin Shin, during a residency at Wysing in June and July.
The designs will make up a family of products for domestic use. Nests of bowls and bento boxes, chop sticks and spoons and many other fusions have been developed to be made with the simplest of means and homemade tools.
Potter, Hyunmin Shin, will be in-residence at Wysing refining the products and preparing Wysing’s onsite Anagama kiln for a spectacular 48-hour firing in early July. Wysing’s wood-fired Anagama kiln was built in 1998 by Japanese potter Izumihara Masanobu to a traditional Bizen, tear-drop shaped, design.
Over the course of three weeks, products will be made in Wysing’s gallery, where they will also be stored and dried, creating a working space and exhibition that will illustrate some of the key ideas behind the project, drawing on the Arts and Crafts movement, the Korean Intangible National Asset register and many other design revolutions.
During Saturday 7 July, a Study Day with invited speakers and contributors will explore the themes of materiality, craft and making, and there will be an opportunity to visit the kiln whilst the firing is taking place.
Further artists involved in the UK-Korea exchange programme will contribute to the thinking and inspiration behind the project, and the aesthetic presentation of their research over the past year. This includes UK artists Aaron Angell and Mark Essen who recently completed a residency in Korea, as well as Jina Lee and the Fairland Collective.
You are invited to join us over the weekend of 16 and 17 June to help make some of these products, working with designers and potters and using clay, which will be fired in Wysing’s Anagama Kiln.
The gallery will remain open every day from 16 June to 15 July and will include works in production, alongside research that has informed the object designs.
Making Everyday builds on a previous collaboration with Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, Joe Hartley and Sam Buckley. The UK-Korea residency exchange is funded by Arts Council Korea (ARKO) and Arts Council of England. With thanks to Ben Brierley and Lawrence Epps.
Saturday 14 April, 12.45pm–4pm
Join us to close our gallery exhibition more of an avalanche with an afternoon of talks and conversations expanding on the themes it raises.
To book a place, including options with transport from Cambridge, go to our Eventbrite page here.
This event will offer a final opportunity to view the exhibition, which closes on 15 April, and an occasion to expand on some of themes it raises: from sickness and crip theory, to the need for intergenerational conversations, and the dissolution of spaces for both critical conversation and club culture.
12pm – Arrivals including time to visit the exhibition and thecafé@wysing which is open 10am to 4pm.
12.50pm – Welcome.
1pm – Nick Aikens, Curator at Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven and co-curator of recent exhibitions 'The Place Is Here' and 'Rasheed Araeen: A Retrospective' will draw on his research to contextualise more of an avalanche and to revisit the key themes of the exhibition. Followed by a Q&A with Wysing curator John Bloomfield.
1.30pm – Taking their contribution to ‘more of an avalanche’ as a starting point, artist Raju Rage will be in conversation with Trishna Shah. Together they will discuss their research and experiences of activism that informed the work.
1.50pm – Break with time to visit the café.
2.20pm – Artist Leah Clements will discuss ideas and issues around sickness and ‘crip’ theory and talk about a new network of art practitioners who will be in residence later this year at Wysing.
2.40 pm – Current artist-in-residence Phoebe Collings-James will talk about the new work she is developing with Last Yearz Interesting Negro/Jamila Johnson-Small in relation to disobedience and sound as a weapon.
3pm – Music producer Elijah will present 'Last Dance', a timely and urgent investigation into the rapid changes affecting UK club culture, and the impact of those changes on music and youth culture.
3.20pm – Open conversation followed by a summing up from Nick Aikens.
4pm – Ends
Contributor Biographies:
Nick Aikens has been a tutor at the DAI Art Praxis since 2013. He is currently a curator at the Van Abbemuseum (since 2012). Recent and ongoing projects have focused on the 1980s and specifically the UK Black Arts Movement, and a retrospective / monograph on Rasheed Araeen. He leads the current research programme Deviant Practice at the Van Abbe. He is a Research Affiliate, CCC at the Visual Arts Department, HEAD, Geneva (since 2016) and a member of the editorial board for L’Internationale Online (since 2013). He was also recently a tutor at the Design Academy Eindhoven (2015-17).
Leah Clements is an artist based in London. Her practice is concerned with emotional experiences, the relationship between the psychological and the physical, and instances of self-loss into other people or worlds. Self/other boundaries and collective identities, the subconscious, and the impact of emotion on the body have been explored through collapse (prelude) at Muddy Yard (2017), we felt the presence of someone else at Jupiter Woods (2016), Beside Chisenhale Gallery Online Commission (2016), Beside at Chisenhale Gallery (2015), You Promised Me Poems, Vitrine (2015), and The Empath Project at Res. She is an artist in residence at space, London on the Art + Technology programme where she has been working on a VR game titled sick bed, and will be an artist in residence at Rupert, Vilnius in June 2018. During her residency at Wysing she has invited collaborators Rebecca Bligh, Uma Breakdown, Elena Colman, Alice Hattrick and Lizzy Rose to form a new network of art practitioners who identify as ‘crip’, disabled, or otherwise non-conforming to standard ideas of good health.
Phoebe Collings-James is a Jamaican British artist, born in London and living in New York. Her practice is intentionally messy and sprawling, focused on how we live with getting bodied. Her works take form in drawing, video, sculpture, text and music, with a distinctly corporeal approach. She burdens ubiquitous materials with a process of symbolic layering, all in order to explore emotional connections to the politics and erotics of violence, language and fear. Phoebe’s work has been exhibited internationally - exhibitions include Harlem Postcards, Studio Museum Harlem, ATROPHILIA, Company Gallery, New York, Just Enough Violence, Arcadia Missa, London, Choke on your Tongue, Artuner at ICI, London, The Flesh Is All You Have If You Mortify That There Is No Hope For You, Ritter Zamet Gallery, London and Blood on the Leaves Blood on the Roots, Preteen Gallery, Mexico City.
Elijah is an electronic music producer and co-founder of influential grime label Butterz, described by the Guardian as “one of the genre’s smartest operations”. He and the core artists (Flava D, Swindle & Royal-T) on the label he runs with his partner Skilliam have toured globally and have been a fixture across the club and festival circuit since 2010. He held a residency at London’s fabric from 2013-2016, and broadcasted weekly on the then pirate, now community station Rinse FM from 2008-2014. It’s seen him collaborate with all of the top tier artists in Grime such as Skepta, JME, Wiley, Kano and Stormzy. His work spans music programming, journalism, a&r and artist management, and shines a light on the artistic, social and economic challenges and opportunities for emerging artists. His podcast series Rhythm&Cash® explored these issues head on with MCs, Producers and Journalists talking openly about how they make a living. As Associate Artistic Director at Lighthouse, Elijah produces ‘Last Dance’ a series of talks, performances and online publications, that takes the debate on the road and into clubs and galleries in cities across the UK, for a timely and urgent look at the rapidly changing landscape for artists and creative communities.
Raju Rage is an interdisciplinary artist who is proactive about using art, education and activism to forge creative survival. They primarily use their non-conforming body as a vehicle of embodied knowledge; to bridge the gap between dis/connected bodies, theory and practice, text and the body and aesthetics and the political substance. They work in performance, sculpture, soundscapes and moving image, focusing on techniques of resistance and utilising everyday objects and everyday life experiences in communicating narratives around gender, race and culture. They investigate history, memory and trauma, with an emphasis on colonial legacy, its continuation and impact on the body. Raju Rage is based in London and has recently shown work visibility vs opacity at Dirty Politics Filthy Mouth, Framer Framed Amsterdam and Edinburgh's Artist Moving Image Festival, published in 'Decolonising Sexualties: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions and presented at ‘Sediments and Arrhythmias: race, sense and sensation' at UCL on the body and the un/archive.
Trishna Shah aka Trishna I has been a roots reggae DJ and singer for over 15 years, building connections in the UK roots reggae soundsystem scene. She co-founded Uprizing - a Cambridge based promotions company who have organised events throughout the UK. She is a writer and contributor to Galdem magazine, and is part of Off Road Circus - an organisation that combines circus and social activism.
Saturday 10 March, 10am - 6pm
Various locations
As part of the project New Geographies, we would invite individuals, groups, friends or families (birth or chosen) to have their photograph taken in the landscape of Cambridgeshire.
Artist Harold Offeh is inviting people living and working in Cambridgeshire to select a specific landscape in their local area within which they would like to be photographed. They can choose any kind of pose, for example it might have a connection to family, from an old photo, film or album cover. Offeh recently moved to Cambridge, and as a relative newcomer, is interested in peoples’ relationship to their local landscape.
This open call comes from Offeh's project The Lounging Series.The series focuses on Offeh's re-enactments of reclining or lounging black men on 1980s album sleeves. The work was developed during a residency at Wysing last summer where the artist performed the poses in rural settings. The reclining figure has long been a familiar position in fine art from ancient times to the present.But what does the pose mean? Offeh's photographic series playfully looks at the social and cultural value of assuming a chosen pose in a landscape.
You may want to pose in a site that has been suggested for the new map of East of England as part of our New Geographies project here or suggest another site that you find personally interesting. Refreshments will be provided and following the photography session you will receive a copy of your photograph.
Please respond to the open call via email with subject line ‘Harold Offeh’ to info@wysingartscentre.org by 26 February. Please send your name and suggested location in Cambridgeshire. For any questions, contact Wysing Arts Centre by email or phone on 01954718881.
Harold Offeh uses performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. He often employs humour to confront the viewer with histories and stories. He is interested in learning from the experiences of re-creating and re-staging historical material artefacts and images.
New Geographies’ aim is to create a new map of East of England based on personal thoughts, reflections and stories of those who live here, rather than on historic or economical centres. During the Summer of 2017, we invited the public to nominate overlooked or forgotten places throughout Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk and received over 270 nominations. Further details can be found at www.newgeographies.uk
2 December 1-6pm
Join artists in residence Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Imran Perretta and Morgan Quaintance for an event that includes the live recording of a radio show exploring the highs and lows of art and culture in 2017, screenings and presentations, and a live DJ set.
Book your free place via Eventbrite, alongside options to book travel, here.
To close their residencies Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Imran Perretta and Morgan Quaintance have devised an event that shares some of the works and ideas they have been developing at Wysing.
12pm: Gallery and Cafe Abantu open.
1pm: Welcome and event introduction.
1.10pm: Morgan Quaintance will stage a live recording of 'Studio Visit', a one-hour interviews-based radio show broadcast monthly on Resonance 104.4FM. Featuring a panel of invited guests including John Douglas Millar, Shama Khanna, Amanprit Sandhu and Erica Scourti, this special end-of-year episode, titled 'That Was the Year That Was', will survey the highs and lows of art and culture in 2017. Followed by a discussion.
2.30pm: Break with food and drinks available to purchase in the onsite cafe.
3pm: Maryam Monalisa Gharavi will present the work Eva's Face (video installation, 2017) that explores one woman's experience with facial paralysis. The work exists in a larger constellation of Gharavi's recent film works concerning the instrumentalisation of the face in ways of knowing, corporeal encounters between self and other, and ultimately, the limits and freedoms of embodied personhood. This will be followed by a discussion.
4.15pm: Break.
4.30pm: Imran Perretta will perform a live DJ set, surveying forms of experimental UK bass music including new tracks written during his residency period at Wysing.
5.30pm: Drinks available to purchase in reception.
6pm: Ends.
The exhibition Andromedan Sad Girl will be open throughout the event, 12-6pm. Cafe Abantu is open from 10am to 4pm.
Contributor Biographies
Shama Khanna is an independent curator, writer and educator based in London. Recent collaborations include: warehouse.industries (Berlin & London); 'Shades of Opacity' at Jerwood Visual arts (London); texts for Art Monthly, LUX and Aorist journal which she co-edits with 7 other writers.
John Douglas Millar is a writer based in London. His first book Brutalist Readings: Essays on Literature was published by Sternberg Press (Berlin) in 2016.
Amanprit Sandhu is an independent curator and writer based in London. She has most recently worked on projects for Art on the Underground and Art360, DACS Foundation. She is co-founder of the curatorial collective DAM Projects.
Erica Scourti was born in Athens, Greece and is now based in London and Athens. Her work across video, text and performance explores personal experience translated through contemporary interfaces and institutions.
Live performance event
Saturday 4 November, 2-5pm
Please note that this event contains adult content and is not suitable for under 18s.
This event is now sold out and the waiting list is now full. We kindly ask anyone with a ticket who can no longer attend to cancel their ticket on eventbrite, or to contact us.
As part of their exhibition, Florence Peake and Tai Shani have developed a live performance event, followed by an in-conversation with Dr Amy Tobin of the University of Cambridge, on feminism and the collaborative nature of the exhibition.
Peake and Shani will perform two separate works simultaneously within the installation:
The first is a reading from Tai Shani's on-going project, Dark Continent Productions, an experimental and expanded adaptation of Christine de Pizan's 1405 pioneering feminist book, The Book of the City of Ladies, within which Pizan builds an allegorical city for notable women drawn from a medieval conception of history, where fact, fiction and myth are blurred. Read by actress Gemma Brockis.
At the same time, Peake will perform with dancer Eve Stainton - interpenetrating waves of energy constellating in time and space, a vocal and movement score that demonstrates some of the methodologies used in the wall paintings and looks at penetration from an energetic perspective and how bodies are porous to their environments.
Running Times
2pm Arrival & Welcome in Wysing's reception
2.10pm Viewing of the show
2.30pm Performances in the gallery
3pm Break
3.20pm In conversation in the open studio
4.10pm Discussion
5.00pm End
Refreshments will be available to purchase from Café Abantu in reception
Florence Peake’s practice encompasses visual art, dance and performance. As a trained dancer Florence Peake’s background in choreography and painting stimulates a studio practice that is both diverse and immersive. Peake is often working performatively to incorporate drawing, painting and sculptural materials. Florence Peake’s work has been shown nationally and internationally; she is a recipient of the Jerwood Choreographic Research project, 2016. Her solo performance piece, Voicings, has toured to Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome, 2017; the Serpentine Gallery, Mysterical day, 2016; Somerset House for Block Universe performance festival, 2016. Solo exhibitions include: WE perform I am in love with my body Bosse and Baum Gallery 2017, The Keeners Solo show at SPACE 2015; Hall of the swell, Gallery Lejeune, 2015; The BALTIC, Newcastle ensemble piece MAKE. Group exhibitions include: Walled Gardens in an Insane Eden, curated by Marcelle Joseph 2017, Hayward Gallery, a 3 month performance installation as part of Mirrorcity, 2015; National Portrait Gallery, performing group work Paper Portraits, 2015. She has done commissions from: Whitechapel Art Gallery; Yorkshire Sculpture Park; Modern Art, Oxford; Chapter Arts, Cardiff; Harris Museum, Preston; David Roberts Art Foundation, London.
Eve Stainton‘s ongoing practice with The Uncollective over the last four years has been focussed on collaboratively using movement, choreography and performance/improvisation to develop a space where politics can engage with and provoke dialogue around instinct, aesthetics and desire. The Uncollective's work has been presented at venues including: The Place, Yorkshire Dance, Royal Academy of Arts, Tangente Danse Montreal, Chisenhale Dance Space, Paris Fashion Week, TripSpace, RichMix, Guest Projects, Lake Studios Berlin, Greenwich Dance, Adelaide Fringe and other venues in Montreal, Canada. Eve has worked freelance for artists/companies/platforms including: Compagnie ECO (Sicily), Oreet Ashery, Goldfrapp, Sonia Boyce, Dog Kennel Hill Project, Susannah Hood (Montreal), Eleesha Drennan, Gary Clarke, Vivienne Westwood, Eva Kotàtkova, Jacopo Miliani, Florence Peake, Holly Blakey, Fashion Week (London, Shanghai, Paris, Berlin).
Tai Shani's multidisciplinary practice, comprising performance, film, photography and installation, revolves around experimental narrative texts. These alternate between familiar narrative tropes and structures and theoretical prose to explore the construction of subjectivity, excess and affect and the epic as the ground for a post-patriarchal realism. Shani's on-going project Dark Continent Productions that proposes an allegorical city of women is an experimental and expanded adaptation of Christine de Pizan's 1405 pioneering feminist book, The Book of the City of Ladies within which Christine builds an allegorical city for notable women drawn from a medieval conception of history, where fact, fiction and myth are blurred. This non-hierarchical approach also determines the construction of the characters and narrative of Dark Continent. Shani has presented her work extensively in the UK and abroad, recent exhibitions and commissions include, including Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2016); RADAR commission, Loughborough University, (2016), Serpentine Galleries (2016); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2015); Southbank Centre, London (2014-15); Arnolfini, Bristol (2013); Matt’s Gallery, London (2012) and FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais and Loop Festival, Barcelona (2011); The Barbican, London (2011); ICA, London (2011)
Amy Tobin is an art historian and writer. Her research looks at the history of feminist-influenced art and the possibilities of feminist futures. She completed her PhD at the University of York in 2017 with a thesis titled 'Working Together, Working Apart: Feminism, Art and Collaboration in Britain and North American, 1970–1981'. She has taught Modern and Contemporary Art and Theory at the Universities of York and Birmingham and Goldsmiths. Her research is published in British Art Studies, MIRAJ and Tate Papers and she has contributed chapters to Collaboration and its (Dis)Contents, (Courtauld Books Online, 2017), Other Cinemas: Politics, Culture and Experimental Film in the 1970s (IB Tauris, 2017), Feminism and Art History Now (IB Tauris, 2017) and A Companion to Feminist Art (Blackwell, 2017 [forthcoming]).
Thursday 19 October
2-4pm
Join us for informal presentations by our autumn residency artists, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Imran Perretta and Morgan Quaintance.
Join Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Imran Perretta and Morgan Quaintance for informal presentations on their work and to hear about what they plan to do during their residencies at Wysing this autumn.
The three artists work across writing, publishing, curating, music and video. Find out more about their work here.
Why not come and have lunch in our café and join the talks afterwards? The cafe serves a range of hot food, including vegetarian and vegan options.
Please book your free ticket for the artist presentations here.
Saturday 19 August, 6.30–9pm
Current residency artists Harold Offeh, Tai Shani and Maxwell Sterling invite you to join them for an evening of newly developed performances and on-going research. Transport from Cambridge is available here.
Please note that this event contains adult content and is not suitable for under 18s. Part of the event will be outside on Wysing's site, so please wear appropriate clothing and footwear.
Harold Offeh will be in conversation with Dr Zach Blas discussing shared research interests from Edouard Glissant's concept of "opacity", through to technology that documents the body and ideas around "hyper-subjectivity".
Tai Shani will invite the actress Maya Lubinsky to read from her feminist horror film, I Am Paradise, a fleshy Promethean myth told in space but not in time. The text forms part of Tai's on-going project Dark Continent Productions, an experimental and expanded adaptation of Christine de Pizan's 1405 pioneering feminist book, The Book of the City of Ladies, within which Pizan builds an allegorical city for notable women drawn from a medieval conception of history, where fact, fiction and myth are blurred.
For his residency at Wysing, Maxwell Sterling is observing, experimenting and re-synthesizing the human voice, as a way of de-coding and studying its profound role as a communications device and musical instrument. Maxwell has been recording with youth choir Harringey Vox and drawing on an archive of late night conversations compiled by artist Max Hawkins for the Call in the Night app. Maxwell's research will culminate in a performance with vocalist Teresa Winter (The Death of Rave). Live voice and instrumentation will converse with recorded voices, creating a dialogue between permanence and transience, fragility and beauty, ancient and modern.
Schedule
6.30 pm: Informal welcome with light refreshments
6.45 pm: Harold Offeh in conversation with Dr. Zach Blas
7.30 pm: Break with light refreshments
7.45pm: Tai Shani reading of I Am Paradise. Read by Maya Lubinsky
8.15pm: Maxwell Sterling live performance with Teresa Winter
8.45pm: Closing reception with light refreshments
9pm: Ends
Biographies
Maxwell Sterling is a composer and musician whose work ranges from film soundtracks to live performance, studio albums to ballet scores. With a background in jazz improvisation and film music, his work is often focused on how music is used as a mode of communication and signifier of emotions. In 2016, he released his debut album, ‘Hollywood Medieval’ which explores the role of synthesis and digital sounds and their effect on us emotionally. Sterling collaborated with artist Linder and curator Kathy Noble on Art Night 2016, Destination Moon, You must not look at her! which featured a live tableaux of dancers, two choirs, a string ensemble and two drummers. Sterling currently works between Los Angeles and the UK.
Tai Shani’s multidisciplinary practice, comprising performance, film, photography and installation, revolves around experimental narrative texts. These alternate between familiar narrative tropes and structures and theoretical prose in order to explore the construction of subjectivity, excess and affect and the epic as the ground for a post-patriarchal realism.
Harold Offeh was born in Accra, Ghana and grew up in London. He works in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh often employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture and is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of history. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. In 2017 he will be exhibiting as part of Untitled: art on the conditions of our time at New Art Exchange in Nottingham, UK and Tous, des sangs-mêlés at MAC VAL, Museum of Contemporary Art in Val de Marne, France. He lives in Cambridge and works in Leeds and London, UK.
Dr. Zach Blas is an artist and writer whose practice engages technology, queerness, and politics. Blas’s recent works respond to technological control, biometric governmentality, and network hegemony. Facial Weaponization Suite (2011-14) consists of “collective masks” that cannot be detected as human faces by biometric facial recognition software. Contra-Internet (2014-present) explores subversions of and alternatives to the internet and is supported by a 2016 Creative Capital award in Emerging Fields.
Teresa Winter is a musician from the Yorkshire coast who makes bedroom pop. Her music is comprised primarily of wordless vocals and other kinds of sounds made with synthesisers, field recordings and various instruments. Teresa's musical explorations began a couple of years ago as a distraction from studies when her heart had been mercilessly broken, she found it to be a strangely life affirming experience. Teresa has recently been preoccupied with the permeation of death and life, and the absence of vocabulary around loss. The Death of Rave will release her next record, Untitled Death.
Maya Lubinsky grew up in London, Israel and New York, her life and work still span these three homes. Maya completed her theatre training at ArtsEd, London, and established herself acting in theatre, television, film and in the fine art context. Her collaborations with artists such as Tai Shani, Anja Kirschner and Gail Pickering have featured in art galleries including Tate Modern, Barbican Centre, Hayward Gallery, ICA, Arnolfini, the Kunstverein in Stuttgart and the Artists Space gallery in New York. In 2007 Maya joined the theatre company Punchdrunk in devising and performing Masque of the Red Death at the Battersea Arts Centre. When Punchdrunk opened Sleep No More in New York City's Off-Broadway, they invited Maya to join them there as part of the original cast of the show, now in its fourth year. Maya co-wrote Peter Burr's performance art piece Special Effect, which premiered at the Museum of Moving Image in New York. She co-wrote and acted in the film Moderation by Anja Kirschner, which premiered in the 2016 Berlinale.
Saturday 8 July, 2pm-6pm
For the last weekend of our gallery exhibition, Mene Mene Tekel Parsin, Wysing's studio artists will be welcoming the public to their studios to see new work and to hear about projects in development.
Twelve artists will be opening their studios and showing work in Wysing's reception and we also have a range of sculpture across our eleven-acre site. The following artists will be showing work: Phil Cornett, Alison Gibb, Laura Hindmarsh, Bettina Furnee, Naomi Harwin, Florian Roithmayr, Robert Foster, Soheila Sokhanvari, Wilf Speller, Ash Summers, Lucy Steggals and Caroline Wendling.
The day is free and open to all.
The full list of permanent on-site works is here. Find out more about our studio artists here.
Cafe Abantu is open from 9am to 6pm and the gallery exhibition Mene Mene Tekel Parsin is open from 12 to 5pm.
22 June, 6-8pm
Somerset House Studios
A screening programme at Somerset House Studios, London, accompanies the exhibition Mene Mene Tekel Parsin.
Places are free but spaces is limited. Book your place here.
The exhibition Mene Mene Tekel Parsin brings together a number of works by international artists who employ words and language to illuminate and obfuscate, fully cogent of the propagandist deployment of slogans and the seductively tall tales of advertising copy, including work by Sarah Boulton, Stanley Brouwn, Jesse Darling, Gordon Hall, Evan Ifekoya, Sulaïman Majali, Imran Perretta, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Özgür Kar, Claire Potter, Rosa Johan Uddoh, Hannah Weiner and Constantina Zavitsanos.
A programme of live works by Gordon Hall, Elaine Mitchener and Claire Potter were presented at the launch of the exhibition.
This accompanying screeing programme includes works by Sonia Boyce, Hamishi Farah, Carolyn Lazard, Miloš Trakilović and Anna Zett.
6.15pm Welcome and introduction
Anna Zett, Text to Speech, 2015
Duration: 9:38
Miloš Trakilović, XYZ, 2016
Duration: 6:46 mins
Carolyn Lazard, Improved Techniques, 2013
Duration: 4 mins
Hamishi Farah, Study, 2016
Duration: 10 minutes
7pm Break
Sonia Boyce, Exquisite Cacophony, 2015
Duration: 35 mins
Curated by Jesse Darling and supported through public funding from Arts Council England.
Drawing course led by artist Caroline Wendling
Thursday 15 June, 10am-12noon
£15 per ticket
This course, led by Wysing studio artist Caroline Wendling, will study different ways of drawing, using both traditional and contemporary drawing techniques to explore different ways of seeing.
The course is both a one-off event and a taster session for a more expanded five-week course that is being developed by Caroline Wendling and which will start this September.
This two-hour session takes food as its starting point and will begin in Wysing’s onsite café, Café Abantu, with a practical exercise including drawing around food and objects directly onto a tablecloth. The next activity will involve exploring Wysing’s site through drawing activities. The course will end with a sharing and discussion of the drawings back in the café.
The course is aimed at people with no drawing experience who would like to try out different kinds of drawing techniques within a supportive group and who would enjoy the opportunity to draw outdoors.
Caroline Wendling has been based at Wysing for a number of years and she is an experienced art teacher; regularly running courses and workshops for adults and children at all levels of ability. In Caroline’s work she explores ideas of place and belonging through drawing, print and three-dimensional constructions, attempting to give material form to the complex interconnectedness of our internal landscapes in relation to the space we inhabit.
Course price: £15. Drawing materials provided. Food is available to purchase from the café. To book your place please visit Wysing's Reception or click here.
Cafe Abantu is open from 9am to 4pm and the gallery exhibition Mene Mene Tekel Parsin is open from 12 to 5pm.
9 June, 8pm-3am
DIY Space for London, London SE15 1TF
£5
Purchase advanced tickets here
Wysing Arts Centre present an all-inclusive night of DJing and dancing, with Women's Beat League, SIREN DJs and particpants from WBL's study week at Wysing..
Women’s Beat League is a Portland, Oregon collective dedicated to teaching and co-learning DJing and music production skills with a focus on representing female-identified and nonbinary views in electronic music. Following a week long retreat at Wysing Arts Centre, Felisha, Daniela, Alyssa and Kathleen will be joined by friends old and new, for a night at DIY Space for London.
This is a safe space prioritised for women and non-binary individuals, but all DIY Space members and their guests are welcome. Join DIY space for London here for £2 a year. Membership takes 48 hours to process.
Alyssa Beers DJs as Nishkosheh, the yiddish word for so-so. Her sets are inspired by up-all-nighters and brass monkeys, overflowing with rippin’ guitars, cheery acid chuggers, and unexpected turns. Her penchant for smooth is matched by her need for the bizarre, drawing influences from a wide array of leftfields from island funk to moody techno. In addition to her work as a founder of Women’s Beat League, she also toils as a community facilitator with her efforts in Pushboard – a weekly events newsletter, and S1 – a local art & music space in Portland, Oregon.
Kathleen Hong is a DJ interested in the intersections of sound and resistance within a decolonial context. She is a part of the music programming team at S1, Portland.
Daniela Karina is a DJ and community organiser focused on highlighting marginalized voices. She finds inspiration in emerging transcultural sounds and reinvented ancestral rhythms, bringing the fringes of diasporic club music to the upper left United States. She is cofounder of Women’s Beat League and staff at S1.
Felisha Ledesma is an artist and organiser based in Portland, OR. Felisha is the Executive Director of S1, an artist-run center that strives to provide engaging, relevant, and critical visual art, performance and education programming. In 2015 Felisha co-founded Women's Beat League with the goal of representing femme and nonbinary electronic musicians. And in 2016 Felisha co-founded the S1 Synth Library which is dedicated to providing education and access around modular synthesis to local, national, and international artists by hosting regular workshops, open library hours, and an artist-in-residence program. Felisha's focus has been providing low or no cost access to art and education in a supportive, nontraditional learning environment.
SIREN is a collective that started a year ago in London, with the purpose of creating a space for those under-represented in dance music on lineups and in crowds. Their parties, zines and radio shows aim to be musical and political platforms for women and non-binary people, as well as a space to critique current trends within electronic music and create alternatives. SIREN are not a DJ collective but many do DJ and focus on the exploring the broadest sense of techno - from electro to minimal, acid to breakbeat.
Find out more about the Study Week here and Women's Beat League here.
You are invited to join the artists, and invited contributors Ghislaine Leung and Rebecca Shatwell, to discuss subjects including the radical potential of informal conversation, the temporal process of memory, and issues around translation and poetry.
The day includes a brunch hosted by residency artist Raju Rage followed by walks and talks within the grounds of Wysing and the surrounding countryside.
The walk will be at a gentle pace and will last a maximum of 2 hours. Please wear appropriate footwear and clothing suitable for the day's weather. Please also bear in mind we will be using public footpaths which may not be accessible for pushchairs, wheel chairs or for those with other access needs. The brunch will include gluten-free and vegan options.
Travel from Cambridge station is available for this event. Book here.
Full Schedule
12 – Welcome from Wysing's curators, John Bloomfield and Lotte Juul Petersen, in Wysing's reception
12.15 – Brunch and discussion hosted by residency artist Raju Rage
13.30 – Open conversation led by residency artist Claire Potter and artist and writer Ghislaine Leung on Wysing's site
14.15 to 16.15 – Walk in the local countryside, including breaks for reflection and conversation, led by residency artist Pallavi Paul and Director of AV festival Rebecca Shatwell
16.15 – Open discussion with tea/coffee in Wysing's reception
17.00 – End of the day
Artist and writer Ghislaine Leung, lives and works in London and Brussels. Recent solo projects include The Moves at Cell Project Space, London, 078746844 at WIELS, Brussels, Soft Open Shut at Studio Voltaire, London and group projects Hollis & Moneyat Künstlerhaus Stuttgart and ICA, London, Violent Incident, Vleeshal, Middelburg, Prosu(u)mer, EKKM, Tallinn andPerformance Capture, Stedelijk, Amsterdam. Recent writings in How To Sleep Faster, LA.NL, Amsterdam and Pure Fiction's Dysfiction, Frankfurt with her collection of writings Partners forthcoming in 2017. Leung is editor of Versuch Press and member of PUBLIKATIONEN + EDITIONEN. She was resident at WIELS, Brussels 2015 and Hospitalfield, Arbroath in 2016.
Rebecca Shatwell is Director of AV Festival, Newcastle upon Tyne. She curated the past four editions of the biennial Festival of contemporary visual art, film and sound, including the most recent Meanwhile, what about Socialism? in 2016. She has curated solo exhibitions with artists including James Benning, Torsten Lauschmann, On Kawara, Jessica Warboys, Claire Fontaine, Pallavi Paul and Cyprien Gaillard, in addition to performances with Roee Rosen, Phill Niblock, Test Dept, Bruce McClure and Charlemagne Palestine amongst many others. Festival film programmes have focused on artists including Naeem Mohaiemen, Eric Baudelaire, Lav Diaz, Ben Rivers and Duncan Campbell. Shatwell studied history at Oxford University before completing an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London. Previous roles include curating public programmes at CCA, Glasgow and founding alt.gallery an independent space for sound art. She is on the board of directors of Pavilion, an arts commissioning organisation in Leeds. The next edition of AV Festival takes place in March 2018, www.avfestival.co.uk
Claudia Firth is currently a PhD researcher at Birkbeck College, University of London in Cultural and Critical Studies, Department of English and Humanities. Her PhD is a non-linear history of three moments of post-economic crises (30’s, 70’s and the present). Her research interests include the art and politics of listening, tools and machines, shared knowledge production, political subjectivity and the sharing economy. She has a background as a visual artist and has facilitated workshops of different kinds in both arts and activist arenas. She has worked with the Precarious Workers Brigade, the Radical Housing Network and other activist groups. She also lives in a housing cooperative. Her writings include articles for Nyx, the journal for the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, Dandelion, the journal at Birkbeck College and DIS online magazine. She has forthcoming articles in journals Parallax and Ephemera.
For more information on the Spring residency artists click here.
Production Workshops
with Ravioli Me Away
21–23 April, daily 12–5pm
Ravioli Me Away are a music/performance group comprising of artists and musicians Sian Dorrer, Rosie Ridgway and Alice Theobald.
Ravioli Me Away have been working together since 2013, have released two albums, and performed at various festivals, arts and music venues across the UK and Europe. Following a recent research and development residency at Wysing, Ravioli Me Away are producing their first large-scale immersive performance work – View from Behind The Futuristic Rose Trellis which will be premiered at Wysing in 2018 and tour to venues and galleries including BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead and Nottingham Contemporary.
As part of the work, Ravioli Me Away are looking for participants to help them explore the role of the chorus within the theatrical construct, and how it relates to the collective and the individual. This three-day workshop will be a collaborative exploration with open discussions, practical group exercises, simple role play and improvisation including singing, acting and audio recording. The aim of these fun and open workshops is to potentially contribute and generate material for the final production. Please be aware that workshops may be filmed and audio recorded.
Workshops will run from 12 to 5pm across the three days. Ravioli Me Away are looking for ideally twenty people to participate, and a commitment of a minimum of one day is requested. The workshops are suitable for participants age 18 and over. Food and refreshments will be provided throughout and no previous singing or acting experience is required!
To register your interest in participating in these workshops, please create an account, or sign in, here to complete a very short questionnaire. Capacity is limited so pre-registration is required. The deadline for pre-registration is midnight Monday 17 April.
View from Behind The Futuristic Rose Trellis is a live multimedia production which will seek to speak for the world in a material and emotional sense. The correlation between the performance and process will be evident throughout the final piece and will cut between film, theatre, dance and live music. The production will attempt to address the big questions in life from an analytical yet comical perspective. The work is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
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Saturday 25 March
During 2017 Wysing are committed to exploring ‘many voices’ across all our programmes within the over-arching title Wysing Polyphonic.
Launching the Wysing Polyphonic residency programme and responding to Wysing's All Channels Open exhibition, this study day will consider what steps can be taken to "open the channels" and what is at stake in seeking to include "many voices".
For the study day, spring residency artists Pallavi Paul, Claire Potter and Raju Rage will be joined by invited contributors Taylor Le Melle, Annie Jael Kwan and Wail Qasim, all of whom will present a "resolution", a proposal for how institutions, artists and the public might ready themselves to confront 2017 with "all channels open". These resolutions will consist of short presentations, readings, performances or screenings to allow for an expansive and open discussion. Breaks throughout the day will allow attendees to visit the All Channels Open exhibition.
Travel from Cambridge station is available for this event. Book here.
12pm: Exhibition and cafe open
1.55pm: Introduction to the Study Day from Wysing curators.
2.00pm: Presentations from Taylor Le Melle and Raju Rage followed by questions
3.10pm: Reading by Claire Potter
3.30pm: Break
4 pm: Presentation from Pallavi Paul followed by questions
4.30pm: Presentations from Annie Jael Kwan and Wail Qasim followed by questions
5.30pm: Open discussion
6pm: Ends
Contributor Biographies
Annie Jael Kwan is an independent curator, writer, researcher and producer based in London. She founded the curatorial partnership, Something Human, in 2012, to focus on her interests in the critical ideas and explorations surrounding movement across borders. Something Human has worked with partners including Barbican Centre, Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University and the Live Art Development Agency, and has delivered projects the UK, Rome, Venice, Belgrade, Skopje, Lisbon and in Singapore.
Taylor Le Melle is a curator, writer and researcher, based in London. Taylor is a part of C.R.E.A.M. and PSS Press.
Wail Qasim is a writer, critic and activist based in London, primarily taking part in campaigns for racial justice. Their work has covered philosophy, politics, art, culture, immigration, protest and deaths in custody for The Guardian, The Independent, VICE UK and the London Review of Books blog. Wail is also a regular contributor to Novara Media.
For more information on the Spring residencies, click here.
Saturday 19 November, 2–8pm
Electricity flows from motherboards into muscle memory. Neurones fire into logic gates across silicon synapses. We must become a part of the system, in order to overcome it. Welcome to the arcade.
For podcasts of the event, click here.
For their Study Day, Meeting the Machine Half-way, current artists-in-residence Larry Achiampong, David Blandy and Gary Zhexi Zhang will be joined by curator Morgan Quaintance, artist Angela Washko, journalist Evan Narcisse, gamer and artist Danielle Nelson (Zakuta/Izanami) and researchers Carleigh Morgan and Nathaniel Zetter, to take part in a programme of talks, demonstrations and a live gaming tournament.
The Study Day will draw on the experiences of professional game-players, researchers and artists in order to explore the history of video gaming culture and to think critically about our embodied relationship to technology, race and sexuality.
There will be a Super Smash Bros (Wii U version), 2014, tournament and a Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, 1992 'winner-stays-on' tournament.
Games will be available to play from 1pm and refreshments will be available from cafe abantu for early arrivals. Early registration for the Super Smash Bros tournament is advised.
2pm – Introduction from Lotte Juul Petersen, Artist and Programmes Curator, and John Bloomfield, Assistant Curator.
2.15pm – Morgan Quaintance on the social context of arcades.
2.45pm – "Cybernetic Communities": Nathaniel Zetter, Carleigh Morgan and Gary Zhexi Zhang in conversation.
3.30pm – Discussion and Q&A.
4pm – First rounds of Super Smash Bros tournament and Street Fighter tournament. Refreshments available from café abantu.
5pm – "A Gamer's Life": Danielle Nelson, David Blandy and Larry Achiampong in conversation.
5.45pm – International gamers' chatroom: Angela Washko and Evan Narcisse in online conversation, moderated by David Blandy and Larry Achiampong.
6.30pm – Discussion and Q&A.
7pm – Final rounds of Super Smash Bros and Street Fighter tournaments. Refreshments available from café abantu.
8pm – Ends.
Artist biographies
Larry Achiampong and David Blandy share an interest in popular culture and the post-colonial position; examining communal and personal heritage within their collaborative practice and using performance to investigate the self as a fiction. Achiampong and Blandy, as individual artists, have been exploring issues surrounding race and culture for many years, albeit from completely different cultural backgrounds. They have been collaborating as Biters and on the Finding Fanon series for over two years, resulting in a body of work including digital imagery, performance and video. Over the past three years, they have exhibited and performed internationally including at Fabrica, Brighton; Iniva, London; Modern Art Oxford; Spike Island, Bristol; ICI/Savvy Contemporary, Berlin; and Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle. Their films are distributed by LUX and David Blandy is represented by Seventeen Gallery, London.
Gary Zhexi Zhang is an artist and writer whose work is concerned with private and political narratives of the virtual. Recent screenings and exhibitions include Would You Like Help at EMBASSY Gallery, Edinburgh and Tenderflix Film Festival at ICA, London. He is a regular contributor to Frieze and Elephant magazines, and recently graduated with a Masters of Philosophy in Criticism and Culture from Cambridge University.
Contributor biographies
Carleigh Morgan is a Fulbright scholar, artist, writer, and researcher exploring the cybernetic sutures between bodies and machines, with particular emphasis on the diagrams of production, communication, and coordination that enclose gamers and their technologies in a chimerical apparatus. Personal interests include using or critiquing wetware, quantified life, AI, virtual reality, biohacking, neuroenhancement, indie games, deeptech startups, object-oriented erotica—and sending romantic dispatches to machine learning bots on Twitter. Carleigh graduated from King's College London in 2016 with an MA in Contemporary Literature, Culture, and Theory and is currently a research assistant at the Centre for Digital Culture, scheming about the automation revolution, the gig economy, and networks of capital accumulation.
Danielle Nelson is an artist and fighting game player having played at a competitive level since 1999. Danielle plays a number of games but is best known for playing Guilty Gear and Tekken. Danielle has worked with Namco, assisting with tournaments and writing character guides in the Official Tekken 5 Guide and helped officially promote the release of BlazBlue in the UK. Danielle has also been selected to participate in the Official Tekken 7 European qualifier, with the winner invited to compete in the grand finals in Japan.
Morgan Quaintance is a London-based writer, musician, broadcaster and curator. Born in South London, he is a regular contributor to Art Monthly, Art Review, Frieze, Rhizome.org and a number of curatorial sites and blogs. He is a contributing editor for E-Flux’s online publishing portal Art Agenda, is a founding member of the curatorial collective DAM PROJECTS, and is the 2015/16 curatorial fellow at Cubitt Gallery, London. As a presenter he currently works with the BBC’s flagship arts programme The Culture Show, and is also the producer of Studio Visit, a weekly hour-long interviews-based programme, broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM, featuring international contemporary artists as guests.
Angela Washko is an artist, writer and facilitator devoted to creating new forums for discussions of feminism in the spaces most hostile toward it. Since 2012, Washko has also been facilitating The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft.
Nathaniel Zetter is a PhD candidate in the faculty of English at Cambridge University. His doctoral research tracks the conceptual exchanges between sport and war in literary texts and in cultural discourse, with a particular focus on the contemporary period. Recent papers on video games include "Perception and Periodization: Video Game Perspective as Symbolic Form" and "Gaming at Work".
Saturday 29 October, 2–6pm
Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, CB3 0DF
Join us for a series of talks and a panel discussion with artists, writers and scientists as they discuss Joey Holder's current solo exhibition at Wysing, Ophiux.
Taking Holder’s new film, also entitled Ophiux, as a starting point, invited artists, scientists and writers will discuss and question the constitution of the 'human' and 'animal' biology, exploring the technology around genetic data collection and manipulation.
We are delighted that the two scientists whose research has provided the starting point for the work in the exhibition will be presenting at this symposium: Dr Katrin Linse, Senior Biodiversity Biologist, the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge and Dr Marco Galardini, Computational Biologist, European Bioinformatics Institute at the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Cambridge. The event also includes a presentation from artist Katja Novitskova and artist, writer and publisher Jamie Sutcliffe.
Bookings for the event can be made here.
We are also extending our opening hours at Wysing for anyone wishing to see the exhibition before the symposium, from 11.30am. Plus we are offering transport from Cambridge Station to the exhibition at Wysing then onto the symposium. Details can be found here.
Schedule
2pm, Welcome, Eliza Gluckman, Curator of New Hall Arts Collection at Murray Edwards College, Joey Holder, artist and Lotte Juul Petersen, Curator at Wysing Arts Centre.
2.10pm, Screening of Joey Holder's new film Ophiux which contains unseen footage from deep-sea expeditions showing the harvesting of organisms for their unique genetic information. The film stimulates current digital technologies used to read genetic data and utilise this for our own evolution.
2.30pm, Dr Marco Galardini will give a presentation on evolution and how we can use it to understand differences between individuals.
3.10pm, Katja Novitskova will make a presentation on alien-world and frontier-environment exploration in relation to big data and image production, from the perspective of her work as an artist.
3.50pm Break, tea and coffee available.
4.10pm, Dr Katrin Linse will give a presentation on biodiversity, phylogeography and evolution of the Antarctic marine.
4.50pm, Roundtable discussion with all of the contributors, chaired by Jamie Sutcliffe, writer, artist and publisher with Strange Attractor Press.
5.30pm, Plenary presentation by Jamie Sutcliffe.
6pm, Ends
Biographies
Dr Marco Galardini is a computational biologist interested in microbiology. He holds a PhD in genetics, microbiology and bioinformatics from the University of Florence, where he has studied the genomes of several strains of the plant symbiont Sinorhizobium meliloti. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Pedro Beltrao's lab at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Wellcome Genome Campus, Cambridge, where he is developing models to predict the impact of
genetic differences among different strains of the model gut bacterium Escherichia coli, in collaboration with microbiologist Nassos Typas (EMBL, Heidelberg).
Joey Holder received her BA from Kingston University (2002) and her MFA from Goldsmiths (2010). Recent solo/duo exhibitions include Lament of Ur, Karst, Plymouth (w/ Viktor Timofeev);
TETRAGRAMMATON, LD50, London (w/ John Russell); BioStat., Project Native Informant, London (2015) and HYDROZOAN, The Royal Standard, Liverpool (2014). Recent group exhibitions include The Uncanny Valley, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2015); Sunscreen, online and at Venice Biennale (2015); A Plague of Diagrams, ICA, London (2015), WEC - Whole Earth Catalyst, The Composing Rooms, Berlin (2015); h y p e r s a l o n, Art Basel Miami, (2014);
Vestige: The Future is Here, Design Museum, London (2013) and Multinatural
Histories, Harvard Museum of Natural History, Massachusetts, USA (2013). Holder was a finalist for the Dazed Emerging Artist Award (2013) and was nominated for the VordembergeGildewart Award (2016).
Dr Katrin Linse is a Senior Biodiversity Biologist, the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge and been a marine benthic biologist with seventeen years’ research experience in the biodiversity, phylogeography and evolution of Antarctic marine invertebrates. She is part of the team designing the first georeferenced Antarctic benthos database, resulting in new Antarctic provinces and an updated biogeography for the Southern Ocean, which is now applied to different taxa. She is involved in the research on phylogenetic relationships of current Antarctic species and their evolutionary histories and has significantly contributed to the discovery of high biodiversity in the bathyal and abyssal Antarctic deep sea, as well as in the recent discovery of the first hydrothermal vents in the Southern Ocean. She has participated in thirteen shipboard expeditions of which four studied hydrothermal habitats in the Southern Ocean.
Katja Novitskova lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin. Novitskova researches ongoing ecological transformations of matter, social and informational processes in the present world, developing personal strategies to render its future forms. With a background in visual semiotics, graphic design and new media, her works range from digital collages to sculpture and installation, collaborative projects and artist publications. In her installation Pattern of Activation (Loki’s Castle) she imagined how robotic deep sea explorers merged with the alien extremophile life forms at Loki’s Castle hydrothermal vent site into a new hybrid ecosystem. www.katjanovi.net
Jamie Sutcliffe is a London-based writer, artist and publisher with Strange Attractor Press. He is co-editor of Ian Breakwell’s DIARY, forthcoming with Occasional Papers, and comprises one half of the Pond Scum Light Show.
Saturday 3 September, 2 - 9.45pm
For the third and final event in our Summercamp series, artist Sonia Boyce has developed the day-long symposium and live music event Two steps to the Left… in collaboration with current artist-in-residence Evan Ifekoya.
Find a podcast of this event here.
The symposium sits within Wysing’s over-arching programme for 2016 Wysing Poly, which explores the legacy of the Polytechnic as a site of radical art practice in the UK in the 1970s and 80s.
In keeping with the theme of the radical art practice of the 1970s and 80s, Two steps to the Left… takes US artist Adrian Piper’s groundbreaking interactive performance Funk Lessons (1982-85) as a point of departure, to explore dance and movement as a political act; asking what role does dance and music play in the creation of momentary communities, of dissent and assent.
Two steps to the Left… will include presentations, workshops and discussions including contributions from artists and academics including Ain Bailey, Adelaide Bannerman, Sonia Boyce, Yassmin V Foster, Evan Ifekoya, Melika Ngombe Kolongo and Zinzi Minott and live music performances from Ain Bailey, ORETHA, and Nkisi.
This symposium is now full but you are welcome to join us from 8pm for DJ sets by Ain Bailey, ORETHA and Nkisi.
Wysing's cafe is open from 10am to 4pm serving a range of hot and cold food, teas and coffees.
2pm – Welcome from Wysing Director Donna Lynas. Introduction and overview from Sonia Boyce
2.30pm – Thinking enough to let it go, a guided movement improvisation devised and led by Zinzi Minott and Evan Ifekoya, followed by an in-conversation and discussion.
3.30pm – Yassmin V Foster's presentation will highlight and discuss the ability to recognise black dance, even when it is not being performed by a ‘black’ body, momentarily suspending the concept of blackness. To illuminate a better description of the form, enhance dance competence, and the value of the art. Ultimately questioning, not what we know, but how we know it? Followed by questions and discussion
4.30pm – Short break
4.45pm – Adelaide Bannerman gives a presentation on Adrian Piper’s Funk Lessons (1982-85) with guided active listening and dancing. Followed by questions and discussion
5.30pm – Ain Bailey gives a presentation on spaces for collective gathering. Followed by questions and discussion
6.30pm – Melika Ngombe Kolongo gives a presentation on NON, a politically minded collective and record label dedicated to music being created by African artists and the diaspora.
7pm -– Wrap up with input from Leyla Reynolds from Gal-Dem who will be live blogging/illustrating throughout the day via the Wysing Instagram account
7.15pm – Nigerian food available at £5 per person, by Eko Kitchen, Cambridge
8pm – DJ set by Ain Bailey
8.30pm – DJ set by ORETHA
9pm – DJ set by Nkisi
9.45pm – Taxis leave for Cambridge station
Ain Bailey is a sound artist and DJ. She is currently a doctoral candidate at Birkbeck, University of London, where she recently completed a Leverhulme Trust Artist-In-Residence. Her compositions encompass field recordings and found sounds and are inspired by ideas and reflections on silence and absence, architectural urban spaces, and feminist activism. Her electroacoustic compositions are created for a variety of forms, including multichannel and mixed media installations, moving image soundtracks, live performance and dance. Works include the soundtrack for the film Oh Adelaide!, a collaboration with Sonia Boyce. Between 2013 and 2015, Oh Adelaide exhibited at the Glassell School of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, CCA-Glasgow, Tate Britain, The Kitchen, New York, and the Whitechapel Gallery. Bailey has created soundtracks for the award winning video Red She Said, 2011, by Kerstin Schroedinger and Mareike Bernien; Jimmy Robert's Abolibibelo performance at Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland, 2015 and Descendances du Nu performance and installation at CAC-Synagogue de Delme, Delme, France, 2016. Commissions have come from mouvoir: a Cologne-based dance company, to create sound works for inclusion in the productions Beautiful Me and Cactus Bar, which toured extensively throughout Europe. In 2014, Bailey collaborated with the MichaelDouglas Kollektiv and composed and performed a soundtrack for a new dance production Here Is You And Not Me, Cologne, Germany. Recent compositions include a suite entitled AGORA, 2015, which were presented in situ at the British Museum, St. George’s, Bloomsbury and The Rio cinema in Dalston.
Adelaide Bannerman has worked predominantly freelance as a project manager, curator and consultant for UK arts institutions working transnationally with critical and creative practitioners, for the past 18 years, including the International Curators Forum (ICF), Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), African and Asian Visual Artists Archive (AAVAA), Tate, Live Art Development Agency, and Arts Council England. She is currently the Archive Coordinator at Autograph ABP, working on the three-year photography research project, The Missing Chapter and her research interests are focused on valorising performative gestures and engagements with live and visual performance art, and privileging the process behind individual and group autonomic practices. Since 2010, Bannerman tentatively explored, noted and when possible, co-opted movement and improvisatory methods as part of her curatorial practice.
Sonia Boyce (MBE, RA) emerged as an artist in the early 1980s as a key figure in the Black-British art scene, with artworks that spoke about race and gender. Since the 1990s out of the spontaneous performances of others she uses the documented process to make multi-media artworks. Recent exhibitions include: Speaking in Tongues, CCA-Glasgow (2014);S/N: Signal to Noise, Whitney Museum of Modern Art/The Kitchen, New York (2015);Liberties – 40 Years Since the Sex Discrimination Act, Collyer Bristow Gallery, London (2015); and, All the World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennale (2015). Boyce is Professor of Fine Art at Middlesex University, Chair of Black Art and Design at the University of the Arts London and is the Principal Investigator for a 3-year AHRC-funded project ‘Black Artists and Modernism’. In 2016, she was elected as a Royal Academician.
Yassmin V Foster is all things movement and dance. Her career spans practice, production and research. She is influenced by her heritage and experience of black culture, in particular the artistic expression of dance and music. Yassmin has contributed to the arts and cultural sector in the Britain since 1992, she is a champion for interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and multi art form collaborative journeys, and advocates for dance as intangible cultural heritage. She combines her artistic flare with sound knowledge and experience in finance, arts management and statistical analysis. Affording her upward mobility in producing work that is aesthetic, social and economic. Yassmin works in live arenas, for online media and outdoor events to develop artists and audiences. Since graduating from MA Choreomundus - International Master in Dance Knowledge, Practice and Heritage in 2015, Yassmin continues to present her research, which has featured as part of: Collegium for African Diaspora Dance conference - Duke University (North Carolina, US); Black Dance Research Project - Lyric Theatre Hammersmith (London), funded by Arts Council England; Framing the Critical Decade: After the Black Arts Movement conference - Bristol University (Bristol); and ADAD Open Stage event - Pegg Studio Theatre (Bristol).
Melika Ngombe Kolongo was raised in Belgium, but she’s now based in London, where she’s adopted the name Nkisi and serves as one-third of the international triumvirate piloting NON, a politically minded collective and record label dedicated to music being created by African artists and the diaspora. In comparison to the sounds being created by her partners Chino Amobi and Angel-Ho, Nkisi traffics in higher tempos, melding elements of techno and electro with African melodic sensibilities into energetic dancefloor weapons. Beyond her own music and DJing, her work with NON has quickly garnered plenty of attention, as the crew’s web-savvy approach, international membership and outspoken politics have found an audience, giving a voice to like-minded children of the diaspora around the globe.
Evan Ifekoya’s current work investigates the possibility of an erotic and poetic occupation using film, performative writing and sound, focused on co-authored, intimate forms of knowledge production and the radical potential of spectacle. Recent exhibitions include A Quiet Violence of Dreams at Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town; Okun Song at StudioRCA, London, 2016; All Of Us Have A Sense Of Rhythm, David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Embodied Spaces, FramerFramed, De Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam – both curated by Christine Eyene, Studio Voltaire OPEN, London, all 2015; and 30 years of the Future, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, 2014. Recent performances and screenings include Sticky Black: A Broadcast at Jerwood Space and A Score, A Groove, A Phantom: The Extended Play at Whitstable Biennale 2016. Collaborative projects include Collective Creativity: Critical reflections into QTIPOC creative practice and Network11. Ifekoya currently lives and works in London.
Shenece Oretha (ORETHA) is an artist, DJ and noisemaker from London. Her mixture of music and samples explore the ways in which DJing is a form of storytelling and lecturing, and allows a commune between the present and other space/time. Some recent events she has participated and collaborated on, in her converging capacities as artist and DJ, are Swaying Feels with Black Sirens (2016); Sounding the Great Hall at Goldsmiths (2016); Video Vexens at HUB16 (2016); SOUNDS LIKE at the ICA (2016) and Against the Theatre of Distance in the Winkelwiese Theatre, Zurich (2016).
Leyla Reynolds is the in house artist and fully time arty woman at gal-dem.com, a magazine written by over 50 women of colour for all to enjoy. She is also a recent Politics graduate from the University of Bristol and a freelance illustrator. Her visual work concerns the political and her written work also concerns the political and its impact on creating radical practices of art. She is currently research assistant to the upcoming book Framing the Critical Decade: After the Black Arts Movement.
Zinzi Minott is a Laban Graduate, a Random Dance intern and scholarship receiver. She has received choreographic commissions from immigrants and animals, Rokeya, Rich Mix, and The Iranian Arts Festival, and a recipient of ImpulsTanz danceWeb Scholarship -2015. Her work considers political themes of colonialism, race and the Black British identities, how dance is used as a mode of resistance and political protest as well as contemporary globalisation contributing to discourse of the body through the body. She is a co- founder along with Hamish MacPherson, and Jamila Johnson- Small of The Rebel Man Standard, which along with her creation “Movement for Queers” was described as “One of the best things in Dance” by Judith Mackrell in the Guardian Newspaper. In 2016 she was artist is Residence in at LADA (UK) Roehampton (UK) EMERGE (USA) and taught, and spoke at the Collegium of African Diasporic Dance (CADD) at Duke University (USA). As well as taking her work 30 skanks (and other revolutionary dances); a collaboration with Charlotte Cooper, on an American tour. She received choreographic commissions from Precipice Award, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Calligram Foundation/Allie Furlotti and Black Creative Collective: BrownHall -2016. She is an Artist in Residence on Tate schools workshop programme at Tate Modern and Britain 2016/17 and will be artist in Residence at Duke University 2018. She is currently working on a new work “What kind of Slave would I be? WKOSWIB?” investigating dance, race, the archive and her own slave narrative.
Radio (Study) Day
Sunday 21 August, 12–5pm. Live online event
For their Radio (Study) Day from Wysing, current artists-in-residence Henna-Riikka Halonen, Evan Ifekoya, Lawrence Lek and Laura O’Neill will take radio broadcasting as a starting point for exploring the potential of the listening subject.
Find a podcast of this event here.
With access to huge amounts of information online through podcasts and ‘how to’ videos, the act of learning is becoming an increasingly individualistic and solitary experience. Radio broadcasting however offers both the solitary experience of listening, and access to the temporal experience of live radio production. It also offers access to a temporary shared community of fellow listeners.
Historically a powerful tool for connecting people and bridging distance, Radio (Study) Day will also pose questions about the role of radio today and its relationship to digital technologies. Four different programmes broadcast throughout the day will draw on the artists' diverse research to address ideas around staging, scripting and fakery and the four artists, alongside invited contributors, will draw on speech, music and sound to think about the critical and creative possibilities of listening in an ocular-centric society.
For Radio (Study) Day the artists will take over the Wysing homepage, inviting
audiences to listen and participate via a live radio stream. The day will be broadcast again by Resonance FM on Monday 29 August, 12–5pm.
Schedule
12pm – Lawrence Lek introduces the Radio (Study) Day and presents Sino-Futurism, a new work in two parts: a live soundtrack and commentary for an unmade film about a fictional artist AI and an essay on Sino-Futurism, combining spoken word with fragments of cinema history. Followed by a discussion with fellow residency artists.
1.15pm – Laura O’Neill introduces Bending Over Backwards, a new work described as "pure presencing affecting affectable bodies; a mapping of rhythm interspersed with film, curved down with soft selves/around the bend". Bending Over
Backwards features a mixed sourced text from poet Greg Nijs. Followed by a discussion with fellow residency artists.
2.30pm – Henna-Riikka Halonen
introduces Pareidolia, a new work where the writing and re-writing of a film script and a soundtrack becomes a spatial play with walls and borders, teasing out the universal through the personal. Confusing the time zones, truth and fiction in order to grasp the ever unreachable right now of right now, Pareidolia is a search for an image or imagination in a realm where the only sense we have is hearing.
Featuring Dr Jeanette Baxter and artist Arnaud Moinet and followed by a discussion with fellow residency artists.
3.45pm – Evan Ifekoya introduces This Catalogue of Poses, a radio play-in progress exploring the daily lives of four figures in a photograph, some of whom are more alive than others. Beginning at a spectral house club night in London, the characters dialogue across as if inhabiting the past and future simultaneously. Original score devised in collaboration with aigrefou
(Netherlands/Morocco). Followed by a discussion with fellow residency artists.
4.45pm – The four artists re-convene for the last fifteen minutes of broadcasting.
5pm – End.
Artists' Biographies
Henna-Riikka Halonen has worked on and produced many large scale video and performance projects and commissions and has shown her work widely in international exhibitions and festivals such as Research Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2015; You Imagine What you Desire, Biennale of Sydney 2014; Eden The Pow(d)er of Fear, Lilith Performance Studio, Malmo, Sweden; Fictitious Entry, Uqbar, Berlin; Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, New York; Gallery Factory, Seoul, Korea; Saison Video, France; Transmediale, 2012, Berlin; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Festival De Nouveau Cinema, Montreal; Incheon International Biennale, Korea and ARTE TV Channel (France/Germany). Halonen lives and works in Helsinki and her residency has been made possible through the support of Frame Finland, HIAP and The Finnish Institute in London.
Evan Ifekoya’s current work investigates the possibility of an erotic and poetic occupation using film, performative writing and sound, focused on co-authored, intimate forms of knowledge production and the radical potential of spectacle.
Recent exhibitions include A Quiet Violence of Dreams at Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town; Okun Song at StudioRCA, London, 2016; All Of Us Have A Sense Of Rhythm, David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Embodied Spaces, FramerFramed, De Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam – both curated by Christine Eyene, Studio Voltaire OPEN, London, all 2015; and 30 years of the Future, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, 2014.
Recent performances and screenings include Sticky Black: A Broadcast at Jerwood Space and A Score, A Groove, A Phantom: The Extended Play at Whitstable Biennale 2016. Collaborative projects include Collective Creativity: Critical reflections into QTIPOC creative practice and Network11. Ifekoya currently lives and works in London.
Lawrence Lek uses architectural fabrication and video game software to produce virtual worlds, video performances and immersive installations, often based on real places. His work deals with the uncanny experience of simulated presence, and how themes of desire, memory, power, and immortality drive our encounters within virtual realms. Recent projects include QE3, Glasgow International 2016 at Tramway; Secret Surface, KW Berlin; Software, Hard Problem, Cubitt Gallery; The Uncanny Valley, Wysing; Unreal Estate, Royal Academy; Performance as Process, Delfina Foundation; Sky Line for Art Licks Weekend 2014 Digital Commission. Lek is a resident artist at The White Building and winner of the 2015 Dazed Emerging Artist Award and ICA/Tenderflix Artist Video Award and Jerwood/FVU 2016 Award.
Laura O’Neill will be a 2017 resident artist at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. Past projects include; Composite, Brussels, 2016; ICA Film Biennale, 2016; Focal Point Gallery’s Big Screen, Southend-on-Sea, 2016; Bikini Wax, Mexico City, 2015; ICA, London, 2015; Camden Art Centre, London, 2015; Baltic 39, Newcastle, 2014; Liverpool Biennale, 2014; Spike Island, Bristol, 2013 and a recent film commission from Mexico City Metro.
Laura O'Neill would like to thank: Agnieszka Szczotka, Alejandra Arrieta, Alex McNamee, Alistar Baldwin, Amanda Espinoza, Andy Hart, Andrea Herrada Main, Antony ward, Annesylvie Henchoz, Alfredo Salomón, Alice Turner, Ben Joe, Benito Mayor BeMaior, Canan Batur, Christian Tonner, Chloe Latimer, Danny Oakes, Diego Flores, Dwayne Coleman, Ella Bear, Elizabeth Bear, Ellie Pratt, Euan Latimer, Evan Ifekoya, Fleur Melbourne, Francis Drayson, George Morris, Girolamo Marri, Gleb Vysotski, Guy Oliver, Hanae Wilkes, Ian Robert Slater, Javier Calderon, Jemma Egan, Jess Bryan, Jessie Denny-Kaulbach, Jill Mcknight, Joe Begley, Jonathan Surples, Joss Heierli, Jorge Bobadilla, Justin Fitzpatrick, Julie F Fox, Julia Frank, Karolina Magnusson Murray, Kate Jackson, Kathlene Stevenson, Keith Winters, Kostantinos Pettas, Laura Kelsall, Laura Mcmullen, Lara Kenworth,y Leo Cohen, Linda O’Neill, Linda Nagajeva, Louise Ginsgberg, Lucia Quevedo, Luis Ramirez Pedraza, Luke Stevens, Luli Perez, Magdalena Firlag, Matilda Moors, Matthew Ferguson, Marcos Castro, Martha Hivid, Mike Bear, Mina Azmy, Minsun Lee, Monica Valcarcel-Saez, Natalie Price Hafslund, Natalie Woodward, Neil Hass, Nicole Vinokur, Nils Alix Tabeling, Owain McGilvary, Paula Smolarska, Rachael Bear, Rachael Szaloky, Roj-Azud Zorlu, Ruby Bear, Samantha Harvey, Sean Lavelle, Sophie Latimer, Rodrigo Garcia Dutra, Tanya Moulson, Valentina Pini, Vera Karlsson, Victoria Grenier, Willem Wilke, William Darrel and Yan White.
Do It With Others - Art and Solidarity in the Age of Networks
Saturday 6 August, 12-5pm
The day is devised and led by Furtherfield (Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett) with contributions from artists Gretta Louw and They Are Here (Helen Walker & Harun Morrison) and writer Tim Waterman.
Find a podcast of the event here.
For the second event in our Summercamp series we have invited Furtherfield to develop and lead the day-long symposium, Do It With Others - Art and Solidarity in the Age of Networks.
Furtherfield create online and physical spaces and places for different kinds of people to come together to get involved with contemporary arts and digital technologies. It was founded by artists Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett in 1996 and is a dynamic, creative and social nerve centre where upwards of 26,000 contributors worldwide have built a visionary culture around co-creation – swapping and sharing code, music, images, video and ideas.
Do It With Others - Art and Solidarity in the Age of Networks will explore art as a commons (defined as the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society) in the age of networks and neoliberalism. It will ask how practices, circulation, appreciation and stewardship of the arts can be emancipated for all. Presentations and discussions include work drawing on the summer programme at Furtherfield's Gallery and Commons lab, exploring tensions between digital inclusion and cultural diversity in the digital global hegemony.
Schedule
12pm- Arrival. Wysing has a café onsite which will be open throughout the day for food and drink. The cafe will be open from 10am
12.20pm - Introduction to the day by Ruth Catlow
The first part of the day will address the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society
12.30pm - Marc Garrett, Unblocking proprietary systems. Marc Garrett, presents his research into different types of grassroots culture and the ways in which they actively re-examine, critique, and hack their way around the controlling conditions of black boxes, proprietary systems and techno-cultural production. These cultures (their tactics and strategies) return control to the users and remodels relationships between the individual and the institutional edifice: in academia, in the arts, technological fields of practice, and as part of everyday life.
1pm -Tim Waterman, Situating the Commons.Tim Waterman, landscape architect and theorist, will discuss how the negotiation of the commons takes place in two distinct realms that are increasingly reaching into and shaping one another: the long history of the landscape commons both in cities and in the countryside, and across digital networks. In both realms we find the continued project of the enclosures, appropriating forms of collectively-created use value and converting it, wherever possible, into exchange value.
1.30pm - Ruth Catlow, DIWO to DAOWO - Collaborative arts and the blockchain. The DIWO (Do It With Others) campaign for emancipatory, networked art practices was instigated by Furtherfield in 2006 and it is informing an artistic engagement with new blockchain technologies; to organise, cooperate, p2p and at scale to transform approaches to contemporary economic and social challenges.
2pm - Open discussion moderated by artist and curator Gretta Louw
2.30pm - Break
This part of the day will draw on the summer programme at Furtherfield's Gallery and Commons lab, exploring tensions between digital inclusion and cultural diversity in the digital global hegemony.
3pm - Gretta Louw, Networking the Unseen. Networking the Unseen, which is currently on view at Furtherfield gallery, is the first exhibition of its kind to focus on the intersection of indigenous cultures and zeitgeist digital practices in contemporary art. Featuring art works – installations and digital media – made in collaboration with artists from the Warnayaka indigenous art centre in Central Australia. Artist and curator Gretta Louw, will discuss postcolonial digital arts practice in relation to the exhibition and event series that brings together concepts and experiences of remoteness and marginalised cultures, with art-making in contemporary society.
3.30pm - They Are Here, Finsbury Park Network. Combining DIY digital culture with socially engaged activity, Helen Walker & Harun Morrison of They Are Here are collaborating with local residents and organisations across Finsbury Park. Working with recently published open source software, they will establish an online network independent of cellular networks and the World Wide Web. They are exploring ways of integrating this network with local community garden activity; enabling data from these microhabitats to affect the communication system.
4pm - Open discussion moderated by Ruth Catlow
4.45pm - Closing remarks by Marc Garrett
5pm - End of the day
Contributor Biographies
Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett are artists, curators, organisers and writers who works with emancipatory network cultures, practices and poetics. They are co-founder/directors of Furtherfield an artist led international community hub for art shows, labs and debates around critical questions in arts, technology and society. Furtherfield's Art Data Money programme seeks to develop new economies for arts in the network age.
Catlow's artistic commissions include Time Is Speeding Up at 20-21 Visual Arts Centre; Sociality-machine at Tate Britain; Play the Web We Want at Southbank Centre; Rethinking Wargames- 3 Player Chess, currently on tour as part of Free Play with ICI. Catlow is named by the Foundation for P2P alternatives in their list of 100 women Co-creating the P2P society. Garrett is the curator of the upcoming exhibition Monsters of the Machine at the LABoral Centre of Art in Spain. He is in the last phase of an Art History Phd at the University of London, Birkbeck College.
Gretta Louw is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer exploring the potential of art as a means of investigating cultural and psychological phenomena, particularly in relation to new technologies and the internet. Born in South Africa, she grew up in Western Australia and is currently based in Germany. Her work has been exhibited widely - in New York, Berlin, Jakarta, and Tel Aviv, amongst others - including in a number of public institutions such as the Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Stadtgalerie Mannheim, and Kunstverein Ludwigshafen.
They Are Here is a collaborative practice steered by Helen Walker & Harun Morrison. We are currently based in Birmingham and London. We have worked together as They Are Here since 2006, often extending our collaboration to include those from all walks of life. Our work can be read as a series of context specific games. The entry, invitation or participation can be as significant as the game's conditions and structure. Through these games, we seek to create ephemeral systems and temporary, micro-communities that offer an alternate means of engaging with a situation, history or ideology. They Are Here work across media and types of site, particularly civic spaces. Institutions we have developed or presented work include: Arnolfini, Camden Arts Centre, CCA Glasgow, Chisenhale Gallery, Grand Union, South London Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Modern, STUK (Leuven, Belgium), VIVID and Whitechapel Gallery. www.theyarehere.net
Tim Waterman lives in London and is Senior Lecturer and Landscape Architecture Theory Coordinator at the University of Greenwich. He is also a thesis tutor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. He is the honorary editor of Landscape: The Journal of the Landscape Institute, for which he writes the regular column ‘A Word …’. He is also also Research Associate for Landscape and Commons at Furtherfield. He writes for Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM) and The Architects’ Journal and is the author of Fundamentals of Landscape Architecture, and is currently at work on two edited collections for Routledge. Landscape and Agency, with Ed Wall (forthcoming 2016) and the Routledge Handbook of Landscape and Food with Josh Zeunert (forthcoming 2017).
Collective Creation between Welfarism and Austerity
Saturday 16 July, 12-5pm
The day is devised and led by Prof Gavin Butt with contributions from Green Gartside of Scritti Polliti, Chris Goode of Ponyboy Curtis, Kevin Lycett of the Mekons, writers Claire MacDonald and Amy Spencer, and Colette Rosa and Charlotte Procter of DIY Space for London.
Find a podcast of the event here.
For our first Summercamp event we have invited Professor Gavin Butt to develop and lead a day-long symposium, entitled Collective Creation between Welfarism and Austerity.
The symposium is developed from Prof Gavin Butt’s research on post-punk culture and British art schools and focuses on collective creation across art, music, and theatre, between the heyday of the Polytechnic until today.
The starting point is to address the importance of informal collectivities - bands and groups – in the production of experimental work, paying particular attention to artistic communalism and DIY as a means to produce new forms in the public sphere.
The day consists of three discussions panels; The Post-Punk Artschool; Ensemble creation between then and now; and From DIY to DIT.
Schedule
12pm - Arrival. Wysing has a café onsite which will be open throughout the day for food and drink. The café will be open from 10am
12.20pm - Introduction to the day by Gavin Butt, Professor of Visual Cultures and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London.
12.30pm - The Post-Punk Artschool. This panel discussion will explore the formation of music bands, and the importance of banding together to make art, in the art school milieu of the late 1970s and early '80s. The panel will consist of two former art students, Green Gartside, the creative force of the left-wing-inspired post-punk band Scritti Polliti, and Kevin Lycett, co-founder of the Mekons, a shifting musical collective formed in Leeds in the late '70s. The session is chaired by Prof Gavin Butt.
1.45pm - Ensemble creation between then and now. This panel discussion will consider ensemble creation between then and now. The panel will include Claire MacDonald, co-founder of Impact Theatre Co-operative, which as a company fused text, music, visual and performance art and Chris Goode, lead artist of Chris Goode & Company and director of the performance ensemble Ponyboy Curtis. The session is chaired by Prof Gavin Butt.
3.00pm - Break
3.30pm - From DIY to DIT. This panel discussion will look at DIY and DIT infrastructure of contemporary art and music. The panel consists of writer Amy Spencer, author of the book DIY: The Rise of Low-Fi Culture, and representatives from the cooperatively-run social centre DIY Space for London, Colette Rosa and Charlotte Procter. The session is chaired by Wysing's Director Donna Lynas.
4.45pm - Closing remarks by Prof Gavin Butt
5.00pm - End
Contributors biographies
Gavin Butt is Professor of Visual Cultures and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is author of Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World, co-author of Visual Cultures as Seriousness, and editor of After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance. He co-directed Performance Matters (2009-2013) a creative research project exploring the cultural value of performance, and was co-director of This Is Not a Dream (2014) a documentary film exploring artist’s DIY use of moving image technology. He is currently completing a new book Anti-Gravitas: Queer Importance in Art and Performance, and is engaged in research on post-punk culture and British art schools.
Green Gartside is the creative force of the band Scritti Polliti. Formed in 1978 in Leeds, England, Scritti Politti were initially a left-wing-inspired post-punk British rock group, that later developed into a more mainstream pop music project in the early to mid-1980s and enjoyed significant success in the music charts in the U.K. and U.S. The group’s most successful album, 1985’s Cupid & Psyche 85, was innovative in its early use of the techniques of sampling and MIDI sequencing and produced hit singles including Perfect Way, The Word Girl, Wood Beez and Absolute. He returned to music-making in the late 1990s, releasing two critically-acclaimed albums in 1999 and 2006. The success of the 2006 Mercury Music Prize-nominated White Bread Black Beer LP is considered to be a major comeback.
Chris Goode is a writer, director, performer and musician. He has been lead artist of Chris Goode & Company since its inception in 2011. He is also director of the performance ensemble Ponyboy Curtis. Recent work for Chris Goode & Company includes: WANTED (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Every One (BAC); Weaklings (Warwick Arts Centre); Men in the Cities (Royal Court; Traverse); STAND (Oxford Playhouse); The Forest & The Field (Ovalhouse); The Adventures of Wound Man and Shirley (BAC).
As an independent maker: Apathy (Theatre Uncut); Ponyboy Curtis at the Yard (The Yard); MAD MAN (Drum Theatre, Plymouth); The Worst of Scottee (Roundhouse); The Loss of All Things (as part of 66 Books at the Bush); Who You Are (Tate Modern). Chris is the author of The Forest and the Field: Changing theatre in a changing world (Oberon), and he hosts the Chris Goode & Company podcast, Thompson’s Live.
Kevin Lycett accidentally founded the slightly legendary Mekons whilst being an art student at Leeds University. Then, while his colleagues leapt as if burnt from the battered shell of Leeds during the 80s he unaccountably decided to stay and became heavily involved in the post-punk scene, producing records, sound engineering, and directing videos for a whole slew of bands, such as Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Sister of Mercy, March Violets, F.S.K., Xmal Deutschland and others. Kevin formed a couple of other bands one of which, The Hill Bandits, is currently being rubbed down and getting its shoes inspected before being let out for another trot round. Kevin is also a visual artist, and has had several solo and group shows, he is currently working on a solo show to be held in Leeds October 2016.
Claire MacDonald’s work in the arts centres on conversation, collaboration and community. She writes and teaches widely, and was a co-founder of the influential visual theatre-making collective Impact Theatre Co-operative, in Leeds, whose archive of film and performance is now being re-worked by the company, starting with the showing of the film version of The Carrier Frequency, a collaboration with the writer Russell Hoban, at Arts Admin in London in February 2016. Her recent book Utopia, is both a collection of plays and a reflection on the cultural history of her practice. Her recent writing also includes ‘All Together Now: Performance and Collaboration’, in Dee Heddon and Jennie’s Klein’s essay collection Histories and Practices of Live Art (Palgrave,2012). She also writes on poetics, feminist art practice and the pedagogy of performance writing. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Amy Spencer lives in Bristol where she teaches creative writing. She works with writers in community settings to use their own experiences as inspiration for creative work and develop channels through which to share this work with audiences. There is an emphasis on social justice and DIY cultural production. Amy holds a PhD from the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College where her research focused on collaborative authorship in digital literature.
Amy is the author of DIY: The Rise of Lo-Fi Culture and The Crafter Culture Handbook and continues to research do-it-yourself culture.
Colette Rosa and Charlotte Procter are representatives from the co-operatively run social centre DIY Space for London (DSFL), which offers low cost creative facilities, meeting rooms and social space in addition to hosting screenings, talks and performances. Everything from the bar to events to sound is organised through the 12 collectives. It runs on a members’ club model so that everyone has an equal say in how the space is run. DSFL also has an in-house record shop TOME Records and Joey’s Kitchen (a vegan cafe). We work to promote the ideas of mutual aid (helping each other) and co-operation (working together.)
Charlotte makes posters and is also a member of the Cinenova Working Group- a collective of volunteers responsible for the ongoing operation of the feminist film & video distributor Cinenova.
Colette plays in the punk bands Woolf and Frau and organises Bent Fest (an annual weekend festival of queer punk with DIY principles in London).
21/22 May
Sunset to sunrise, dusk to dawn
We invite you to join us for a very special Study Night that will begin at sunset on Saturday 21 May (9pm) and end at sunrise on Sunday 22 May (5am).
The event is now fully booked, please contact us to be put on the waiting list, click to email here.
Throughout the duration of the night, when Wysing will be lit by a rare Blue Moon, artists Beatrice Dillon, Wojciech Kosma and Florence Peake will unfold a series of events and scenarios across our rural site, both indoors and outdoors. The event has been devised by the artists as a contribution to our programme, Wysing Poly, within which we are seeking new ways to share knowledge.
The Study Night will explore the power of experiential ways of learning; where a temporary community is created and encounters collaboratively experienced. The event is located outside the usual circadian rhythm so that duration can be manipulated and senses heightened, allowing for slight interventions and movements to become intensified.
We invite you to enter into the duration of this Study Night by joining us at dusk and staying until dawn. The event will include discussion and food, movement and sensory experience, and celebration.
The Study Night will be produced by the artists with the support of Wysing staff. Food will be provided throughout, at no charge, and transport to and from the Wysing at the beginning and end of the event is available. We ask that you bring warm comfortable clothes, strong shoes and a sleeping bag or blanket.
Saturday 7 May, 2-5pm
Join current artists-in-residence Beatrice Dillon, Wojciech Kosma and Florence Peake for a Study Day that will unfold some of their research and areas of interest.
Book travel from Cambridge for this event here.
During the afternoon each artist will talk about their work and working methods and they will show aspects of new work in progress; including works in sound, performance and film. The day will begin with a performance by Beatrice Dillon in the open studio, followed by a presentation by Wojciech Kosma in the reception area and ending with an immersive movement session in the gallery led by Florence Peake. There will be time for discussion and tea and coffee will be available throughout the event. This event is being recorded.
Beatrice Dillon is a producer, composer and musician who collaborates widely with a range of visual artists producing music and sound for film, performance and installation. Her recent releases Blues Dances, Face A/B and Studies for Samplers and Percussion (with Rupert Clervaux) were selected for FACT, Juno and Quietus’ Best of 2015. She has performed and DJ’d internationally at venues including Southbank, Barbican, Tate, ICA, Palais de Tokyo, Lisson, Arma Moscow, Center of Contemporary Art Geneva and MONA Tasmania amongst others. Beatrice presents a monthly show on London’s NTS.
Wojciech Kosma explores multiple aspects of relationships and sociality, working within a performance framework and together with a number of close collaborators. The effects of this process are manifested both in the social realm and in artistic productions. Kosma’s collaborations with Dylan Aiello, Dwayne Browne, Sjoerd Dijk, Brian Doose, Gordon Douglas, Ligia Lewis, Sofia Lomba, Ewa Majewska, Irene Moray, Timothy Murray, Paulita Pappel, Llewellyn Reichman, Yunuen Rhi, Ingrid Sattes, Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor and Judith Vrancken were presented at Interstate Projects in New York; Chisenhale Gallery, London; Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin; Galerie Kamm, Berlin; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Transmission, Glasgow; Outpost, Norwich; LEAP, Berlin; and Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź among others. In 2015, Kosma was the recipient of Scholarship for Visual Arts awarded by the Berlin Senate and resident artist at Triangle in New York.
Florence Peake’s practice encompasses visual art, dance and performance. Peake works with drawing, painting and sculptural materials combined with found, appropriated and fabricated objects placed in relationship to the moving body. Site and the placement of performance and audience, live and recorded text, as well as a well-developed sense of wit and humour, are key to her work. She has shown nationally and internationally, presenting work at the National Portrait Gallery, London; BALTIC, Gateshead; Hayward Gallery as part of Mirrorcity, London; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Yorkshire Sculpture Park; Modern Art Oxford; Chapter Arts, Cardiff; the Harris Museum, Preston; and the Herbert Museum, Coventry.
Saturday 26 March, 11am-6pm
Saturday 26 March, 11am-6pm
Open Forum 2016 is a series of FREE events for practicing visual artists offering advice and support.
Artists can book one of the following one-to-one feedback sessions at Wysing;
Developing a Commercial Practice with Alex Michon, Transition Gallery
Public Funding Options with Matt Roberts
Each session is 45 minutes and can also include advice on your practice or professional ambitions.
To book either a one-to-one session please email info@mattroberts.org.uk.
20 February and 5 March
During our exhibition The Practice of Theories we are hosting two Study Days that will draw out some of the themes of the exhibition. The Study Days are free and open to all but due to limited capacity need to be booked in advance.
20 February
Study Day, 4 - 6pm
Join American poet and blogger Steve Roggenbuck, alongside exhibiting artists Andy Holden and Erica Scourti, for a Study Day exploring writing after the Internet. The afternoon offers a small group of participants the opportunity to focus on this subject and a rare opportunity to explore Steve Roggenbuck’s working methods; Roggenbuck’s most popular video has been viewed over 150,000 times online and he has been profiled by The New York Times, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker. Andy Holden and Erica Scourti will join Roggenbuck for an afternoon of talks and discussion; sharing experiences of writing, authorship, text, time and emotion.
There are still places for Steve Roggenbuck's live reading event which will be located within Andy Holden’s immersive sculptural work The Dan Cox Library for the Unfinished Concept of Thingly Time. For the event. Roggenbuck, Holden and Erica Scourti will be joined by artist and poet Heather Phillipson for an evening of readings and interventions within the work.
5 March
Study Day, 2 - 5PM
Join Curator Dan Kidner for a Study Day that takes the film Peggy and Fred in Hell, Folding (1984-2015) as a starting point from which to explore the group exhibition The Inoperative Community; an exhibition of experimental narrative film and video that addressed ideas of community and the shifting nature of social relations. The exhibition, at Raven Row gallery, London and curated by Kidner focussed on a period that could be described as the long 1970s (1968-84); all the works were either made during this time, or reflect on the radical social and political movements of the era.
2pm Introduction by curator and writer Dan Kidner
2.15pm – 3.50pm Screening of Leslie Thornton’s Peggy and Fred in Hell: Folding (1984 - 2015), 16mm film and video transferred to digital, 95 minutes.
3.50pm - 4pm Break with tea and coffee available
4 pm - 5pm A presentation by Kidner followed by an open discussion
To book a place, click here
“Peggy and Fred in Hell, Folding (1984-2015) is an open ended episodic work that has been in the making for over thirty years, its protagonists, real-life siblings Janis and Donald Reading, fall down a rabbit hole into a post-apocalyptic world where they are the only humans. With only the loosest backstory, Thornton began filming the children – who were her neighbours – in the early 1980s. She continued to work with them as they grew into teenagers and then young adults, and still maintains contact with them now. Over three decades she has continued to rework the material they shot together, periodically producing new ‘episodes’, and the project has evolved into one of the most singular and complex works of experimental film and video.” The The Inoperative Community, exhibition booklet.
Dan Kidner is a curator and writer. He was previously Director of Picture This, Bristol (2011 - 2013), and co-Director of City Projects, London (2004 - 2011). Over the past 10 years he has produced projects by many artists’ working with film and video including Knut Åsdam, Anja Kirschner and David Panos, Cara Tolmie, Emily Wardill and Jimmy Robert. His books include, with Petra Bauer, Working Together: British Film Collectives in the 1970s (2013) and with George Clark and James Richards, A Detour Around Infermental (2011).
Leslie Thornton (b. 1951, USA) has been working with video and digital media since the 1980s. Her works have been presented at the Serpentine Gallery, London, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate Modern, London, the Whitney Biennial, New York, and documenta 12, Kassel. Her first solo exhibitions, ‘Binocular’ (2011) and ‘Luna’ (2013), were held at Winkleman Gallery, New York.Thornton lives and works in New York and Providence, Rhode Island, where she is Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, Rhode Island.
Image credit:
Leslie Thornton
Peggy and Fred in Hell: Folding (1985 – 2015)
Still from digital video (originated on 16mm film), 95 mins
Courtesy of the artist
20 FEBRUARY, 7.30 - 9PM
As part of The Practice of Theories, artist Andy Holden will host an evening event located within his sculptural installation The Dan Cox Library for the Unfinished Concept of Thingly Time.
Free and open to all though space is limited. To book your place, click here.
The Dan Cox Library for the Unfinished Concept of Thingly Time is a space containing all of the books owned by Dan Cox, a close friend and collaborator of Andy Holden's, who passed away 2011. The books are placed in relation to fragments from Holden's sculptural projects. In the spirit of the pair’s friendship and collaboration, it is a space for dialogue, between ideas and words, things and art-objects.
For this event, Holden has invited fellow artists, both of whom are also included within The Practice of Theories exhibition, Heather Phillipson and Erica Scourti, to read from their texts within the library, alongside Holden himself with invited guests, and poet and blogger Steve Roggenbuck.
American poet, blogger and Youtuber, Roggenbuck’s most popular video has been viewed over 150,000 times online and he has been profiled by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and The Guardian.
Heather Phillipson works across video, sculpture, sound, text and live events. She is has exhibited extensively internationally and is also a published poet with work appearing in solo publications alongside many compilations, including The Best of Poetry London, (Carcanet, 2014).
Erica Scourti draws on a personal biography to explore the notion of a subject aware of herself as caught within a system of techno-social representations. Her work in video, performance, online and with text has been shown recently in groups shows and festivals including Transmediale 15, Berlin (2015), and End User, Hayward Project Space, London (2014).
Andy Holden is an artist who works across many media but for whom theory and writing form a fundamental basis to his work. This event has been conceived and curated by Holden.
12 December, 2-6pm
Join us for our final event of 2015 to close both the year of The Multiverse and our current residencies with artists Essi Kausalainen, Paul Purgas and Erica Scourti.
Travel from Cambridge station is available for this event. Book via our Eventbrite page here.
For this event Essi Kausalainen, Paul Purgas and Erica Scourti have developed a framework through which to present and test out new ideas. The event, Full Sequence Learning, stems from the artists’ ongoing discussions on cybernetics and organic systems, the human relationship to the machine, and learning through unknowing and stupidity.
The day will consist of a series of newly developed performances by the artists, free time activities devised by them, and a summary of the day led by invited contributor Dr Erika Balsom, Lecturer in Film Studies and Liberal Arts at King’s College London.
2pm: Welcome refreshments and introduction to the day by Wysing Curator, Lotte Juul Petersen
2.20-2.45pm: 2.20-2.45pm: Performance Wish List by Erica Scourti. Wish List is a live, semi-improvised reading of automatically-generated closed captions from a series of lecture videos in Erica’s watch later playlist on YouTube. An exercise in multi-tasking edutainment, the reading will simultaneously be broadcast live on Periscope for anyone wishing to tune in from home.
2.50-3.10pm: Variations Mutations (Leaps) by Essi Kausalainen is a presentation of a piece that does not exist yet. It is an act of fabulation and hesitation, a platform for future potentials. Created together with the generous assistance of Bettina, Lisa, John, the silk, the wool, the raffia, the quartz, the carnation and other present & absent bodies.
3.10-3.20pm: Break with tea and coffee available
3.20-4.15pm: Free time activities devised by the artists
4.15-4.30pm: Presentation by Paul Purgas working with sound, indeterminacy and chance games alongside a predicative analysis neural network responding through voice using outline algorithms based on the work of the late cybernetician Gordon Pask. Created with NuPIC (Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing), 3D printed bone, CD player, pocket calculator, whiteboard and microphone.
4.30-5pm: Summary session led by Dr. Erika Balsom
5-5.30pm: Questions and discussion
5.30-6pm: Drinks reception
6pm: Ends
Travel from Cambridge station is available for this event. Book via our Eventbrite page here.
Archive Live Broadcast
21 November, 2-6pm
Join us for a day of in-conversations and presentations by artists-in-residence Essi Kausalainen, Paul Purgas and Erica Scourti alongside contributions from invited speakers.
This event is the first in our autumn residency programme that takes The Multiverse as a starting point for research and discussion. With artists-in-residence Essi Kausalainen, Paul Purgas and Erica Scourti and invited speakers, writer and curator Paul Clinton; Irene Revell, curator and Director of Electra; and Dr James Riley, lecturer in English Literature at the University of Cambridge.
Paul Purgas has composed a pre-recorded sound score that will play throughout the event.
2pm Welcome from Wysing Curator, Lotte Juul Petersen
2.05pm An in-conversation between artist Erica Scourti and writer Paul Clinton focussed around ideas of the self, identities, fiction, and stupidity in a fully mediated world, including works introduced by Erica Scourti. Followed by questions and an open discussion.
3.10pm Break with tea and coffee
3.30pm A presentation by James Riley entitled Ghost Noise; a speculative talk looking at some of the links between cybernetics and the paranormal in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Q&A with artist Paul Purgas. Followed by questions and an open discussion.
4.35pm Break with tea and coffee
4.45pm A screening of Essi Kausalainen's work, Orchard, 2013, video (HD), duration: 1min 44s.
4.50pm An in-conversation between artist Essi Kausalainen and curator Irene Revell on her work, including the influence of philosopher and physicist Karen Barad. Followed by questions and an open discussion.
5.40pm Drinks reception
6pm Ends
Contributor Biographies
Paul Clinton is assistant editor of Frieze and Frieze Masters magazine. Clinton has written on art and stupidity for over ten years and co-curated the exhibition 'Duh? art and stupidity' which recently opened at Focal Point Gallery, Southend. He has taught on art, stupidity and queer theory at Goldsmiths College and the University of Manchester. In 2013 he edited a special issue of the philosophy and critical theory journal parallax on stupidity, and in 2014 the South London Gallery staged a day-long event around his research on this subject. In the same year he organised the conference Shimmering World, which featured presentations by artists Ed Atkins, David Panos and Hannah Sawtell. His catalogue essays include on the work of artists Bonnie Camplin, and Jacopo Miliani. Previous speaking engagements have taken place at the Frieze Art Fair, ICA, Tate Modern, Whitstable Biennale and Whitechapel Gallery, amongst other venues. He was also a founding member of the band No Bra, co-writing several songs on the album Dance and Walk, and with Patrick Wolf he formed the band Maison Crimenaux.
Essi Kausalainen’s work perceives the world as an organic entity; a chaotic body in which all parts are equally important and makes works in which the space, different species of beings and ‘things’ are approached as performers and partners. Inspired by plant thinking, feminist science studies, new materialisms and quantum physics, Kausalainen creates ambiguous works in the form of gestures and actions. Essi Kausalainen (b. 1979) studied performance art and theory at Turku Arts Academy and the Theatre Academy of Finland. Her work has been exhibited and performed in venues including KIM? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga; Malmö Moderna Museet; Frankfurt Kunstverein; Museum for Contemporary Art Roskilde; Nikolaj Kunsthalle, Copenhagen and Kunstraum Bethanien, Berlin. Essi Kausalainen's residency is supported by The Finnish Institute in London and Frame Visual Art Finland.
Paul Purgas has a multi-disciplinary approach that brings together elements of sound and composition, architecture, industrial design and software programming. Originally trained as an architect and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2004, he has since been based in the curatorial department at Arnolfini, Bristol and curated contemporary art and performance projects for Tate Britain, De La Warr Pavillion, Spike Island and Frieze Art Fair. Alongside this he is also the co-founder of Emptyset with James Ginzburg, a project that operates as a meeting point for sound, architecture and performance considering full frequency audio, psychoacoustics and the legacy of Structural/Materialist production. Emptyset have produced installations for Tate Britain and the Architecture Foundation in London, and live performances at Bergen Konsthall, CTM/Transmediale, Kunsthalle Zurich and the Wysing music festival in 2012.
Irene Revell is the Director of Electra, an organisation which curates, commissions and produces projects by artists working across sound, moving image, performance and the visual arts. Through close dialogue with a range of venues and collaborators, Electra presents projects across the UK and internationally. At the heart of their practice is a process-based relationship between artist, curator and audiences, which seeks to give the projects space to find their own rhythm, public outputs, and discourse. Electra's core aim is to foster a dialogue between a range of disciplines of contemporary artistic practice, to provide a platform for debate and engaged, dynamic investigations of urgent social, political and cultural questions. Projects include:Someone Else Can Clean Up This Mess (Flat Time House, 2014-15); Her Noise: Feminisms and the Sonic (Tate Modern, 2012); Sound Escapes (Space 2009); The Wire 25 (2007).
James Riley is Fellow and College Lecturer in English Literature at Girton College, University of Cambridge. He works on 20th and 21st century writing with an emphasis on the Beat writers, counterculture, occulture and the intersection between literature and technology. Recent publications include a multi-volume collection of archival texts linked to the literature and film of the 1960s. James has written on cult film for Vertigo, Monolith and One+One, he has curated film seasons and film tours across the UK and recently featured as part of the Congress of Curious Peoples at Coney Island, New York. Current projects include: Playback Hex, a study of William Burroughs and tape technology and Road Movies, a book site-specific cinema. He is also co-directing The Alchemical Landscape, a research and public engagement project looking at notions of magic and geography. James blogs at Residual Noise and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Erica Scourti draws on a personal biography to explore the notion of a subject aware of herself as caught within a system of techno-social representations, reflecting on questions of post-authenticity, intimacy and connection in a fully mediated world. Her work in video, performance, online and with text has been shown recently in group shows and festivals, Transmediale 15, Haus De Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, (2015), End User, Hayward Project Space, London (2014), Soft Machines, IMPAKT Festival, Utrecht, (2014), P/N/19 Foam, a peripatetic project by Mat Jenner at Project/ Number, London, (2014), Snow Crash, Banner Repeater, London, (2014). She has also presented performances and talks at the ICA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, DRAF and the Southbank Centre.
Video documentation from the event
31 October, 2-6pm
Join us on Halloween for an event that will explore some of the themes raised in Wysing's current exhibition The Uncanny Valley, with contributions from academics and artists.
Book travel from, and back to, Cambridge station for this event. Click here.
This event explore some of the themes raised in the exhibition The Uncanny Valley and includes presentations and performances across Wysing’s site as well as an opportunity to see the exhibition before it closes on 8 November.
Schedule:
In the Open Studio
2pm Welcome by Wysing Director, Donna Lynas
2.05pm A presentation by Dr Fumiya Iida, Lecturer in Mechatronics at the University of Cambridge who will be speaking about developments in robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Dr Iida’s research topics include legged robot locomotion, evolutionary robotics, human-robot interactions, and embodied artificial intelligence. Followed by a Q&A
2.50pm An audio visual performance presentation by Werkflow (James B Stringer, Tom Wandrag and Clifford Sage) who are a London-based studio specialising in Next Gen Cinematography. Werflow have collaborated with many visual artists including Julia Crabtree and William Evans, Sidsel Meineche Hansen and Joey Holder.
In the Gallery
3.30pm A live performance by Lawrence Lek in relation to his new work for Wysing, Shiva’s Grotto, 2015, which maps out a terrain for a possible future Wysing.
4pm Break with tea and coffee
In the Open Studio
4.15pm Can looking at hands make your skin crawl? Perception, imitation, cognition and the uncanny valley, a presentation by Dr Ellen Poliakoff, of Body Eyes and Movement (BEAM) laboratory, School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester
What is special about seeing another person move? Do we imitate non-human agents and robots and what might happen if they appear ‘uncanny’? Dr Poliakoff will talk about some recent and current work on the uncanny in relation to the body, and in particular the hand, as well as reviewing current cognitive accounts of the uncanny valley. Followed by a Q&A
5pm A music performance by Benedict Drew, using the voice and synthetic voices.
In Amphis
5.30pm A performance of
*OMG UN-fucking-CANNY a new work by Sophie Jung made especially for this event.
6pm Ends
Contributor biographies
Benedict Drew uses a combination of video, music and sculptural elements – and brings together material as diverse as lumps of clay, overhead projectors and high resolution digital video – to reflect on society’s ambivalent relationship with technology, and create work that is hypnotic, fantastical and unsettling. He has had solo exhibitions and presentations at Matt's Gallery, London; SASA Gallery Adelaide, Australia; School of Fine Arts University of Canterbury, New Zealand (2014); Phoenix and Two Queens Gallery, Leicester; Rhubaba, Edinburgh, Scotland; Wysing’s Music Festival (2013) and Whitstable Biennale; Outpost, Norwich; Cell Project Space, London; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Circa Site/AV Festival, Newcastle (2013). He is currently exhibiting a new commission as part of British Art Show 8.
Fumiya Iida received his bachelor and master degrees in mechanical engineering at Tokyo University of Science (Japan, 1999), and Dr. sc. nat. in Informatics at University of Zurich (2006). In 2004 and 2005, he was also engaged in biomechanics research of human locomotion at Locomotion Laboratory, University of Jena (Germany). From 2006 to 2009, he worked as a postdoctoral associate at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in USA. His research interests include biologically inspired robotics, embodied artificial intelligence, and biomechanics, and he has been involved in a number of research projects related to dynamic legged locomotion, navigation of autonomous robots, and human-machine interactions. He has so far published over forty publications in major robotics journals and conferences, and edited two books. Currently he serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems and Frontiers in Neuroscience (Neurorobotics), and as a program committee member for international conferences and workshops.
Sophie Jung received her BFA from the Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam and her MFA from Goldsmiths, London. Recent projects include her solo exhibition Learning about Heraldry, Ceri Hand Gallery, United Kingdom; Pick Me Ups & Pick Ups, ICA, United Kingdom; NY–LUX, MUDAM, Luxembourg;Throw Up / On Line, House for Electronic Arts Switzerland; read the room/you’ve got to, S.A.L.T.S., Switzerland; Inflected Objects, Instituto Svizzero, Milan, Italy; Panda Sex, State of Concept, Greece; X&X at Oslo10, Switzerland, her most recent solo show New Waiting at Temnikova & Kasela, Tallinn, Estonia, an online comission for Inflected Objects at Instituto Svizzero in Milan, curated by Melanie Bühler, the 4th edition of the Eternal Internet Brotherhood, Uncanny Valley at Wysing Arts Centre (UK) as well as Äppärät curated by Tom Morton at Ballroom Marfa (US).Sophie’s writing has been published in PALE Journal, Hoax Publication, Paperwork Magazine, Journal of Visual Arts Practice, Intellect, Fiktion.cc. In 2013 she received the Edward Steichen Award, Luxemburg which allows her to spend six months at ISCP, New York
Lawrence Lek explores the physical experience of simulated presence through wearable devices, audio-visual programs, and immersive installations. Lek was born in Frankfurt am Main and studied architecture at Cambridge University before going on to train at the Architectural Association and The Cooper Union, New York. He won the Dazed Emerging Artist Award in 2015 and has exhibited internationally since 2010 including at KEK, Budapest; Artslant, San Francisco; Gewerbe Musuem, Wintertur; Chashama Foundation, New York; Cubitt, London; and the Delfina Foundation, London.
Ellen Poliakoff is a senior lecturer in Psychology at the University of Manchester and is co-director of the Body Eyes and Movement (BEAM) laboratory. She investigates how we use sensory information such as vision and touch to move and interact with the world around us and how this is affected by Parkinson’s disease, ageing and autism. She is also interested in multisensory processes; how information from the different sensory modalities interacts.
Werkflow was founded in 2013 by James B Stringer, Tom Wandrag and Clifford Sage and specialises in Next gen Cinematography. As a studio, Werkflow research new and unusual workflows, exploring unique hardware/software combinations to produce a range of work including interactive live visuals, music videos, computer games, album artwork and brand identity, as well as assisting artists and musicians in realising their ideas.
The Uncanny Valley is a group exhibition with Julia Crabtree and William Evans, Benedict Drew, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Holly Herndon, Joey Holder, Sophie Jung, Lawrence Lek, Rachel Maclean and Katja Novitskova. Details of work included in the exhibition, here.
Creative Interface: Bridging the Digital Divide
13 August, 6.30 - 8.30pm
Exploring the role of galleries and museums as a creative interface between young people and the digital sector. We are exploring new ways to equip our diverse group of young people with the creative skills needed to become part of the digital and hi-tech industries. You are invited to join us for a presentation of our progress to date and learn of our future plans to engage with the tech, gaming, film and visual effects industries across the UK.
Kettle's Yard (part of the University of Cambridge Museums) and Wysing Arts Centre are working in partnership on Circuit, a national programme providing opportunities for 15–25 year olds to access arts and cultural activities in galleries and museums. Working in partnership with various youth and cultural sectors, Circuit is enabling young people to take a leading role in their cultural development and creating long-term relationships with young people who have not previously engaged with the arts.
The event will include:
• Introductions from Donna Lynas, Director – Wysing Arts Centre and Dr Jennifer Powell, Senior Curator – Kettle’s Yard
• Presentation from Hannah Kemp-Welsh, Digital Producer: Circuit Programme - Tate
• An overview of Circuit Cambridge and an introduction to digital content opportunities for Circuit Unlocks Cambridge – a young people's city-based festival
To book your place at this event please email circuit@wysingartscentre.org or call 01954 718 881
Circuit is a national programme connecting 15-25 year olds to the arts in galleries and museums. Led by Tate and funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
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22 & 23 August, 12noon-6pm
Wysing’s Annual Open Weekend returns this year with a range of contributions including a gallery exhibition, performances, readings and a screening programme, alongside eleven artists working from Wysing opening their studios; a rare treat.We also have a range of sculpture across our 11 acre site, which includes walks and picnic areas, and we will be operating a café over the weekend. Free and all welcome.
Artists work from studios every day at Wysing. Come and have a look inside to see the range of work that is developed at Wysing. Opening their studios this year are:
Jack Cornell, Bettina Furnée, Alison Gibb, Naomi Harwin, Josepa Munoz, Florian Roithmayr, Emma Smith, Rob Smith, Soheila Sokhanvari, Ash Summers and Caroline Wendling
The studio artists have also contributed to a screening programme that will be playing throughout the weekend, interspersed by readings and performance.
The Open Weekend also marks the end of this year's Leverhulme Arts Scholars Summer School; the scholars will have been working at Wysing over the previous six weeks, taking part in workshops and mentoring sessions with artists who have been in-residence and worked at Wysing. For this event the scholars will be exhibiting the new work they have created at Wysing, in a gallery exhibition and at locations around the site. Some of the scholars will be preseting live performances throughout the two days.
The artists participating in our summer school this year are: Chris Alton, Calum Bowden, Gordon Douglas, Henry Driver, George Harding, Emily Hawes, Steph Li, Helen Savage, Sophia Simensky, Ben Tupper, Jules Varnedoe, Nathaniel Whitfield
During the weekend Lucy Reynolds, who has been working with our organisation-in-residence, Electra, will present a new version of her work 'The Feminist Chorus', which will be performed live by The Leverhulme Scholars from the windows of the Wysing farmhouse.
Plus we recently launched two new site works that form part of our growing collection of outdoor sculpture that can be visited including by artists Rupert Norfolk, Laure Prouvost, Joanna Rajkowska, The Grantchester Pottery and Bedwyr Williams. The full list of works is here.
Schedule
Click here to view a full schedule of the many performances, screenings and events happening over the weekend.
Click here for a site map with details of locations for each of the events. Please note artists studios will be closed during the performances, 2-3pm and 4-5pm.
Transport to Wysing
There will be return transport available to Wysing from Cambridge Train Station on both Saturday and Sunday. To book a place please visit our Eventbrite page here.
Lucy Reynolds, A Feminist Chorus
Archive Broadcast: David Toop in-conversation with Conal McStravick and Irene Revell
“If we’re going to use this wretched term, then let’s be clear about who was innovating in it”
Saturday 25 July, 2-6pm
Join us for the first event as part of Electra’s residency at Wysing across the Summer. Electra curates, commissions and produces projects by artists working across sound, moving image, performance and the visual arts.
With:
- David Toop in-conversation with Conal McStravick and Irene Revell
- A video programme of early works by Stuart Marshall
- A performance programme collaboratively developed during the first fortnight of the residency by Lisa Busby, Cathy Lane, Holly Ingleton and Lucy Reynolds
For this event Electra will make public two intersecting strands of enquiry that they will be exploring during their time at Wysing; the feminist performance score, and the early sound works and video of Stuart Marshall (1949-1993).
The event takes its title from a comment made by David Toop in a recent interview conducted by artist Conal McStravick with Electra's Irene Revell, referring to “sound art”, but which might equally refer to the proposition of the “feminist performance score”. With a shared interest in the politics of Marshall’s work in sound and move towards video, McStravick and Revell will continue the interview with Toop at Wysing, focusing on Marshall’s overlooked legacy in the history of sound art.
The conversation will be in dialogue with the audience, will be recorded, and will form part of McStravick’s research project Learning in a Public Medium; researching the work of the late British video artist and its contemporary resonances. The event will include a video programme of Marshall’s early video works, alongside others.
In parallel the afternoon will see a performance programme including Lisa Busby’s Negotiating with the Dead: A self-help programme for composers, 2014, an instruction score inspired by the Margaret Atwood text of the same name, alongside work collaboratively developed by Busby, Cathy Lane, Holly Ingleton and Lucy Reynolds during the first fortnight of the residency.
Further individual and collaborative new performances developed in this period will form Electra’s programme for Wysing’s Space-Time: The Multiverse festival, 5 September, alongside other work including a new performance of Pauline Oliveros’ Saxual Orientation (1977) with Verity Susman (tenor), Sue Lynch (tenor), Artur Vidal (alto) and Adrian Northover (soprano).
Join us for what promises to be an extraordinary afternoon.
Archive Broadcast: The Fifth Artist Exhibition Closing Event
Saturday 4 July, 2-5pm
Our current exhibition The Fifth Artist features new work by Olivier Castel, Jesse Darling, Julia Crabtree & Williams Evans and Alice Theobald, who were in-residence together at Wysing in the autumn of 2014, working within the theme of The Future. Join us to close the exhibition for an afternoon of readings, screenings and in-conversations, devised in collaboration with the artists.
Schedule:
2.00pm, arrival
2.00-05pm welcome
2.05-2.10pm Screen tests (The Field, The Shed and The Car, The Car Door), 2014, Olivier Castel, Julia Crabtree & William Evans, Jesse Darling, Alice Theobald, edited by Alice Theobald 2015
2.10-2.50pm In-conversation with artists about some of the themes within the exhibition
2.50-2.55pm Julia Crabtree & William Evans present three new computer animations, Critters (C.A.T.S) I, 2015*
3.55-3.00pm Screen tests (Hood, Smoke and The Car Door), 2014, Olivier Castel, Julia Crabtree & William Evans, Jesse Darling, Alice Theobald, film edited by Alice Theobald, 2015
3.00-3.30pm Break with a chance to view The Fifth Artist and explore Wysing’s site, including two new outdoor works by Rupert Norfolk and Joanna Rajkowska
Tea & coffee available from reception
3.30-3.50pm Olivier Castel presents the performance, A Reading, 2015
3.50-4.00pm, Short break
Tea & coffee available from reception
4.00-4.05pm Julia Crabtree & William Evans, Critters (C.A.T.S) II, 2015*
4.05-4.10pm Screen tests (Smoking in The Dark, Windows), 2014, Olivier Castel, Julia Crabtree & William, Jesse Darling, Alice Theobald, film edited by Alice Theobald, 2015
4.10-4.25pm Audience Q&A
4.25-4.30pm Screen tests (Car Lights), 2014, Olivier Castel, William Evans and Julia Crabtree, Jesse Darling, Alice Theobald, film edited by Alice Theobald, 2015
4.30-4.35pm Julia Crabtree & William Evans, Critters (C.A.T.S) III, 2015*
4.35-4.40pm Alice Theobald shows her film The Back and Forth (we're too close to focus), 2015
4.45-5.00pm, Drinks in reception
5.00pm event ends
*The Critters (C.A.T.S) I, II, III made with Werkflow with support from the Mechatronic Library and the Arts Council England.
To book a FREE ticket please visit our Eventbrite page here.
Further information and installation shots of the exhibition are available here.
Saturday 20 June, 2-4pm
Please join us at a special event to launch two new permanent works for Wysing’s site, The Peterborough Child by Joanna Rajkowska and Beach by Rupert Norfolk.
The Peterborough Child by Polish artist Joanna Rajkowska is a work that has had a long and fraught journey to Wysing. Commissioned in 2012 as part of Citizen Power Peterborough; a collaboration between The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, Peterborough City Council and Arts Council England, the work has travelled to Poland and back again and inspired both a film and a great deal of unwonted controversy.
The work has the appearance of a staged archaeological dig. However, Rajkowska has described it as ‘a chakra – a place of focussed, accumulated energy’. At the centre of that energy is a tiny replica skeleton of a thirty week old foetus. An emotive image, but one intended as a response to the location of Peterborough as a site of ancient graves, some dating back to the Neolithic period. This narrative for the work however became woven into the experience of Rajkowska herself who was living and working in Peterborough on the commission and whose own young child, Rosa, had at the time been diagnosed with Retinoblastoma, a rare eye cancer.
The controversy emerged when the work started to be viewed as a grave and not a re-enactment of an archaeological dig; when private experience met a collective un-comfortableness with potential immediate, rather than historic, death.
Wysing has been given custodianship of The Peterborough Child and we welcome the opportunity to reclaim it as both a work of art, and a chakra.
The Peterborough Child has been realised with funding from Arts Council England and the Polish Cultural Institute in London and with the support of The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, Peterborough City Council, culture.pl and T.A.D. Precision Sheet Metal Engineers Ltd.
Beach by UK artist Rupert Norfolk was originally commissioned in 2011 by the Fundament Foundation in Tilburg, The Netherlands. As with Rajkowska’s work, Beach apparently reveals an unexpected and previously hidden history; in a clearing in the woods to the back of Wysing’s site the disconcerting image of a sandy beach appears. Dappled sunlight filtering through trees further adds to the sense of disorientation of seeing a natural image transposed to an unnatural location.
To create the work Norfolk cast at the Solway Firth, at winter low-tide, from which he created 480 interlocking parts. Much of Norfolk’s work involves the use of multiple components to generate dissonance.
Rupert Norfolk was in-residence at Wysing during 2013, during which time he explored hidden systems and structures alongside fellow residency artists James Beckett, Cécile B. Evans, Michael Dean and Seb Patane. Norfolk has generously given Beach to Wysing on long-term loan.
Beach has been realised with funding from Arts Council England through an initiative to support the development of crafts in the East and South East of England.
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Rupert Norfolk, Beach, 2011
Tuesday, 16 June, 7.30pm
Join us for the performance lecture by Andy Holden, Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape. During the week of 15 June, Andy is leading a retreat at Wysing and this event reveals some of the ideas being explored during the retreat.
Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape is part lecture on cartoons and part cartoon lecture which starts from the position that art history has come to an end and that the world has come to resemble a cartoon. It looks at how physics operates in cartoons and how laws form in a space in which anything seems possible. Through a combination of physics, philosophy, cartoon history and exaggeration it attempts to present a methodology for how an artist might proceed in this Cartoon Landscape.
Andy Holden has developed a retreat at Wysing that launches our year-long programme The Syllabus. During the retreat the selected participants will explore what it means to be an artist through a series of texts, films, discussions and practical exercises.
This event will last approximately one hour and is FREE and open to all.
To book your FREE place, please visit our Eventbrite page here.
Archive broadcast: NEMATODE
9 May, 2-6pm
Join us for events programmed events programmed in partnership with residency artists, and which draw out some of their research:
Saturday, 11 April, 2-6pm - Spring Residency Artists
Thursday 23 April, 6-8pm -Live Performance: Plastique Fantastique
Saturday 9 May, 2-6pm - NEMATODE
Scroll right for details.
For information on the artists in-residence click here.
Saturday, 11 April, 2-6pm
The Multiverse Spring Residency Artists
A day of in-conversations and presentations by residency artists with contributions from invited speakers including Wysing studio artist Florian Roithmayr, Computational Biologist Marco Galardini from the European Bioinformatics Institute at the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Cambridge and Biologist Dr. Katrin Linse from the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge.
2.05-2.40pm, Artists Kit Craig and Florian Roithmayr, both of whom work predominantly in sculpture, will discuss possible ways of comprehending a multiverse, in multiple dimensions
2.40-3.15pm, Presentation by artist Takeshi Shiomitsu
3.15-3.55pm, Computational Biologist Marco Galardini will give a presentation on alternative uses of DNA.
4.15-4.50pm, A presentation by artist Joey Holder, developed in response to the research of Marco Galardini and Dr. Katrin Linse
4.50-5.30pm, Dr. Katrin Linse will give a presentation on Antarctic marine and deep-sea biodiversity and hydrothermal vent diversity.
Thursday 23 April, 6-8pm
Live Performance: Plastique Fantastique
Plastique Fantastique will perform Urb-Fux-Glitter-Addiction, a special one hour performance in two parts with live sound and projected film. Plastique Fantastique is a collaboration between David Burrows, Alex Marzeta, Simon O’Sullivan, Vanessa Page and Harriett Scully, and is a mythopoetic fiction - an investigation of aesthetics, the sacred, popular culture and politics - produced through comics, performances, text, installations, shrines and assemblages.
Part I
How Urb-FUX-Glitter-Junky (an ALL-STAR) incubates and spreads the Virus-Junk-GLOOP – the gift-habit of Van-Damme-PLASTIC-Man (the ice-cream-maker) and his Running-RAT-Boyz-Cycle – until all (including you) are GLOOP-Blissed-Flatline or system-crashed.
Part II
How Urb-FUX-Glitter-Junky FLATLINE-sing-summons a passing comet carrying GOLD-Virus-Junk-GLOOP to Earth (an alien invasion) - flooding the planet with GLOOP-speed-POSITIVITY (the new drug simply called GOLD) – (distribution) controlled by Van-Damme-PLASTIC-Man (his plan all-a-long) – until Urb-Fux-Glitter-Junky reverse-overdoses on a mutant strain (GLOOP-speed-NEGATIVITY) - until all (including you) is backward-noise-melted – until all roads become rivers of gold - until all (including you) is GOLD-GLOOP-BLISS.
Saturday 9 May, 2-6pm
NEMATODE
For the final event of their residencies, artists Kit Craig, Joey Holder and Takeshi Shiomitsu have devised a flexible framework through which to present ideas, works-in-progress and fragments of images, which will take place within Wysing’s gallery. Playing with the structure of a space for presentation, alongside the space itself, the gallery will become a fragmented environment within which, through a process of layering of imagery, video, film, text, spoken word and objects, the artists will give an insight into some of the research they have been focussing on during their time at Wysing. For the event, they will be joined by Electra’s Irene Revell who will present films by experimental feminist film-maker Sandra Lahire (1950-2001), with additional contributions from Canadian artist, writer and educator Emily Rosamond and the writer, critic and curator, Chris Fite-Wassilak.
NEMATODE programme
2pm Welcome by Wysing’s curator Lotte Juul Petersen
2.05pm Emily Rosamond presents ideas on The Umwelt and The Operational Image in response to Joey Holder’s work in progress*
2.45pm Irene Revell presents three films by Sandra Lahire and reads a text co-written with artist Kerstin Schroedinger in response to the three artists in residence. Further information about the films is available on The Show Room website here.
2.55pm Sandra Lahire Plutonium Blonde (15min) (film not available on the archive broadcast)
3.10pm Break with refreshments. Joey Holder filmic work*
3.30pm Chris Fite-Wassilak and Kit Craig in conversation on his work made whilst on residency
4.10pm Sandra Lahire Uranium Hex (11 min) (film not available on the archive broadcast)
4.25pm Break with refreshments. Joey Holder filmic work*
4.45pm Takeshi Shiomitsu presents a work in progress combined with a painting, slideshow and notes
5.05pm Sandra Lahire Serpent River (30 min) (film not available on the archive broadcast)
5.30pm Drinks in reception. Joey Holder filmic work*
*With thanks to Dr Katrin Linse, British Antartic Survey and Dr Marco Galardini, European Bioinformatics Institute, Cambridge
Archive Broadcast: The Multiverse Spring Residency Artists Event
Saturday 11 April 2-6pm
Archive Broadcast: Plastique Fantastique
Thursday 23 April 6-8pm
21 February, 12 - 7pm
The over-arching theme of our artistic programme during 2015 is The Multiverse; a theory that proposes the potential for a set of multiple universes.
This event was broadcast live on thisistomorrow at thisistomorrow.info/broadcasts. Click on the video above to watch the recording of the talks element of the broadcast (without the film screenings).
Click here to view a gallery of images from the event on our Flickr page.
Image at beginning of film: Lis Rhodes, Light Music (1975), installed Wysing Arts Centre. Courtesy LUX.
We will be launching The Mulitverse with a day-long event that explores the theory from a number of positions; fictive, philosophical, artistic and scientific.
Programme:
RECEPTION Lunch 12noon-12.45pm
RECEPTION Durational 12noon-7pm
Joey Holder pèrəzóʊə (2015), a physical work with permeations through to an online presence, with streams, trails and links to different realms. It allows the user to navigate in several dimensions: linearly along axes, transversally across different species, and chronologically along evolutionary time.
GALLERY Durational 12noon-7pm
Lis Rhodes' Light Music (1975), installed in the gallery as a fully immersive work. Light Music is an innovative work presented originally as a performance that experiments with celluloid and sound to push the formal, spatial and performative boundaries of cinema. An iconic work of expanded cinema, it creates a more central and participatory role for the viewer within a dynamic, immersive environment.
OPEN STUDIO
12.45pm Welcome by Wysing Director Donna Lynas and Curator Lotte Juul Petersen.
1-2pm Presentation Art Practice as Fictioning (or, Myth-Science) by Dr Simon O’Sullivan, Reader in Art Theory and Practice in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, London. 15 min Q&A.
2-2.15pm Screening of Maya Deren’s At Land (1944) in which a woman, played by Deren, is washed up on a beach and goes on a strange journey encountering other people and other versions of herself. Composer John Cage and the poet and film critic Parker Tyler were involved in the making of the film and appear in it.
2.15-2.45pm Irene Revell reads a piece made in-conversation with Beatrice Gibson followed by a screening of Beatrice Gibson’s film F for Fibonacci (2014)
RECEPTION
2.45-3.00pm Break with tea and coffee.
OPEN STUDIO
3-3.30pm Reading by writer Mark von Schlegell from his short story Pinktoes/Earth of the Books (2015).
3.30-4.30pm Presentation The Accelerating Universe - the evolution of the Universe from the earliest time to the present by Anne-Christine Davis, Professor of theoretical physics and cosmology at the University of Cambridge. 15 min Q&A.
4.30-4.45pm Screening of Maya Deren’s The Very Eye of the Night (1958) in which a shimmering constellation of stars establishes the background for negative images of figures resembling Greek Gods superimposed on and magically transported along the Milky Way.
RECEPTION
4.45-5pm Break with tea and coffee.
OPEN STUDIO
5-5.15pm Reading by writer & curator Tom Morton from his novel-in-progress Doggerland.
5.15-6.15pm Presentation From Mars to the Multiverse -- how our cosmic horizons have expanded by Martin Rees, Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. 15 min Q&A.
6.15-7pm Roundtable discussion with Simon O’Sullivan, Irene Revell, Mark von Schlegell, Martin Rees and Anne-Christine Davis and Tom Morton.
7pm Ends
Contributor Biographies:
Professor Anne-Christine Davis is a theoretical physicist and professor of cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Her recent research is in Particle Cosmology. Her current work is on modified gravity theories, such as the chameleon model and related scalar-tensor theories of gravity. She has also worked on inflation and extra-dimensional theories.
Maya Deren was one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer and photographer. She combined her interests in dance, voodoo and subjective psychology in a series of surreal, perceptual, black and white short films.
Beatrice Gibson’s recent solo exhibitions include, A Tale of Two Cities, The Highline, Channel 14, New York, (2014), Beatrice Gibson, Wilfried Lenz, (2014) CAC Bretigny (2013), Index, The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm; The Showroom, London (2012); Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart (2010), The Serpentine Gallery (Sackler Center) (2010). She has twice won the Rotterdam International Film Festival Tiger Award for short film, was nominated for the 2013 Jarman Award and shortlisted for the 2013-15 Max Mara Art Prize for Women.
Joey Holder was a recent finalist for the Converse/Dazed Emerging Artist Award; included in Vestige: The Future is Here, Design Museum, London and Multinatural Histories, Harvard Museum of Natural History, Massachusetts, USA (all 2013). She has exhibited widely with projects including Hypersalon at Miami Basel and HYDROZOAN a solo exhibition and part of the Liverpool Biennial program at The Royal Standard (both 2014). Upcoming projects include Eco-Currencies a group show at The Composing Rooms, Berlin and a solo project BioSTAT at Project Native Informant, London.
Tom Morton is a writer, curator, and Contributing Editor for frieze magazine. His recent exhibitions include British British Polish Polish at the CSW Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, and Panda Sex at State of Concept, Athens. In 2014, he gave readings of his fiction at BALTIC, Gateshead, and Tate Britain, London. He is working on his first novel.
Martin Rees, is a Fellow of Trinity College and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. He holds the honorary title of Astronomer Royal and holds several visiting professorships. His main current research interests are high energy astrophysics, especially gamma ray bursts, galactic nuclei, black hole formation and radiative processes (including gravitational waves) and cosmic structure formation, especially the early generation of stars and galaxies that formed at high redshifts at the end of the cosmic 'dark age'.
Irene Revell is Director of Electra Productions. Working across sound, moving image, performance and the visual arts recent projects include: Charming for the Revolution (The Tanks at Tate Modern, 2013); Toxic Play in Two Acts: Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz (South London Gallery, 2012); Her Noise: Feminisms and the Sonic (Tate Modern, 2012); From Below, as a Neighbour (Drugo More, Croatia, 2012); Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, Toxic (Les Laboratoires D'Aubervilliers and Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2012).
Lis Rhodes has since the 1970s been making radical and experimental films that challenge the viewer to reconsider film as a medium of communication and presentation of image, language, and sound. Her works were recently shown in the solo exhibition, Dissonance and Disturbance at the ICA and the performance installation Light Music (1975) was recreated for the Tanks at Tate Modern in 2012.
Mark von Schlegell is a science fiction writer and cultural critic. His novels include Venusia (2005), which was honor-listed for the 2007 James M. Tiptree Jr. Prize, Mercury Station (2009) and recently Sundogz (2015), all published by Semiotext(e), MIT Press. Mark von Schlegell's stories and essays appear regularly in underground newspapers, zines, art books and he is also a regular contributor to Art Forum, Frieze and Mousse.
Dr Simon O’Sullivan is Reader in Art Theory and Practice in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has published two monographs with Palgrave, Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari: Thought Beyond Representation (2005) and On the Production of Subjectivity: Five Diagrams of the Finite-Infinite Relation (2012), and is the editor, with Stephen Zepke, of both Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New (Continuum, 2008) and Deleuze and Contemporary Art (Edinburgh University Press, 2010). He also makes art, with David Burrows, under the name Plastique Fantastique.
28 January 2015, 10.30am-5.30pm
Bringing together thinkers, artists and innovators, this day of talks, performances and workshops will explore the new ways of working that are shaping a more sustainable future for the arts and culture. Presented at Wysing in partnership with Julie's Bicycle and The Junction Cambridge.
The day aims to inspire debate and equip participants with new insights and practical actions, with spotlights on: working internationally, materials and suppliers, skills sharing economies, how 'green' digital technology really is, and presentations of new work from The Cambridge Junction in collaboration with Angharad Wynne-Jones.
The day will be shaped by two themes:
Rip It Up and Start Again
We will look at the environmental and social issues around where we source our materials and resources. Julie’s Bicycle will be in conversation with Laura Billings, Jane Penty and Diana Simpson Hernandez exploring a rethink on how we use materials, and the emergent 'circular' and exchange economies shaping a sustainable future for the arts and culture.
The Artist is Not in The Room
This will focus on environmentally sustainable working models that have been enabled by digital technology. Julie’s Bicycle will chair a discussion including Cambridge Junction, Angharad Wynne-Jones and Donna Lynas around these models focusing on digital collaborations, working rurally-operating globally and the pros and cons surrounding digital technology and environmental sustainability within these working models.
Throughout the day there will be performances and practical action planning workshops.
Confirmed Speakers Include:
Laura Billings: Trade School London, Civic Systems Lab
Jane Penty: Practicing designer and educator, BA Product Design, Central Saint Martins
Diana Simpson Hernandez: Designer, Golondrina Design, SustainRCA Alumn
Donna Lynas: Artistic Director, Wysing Arts Centre
Angharad Wynne-Jones: Creative Producer, Arts House, Melbourne, Australia
Daniel Brine: Director, Cambridge Junction
About the Performances
Sarah Rodigari; 'Reach out and Touch Faith'
Reach out Touch Faith is part of a body of work exploring the triangular paradigm of artist, art object and audience in relation to participatory art practice. Removing the artist from the live performance, this work focuses on the position of artist within this paradigm. Rodigari employs the notion of sympathetic magic, calling on her totemic animal, the goat, to act as a spiritual guide within this paradigm. Protected by the gallery attendant, who performs a speech on behalf of artist, the audience (8 people at a time) are invited to spend time with and stroke the goat, embracing their own sense of curiosity and spiritual ambition. In doing so they channel a deeper connection with the art object (the goat) and in turn the artist (also the goat) drawing all three points of the triangle together in a shamanic experience.
Helen Cole and Alex Bradley in collaboration with Angharad Wynne-Jones; ‘one step at a time like this’
What would you pack in your suitcase if you were 'going nowhere'? Starting in their own homes, participants explore the idea of 'nowhere', prompted by text messages, audio instructions, poetic musings and, eventually, their real-time companions on this enigmatic journey. NOWHERE is a chance to consider where we dwell and what we carry with us; a chance to share a cup of tea and 'unpack' some preconceptions. (This performance will be presented at hourly intervals throughout the day)
Book your FREE place here.
14 December, 5.30-8pm
Modern Art Oxford and online
To bring our current residencies to a close we will be broadcasting from Wysing to Modern Art Oxford as part of their event Basement. TV, new digital platform for performance, music and film at Modern Art Oxford. The inaugural edition of Basement.TV is themed on Imagined Futures to accompany the exhibition Love is Enough. Imagined Futures will be broadcast in front of a studio audience, live from the Basement at Modern Art Oxford
Building on conversations and experiments that have evolved over their six weeks together at Wysing, residency artists Olivier Castel, Julia Crabtree & William Evans, Jesse Darling and Alice Theobald, will workshop the live feed as installation, streaming in from the rural environs of Wysing. The installation is built in and around the interstices in the artists' respective ways of working, where mediation meets authenticity and the cinematic meets theatrical (in digital): an open space where anything might happen - or nothing at all.
The schedule also includes:
- A documentary film about the making of Love is Enough, featuring Jeremy Deller.
-Short visions of the future from academics at the Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford.
-Goshka Macuga’s film Preparatory Notes for a Chicago Performance
-Performance of The Roadless Trip by Sarah Woods
-Live music from guest DJ Keith Harrison
The event can be accessed in person at Modern Art Oxford or online via thisistomorrow.
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22 November, 5-7pm
Dinner at the House, is an artist dinner / mediated happening with resident artists Olivier Castel, Jesse Darling, Alice Theobald and Crabtree & Evans & friends as part of 6PM YOUR LOCAL TIME (6PM YLT); a networked, distributed, one night contemporary art event, which takes place simultaneously in different locations, coordinated from one central venue, and documented online via a web application.
6 PM YOUR LOCAL TIME (6PM YLT) #6pmuk the UK beta test includes participation from:
Furtherfield
“6 PM YOUR LOCAL TIME - the UK beta test”
Furtherfield Commons, Finsbury Gate Finsbury Park, London
22 November 2014
Bloc Projects
“Louisa Martin – The Lighthouse”, exhibition and artist talk
4 Sylvester Street, Sheffield (UK)
22 November – 20 December 2014
Carroll/Fletcher
“Unoriginal Genius”, group show. Curated by Domenico Quaranta
Project Space, 17A Riding House St, London
31 October 22 November, 2014
Wysing Arts Centre
“Dinner at the House”, artist dinner / mediated happening with resident artists Olivier Castel, Jesse Darling, Alice Theobald and Crabtree & Evans & friends
Fox Road, Bourn, Cambridge
22 November 2014
Wysing's event can be accessed online using the Twitter hashtag #6pmuk
Enclave
“Lux13”, artist dinner
Resolution Way, London
22 November 2014
FACT
“Making in 3D”, workshop (with Lauren Moffatt)
88 Wood Street, Liverpool
22 November 2014
Federation House
“HOARD Artists Talk Hankering for Classification 2014”
Federation House, on the corner of Federation Street and Balloon Street, Manchester
Platform Arts Belfast
“All Or Nothing”, exhibition closing event
1 Queen Street, Belfast
November 7 – 26, 2014
PS2 – Paragon Studios
“Build Trust – Martin Carter”, exhibition
18 Donegall Street, Belfast
17 November – 06 December 2014
Seventeen
“Cécile B. Evans – Hyperlinks”, exhibition
“A Picture is No Substitute”, exhibition
270-276 Kingsland Road, London
15 October – 6 December 2014
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To accompany the exhibition The Influence of Furniture on Love, being held in Wysing's C17th farmhouse, we have invited three artists to host dinners that will bring some of the conversation that takes place in farmhouse during artists' residencies and retreats into the public realm. The dinners will take place in Wysing's gallery and there will also be an opportunity to visit the exhibition during the evening.
Saturday 11 October, 6-9pm
£20 per person, booking essential
Artists Ruth Beale and Giles Round will host a dinner of local artisanal produce alongside dishes made from seasonal and foraged ingredients. The dinner will take place in Wysing's gallery, amongst the contents of the farmhouse removed for the exhibition. Interventions will include salon discussion topics with each course and a reading by artist Anna Barham of John Maynard Keynes' essay Can we consume our surplus or the influence of furniture on love. King's College Cambridge have given us special permission to have this unpublished essay read aloud.
The evening will begin with tea served in Wysing's farmhouse at 6pm, followed by dinner in the gallery.
Giles Round is the co-curator of our current exhibition The Infleunce of Furniture on Love. Artist Ruth Beale has been running Miss B's Salons since 2008, roundtable discussion events that blur the boundary between public conversation and intimacy, formality and informality. Past events have included haircutting, play recitals, drawing workshops and giant books.
Please note: This dinner is now fully booked.
Saturday 1 November, 6-9pm
£20 per person, booking essential
Artist Philomene Pirecki will host a dinner themed around the colours black and white. Beginning with all white food, through to combinations of white and black, the dinner will culminate with an all black dessert. A selection of readings, screenings, and sound related to perception and colour will accompany the evening.
Philomene Pirecki’s practice includes painting, photography, drawing, slide projections, sculpture and text. She has contributed the works White Wall, Wysing Arts Centre farmhouse (14:26, 14:39, 14:18, 14:29, daylight, 9-8-14), 2014, Emulsion and acrylic paints, machine mixed and mixed by eye, 2.3m X 5.5m and Reflecting Studio White Wall, daylight, 15:43, 14-6-14 (2nd Generation), 2014, Colour C-type photograph to the exhibition The Influence of Furniture on Love.
Please note: This dinner is now fully booked.
9 June - 15 August
During Futurecamp we will be exploring what the future might hold, from five specific positions. Artists who will be in-residence are Bonnie Camplin, David Raymond Conroy, Patrick Goddard, Daniel Keller, Rachel Maclean, Shana Moulton, Ahmet Öğüt, Rachel Reupke, James Richards and Tracey Rose.
Futurecamp is curated by Wysing Curators, Kathy Noble and Gareth Bell-Jones.
Download a pdf of writer Jessica Lack's live blog commentary of the events here.
A series of fortnightly events will address elements of the way we live now and how these might evolve and affect the future and will comprise talks, discussion, screenings, performances and workshops.
Saturday 14 June, 12 – 5.40pm
The Way We Act Now: Psychology and Behaviour in the Digital Age
Behaviour and human interactions have been radically affected and changed by the impact of the digital and Internet revolutions – causing dramatic changes that we are still living through. The pleasure of our networked lives is played out publicly via social networks of image and text, and the immediate access to information and entertainment this enables is now considered essential. However, the anxiety caused by living in this network of constant communication mean many of us work all hours of the day via smart phones and tablets. Alongside this, our emotions are now instrumentalised via technology and the virtual world and we experience relationships and emotions through a screen.
With contributions from Dr Stefana Broadbent, Digital Anthropology MsC at University College; Dr Kathleen Richardson, Research Associate at Department of Anthropology, University College London; and artists Cécile B Evans, Jesse Darling, Shana Moulton, Rachel Reupke, Erica Scourti and Frances Stark.
Saturday 28 June, 12 – 5pm
Private vs Public: Activism, Economics and Politics Today
The relationship between the economy, politics and the way we are governed, is irrevocably intertwined and the future of one cannot be considered without the others. Added to which there is both a culture of apathy and an ongoing appetite for extreme activism and protest being necessary for society. The ability to forecast what may happen to the economy accurately will affect political thought and models, whilst widespread public dissatisfaction, and corrupt or unfair economies of labour and work, urge people towards more extreme viewpoints. Alongside this, the prevalence of surveillance via digital and drone technology creates a culture of secrecy and fear and needs to be considered openly. How we address and question these systems of power, imagine or envision alternatives, and how these are enacted are essential to how the future might be formed.
With contributions from Rammy El, producer, Al Jazeera; Ray Filar, journalist; Dr Claire Loussouarn, Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London, Aaron Bastani of Novaramedia; and artists Patrick Goddard, Josh Harris, Yuri Pattison, Nicoline Van Harskamp and Soheila Sokhanvari.
Saturday 12 July, 12 – 5pm
The Way We Live Now: Environmental and Social Consequences
The environments we live in, be they man-made or natural, are essential to our future development and possibly survival. The design and construction methods of the places and space’s we inhabit affect our physical and psychological experience by framing the way we live, alongside their long-term sustainability and impact on the environment; therefore, are inextricable from the social, political and environmental eco-systems we inhabit. The increasing lack of affordable socially and economically viable alternatives has led to many people being unable to sustain a reasonable standard of living. As such, what are the alternative ways of living and who will propose and instrumentalise these?
With contributions from Dr Richard Barbrook, Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages, University of Westminster; Louise Carver, doctoral researcher with the Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Value, Prof Ian Hodge, Professor of Rural Economics at the Department of Land Economy at University of Cambridge, Dr Isaac Marrero-Guillamón, Anthropology, Goldsmiths College; Ben Vickers, unMonastry and Curator of Digital, Serpentine Gallery; and artists Bonnie Camplin, David Raymond Conroy and Daniel Keller.
Saturday 26 July, 11am – 5pm
Alternative Methods: Art and Education
Plus Open Studios
Art education has become an urgent issue, at both secondary and university level, due to cuts in funding and the politics and public discussion surrounding its relevance to society. As such, the formal routes for education and engagement with art are failing, and access is becoming socially and economically more divided than ever. Artists have long created alternatives to the established institutions and methods. However, recently there has been a resurgence in this form of activity and discussion, in part in response to the general need, but also in relation to more specific questions of social and economic access for different parts of society and culture.
With contributions from Dr Matthew Cheeseman, School of English, University of Sheffield; Anna Colin, freelance curator, co-founder Open School East; Leah Gordon, Ghetto Biennale, Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Ahmet Ögüt, The Silent University; School of The Damned and Ella Ritchie, Director of Programming at Intoart with artist Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye; Sally Tallant, Director, Liverpool Biennial; artist Florian Roithmayr and the Expanded Studio group at Wysing.
Some of the artists based at Wysing will be opening their studios for this event.
Saturday 9 August, 12 – 5pm
A Post-Gender World
Is there a future in which humans can, and will want to, move beyond the biological and social constructions of gender? The ever increasing mediatisation of life has created a form of self-objectification unlike ever before, for both men and women. However, the discussion surrounding the presentation of girls and women has led to a heated public debate and a dramatic resurgence of feminist discourse within the media and public sphere. Within this, the consideration of the discourse surrounding gender identity, in its broadest sense, seems lacking, as the complexities of social and philosophical interpretations of how gender is formed and enacted, are marginalised within the main-stream.
With contributions from artists Zachary Drucker and Rhys Ernst, Richard John Jones, Rachel Maclean, Tracey Rose, Jessica Wiesner and D3signbur3au, alongside a film programme curated by James Richards.
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Saturday 9 August, 12 – 5pm
A Post-Gender World
Click here for our Eventbrite page to book return travel from Cambridge train station for this event. Transport will leave Cambridge station at 11.30am and return to the station at 5pm. Trains from London Kings Cross travel to Cambridge every 30 mins and the journey time is 45 mins. This event is FREE.
Join us for the fifth and final event in our Futurecamp series which explores how the complexities of social and philosophical interpretations of gender and identity are formed and enacted. With contributions, including new performances created for this event, from d3signbur3au, Zackary Drucker, Berivan Erdogan, Rhys Ernst, Richard John Jones, Rachel Maclean, Anne McGuire, Tracey Rose, James Richards, Leslie Thornton and Jessica Wiesner.
Event premise:
Is there a future in which humans can, and will want to, move beyond the biological and social constructions of gender? The ever increasing mediatisation of life has created a form of self-objectification unlike ever before, regardless of gender. Alongside this, questions around the presentation of girls and women has led to a heated public debate and a dramatic resurgence of feminist discourse within the mainstream media and politics. This event explores discourses around gender and identity, with artists and within their work.
Programme:
Richard John Jones' installation Keeping Watch Above the Flowers (2014) is an assemblage of collected images juxtaposing wilderness paintings of the Hudson River School with photographs of women manufacturing camouflage netting during WWII. Although historically and stylistically distinct, the two forms interplay with one another alluding to the question of historical erasure, the cultural specificity of the pictorial gaze and the duplicity of camouflage and recognition.
12pm: Welcome and introduction
12.10pm: Jess Wiesner presents a new performance. Using video juxtaposed with live event, she will address the notion of retainment in relation to contrary behaviour and its future implications on gender identity and expectations. By the way, what was Pepé Le Pew about anyway, and whatever happened to the undercat?
12.20pm: Screeing of Meanwhile (2013) by Berivan Erdogan. Selected by Futurecamp artist James Richards.
12.30pm: Collective d3signbur3au will present a narrative based on the post-gender character they have created, Agatha Valkyrie Ice, within the framework of social media. By inserting Agatha within established social media systems, d3signbur3au attempt to observe and analyse the clashes and controversies this move creates, whilst speculating on the current condition of neoliberal subjectivity through a feminist perspective.
1pm: Break
1.30pm: Futurecamp residency artist Tracey Rose presents elements of a new performance she is developing entitled KniggerKhaffirKhoon or KKK, which seeks to address issues of race, post-colonial heritage, the slave trade, modern media depictions of African Americans, and African, particularly South African, political and social dynamics.
1.50pm: Screening of When I Was A Monster (1996) and Joe Dimaggio 1, 2, 3 (1991) by Anne McGuire. When I Was A Monster is a video of a performance by McGuire examining her experiences and body during the aftermath of an accident. Joe Dimaggio 1, 2, 3 sees McGuire secretley follow and serenade Joe Dimaggio in her car, as he strolls the docks, unaware that McGuire is videotaping his every step. Selected by Futurecamp residency artist James Richards.
2.10: Break
2.30pm: Screening of Futurecamp residency artist Rachel Mclean’s Over The Rainbow (2013). Inspired by the Technicolor utopias of children's television, Over The Rainbow invites the viewer into a shape-shifting world inhabited by cuddly monsters, faceless clones and gruesome pop divas. Commissioned by The Banff Centre, Canada and The Collective Gallery, Edinburgh. Funded by Creative Scotland.
3.10pm: Break
3.30pm: Screening of Sahara/Mojave (2006) by Leslie Thornton, which the artist describes as a "little trip to Hollywood via North Africa, circa 1900. I hone an 'aesthetics of uncertainty' to question our understanding of the real." Selected by Futurecamp residency artist James Richards.
3.45pm: Discussion with artists Richard John Jones, Rachel Maclean, Tracey Rose, James Richards and Jess Weisner, chaired by Kathy Noble
4.30pm: The first UK screening of She Gone Rogue (2012) by Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst. “Darling” (played by Zackary Drucker) attempts to visit her “Auntie Holly” but instead falls down a rabbit hole, encountering a series of confounding, nebulous, complicated and contradictory trans-feminine archetypes. She Gone Rogue was written and produced by Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst, who also and directed it. It stars Zackary Drucker, Holly Woodlawn, Vaginal David, Flawless Sabrina, Rhys Ernst’s and Zackary’s parents, with an original score by Ellen Reid.
5pm: Event ends
Click here for our Eventbrite page to book return travel from Cambridge train station for this event.
Contributor Biographies
d3signbur3au is a collective comprising of Dorota Gaweda, Egle Kulbokaite and Catherine Österberg established in 2013.
Zackary Drucker is an artist who breaks down the way we think about gender, sexuality and seeing. Her participatory art works complicate established binaries of viewer and subject, insider and outsider, and male and female in order to create a complex image of the self. She has performed and exhibited her work internationally in numerous museums, galleries, and film festivals including the 54th Venice Biennale–Swiss Off-Site Pavilion; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; MOMA PS1; Deitch Projects; Leo Koenig Inc, the Hammer Museum and REDCAT in Los Angeles. She lives and works in Los Angeles and is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angelese.
Rhys Ernst is a writer/director who places multidimensional queer/trans characters within larger narratives, complicating (trans) gender representation in film and video. The Thing (2012) premiered at Sundance 2012 and She Gone Rogue premiered at the 2012 “Made in LA” Los Angeles Biennial at the Hammer Museum and subsequently in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and “Fan the Flames” at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Past screening venues include Oberhausen, Chicago International Film Festival, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and in Los Angeles at UCLA Hammer Museum, REDCAT and LACE.
Richard John Jones is an artist based in Amsterdam. Jones was co-director of the artist-run space Auto Italia South East in London between 2011 and 2012. His work explores the act of withdrawal and the notion of the performative silence drawing on a history of anti-assimilationist queer movements, camouflage and also the occult; namely practices of witch-craft, neo-paganism and ritual. He is questioning how this interacts with our contemporary preoccupation with visibility and recognition as key emancipatory paradigms.
Rachel Maclean makes videos that combine a multitude of aesthetic and performative tropes from pop videos, YouTube performances and commercials to nursery rhymes, creating day-glo, hyper-real compositions, in which she performs all the characters herself. These works address contemporary identity and consumption in work that could only have been made in today’s ‘post-Internet’ world. Recent and upcoming solo-exhibitions include The Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; Glasgow Film Festival, (2014); I HEART SCOTLAND, as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival and Germs, for Channel 4 Random Acts (2013). Rachel Maclean lives and works in Glasgow.
Anne McGuire is a San Francisco-based video, sound and performance artist, who uses video as a confessional tool, a device to record her difficult and traumatic personal experiences for public consumption and as such, is always a presence in her videos, whether or not she’s in front of the lens. Her work has been shown as part of exhibitions and screenings at such institutions as the Tate Gallery, London, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, YYZ Artists Outlet, Toronto, and the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art.
Tracey Rose works with performance, film and photography to make work that addresses the complexity of gender, sexuality and racial identities, usually performing as multiple characters, allowing her to play with the ambiguity that this creates. Rose has had solo presentations in Europe, the Americas and Africa, and has been featured in major international events such as the Venice Biennale in 2001 and group exhibitions such as Africa Remix (2005), Hayward Gallery, London, Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Tracey Rose: Waiting for God, the artist’s mid-career survey show, was held at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (2011) and Bildmuseet, Umeå University, Sweden, (2012). In 2014 Rose had a solo exhibition, (x), at Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid.
James Richards works primarily between moving image, sound and sculpture, often merging these forms within individual works to interrogate the experience of what it is to view and be viewed. Richards is a current Turner Prize nominee and was a 2012 recipient of the Derek Jarman award. Recent solo exhibitions include The Screens, RODEO, Istanbul (2013); James Richards at CCA Kitakyushu, Japan (2012); and Not Blacking Out, Just Turning the Lights Off at Chisenhale Gallery, London (2011) and Tate Britain (2010). He lives and works in Berlin and London.
Leslie Thornton's experimental film and video work is an investigation into the production of meaning through media, where form and content are co-extensive. She has been honored with the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013 and the Maya Deren Award. Thornton's film and media works have been exhibited worldwide including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Biennial Exhibition; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Rotterdam International Film Festival; New York Film Festival; capcMusée, Bordeaux; and Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley. Thornton is Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.
Jess Wiesner is an artist who works and lives in London.
Saturday 26 July 11am - 6.30pm
Alternative Methods: Art and Education
Plus Open Studios
Click here for our Eventbrite page to book return travel from Cambridge train station for this event. Transport will leave Cambridge station at 10.30am and return to the station at 6.30pm. Trains from London Kings Cross travel to Cambridge every 30 mins and the journey time is 45 mins. This event is FREE.
You are very welcome to stay on with us for the evening, for our summer BBQ, which starts after the event.
The fourth event in our Futurecamp series includes contributions from artist Lucy Beech, Dr Matthew Cheeseman, School of English, University of Sheffield; Anna Colin, freelance curator, co-founder Open School East; the Wysing Expanded Studio Group presented by artists Frank Abbott and Rob Smith; Leah Gordon, Ghetto Biennale, Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Futurecamp residency artist Ahmet Ögüt, with student Senay Öztürk; Sara Nunes Fernandes, co-founder of School of The Damned with current students Ruth Angel Edwards and Emilia Bergmark; Ella Ritchie, Director of Programming at Intoart with artist Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye; artist Florian Roithmayr; and Sally Tallant, Director, Liverpool Biennial.
Artists based at Wysing who will be opening their studios are: Erica Böhr, Jackie Chettur, Elena Cologni, Lawrence Epps, Bettina Furnée, Soheila Sokhanvari, Rob Smith, Helen Stratford, Ash Summers, Caroline Wendling, Lisa Wilkens and Caroline Wright.
Wysing’s annual Leverhulme Arts Scholars Summer School will also be operating during the event. Information on the School can be found here.
Premise of the event
Art education has become an urgent issue, at both secondary and university level, due to cuts in funding and the politics and public discussion surrounding its relevance to society. As such, the formal routes for education and engagement with art are failing, and access is becoming socially and economically more divided than ever. Artists have long created alternatives to the established institutions and methods. However, recently there has been a resurgence in this form of activity and discussion, in part in response to the general need, but also in relation to more specific questions of social and economic access for different parts of society and culture.
Schedule
11am – 12noon Wysing Artists Open Studios
12pm: Introduction and welcome
12.10pm: Sally Tallant will discuss her approach to art and education, within the range of different programmes she has run, previously at The Serpentine Gallery, and now as Director of the Liverpool Biennial.
12.30pm: Anna Colin will discuss Open School East. Located in a former library in De Beauvoir Town, East London, OSE is a non-fee paying study programme for 12 associate artists and a space that is host to a wide-ranging public programme. Anna Colin will be joined by current OSE associate Lucy Beech.
12.50pm: Sara Nunes Fernandes will discuss the School Of The Damned, an unaccredited MA course run by its students which advocates free education and demands a universal acknowledgment of education as a fundamental right. She is accompanied by current students Ruth Angel Edwards and Emilia Bergmark.
1.10pm: Open discussion
1.30: Break with teas, coffees and snacks available and Wysing Artists Open Studios
2.30pm: Leah Gordon will talk about the Ghetto Biennale, Port-au-Prince, Haiti – a cross-cultural arts festival held every two years since 2009 in a popular neighbourhood in Port-au-Prince hosted by the Haitian arts collective, Atis Rezistans.
2.50pm: Ella Ritchie, Director of Programming, and artist Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye discuss Intoart, a London based art collective that includes people with learning disabilities and has developed a reputation for sharing practice inclusively with audiences.
3.10pm: Frank Abbott and Rob Smith will discuss the Expanded Studio Group formed by the artists who have studios at Wysing Arts Centre and at Primary, Nottingham. They will present aspects of their self-organised project as an experiment in community and collaboration.
3.30pm: Break with teas, coffees and snacks available.
3.50pm: Dr Matthew Cheeseman, Research Fellow in the School of English, University of Sheffield, and Wysing studio artist Florian Roithmayr will discuss the concept of ‘tacit knowing’ developed by Hungarian theorist Michael Polanyi.
4.10pm: Futurecamp residency artist Ahmet Ögüt will discuss The Silent University, an autonomous knowledge exchange platform by and for refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. With current student Senay Öztürk, he will then introduce Aciliyet Mektebi, a new autonomous pedagogic laboratory space initiated by Öğüt.
4.30pm: Open discussion
5.30pm: Wysing Artists Open Studios
6.30pm: Event ends - You are very welcome to stay on with us for the evening, for our summer BBQ
Contributor Biographies
Frank Abbott is a studio artist at Primary, Nottingham. He makes films and video installations and has a long record of organising collaborative projects, including the European funded Creative Collaborations (2002-2005). His recent work includes working with the painter Duncan Higgins, Muscle (Berlin 2011) and a workshop on collaboration with Indian artists in Jaipur.
Aciliyet Mektebi is an autonomous pedagogic laboratory space initiated by Ahmet Öğüt. It started with an urgent need to rethink alternative models for the current education system in Turkey. It aims to engage the existing capacity of knowledge between professionals and students and turn itself into a collective learning center. It aims to promote strategies that offer equal learning opportunities and exchange knowledge and skills with a parasitic approach of pedagogy instead of target practice and banking system of education. Its first hosting venue will be SALT Beyoğlu from summer 2014.
Lucy Beech is an artist living and working in London. Recent presentations of her work include: Cigarette Game 2 (Tearing it Up), Tent, Rotterdam (2014), Passive Aggressive 2, Camden Arts Centre, London (2014), Left Behind Together, Outpost, Norwich (2013) in collaboration with Edward Thomasson; Young London, V22, London (2013); Buried Alive, Plaza Plaza, London (2013); 21st Century, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2013) and One Another’s Company, IMT Gallery, London (2011). Beech is currently an associate at Open School East.
Dr Matthew Cheeseman is a research fellow in the School of English, University of Sheffield. He is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and the University of Sheffield. He worked in contemporary art before becoming an academic, where he now works between English Literature, Folklore, Creative Writing, Music and Education.
Anna Colin is a curator and writer based in London. She is a co-director of Open School East, associate curator at Fondation Galeries Lafayette in Paris and co-curator, with Lydia Yee, of the next British Art Show.
Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye is a member of the London-based art collective, Intoart. Her practice integrates the visual, written and spoken word through print, text, image and live performance. She had a recent solo exhibition at Saison Poetry Library, Southbank Centre (2014). Group exhibitions include ‘See Revolutionary Art Exhibit’ at Whitechapel Gallery (2009/10), Tate Modern 'No Soul For Sale' (2010), Studio Voltaire (2007) and at MAD Musée, Belgium (2011).
The Expanded Studio Project is an artist-led initiative that has emerged from out of two in-house collaborative projects developed independently by current studio holders at Wysing Arts Centre and Primary (Nottingham). The 24 artists are trialling a collaboration between different geographic locations to extend their practices beyond their own studio. The project will use a continuous live link between studios and feature a final public event shared across two sites and online.
Leah Gordon is an artist and curator. Her film and photographic work has been exhibited internationally. She is the co-director of the Ghetto Biennale, was one of the curators for the Haitian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale, and was the co-curator of Kafou: Haiti, History & Art, at Nottingham Contemporary. Gordon is represented by Riflemaker Gallery, London. The Ghetto Biennale is a cross-cultural arts festival held every two years since 2009 in Port-au-Prince hosted by the Haitian arts collective, Atis Rezistans.
Ahmet Ögüt is a socio-cultural initiator, mediator, artist, negotiator and lecturer, whose work addresses social situations, communications, and recently, alternative forms of educational and institutional systems. Öğüt exhibits widely internationally working across a variety of media. Ögüt was awarded with the Visible Award for The Silent University (2013) and he co-represented Turkey at the 53rd Venice Biennale together with Banu Cennetoğlu (2009). Ahmet Öğüt lives and works in Istanbul.
Located in a former library in De Beauvoir Town, East London, Open School East is a non-fee paying study programme for 12 associate artists and a space that is host to a wide-ranging public programme. It was instituted in 2013 as a space for artistic learning that is structurally light, collaborative and experimental, and that invites interactions between artists, local residents and the broader public.
Ella Ritchie is the Director of Programming and founder member of Intoart. Since 2001, she has initiated and developed programming that seeks to create opportunities working with people with learning disabilities facing barriers to inclusion through social, economic and health factors, and with little or no access to art education. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton.
Florian Roithmayr‘s work involves the presentation of hand-crafted, sculpted and cast homages to the production of objects. He has recently had solo exhibitions at Site Gallery, sheffield, MOT International London, Galerie Neue Alte Brücke in Frankfurt and Treignac Projet, France. Florian Roithmayr is represented by MOTInternational in London and Neue Alte Brücke in Frankfurt. He has a studio at Wysing.
The School of the Damned is an unaccredited MA course run by its students which advocates free education and demands a universal acknowledgment of education as a fundamental right. The School of the Damned was produced as a pragmatic response to the current educational system and as a protest against it. Sara Nunes Fernandes is one of the founders, she is accompanied by current students Ruth Angel Edwards and Emilia Bergmark.
Rob Smith is a studio artist at Wysing Arts Centre, who alongside his own practice has a collaborative practice with Charles Danby and a co-director of Field Broadcast. Recent venues for projects include IMT Gallery London, a symposium at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and Den Frie, Copenhagen.
Sally Tallant is Director of Liverpool Biennial – The UK Biennial of Contemporary Art. From 2001–11 she was Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Gallery, London where she was responsible for the development and delivery of an integrated programme of Exhibitions, Architecture, Education and Public Programmes. She has curated exhibitions in a wide range of contexts and developed long-term projects including The Edgware Road Project, Skills Exchange and Disassembly. She initiated the Park Nights series in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions and co-curated the Serpentine Gallery Marathon series with Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Jessica Lack will live blog this event. Jessica Lack is a freelance arts writer for the Guardian. She was the previews arts editor of The Guide for ten years and now contributes to G2 and the arts and culture section online. She also contributes to various art and culture magazines including Dazed and Confused, ID Magazine and World of Interiors. She was Deputy Editor of Tate Magazine for five years and has published various catalogue essays and art books. She was writer-in-residence at Jerwood in September 2012.
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Saturday 12 July 12noon-5pm
The Way We Live Now: Environmental and Social Consequences
Click here for our Eventbrite page to book return coach travel from Cambridge train station for this event. The coach will leave Cambridge station at 11.30am and return to the station at 5pm. Trains from London Kings Cross travel to Cambridge every 30 mins and the journey time is 45 mins. This event is FREE.
The third event in our Futurecamp series includes contributions from Dr Richard Barbrook, Bonnie Camplin, Louise Carver, David Raymond Conroy, Prof Ian Hodge, Daniel Keller, Dr Isaac Marrero-Guillamón and Ben Vickers.
Click above for the archived broadcast of the event 12-4.05pm.
Premise of the event:
The environments we live in, be they man-made or natural, are essential to our future development, and possibly our survival. The design and construction methods of the places and spaces we inhabit affect our physical and psychological experience by framing the way we live, alongside their long-term sustainability and impact on the environment. These methods are therefore inextricable from the social, political and environmental eco-systems we inhabit.
The increasing lack of affordable socially and economically viable alternatives has led to many people being unable to sustain a reasonable standard of living. As such, what are the alternative ways of living and who will propose and instrumentalise these?
Event schedule:
12.00pm: Introduction from Wysing Curators Kathy Noble and Gareth Bell Jones
12.10pm: Dr Richard Barbrook, senior lecturer in the department of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages at University of Westminster, will present a talk updating his 1995 essay The Californian Ideology on the eve of its twentieth anniversary. Co-written with Andy Cameron, the original essay is a critique of dotcom neoliberalism. This new paper, The Californian Ideology 20.0, updates the essay to argue for rational and conscious control over the shape of the digital future, an inclusive and universal cyberspace and a rebirth of the Modern.
12.40pm: Dr Isaac Marrero-Guillamón, lecturer in Anthropology at Goldsmiths College will present a talk entitled London’s Olympic Re-Development: Legal Architectures, Grand Narratives and Disobedient Artifacts. This presentation discusses the legal architecture of the Lower Lea Valley Olympic “regeneration” project, as well as some of the ways in which a series of disobeying artifacts articulated a counter-narrative of the transformation of this part of East London. These works were part of a larger constellation of critical practices that challenged the politics of effacement and the cartography of consensus enacted by the Games.
1.10pm: Open discussion chaired by Gareth Bell-Jones.
1.25pm: Break with teas, coffees and snacks available.
1.55pm: Prof Ian Hodge, Professor of Rural Economics at the Department of Land Economy at University of Cambridge, will reflect on the way in which environmental issues are discussed in terms of ecosystems services and the implications of valuations and payments for ecosystems services approaches.
2.15pm: Louise Carver is a doctoral researcher with the Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Value, and based in the Department of Geography, Environment and Development studies, at Birkbeck College. Biodiversity offsetting is frequently critiqued as the commodification of biotic life through the entangled logics of capitalism and conservation, or defended as a pragmatic solution compatible with development and growth. Carver will discuss the framing and narratives that sustain the idea of biodiversity as amenable to market based values and those that offer scope to articulate alternatives.
2.35pm: Open discussion chaired by Kathy Noble
2.50: Break with teas, coffees and snacks available
3.05pm: Futurecamp residency artist David Raymond Conroy presents a performance lecture investigating analysis paralysis within behavioural economics. Analysis paralysis is the state of over-analysing (or over-thinking) a situation so that a decision or action is never taken. In an economic context it refers to the escalation of the increase of choice, the increased profit margins that this brings and the increased dissatisfaction and confusion on the part of consumers. Through examples in popular culture, Conroy will display how psychological, social, and emotional responses are affected by the economic decisions of individuals and institutions, market prices and returns.
3.25pm: Ben Vickers, co-founder of the unMonastery and Curator of Digital at Serpentine Gallery will present a talk focusing on the unMonastery, an ambitious and radical response to the challenge of bridging the gap between working to make a living and working to make meaning. It draws inspiration from the 10th century monastic life to encourage radical forms of social innovation and collaboration. Vickers will breakdown how different methodologies can be used to demonstrate the existing capacity for a bottom up smart city and what this could begin to look like. Followed by a Q&A.
4.05pm: Break with teas, coffees and snacks available.
4.20pm: Futurecamp residency artist Daniel Keller will present a new performance entitled An iDrive. Using a script by Daniel Keller and Ella Plevin, this work is a speculation on the future of the Californian Ideology in the form of a short sci-fi stage performance. The scene takes place at the beginning of a self-driving Tesla car journey from Freistadt Cupertino to the Autonomous Kingdom of Nevada. It features a dialogue between Kai Zuckerberg, the hacktivist daughter of Mark and Priscilla Zuckerberg and Dalston Kutcher (son of Ashton and Mila), her air-headed AbEx painter boyfriend who recently got super into Ayn Rand.
4.40: Futurecamp residency artist Bonnie Camplin will give her attention to the correlations between two books. The first, Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (1979) is a novel about a thirty-seven year old Mexican-American woman who, under great duress, experiences different sci-fi and utopian visions of the future. The second, Dr. Richard Alan Miller's Power Tools for the 21st Century (2013) shows the protocols developed for the Navy SEALs to create super soldiers.
5.00pm: Event ends
Click here for our Eventbrite page to book return coach travel from Cambridge train station for this event. Trains from London Kings Cross travel to Cambridge every 30 mins and the journey time is 45 mins.
Contributors Biographies:
Dr Richard Barbrook is an academic in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages at the University of Westminster. Working with Andy Cameron, he wrote The Californian Ideology a pioneering critique of the neo-liberal politics of Wired magazine. His other important writings about the Net include The Hi-Tech Gift Economy, Cyber-communism, The Regulation of Liberty, and The Class of the New and in 2007 published Imaginary Futures. In the early 1980s, he was involved with pirate and community radio broadcasting, helping to set up Spectrum Radio station in London. In 1995, he became the coordinator of the Hypermedia Research Centre at Westminster's Media School.
Bonnie Camplin is an artist based in London. She broadly describes her work as ‘The Invented Life’, which has included eight years as a para-theatrical producer, director, dancer and performer of experimental club nights as well as work across the disciplines of drawing, film and video, performance, music and writing. She exhibits internationally and her work has included collaborations with artists Enrico David, Mark Leckey, Lucy McKenzie and Paulina Olowska. She is currently a Lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and was Guest Professor of the Film-Class at Städelschule Frankfurt from 2008 to 2010.
Louise Carver is a doctoral researcher with the Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Value based in the Department of Geography, Environment and Development studies, at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her research concerns the valuation processes involved in biodiversity offsetting, an emergent approach towards conservation. Louise organises NATURES, a travelling music and arts festival venue that hosts speakers and panel discussions around social science perspectives on society’s relationship with science, technology and mainstream views on sustainability.
David Raymond Conroy is an artist based in London. His compositions investigate the performance and construction of subjectivity within shared social space. Conroy presented the solo project, PPE, or It is spring and I am blind at Modern Art Oxford in 2013, other projects include a solo presentation L’homme qui voulait savoir at GP & N Vallois, Paris, a staged reading Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, (with Andy Holden), ICA, London and Arnolfini and the exhibition A Plea for Tenderness, Seventeen Gallery, London. He lives and works in London.
Prof Ian Hodge is Professor of Rural Economics at the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge. His positions include: fellow at Hughes Hall; fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors; member of the management board at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership; member of the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs Economics Advisory Panel; member of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative University Working Group; and also board member of the Nene Park Trust. He was head of the Department of Land Economy, from 2002 to 2011 and was a Cambridge Fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, Feb-May 2013.
Daniel Keller is an artist from Chicago based in Berlin. His wide-ranging output engages with issues at the intersection of economics, technology, culture and collaboration. His current focus of research is on notions of progress, technological disruption and the role of the post-studio 'prosumer imagineer' artist in the global networked economy. As Aids-3D, he has exhibited throughout Europe and the United States since 2006. Recent solo exhibtions include eVita, Casa Maauad, Mexico City (2014); 63rd-77th steps, Bari, Italy (2014); Lazy Ocean Drift, New Galerie, Paris (2013); abc, art berlin contemporary, with Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin (2013). He lives and works in Berlin.
Dr Isaac Marrero-Guillamón is lecturer in anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. His main areas of interest are urban regeneration, documentary practices and experimental ethnography. He is the editor, with Hilary Powell, of The Art of Dissent: Adventures in London´s Olympic State (Marshgate Press, 2012).
Ben Vickers is a curator, writer, network analyst, technologist and luddite. Currently Curator of Digital at the Serpentine Gallery, he co-runs LIMAZULU Project Space, is NearNow Fellow and facilitates the development of unMonastery, a new civically minded social space based in Matera, Southern Italy.
Jessica Lack will live blog this event. Jessica Lack is a freelance arts writer for the Guardian. She was the previews arts editor of The Guide for ten years and now contributes to G2 and the arts and culture section online. She also contributes to various art and culture magazines including Dazed and Confused, ID Magazine and World of Interiors. She was Deputy Editor of Tate Magazine for five years and has published various catalogue essays and art books. She was writer-in-residence at Jerwood in September 2012.
Saturday 28 June, 12 – 5pm
Private vs Public: Activism, Economics and Politics Today
The second event in our Futurecamp series includes contributions from Aaron Bastani, founder of Novara Media; Rammy El, producer, Al Jazeera; Ray Filar, journalist; and artists Patrick Goddard, Josh Harris, Yuri Pattison, Nicoline Van Harskamp and Soheila Sokhanvari.
Click above for the archived broadcast of the event from 12noon until 4.10pm.
This event was also live blogged throughout by Jessica Lack. Click here to read the blog.
Premise of the event:
The relationship between the economy, politics and the way we are governed, is irrevocably intertwined and the future of one cannot be considered without the others. Added to which there is both a culture of apathy and an ongoing appetite for extreme activism and protest being necessary for society. The ability to forecast what may happen to the economy accurately will affect political thought and models, whilst widespread public dissatisfaction, and corrupt or unfair economies of labour and work, urge people towards more extreme viewpoints. Alongside this, the prevalence of surveillance via digital and drone technology creates a culture of secrecy and fear and needs to be considered openly. How we address and question these systems of power, imagine or envision alternatives, and how these are enacted are essential to how the future might be formed.
This event will be live blogged throughout by Jessica Lack. Check Facebook and Twitter for updates on both.
Event schedule:
12.00pm: Introduction from Wysing Curators Kathy Noble and Gareth Bell Jones
12.10pm: Aaron Bastani, founder of Novara Media will present the talk ‘Work, Technology, Politics: 2 Visions of the Future’, in which he will discuss the technological changes that are currently occurring, the affect these will have on work and the, increasingly blurred, distinctions between public and private. Is there a future ‘without work’? Or, regardless of the technological developments, such as 3D printing and rapid information exchange, can a new version of society will occur without radical political change too?
12.50-1.30pm: Journalist Ray Filar will give a talk entitled How to stay sane when everything is shit. The silence and social stigma surrounding mental health is deliberate, the product of an institutional refusal to talk about the affective impact of socio-political conditions. Some people get depressed, or psychotic, we think, because of chemical imbalances or individual traumatic experiences. They're just lazy or making it up. We don't talk about austerity, poverty, demonisation of the unemployed – the politically-driven stigmatising of the least privileged groups of people – but is it any wonder we're unhappy?
1.30-2pm: Discussion chaired by Wysing Curator Kathy Noble
2pm: Break with teas, coffees and snacks available
2.30pm: Artist Soheila Sokhanvari and Al Jazeera producer Rammy El will speak about, and discuss, two different aspects of Middle Eastern society and politics – relating histories, to recent events and their media broadcast. Sokhanvari will address the twentieth century politics of Iran – from the 1920s to the fall of the Shah in 1979 – focusing on the role of the dictator as the father of the nation and the rise and the fall of Pahlavi regime. Alongside this, El will attempt to construct a framework for how the patriarch figure within Egyptian society manifests itself by using excerpts from Egyptian film, television and media coverage of the Tahrir protests.
3.20pm: Artists Yuri Pattison and Josh Harris will discuss the their shared interest in information technology's effect on society. This will primarily centre on Harris' work from the turn of the century to the present; specifically Harris' prophetic networked social experiments Quiet & We Live in Public and his current project Net Band Command which is the foundation for a "virtual city state”. Its mission, as described by Harris, is to create the "Singularities Effect" well in advance of its arrival to the masses – or in other words, create a time machine that peers into the near future, enabling us to experience the human chicken factory "cage" before the door slams shut.
4.10pm: Break with teas, coffees and snacks available
4.30pm: Screening of Nicoline Van Harskamp’s film Yours in Solidarity (2011 - 2013) which addresses the recent history of anarchism through the correspondence archive of Karl Max Kreuger. From 1988 until 1999, the late Dutch anarchist corresponded by post with hundreds of like-minded people worldwide. As one of these letter writers herself, van Harskamp studied the archive for more than a year and tried to imagine the many proponents’ life stories since the last date of writing. She chose especially captivating correspondents, gave them a pseudonym, collected notes on them and produced their personality reports through an online handwriting analysis program. She then cast professional actors for each writer, with the relevant nationality and estimated current age, to work with her, one at the time, on creating a character with a biography and set of views detailed enough to conduct an interview. The resulting video, named after a much-used anarchist sign-off, suggests what might happen if the international correspondents were to meet today.
4.45pm: Patrick Goddard will present the performance Apocalipstick (2014); a wry look at the political potential of art, specifically concentrating on poetry. It comprises elements of Goddard’s own poetry, fluctuating between nihilistic skepticism and a belief in the political agency of art, in order to ask ‘when does thinking end and action begin… or are they the same thing?’ Alongside this, Goddard will examine the untitled poem by William Blake, commonly referred to as “Jerusalem” – which stands as a challenge to artists to embrace their potential political agency, standing against nationalism, industrialization and established hierarchy – culminating in a new musical rendition of the poem.
5.00pm: Event ends
Contributors Biographies:
Aaron Bastani (my father's name) is the founder of Novara Media and a doctoral candidate at the New Political Communications Unit, University of London. He has a graduate degree in international public policy and has written for publications including Vice, The London Review of Books, The Guardian and Open Democracy.
Rammy El is producer for the television station Aljazeera International. His background is in video research, editing animation and producing promotions, addressing the cross over between politics and architecture, whether in the built environment or in other systems. His work at Aljazeera as a producer during the critical juncture of the Arab spring, exposed him to the fast paced changes and key players within the political and social unrest of this time.
Patrick Goddard is an artist and writer working in London. Recent works have taken the form of videos, books, performances and sculpture, all with an emphasis on observational anecdotes or research led articles, often utilising visual games or puns to offset sociological observances. Recent and forthcoming shows include Revolver II, Matt’s Gallery, Solo Show, London, (2014); Operation Paperclip, Comic launch and performance at Matt’s Gallery, London, (2014); and Open Film, Outpost Gallery, Norwich, (2013).
Ray Filar is a journalist and an editor at openDemocracy, working on the Transformation section. Their writing has been published in The Guardian, The Times, and the New Statesman, among others. Ray is interested in power and disadvantage, feminist and queer politics, (sub)culture, and other political struggles. They tweet, @rayfilar, their website is here.
Nicoline Van Harskamp lives and works in Amsterdam. Her work aims to address the function and power of the spoken word, and its ability to shape political thought and action. Using footage of public presentations and debates, records of conversational writing and other available or generated material, she writes the scripts for her video and performance pieces. Her film Yours in Solidarity was presented in different stages of completion at the MUAC in Mexico City, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Manifesta 9 in Genk, the 2013 Shanghai Biennial, GMK in Zagreb, D+T Project Gallery in Brussels, the Sydney Biennial 2014 and elsewhere. In 2009 she won the Dutch national prize for contemporary art, Prix de Rome.
Soheila Sokhanvari, born in Iran and living and working in Cambridge, is a multi-media artist who works with everyday found objects to make works that are multi layered and deal with mass trauma and politics of a nation told through the narrative of the individual and historical conflicts. Recent exhibitions include The Moving Museum’s show Open Heart Surgery in London, 2013 and Hey, I’m Mr Poetic at Wysing Arts Centre in 2014 and has a solo exhibition at Janet Rady Gallery in Basel, June 2014.
Josh Harris started a leading Internet research firm Jupiter Communications in 1986. He took the company public and cashed out. In 1994, he founded the world's first internet radio/television network, Pseudo Programs, Inc. He was the subject of the Grand Jury Prize winning documentary film We Live In Public at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, which was later acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Mr Harris has also captained a sport fishing boat, played poker professionally, farmed apples commercially, lived at loose ends in Malta and rediscovered himself in the great country of Ethiopia. He is currently raising a cyber-army called the Net Band Command.
Yuri Pattison, born in Ireland and living and working in Berlin, is an artist working with, and creating, subjective datasets. Pattison’s work reflects on the impact of digital media on our understanding of reality, highlighting inconsistencies in the system of representation. Mastering a huge variety of media, his work often uses different devices to explore the strengths and limits of digital communication. He has shown extensively internationally and online, including solo presentations at Minibar Artists Space, Stockholm, Project/Number, London, Arcadia Missa, London, SPACE, London, Bubblebyte.org, Legion TV, London & New Museum, New York.
Jessica Lack will live blog this event. Jessica Lack is a freelance arts writer for the Guardian. She was the previews arts editor of The Guide for ten years and now contributes to G2 and the arts and culture section online. She also contributes to various art and culture magazines including Dazed and Confused, ID Magazine and World of Interiors. She was Deputy Editor of Tate Magazine for five years and has published various catalogue essays and art books. She was writer-in-residence at Jerwood in September 2012.
Saturday 14 June, 12 – 5.40pm
The Way We Act Now: Psychology and Behaviour in the Digital Age
The first event in our Futurecamp series explores how behaviour and human interactions have been radically affected and changed by the impact of the digital and Internet revolutions. With contributions from Dr Stefana Broadbent, Jesse Darling, Cécile B Evans, Shana Moulton, Rachel Reupke, Dr Kathleen Richardson, Erica Scourti and Frances Stark.
The first event in our Futurecamp series includes contributions from Dr Stefana Broadbent, Jesse Darling, Cécile B Evans, Shana Moulton, Rachel Reupke, Dr Kathleen Richardson, Erica Scourti and Frances Stark.
Premise of the event:
Behaviour and human interactions have been radically affected and changed by the impact of the digital and Internet revolutions – causing dramatic changes that we are still living through. The pleasure of our networked lives is played out publicly via social networks of image and text, and the immediate access to information and entertainment this enables is now considered essential.
However, the anxiety caused by living in this network of constant communication mean many of us work all hours of the day via smart phones and tablets. Alongside this, our emotions are now instrumentalised via technology and the virtual world and we experience relationships and emotions through a screen.
This event will be live streamed from 12noon-2.15pm. Writer Jessica Lack will live blog throughout. Check Facebook for updates on both.
Event schedule:
12pm: Welcome and introduction from Wysing Curators Kathy Noble and Gareth Bell-Jones
12.10pm: Dr Stefana Broadbent, Digital Anthropology at University College will present aspects of her research in relationship to the psychological and behavioural affects that occur in our personal communication, as a result of the digital world we live in today.
12.40pm: Dr Kathleen Richardson, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Department of Anthropology, University College London will present Digital Social Networking: A Collective Out of Body Experience?, exploring the rise of digital social networking as a dissociative practice; in that studies of social networking are focused on what people say is happening, rather than what is happening when people interact via machines.
1.10pm: Open Discussion followed by a break with refreshments available
1.45pm: Screening of AGNES (the end is near), 2014, by Cécile B Evans followed by a discussion with Kathy Noble, Wysing Curator about AGNES; a bot - an automated programme - that lives on the Serpentine Gallery's website.
2.15pm: Habeas Corpus Ad Subjiciendum, or Body of Work? You're Looking At It powerpoint, text. (2013), a performance lecture by Jesse Darling.
2.45pm: Screening of Rachel Reupke’s Wine & Spirits (2013),a film about alcohol and romance, and the rituals that link the two. In a hybrid of real life observation and advertising image, a man and a woman meet for a drink in a series of scenes in which physical gesture and verbal disjuncture are emphasised by the absence of sound.
Screening of Life in AdWords (2012-13) by Erica Scourti; a project in which Scourti wrote and emailed her daily diary to her Gmail account and then performed to a webcam the list of suggested keywords linking to clusters of relevant ads, making visible the way we and our personal information are the product in the 'free' internet economy.
Screening of You Could've Said (2013) by Erica Scourti; made using Google's keyword search-engine to write a confessional text and originally performed live online for Fieldbroadcast . Total 20 mins.
3.20pm: Break – refreshments available
3.30pm: A new performance by Shana Moulton; as her middle-aged house-wife alter-ego Cynthia
4pm: Screening of My Best Thing (2011) by Frances Stark; a conversation between two online avatars, on a dating website, that develops into a sexual affair between an older woman and a younger man, in this feature length animation – a story which Stark developed from real experiences that occurred between her and others, in online chat rooms. 1hr 40 mins.
5.40pm: Ends.
Contrbutor biographies:
Dr Stefana Broadbent is a fellow of the new Digital Anthropology programme at University College London. She began her academic life as a developmental psychologist and a cognitive scientist and since 1991 has undertaken ethnographic research on emerging digital practices, using a cognitive anthropological approach. She has spent decades observing people as they use technology both at home and in complex workspaces such as air-traffic control towers and nuclear power plants, looking at the ways we use digital tools to relate and create new social systems. In particular, she focussed on our social expectations regarding giving and receiving, publishing a chapter on Personal Communication in the book Digital Anthropology (2012) edited by Heather A. Horst and Daniel Miller. Her current research focuses on the workplace and the social phenomena of digital activities that occur within it.
Jesse Darling is an artist and occasional essayist living and working in London and wherever. S/he works in sculpture, installation, digital, “dasein by design”, and the space in which performance becomes unmediated experience, researching ways to #occupy [and resist] the contested territory of subjectivity, sociality and the physical body. S/he recently completed an MFA at Slade and has exhibited, published and performed internationally. JD is represented by Arcadia_Missa.
Cécile B. Evans is a Belgian American artist based in London and Berlin. She is the 2013 recipient of the Push Your Art Prize with the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), ‘Convention T’, artist in residence at Wysing Arts Centre, Radar commissioned artist (Loughborough), and 2012 recipient of the Emdash Award (Frieze, London). Recent exhibitions include La Voix Humaine (Kunstverein Munich), Bold Tendencies 7 (Peckham) and How To Eclipse the Light (Wilkinson Gallery, London).
Shana Moulton is an artist who grew up near Yosemite, California, and now lives and works in New York and Munich. Over the past ten years she has been developing her ongoing video/performance series Whispering Pines, in which she plays the role of ‘Cynthia’, a middle age woman, who is both a fictional figure and the artist's alter ego. Moulton has had solo exhibitions or performances at The New Museum, SFMOMA, MoMA P.S.1, Performa 2009, The Kitchen, Electronic Arts Intermix, Art in General, The Andy Warhol Museum, The Palais De Tokyo in Paris, The Migros Museum in Zurich and the Times Museum in Guangzhou.
Rachel Reupke is an artist who lives in London and works primarily with the moving image. Recent videos deal with the idea of worry – worry about health, money, social status and relationships etc. She was awarded a FLAMIN production award from Film London in 2011 and the resulting film Wine & Spirits was shown at Cell Project Space, London in 2013.
Dr Kathleen Richardson is a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at University College London. Richardson has conducted research in the areas of robotics, autism and social networking and publishes the An Anthropology of Robots and AI: Annihilation Anxiety and Machines on the study of the culture of robots in January 2015). Kathleen’s core research explores human attachment styles and machines. She held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at UCL exploring the use of robots for helping children with autism. In 2013 she was a research fellow at CRASSH on the Digital Bridges Project exploring the role of theatre and technology. In 2006 she produced the 1921 play R.U.R (Rossum’s Universal Robots) and in 2016 will produce ‘The Universal Robot Project’ a festival exploring what it means to be human.
Erica Scourti is an artist who was born in Athens, Greece in 1980 and now lives in London. She works with video, performance, online and with text, and has shown internationally at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Museo Reine Sofia, Kunstmuseum Bonn and Jeu de Paume Museum and Kunstverein Munich.
Frances Stark is an artist who was born in Newport Beach, California, and lives and works in Los Angeles. She works in many different ways and mediums and has had solo exhibitions at ICA London; Nottingham Contemporary, CRG, New York; The Hammer Musem, Los Angeles; Kunstverein Galerie, Munich; and Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne. She is the author of The Architect and the Housewife (Book Works, 1999).
Jessica Lack will live blog this event. Jessica Lack is a freelance arts writer for the Guardian. She was the previews arts editor of The Guide for ten years and now contributes to G2 and the arts and culture section online. She also contributes to various art and culture magazines including Dazed and Confused, ID Magazine and World of Interiors. She was Deputy Editor of Tate Magazine for five years and has published various catalogue essays and art books. She was writer-in-residence at Jerwood in September 2012.
Saturday 24 May 2014
Open Forum 2014 is a series of events for artists offering advice on developing a commercial practice and promoting work.
Led by Matt Roberts with Ceri Hand and Aid & Abet, Cambridge.
One-to-one sessions for artists: Saturday 24 May, 11am - 5pm (each session lasts 45 minutes)
Choose from one of the following one to one sessions;
• Developing your commercial practice with Ceri Hand, Ceri Hand Gallery, London or
• Ways to promote your practice with Matt Robert, Matt Roberts Arts
These sessions are now fully booked but please do join us for the panel discussion:
Panel Discussion: Saturday 24 May, 6.30 – 8pm
Join Matt Roberts, Ceri Hand, and Aid and Abet, Cambridge, for a panel discussion about opportunities to show and sell your work, and the ways in which the arts sector is changing.
To book a place for the panel discussion please email openforum2014@mattroberts.org.uk.
Matt Roberts Arts is a dynamic not-for-profit organisation founded in 2006 to create opportunities for artists in new locations and contexts. Matt Roberts Arts offers support to creative practitioners by providing a range of professional development programmes and national and international touring exhibitions.
Ceri Hand initially trained as an artist, Ceri Hand draws on over twenty years in the art world, having previously acted as Director of Metal (Liverpool), Director of Exhibitions, FACT (Liverpool, where she was a contributing curator to Liverpool Biennial in 2004 and 2006), Deputy Director of Grizedale Arts, Cumbria and Director of Make, London. Exhibitions curated during the Liverpool period include artists Yang Fudong, Jill Magid, Vito Acconci, Chen Chieh-jen, Walid Raad/The Atlas Group, Christian Jankowski, Matthew Buckingham, and The Black Audio Film Collective.
She established Ceri Hand Gallery in Liverpool in 2008 and has recently relocated the gallery to London. She has been on the boards of a number of organisations in the UK (including Malgras Naudet, Eastside Projects, Open Eye Gallery and Tate Members Committee) and a judge for numerous panels. She was a recent selector for the Creekside Open, The Catlin Art Prize and the Kinsale Arts Festival and has been an Artists Mentor for the Photographers Gallery and New Art Gallery Walsall.
Aid & Abet is an artist-led contemporary art space which supports artists to experiment, take risks and innovate as well as collaborate, engage and network. Aid & Abet is a production and presentation site for contemporary art that combines work, project, gallery and performance space allowing audiences and participants to engage with cross-disciplinary practices in both creative and critical ways. Aid & Abet is situated in Cambridge and the artist directors are Sarah Evans and David Kefford. David Kefford is currently exhibiting in Hey, I'm Mr.Poetic.
17 November – 20 December
A series of events accompanies the exhibition, X-Operative, including performances, readings, publishing events and artists' in-conversations.
Subverting and playing with how we read, write, collect knowledge and what we think of as a book, specialist East London independent bookshop, publisher, and project space X Marks the Bökship is setting up shop at Wysing Arts Centre for a special programme that is part exhibition, part events series and part functioning shop for artist’s books and independent publishing.
The title X-Operative is taken from an essay by Ksenia Cheinman, who uses the term to describe common places where the cultural space becomes creative, productive, commercial, domestic, and educational all at once. Using this playfully as a platform, the exhibition includes specially commissioned artist-made display systems by Adam Burton, Sophie Demay, Rory Macbeth, Beatriz Olabarrieta and Keef Winter, each supporting a wide range of publications available to read or purchase from each station. Independently produced by artists, designers, writers and thinkers, these books sit in relation to five separate themes illustrating the multi operations of X Marks the Bökship: reading & writing, production, performance, distribution and exchange.
Saturday 16 November 5-8pm
Preview and Launch event
5-7pm Keef Winter Lets Build Our Own Tomb, Durational Performance
6pm Introduction by Bökship founder Eleanor Vonne Brown
6.30-8pm Lucy Woodhouse Experimental Ink Jet, Durational Performance
After an introduction to X-Operative by Eleanor Vonne Brown artist and publisher Keef Winter activates his installation, shredding books about production and reforming them into concrete book blocks throughout the evening. Alongside, Lucy Woodhouse uses printers and scanners to create live visuals and unique prints in the gallery.
Saturday 30 November 1-5pm
Day for the exchange of ideas led by Eleanor Vonne Brown
1-2pm Publishers Lunch
2-5pm Reading and discussion group, workshops on the themes of production and distribution for independent publishers with Adam Burton, Anagram Books and And Public.
From 1- 2pm there will be a free lunch available for publishers and those interested in publishing to meet and discuss new projects they have been working on. Afterwards there will be discussion on the theme of distribution led by artist Adam Burton. Speakers from varied fields, bookshops, a distributors, online platforms and independent publishers will meet to discuss solutions to current problems with distribution.
Saturday 7 December 3-5pm
In-Conversation
Screening of Adam Chodzko’s Plan for a Spell (2001) followed by an in-conversation with the artist and Rob Young, author of Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music.
From what seems like random patchwork of images and sounds Adam Chodzko’s Plan for a Spell conjures an oblique but compelling picture of Britain at the turn of the millennium. Playing with ideas of repeating patterns and cryptic codes (whose hidden meaning is always just about to be revealed), the piece even promises to be the definitive word on its subject, while self-consciously disclaiming how this knowledge could ever be possible. In this special screening at Wysing Arts Centre, Adam Chodzko looks back on the piece, and its place within his wider practice, in the company of writer and critic, Rob Young, Editor-at-Large at The Wire magazine, and author of Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music, published by Faber and Faber. The screening will be followed by a signing of the accompanying publication Plans and Spells by the artist.
Adam Chodzko’s Plan for a Spell was commissioned as a Film and Video Umbrella Touring Exhibition in association with Mappin Art Gallery. Supported by Arts Council England. This event is part of Film and Video Umbrella's 25 Frames.
Saturday 14 December 3-5pm
Launch of new publications and journals with talks and readings including
PERSONA magazine - East Coast / West Coast a conversation between Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson re-enacted by Melissa Gordon, Jessica Wiesner and Marina Vishmidt.
The Fox Journal - Mathew Whittington launches new journalThe Wanderer by Franz Kafka - Rory Macbeth presents an audio piece from his forthcoming book
Errors Hit Orient - Lyrics by B.S. Johnson. Live musical performance with Chris Evans and Will Holder.
Detailed schedule for this event here.
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Saturday 14 December 2013, 3-5pm
To bring to a conclusion the current exhibition, X-Operative, X Marks the Bökship has programmed a special series of publication launches, readings and performances that each take an influential original text and recaptures or re-interprets it in a diverse selection of ways.
Launch of The Fox – Although technically a first issue, The Fox ‘issue 4’ is loosely a continuation of the seventies journal of the same name produced by the artist's collective Art & Language. However this regenerated version, edited by Matthew Whittington, deviates from the concerns of the past publication, being more closely aligned with the 'natural world' and using the urban fox as a medium with which to explore attitudes towards the city, culture, nature, labour, architecture and design.
The Fox includes contributions from Daniel Arsham, Federico Campagna, Mike Davis, Mabli Elliman, Paul Elliman, Kristen Gallerneaux Brooks, Valentijn Goethals, Bill Hutchison, Esther Leslie & Ben Watson, Tetsuo Mukai, Leonard van Munster, Melissa Pilon, and Hermione Spriggs, as well as a selection of re-published material from the 19th and 20th century.
More information about The Fox here.
Launch of PERSONA including performance with Paul Becker and Nadia Hebson directed by Jessica Wiesner - PERSONA is an artist-led magazine co-edited by Melissa Gordon and Marina Vishmidt. It is the second in a series of magazines that grew out of the need to respond to questions that arose during four meetings of female artists entitled A conversation to know if there is a conversation to be had, held in New York, Amsterdam, Berlin and London in 2010-11.
PERSONA looks at the condition of self-presentation for the contemporary artist, and in an expansive manner encompasses discussions on refusal, interiority, friendship, candor, and embarrassment. The launch will be marked by a performance of East Coast/West Coast Re-presented directed by Jessica Wiesner. The performance reconstructs the original East Coast/West Coast - a videotaped argument between Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson conducted with Joan Jonas in 1969. Watch footage of this event on the Bokship Youtube channel here.
Audio extract from The Wanderer by Franz Kafka by Rory Macbeth – Macbeth’s novel has been written by translating Kafka’s classic tale without knowledge of the German language or use of a dictionary. Rather than relying on computer-aided translations, Macbeth uses belief as a method for writing, forcing himself into a place where he simply believes the translation to be correct. Once a sentence is believed to be right, it is set in stone: there is no going back and reviewing it for the sake of a ‘better’ story – changing a word would invalidate the rest of the text. In this way, running parallel to the story of Gregor, is another story in real time – the story of a book being written.
The Wanderer by Franz Kafka is an ongoing work that has been performed and shown in galleries internationally, each time being printed and bound with blank pages. The final work will also be an audio book. The unfinished novel has recently been adapted for film by Turner nominee and former Wysing resident artist Laure Prouvost. Macbeth has worked on the novel during his time as Writer in Residence at X Marks the Bökship.
Errors hit Orient by Chris Evans and Will Holder – Chris Evans went to British Library Newspapers, Colindale, to read B.S. Johnson's football reports (published in The Observer in 1964 & 65) then suggested to Will Holder that they be set to music. Eight reports are scored for speech and eight improvised themes, played 'bottleneck' on bass guitar. Four modular, percussive and affective pieces accompany this, composing a commentary in the indeterminate manner of some of the author's novels.
No Strange Men Shall Remove the Stone by Rebecca Jagoe – Current writer in residence for the duration of X-Operative, Jagoe will be bringing together her collected writing and presenting a selection of new work created during her time at Wysing.
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Join us for an afternoon of discussion on publishing and a think-tank on alternative models of distribution.
1-2pm Publishers lunch
Are you an Independent publisher or interested in publishing? If so then why not join us for a free lunch to discuss recent books you have published and distributed, or projects in you have in development.
2-4pm Alternative models of distribution think tank
A session that starts with a discussion of Adam Burton’s text Some Problems of Distribution for Independent Publishers and Independent Booksellers, written for X-Operative.
Followed by a think-tank led by X Marks the Bökship founder Eleanor Vonne Brown, on Alternative Models of Distribution with presentations from Louisa Bailey (Luminous Books) and Eva Weinmayr (AND Publishing) and independent publishers, distributors and booksellers. Plus discussion on Print-on-Demand platforms and social distribution initiatives.
Drop in at any point during the day or stay for the whole thing. FREE.
For more details about X-Operative see the exhibitions page here.
Saturday 9 November, 2-6pm
James Beckett, Cécile B. Evans, Michael Dean, Rupert Norfolk and Seb Patane will bring their autumn residencies to a conclusion with presentations of new work and work in progress developed at Wysing.
Watch a recording of the day at Wysing's vimeo page here.
2pm: Introduction to the day by Wysing Curators Gareth Bell-Jones and Kathy Noble
2.10pm: Presentation - Aubrey de Grey
Cécile B Evans has been researching the work of maverick scientist and theorist Aubrey de Grey who is co-founder of the SENS Research centre, which has a research lab at the University of Cambridge. SENS is the leading international centre for research into the science of the prevention of ageing. De Grey suggests that there are seven primary types of mitochondrial ageing that lead to human decay and death; if these can be prevented, in theory it would be possible to live to a thousand years. Evans was led to de Grey’s work through her recent research into established values in culture, and the ways in which we may subvert or view them differently. De Grey will give a presentation on his theories.
2.55–3.10pm: Q & A with Aubrey de Grey, Cécile B Evans and Kathy Noble
3.10pm: Screening - The Brightness, Cécile B. Evans
Cécile B. Evans will present her new 3D film The Brightness (2013), commissioned by Push Your Art for Palais de Tokyo, which she has been making whilst at Wysing. Evans’ film begins with an interview between herself and her namesake real-life phantom limb specialist Dr. Cécile B. Evans, which is then interrupted by an animated choreography of loose teeth. The film continues Evans’ exploration of the place of emotion in society today, in particular addressing issues of loss. The Brightness was made possible through the support and commissioning of the Push Your Art Prize, Orange, and the Palais de Tokyo.
3.20–3.45pm: BREAK
3.45–4pm: Performative Talk - Michael Dean and Gareth-Bell Jones
Writing is fundamental to the way Michael Dean makes art. He always begins by jotting down texts and words, constantly accumulating different thoughts and ideas, which then form the basis for many of his sculptures. Dean has used the time and space at Wysing to focus on his writing and will present a performative lecture using some of this material.
4–4.10pm: Soundwork - Seb Patane
Whilst in residence, Seb Patane has made a series of field recordings which are particular to Wysing, such as pheasants in flight. Whilst Gustav Metzger was in residence at Wysing during the summer, Patane also collaborated with him to make a recording of a passage from the book by the experimental German theatre director, and contemporary of Bertolt Brecht, Erwin Piscator. Patane has been reading Piscator’s book The Political Theatre (1929) during his time at Wysing, with the description Piscator wrote about his ill-fitting army uniform just before going to war, particularly striking him. The correlation between Metzger’s own experiences as a German Jew who came to London as a child refugee in 1939, and Piscator’s later anti-military stance, following being drafted into the army for the First World War, inspired Patane to ask Metzger if he would read the passage for him to record.
4.10–4.20pm: In conversation - Seb Patane and Kathy Noble
4.20–4.30pm: Screening - Rupert Norfolk
Rupert Norfolk has been experimenting with different mediums in sculpture, drawing and video whilst in residence at Wysing. As a reflection of his ongoing artistic research he will present a new short video piece as a work in progress.
4.30-4.40pm: In Conversation - Rupert Norfolk and Gareth Bell-Jones
4.40–5.05pm – BREAK
5.05–5.50pm: Presentation - James Beckett, A History of Anaesthesia
James Beckett has been researching the history of dentistry in relation to a future publication he is working on. In this talk, Beckett will trace the history of anaesthesia, interweaving the different methods used with the autobiography of the key figures working in this area. He will present a “museum” of the historical tools and materials, using examples kindly loaded by the Association of Anesthetists in London.
5.50–6pm: In Conversation - James Beckett and Gareth Bell-Jones
Join us for an insight into the development of recent artist-in residence Cally Spooner's most ambitious live project to date - a peripatetic musical premiering at Performa ’13, New York and Tate Modern, London. For two days she will be hosting open rehearsals in Wysing's gallery.
Involving 20 female singers recruited through an open call, visitors to Wysing's gallery will be able to see Cally Spooner develop the work through an open rehearsal process. This is a rare opportunity to see how Spooner collectively tests and produces new material and vocal scores. Singers will be working directly with Cally Spooner, alongside the core cast and musical director on developing the content of the work.
On Friday 11 October, 10am to 6pm, Cally Spooner will be rehearsing with the core cast.
On Saturday, 12 October, 10am to 6pm, she will be working with the singers for the first time.
Audiences are invited to drop in throughout the two days to meet Cally, find out more about the project and see the work develop. The finsihed work will be premiered at Performa '13 in New York next month before going on to be performed at Tate Modern early next year.
The work will form part of the continuing development of And You Were Wonderful, On Stage, a live performance originally commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, which presented six female voices that gossiped about current affairs, fallen heroes, unfulfilled promises, and instances of automation parading as ”liveness”, whilst lacking its qualities (changeability, direct encounter and risk), in politics, pop music, and sport.
If you are a female singer who is able to read music and want to take part in the open rehearsal, email edd@eddhobbs.com
A public programme of talks and events to accompany our Convention T autumn residencies with artists James Beckett, Cécile B. Evans, Michael Dean, Seb Patane and maker-in-residence Rupert Norfolk.
Saturday 28 September, 2-7pm
Launch Event
A day of presentations exploring hidden systems and structures with academics from the University of Cambridge: Dr Torsten Meißner, Senior Lecturer in Classics will discuss his specialism in historical linguistics; Prof. Michael Potter from the Faculty of Philosophy will explain semantic theory of truth and logic; Mark Gotham, Director of Music Making, will talk about tonal and metrical structures in music. The day will be interspersed with a selection of artists’ films.
Thursday 3 October, 6.30-8pm
Evening Talk
Join Liz Davies, Curator at St Neots Museum, for a talk on how our ancestors tried to understand the world around them before the industrial revolution and the development of modern scientific theories, through witchcraft and the magical powers of moles and hares.
Saturday 26 October
The Big Draw Workshop, 10am-4pm and Book Launch, 4-6pm
Join artist Caroline Wendling for a family drawing workshop on the theme of the harvest feast. Booking required.
Then join artist Giles Round, and Jo and Mark Proud of Bourn’s Manor Farm, for a feast to launch the third edition of the Bourn Cookery Book compiled from local and artist contributions.
Saturday 2 November, 5-7pm
Meditation Event
Reiki Master Joy Magezis will introduce her practice on mindfulness, meditation and art before hosting a guided group meditation session. The session will be followed by a screening of Be Not Content, 2011 by artist Mark Titchner. No previous experience of meditation required. Booking required.
Saturday 9 November, 2-6pm
Closing Event
To mark the end of their residencies we are hosting a closing event with James Beckett, Cécile B. Evans, Michael Dean, Seb Patane and Rupert Norfolk.
All talks and events are FREE and open to all but some require booking.
We also have workshops for families during the autumn half-term break.
Saturday 28 September 2-7pm
Join us for a special day of presentations and film screenings exploring hidden systems and structures, that launches our autumn artists’ residencies.
2pm Welcome by Gareth Bell-Jones & Lotte Juul Petersen, Wysing curators.
2.10pm Presentation by Dr Torsten Meißner, Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge. Taking the example of the Linear B script, Dr Meißner will show how linguistics analyses structures in unknown writing systems and makes sense of ancient scripts.
3.10pm Screening of Beatrice Gibson's Agatha 2012 (14min)*, a psychosexual sci-fi about a planet without speech. Its narrator, ambiguous in gender and function, weaves us slowly through a mental and physical landscape, observing and chronicling a space beyond words. Based on a dream had by the radical British composer Cornelius Cardew.
3.25pm-3.40pm Break with tea and coffee available.
3.40pm Presentation by Michael Potter, Professor of Logic at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College. Prof. Potter will explain why Polish logician Alfred Tarski (1901-1983) searched for a definition of truth and what that definition was. He will also explain Tarski's distinction between object language and meta-language and its importance.
4.40pm Screening of Anna Barham’s Argent Minotaur Slept, 2012 (08.08 min, silent), an animated version of a section of a large volume of text, written from the letters in the phrase 'Return to Leptis Magna', a reference to an ancient archaeological ruin.
4.50pm-5.10pm Break with tea and coffee available.
5.10pm Presentation by Mark Gotham, Director of Music Making, Churchill College. Gotham will talk about Hidden systems: A defence of ‘modern’ music and engage with the kinds of complaints that are commonly leveled against modern, classical music. The talk will be illustrated with many audio examples.
6.10pm Screening of Wojciech Bruszewski’s Matchbox, 1975 (5 mins)*. A loop of film of a hand tapping a matchbox alternates with a shot of a window and sets up a strong visual rhythm. This is offset by a single thumping sound, of the matchbox, that gradually slips out of phase, hitting all the sync points in the film. The work encapsulates in miniature such feelings attributable to film as anticipation, memory, desire, resolution. Guy Sherwin
6.15pm-7pm Roundtable discussion and questions from audience.
7pm Event ends
To see other events taking place as part of Convention T, see here.
This event is free and no booking is required.
*With thanks to LUX, London
Activity over both days:
12-6pm Exhibition and performance event
Jonathan Baldock’s gallery exhibition will be activated for the duration of the Open Weekend by leading British choreographer Henrietta Hale and her collective of performance-makers, Dog Kennel Hill Project. They will be based in the gallery which will be open throughout the two days with performance times 12.30pm, 2.30pm, 4.15pm and 5.30pm over both days.
12-6pm Open Studios
A once a year opportunity to see into the studios of Erica Böhr, Julie Brenot, Jackie Chettur, Elena Cologni, Alexandra Drysdale. Lawrence Epps, Bettina Furnée, Nora Maycock, Josepa Munoz, Rob Smith, Helen Stratford, Ash Summers, Caroline Wendling, Lisa Wilkens and Caroline Wright.
2-4pm Family Workshops: Stage, Prop, Perform
With a new take on Wysing’s family den making days, artists Rob Smith and Sophie Buxton lead workshops to build sets and stages, make backdrops and props, create cloaks and characters. Families are invited to animate and activate their own area of Wysing’s outdoor space with sculptural platforms, playful performance and storytelling. Suitable for all ages.
Guest speakers on Saturday 6 July:
A day of local knowledge, uncovered
1pm Paul Beskeen from the Pumpkin Patch Observatory, Bourn and expert in astrophotography will give a presentation, Hidden in full view, revealing the invisible universe, emphasing hidden components and structures that our eyes can’t register, even when looking through a telescope.
3pm The Cambridge riverfront and the village of Madingley are the subjects of a presentation by freelance anthropologist Dr. Nicholas James about history hidden in Cambridge’s scenery. He will reveal stories concealed within the landscape.
5pm Author and musician Nigel Pennick will give the presentation Boundaries Visible and Invisible: Borderlines of the Physical, Legal, Cultural, Sacred, Magical and Eldritch. Followed by music with contributions from Jon Ward.
Guest speakers on Sunday 7 July:
An afternoon on the Bourn Cookery Book and local food
2-4pm Hear more about our plans to publish the third edition of the Bourn Cookery Book* and find out about Cambridgeshire’s local produce. Contributors to the day are artist Giles Round, Jo & Mark Proud from Manor Farm, Bourn with special invited guests. *Published with the kind permission of Margaret Greenwood, editor of the first two books.
We will be collecting recipes for the cookery book over the weekend and at Bourn Church Fête, where we will have a stall on Saturday 6 July, from 2.30pm.
6 June, 9.30am – 6pm
Can chance, serendipity and random acts open up new and unexpected outcomes? This workshop will hear from experts who are investigating the role of serendipity in early stage ideas development and research, alongside hands-on activity.
Artists frequently utilise accident to generate interesting and creative outcomes and break down habitual patterns of working. Some of the most successful artworks have emerged through serendipity, and artists are highly attuned to creative opportunity through happenchance.
The workshop is free and open to companies with fewer than 10 employees and a turnover of less than £1.5 million. We can cover travel costs within a 20 mile radius of Wysing. All food and refreshments are free of charge.
9.30 – 9.45am Arrive Wysing Arts Centre, tea & coffee
9.45 am –11.30 am Introduction to the day by workshop leader Kit Hammonds alongside introductions from participants and contributors to the day
11.30 am – 1 pm Presentation on the role of serendipity by Dr. Stephann Makri, a Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction and Information Science at City University London. His serendipity research was part of a £1.87m UK Research Council funded project (SerenA: Chance Encounters in the Space of Ideas) which involved getting a better understanding of serendipity and using this understanding to inform the design of interactive systems that support the phenomenon.
1pm – 2pm Lunch
2pm – 4pm Hands-on session led by artist Jenny Moore
4.00 – 4.30pm Coffee/ tea break
4.30 pm – 5.30pm Discussion to bring elements of the day together, led by the workshop leader
5pm – 6pm Feedback, wrap up with drinks
6pm Taxis to central Cambridge
The programme has been funded by a grant from ideaSpace Enterprise Accelerator at The Hauser Forum in Cambridge and is being delivered in association with Cambridge Event Management Ltd.
For more information on Business Workshops email here.
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Sunday 5 May, 2-4pm
An alternative round-table discussion conceived with current artists-in-residence Anna Barham, David Osbaldeston, Charlotte Prodger and Florian Roithmayr.
During the course of their Convention T residencies, which have run from 11 March - 6 May, the artists have collected a hugely diverse range of research material in the form of text, video, image and sound which, alongside examples of their work in progress, will be recited, played and discussed by them on the day. The material has been collated and will be available as a complementary publication for all audience members to take home with them.
Also available for a first viewing is the exciting new commission Arrest by Florian Roithmayr. Using a new technique beloved by car-modification communities, the artist has transformed Wysing's otherwise unremarkable Renault Kangoo into a new mobile artwork.
The event will be broadcast live at www.thisistomorrow.info.
25 April, 9.30am-6pm
Insularity and solo working can be a scourge of innovation and a creative block. Sharing knowledge and collective thinking can create new perspectives on product development or problem resolution. Bring your problems to this free workshop for businesses and we will find a resolution together.
The tradition of relational practice, where individuals come together to share resources, skills and knowledge in order to support one another to generate mutually useful outcomes, is a recent tradition in contemporary art. Artists have become adept at mobilising others to enable them to make their work, whilst also ensuring that those being mobilised receive a fair deal in return. This way of working necessitates an understanding of what will motivate others to help and the ability to transform interest into action.
This workshop will hear from contributors on how they transformed a group of interested parties into active collaborators. Part of the day will involve some hands-on activity and making and a substantial part of the afternoon will involve sharing and discussing the issues that are causing your business difficulties (these can be general rather than specific and confidential issues), with the aim of finding and practical resolution.
The workshop is free and open to companies with fewer than 10 employees and a turnover of less than £1.5 million. We can cover travel costs within a 20 mile radius of Wysing. All food and refreshments are free of charge.
9.30 – 10am Arrive Wysing Arts Centre, tea & coffee, in Wysing’s Reception building
10am –11.30 am Introduction to the day by workshop leader Kit Hammonds alongside introductions from participants and contributors to the day.
11.30 am – 1 pm Presentation by artist Emma Smith on how she transformed a group of interested parties into active collaborators, followed by a hands-on session. No artistic skills required
1pm – 2pm Lunch
2pm – 4pm A facilitated session raising and exploring current issues and problems; be prepared to give solutions and be offered solutions in return
4.00 – 4.30pm Coffee/ tea break
4.30 pm – 5.30pm Discussion to bring elements of the day together, responding to participant identified issues or problems, led by the workshop leader in the Open Studio
5pm – 6pm Feedback, wrap up
The programme has been funded by a grant from ideaSpace Enterprise Accelerator at The Hauser Forum in Cambridge and is being delivered in association with Cambridge Event Management Ltd.
This workshops is now fully booked. To stay in touch about similar opportunities subscribe to our e-bulletin.
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Saturday 6 April. Live performance 8pm, £5. Music Masterclass 4-6pm, free.
A live performance event featuring guitar legend Daevid Allen of Gong and Soft Machine, and avant-garde jazz pioneer Marshall Allen of Sun Ra Arkestra. Plus a music Masterclass.
Cinema Soloriens is a live audio visual performance of American film-maker and musician James Harrar's experimental films, with live musical renderings performed by Harrar (tenor sax, flute, bulbul tarang, reeds, voice and effects), Marshall Allen (alto sax, flute, keyboards, EVI and effects), Daevid Allen (guitar, voice & effects), and Rogier Smal (percussion & electronics). The performance encompasses psychedelic rock, outre ethnological improvisations and Marshall Allen approved jazzy stomps.
As part of this event, the ensemble will provide a free Masterclass to artists and musicians, sharing the jazz improv techniques honed by these musical legends over many years. Full details here.
Daevid Allen is avant-rock's guitar legend and one of the founders of the British progressive rock band, Soft Machine. After Soft Machine, he became the founder/leader of Gong. He continues to release numerous live sets and one-off collaborations in limited editions on various independent labels under his own and various group names. Said Daevid, "this is a time of great changes, and we will be offering some real outer-space surprises; so happy and honored to be working with these guys-finally playing with Marshall after all these years, I mean who hasn't he and Sun Ra influenced!"
During the mid-1950's, Marshall Allen met Sun Ra and became a devoted student of his musical cosmology. After joining the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1958, Marshall Allen led Sun Ra's reed section for over 40 years. He is featured on over 200 Sun Ra releases, while appearing as special guest soloist in concert and on recordings with diverse groups such as NRBQ, Phish, Sonic Youth, and Medeski, Martin & Wood. Allen assumed the helm of the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1995 after the ascension of Sun Ra in 1993 and John Gilmore in 1995.
James Harrar began as a filmmaker, crafting densely lyrical film-poems since the late 1980’s exhibiting at venues including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Andy Warhol Museum and Yamaguchi Center for Art & Media to name a few. In an intimate form, Harrar attempts to imprint thoughts, dreams and conceptual ideas onto the open-minded viewer while examining the possibilities of perception. Throughout his career, Harrar has tried to give the viewer new visual experiences while challenging fixed notions of filmic language and individual seeing. Since 1995 Harrar has been collaborating with Marshall Allen, creating live music to Harrar’s silent films which often include archive footage of the Sun Ra Arkestra.
Rogier Smal is a drummer who experiments with free percussion sounds. Besides playing in improv group Dagora he plays with different musicians and solo. Smal tries to find the energy of space and participants while remaining open to the environment and acoustics. Lately he has been been making sonic waves of liberty with gems like: Anne la Berge, Peter Quistgard, Jaap Blonk, James Harrar, Yedo Gibson, Marshall Allen, Dagora, Ti Femme, Dylan Carlson, Eugene Chadbourne, Geoff Leigh, Peter Zincken, Frankie Vis, Peter van Bergen, Ludo Mich, City Hands, Raoul van der Weide, Sunburned hand of the man, Eric Thielemans, Mik Quantius, John Moloney, Cathy Heyden, Alfredo Genovesi, Arvind Ganga, and many more...
Youtube footage of the performance, here.
21 March, 9.30am – 6pm
This workshop will allow participants to hear from individuals in how they have created spaces and systems, both physical and conceptual, to encourage creative risks.
Risk is an over-used word when applied to business development. At its most basic, it implies a straightforward choice been taking and avoiding a risk and that this decision will either be a good or bad one. But what happens when risk and play become entangled; does taking a risk need to be such an over-laboured decision? Artists routinely take themselves out of their comfort zones and uncertainty is an integral part of their working lives. Many artists devise structures and systems as a way to create spaces in which uncertainty, play and risk can flourish. Key to this process is setting initial limitations and understanding what an acceptable outcome might be.
The workshop is free and open to companies with fewer than 10 employees and a turnover of less than £1.5 million. We can cover travel costs within a 20 mile radius of Wysing. All food and refreshments are free of charge.
9.30 – 9.45am
Arrive Wysing Arts Centre, tea & coffee, in Wysing’s Reception building
9.45 am –11.30 am
Introduction to the day by the workshop leader, curator Kit Hammonds, alongside introductions from participants and contributors to the day, in Wysing’s Open Studio
11.30 am – 1 pm
A presentation by writer Pat Kane on the role of play and games when building communities of interest, followed by a discussion on the nature of play in relation to risk, in Wysing’s Open Studio
1pm – 2pm
Lunch
2pm – 4pm
Hands on artist-led session with artist Caroline Wright. No artistic skills required
4.00 – 4.30pm
Coffee/ tea break
4.30pm – 5.30pm
Discussion to bring elements of the day together, led by workshop leader in the Open Studio
5pm – 6pm
Feedback, wrap up with drinks
The programme has been funded by a grant from ideaSpace Enterprise Accelerator at The Hauser Forum in Cambridge and is being delivered in association with Cambridge Event Management Ltd.
Email us for more details and a booking form here
Further info and FAQs here
A public programme of events to accompany our first set of residencies with artists Anna Barham, David Osbaldeston, Charlotte Prodger and Florian Roithmayr, Convention T.
Saturday 23 March, a day of live events to accompany our current exhbition Relatively Absolute. More info here.
Saturday 6 April, Masterclass 4-6pm. Live performance 8pm
A unique Masterclass for artists and musicians. Marshall Allen, who has been leading experimental jazz ensemble Sun Ra Arkestra for twenty years and is 89 yrs old, will be joined by Daevid Allen of Gong and Soft Machine, and musician and experimental film-maker James Harrar, for an afternoon of improvised avant-garde rock and psychedelia, followed by a live performance of Harrar’s Cinema Soloriens featuring these two musical legends. Not to be missed. Tickets: the Masterclass is Free but booking essential, live performance £5.
Saturday and Sunday 13& 14 April, 12-4pm
A weekend of bread-making. Peter Voshol a senior scientist and initiator of Loaf for Life bakery will teach sourdough baking skills whilst at the same time reflect on the structure of our food and energy needs. Suitable for all ages. Fully booked.
Wednesday 17 April 6.30pm
Sarah Ellen MacDonald will talk about the secretive origins of Royston Cave, the 13th century chalk cavern located under Royston’s High Street, whilst anthropologist Dr. Nicholas James will talk about some of the key Roman roads and trade routes linking Bourn and Royston.
Wednesday 24 April 6.30pm
Dr. Mete Atature of the Atomic, Mesoscopic and Optical Physics (AMOP) Group, Cambridge will talk about maths and coding whilst musician Lea Nicholson will perform a piece developed in SuperCollider programming language, featuring synthesised handbells and a Nintendo Wiimote.
Sunday 5 May, 2-4pm
An alternative round-table discussion with Anna Barham, David Osbaldeston, Charlotte Prodger and Florian Roithmayr on their Convention T residencies. More information on this event here.
Saturday 23 March, 2-8pm
A day of talks, screenings and live performances to accompany the exhibition Relatively Absolute.
2pm Welcome and chance to see the exhibition Relatively Absolute, which closes on 24 March, with new work by Luke Abbott, Salvatore Arancio, Ed Atkins, Jonathan Baldock, Edwin Burdis, Patrick Coyle, Nicolas Deshayes, Jess Flood-Paddock, Emma Hart, Nilsson Pflugfelder, Flora Parrott, Philomene Pirecki, Elizabeth Price and Stuart Whipps.
2.30pm Patrick Coyle will perform a new work reflecting on his experience as Wysing’s 2012 writer in residence.
3pm Victoria Camblin, writer, editor of 032c magazine (Berlin) and a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge, interviews Dr Cecile B. Evans, an American phantom limb and pain specialist, in a screened conversation.
3.30pm Short Break with refreshments available.
3.45pm Screening of Stephen Malinowski's Ricercar a 6 (from J. S. Bach's Musical Offering) constructed using Music Animation Machine, software Malinowski first developed in 1985 to allow for the visualisation of musical structure.
3.55pm A recorded reading by Gertrude Stein of her modernist novel The Making of Americans; a novel that includes frequent meta-fictional meditations on the process of writing the text, that periodically overtake the main narrative.
4pm Dr. Anil K Biltoo, Head of Languages School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), will talk about fictional languages and on the creation of languages in the movies, with a focus on Anthony Burgess as a linguist and creator of Nadsat in A Clockwork Orange.
4.30pm A reading from the late 1980’s Gothic Italian fanzine Nero with musical accompaniment of instrumental tracks from the album Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age by Broadcast and The Focus group.
4.45pm Break with refreshments available.
5.15pm A performative reading of recent work by Stewart Home.
5.45pm Writer Alice Butler will talk about experimental literature and in particular Sparraw's Kneecaps, an unpublished manuscript from 1974 found by Elizabeth Price in a junk market, followed by a discussion with Elizabeth Price and Stewart Home.
6.30pm Short Break with food and drink available
6.45pm A curated film programme featuring: Boomerang, 1974 by Richard Serra with Nancy Holt, hip hop producer Araabmuzik, Doris Lessing and In My Language by Amanda Baggs, 2007.
7pm Launch of James Beckett’s new publication Works of James Beckett with Constant Interjections by Frank Key featuring a performative talk by James Beckett and Frank Key.
7.45pm Closing Drinks.
Throughout
A television tuned to 24hr news station Al Jazeera (English). Muted with subtitles to run for the duration.
This event is FREE. It is seated and will take place predominantly in Wysing's Gallery and nearby Open Studio. There will be a cafe operating during the event; selling sandwiches, teas and coffees.
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16 January 2013, 6.30pm
Join us for a special presentation of Edwin Burdis' new work The Fruit Machine (a painting and an opera) which he has been making in Wysing's gallery during The Forest residency.
Join us for a special presentation of Edwin Burdis’ new work The Fruit Machine (a painting and an opera) which he developed during his residency at Wysing in November and December 2012. The allegorical painting by Burdis, which occupies most of Wysing’s gallery space, depicts, with great absurdity, how we on Earth use and abuse our fruits and resources to fulfill our own desires. Artist and poet Heather Phillipson, who will be exhibiting at Cambridge’s Aid and Abet this coming spring, has created a libretto to a musical score by Burdis which will be played on the evening.
Edwin Burdis' recent performances and solo exhibitions include MegaDairyPigFarm, Max Wigram Gallery, London (2012), Recent British Painting, Grimm Gallery, Amsterdam (2012), Soundworks, ICA, London (2012), 2 Emma Toc/Writtle Calling, Essex (2012), Handle, Manton Studio, Tate Britain, London (2011), Bruderkriegsoundsystem, ICA, London (2011), Home Service, Hayward Gallery Project Space, London (2011), and Longmeg at Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes (2012), Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2010), Tate Modern, London (2010), and Haus De Kunst, Munich, (2010).
As part of The Forest residency events programme we present an evening of live music by musician-in-residence Luke Abbott. Luke has been at Wysing since 4 November, composing new work in response to the metaphor of The Forest.
Luke’s recent single Modern Driveway was a Drowned in Sound single of the week and his music has been remixed by the likes of Gold Panda and Etienne Jaumet. Join us for a special event on Saturday 1 December, 6-8pm, for a live performance from Luke and a DJ set by Sam Willis, one half of the electronic duo Walls. Writer-in-residence Patrick Coyle will also make a contribution to the evening.
Luke Abbott’s bleary-eyed efforts are that special thing; slow-builders that earn the right to their ambling pace. It seems to me his work is an exercise in patience rather than self-denial, though he isn’t one for cheap tricks, stateliness is the word, I think. ‘Modern Driveway’ however, is especially impressive in the way it has you thinking almost immediately of Coen Brothers' roads, or lights that sing hazily in the distance, that you want to pull towards you, by sheer will. All of which tortured prose indicates that I am a bit drunk on him – not least because I finally went to Holkham last weekend, and it was as rare, bleak and emptily beautiful as music that good, and named after it, should be. Wendy Roby, Drowned in Sound
For six weeks from 4 November, artists Jonathan Baldock, Edwin Burdis, Emma Hart and Jess Flood-Paddock, alongside musician Luke Abbott, will be resident at Wysing’s rural site near Cambridge, developing new art works that explore the future, nature and transformation in response to the metaphor of The Forest. Artists will be present during the events.
We have invited people living and working close to our rural centre in Bourn, Cambridgeshire, to take part in public talks and events programme during the six week residency period to offer different tangents on the theme.
SPECIAL LAUNCH EVENT
Saturday 10 November 1.30-4pm
In the Window Room: throughout the afternoon, writers Jessica Penrose and Clare Crossman invite families to look, draw, collect ideas and write poetry based on the hidden world of the forest.
In the Gallery: a presentation by pagan author Anna Franklin, followed by an in-conversation with Nigel Pennick. Then Nigel is joined by musicians Frances Collinson and Jon Ward for some live music on the theme of the wild wood.
PRESENTATION
Wednesday 21 November 6.30-8pm
Dr Thomas Mathews, Medical Director at Bourn Hall Clinic, the world’s first IVF clinic, talks about the themes of nature and transformation in relation to the personal journeys of people undergoing fertility treatment.
LIVE EVENT
Saturday 1 December 6-8pm
Live performance by musician in residence Luke Abbott plus special guests.
PRESENTATION
Wednesday 5 December 6.30-8pm
Rachel Blunstone, Assistant Editor of interior design company Stylus, talks about trend forecasting and why the forest has emerged as a current fashion trend.
Starting with Play is an event aimed at educators, artists and facilitators interested in participation and engagement. The day includes a keynote from Frances Williams, Head of Education, South London Gallery, on the role of play in her award winning programme and combines inspiring talks on play, and playful approaches to audience development, alongside hands-on activities.
Discover how learning alongside children and families contributed to the development of a unique resource for galleries and cultural spaces, the props box, and hear from Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination, Kettle’s Yard and Wysing on how this work influenced other aspects of their approaches to participation and engagement.
Friday October 12th, 10am – 2pm
At Wysing Arts Centre, Fox Road,(near) Bourn, Cambridge, CB23 2TX
Cost £25 including lunch and refreshments
To book a place please email HERE
Solid on Our Source Planet is an exhibition by Annabelle Craven-Jones, Mat Do, Clare Gasson, Claire Hope, Glen Jamieson, Kit Poulson, Kari Rittenbach, Florian Roithmayr and Alan Stanners.
EXHIBITION LAUNCH
Saturday 29 September 6-8pm - Join us for the opening preview of the exhibition.
FAMILY WORKSHOP
Saturday 6 October 2-4.30pm - Drop-in family workshop as part of the Big Draw. Join us to make a collective artwork.
ARTIST-LED EVENT
Thursday 18 October 6.30-8pm - Join us for an event conceived collaboratively by the artists and which marks the end of our upcoming Escalator Retreat, Space of Attention.
15 July — 24 August 2012
For six weeks artists Ed Atkins, Nicolas Deshayes, Philomene Pirecki and Elizabeth Price explored the metaphor of THE MIRROR, alongside writer-in-residence Patrick Coyle.
A series of Sunday afternoon presentations explored different facets of The Mirror as a metaphor. Free children’s drop-in activity took place each afternoon during these events.
Admission free
ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION
Sunday 15 July 2.30-4pm
Part of our annual Open Weekend, a roundtable discussion on the metaphor of The Mirror with artists-in-residence Ed Atkins, Nicolas Deshayes, Philomene Pirecki and Elizabeth Price, chaired by Kettle’s Yard Associate Artist Jeremy Millar. Listen to this presentation here:
PRESENTATION
Sunday 29 July 2.30-4pm
Dr. Jennifer Rampling, Research Fellow at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge on The Mirror of Alchemy: Images and Reflections of the Medieval Alchemical Cosmos, including examples of work by the fifteenth-century English alchemist George Ripley and the Elizabethan mathematician and astrologer, John Dee. Listen to this presentation here:
PRESENTATION
Sunday 12 August, 2.30-4pm
Dr. Spike Bucklow, Conservator and Senior Research Scientist at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge considers the metaphor of mirrors in the European painting tradition; both the act of reflection and that which is reflected. Listen to this presentation here:
PRESENTATION
Sunday 26 August, 2.30-4pm
Dr Elizabeth Baquedano, Lecturer at University College London, Institute of Archaeology, gives an overview of the importance of obsidian in Aztec Mexico with special reference to obsidian mirrors and its symbolism, whilst Dr. Elizabeth DeMarrais, who teaches in the department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge reflects on time, trade, and social relations: obsidian and archaeology and has some obsidian objects on hand to show. Listen to this presentation here:
Over the course of 2012 Escalator artist in residence Patrick Coyle documents the residencies through creative writing. Read his blog here.
14 July — 15 July 2012
10am-6pm
A two-day extravaganza across Wysing's large rural site on the outskirts of Bourn village including artists' spoken word performances (Sat 2-6pm); film screenings (Sun 4-6pm) and a round-table discussion on the metaphor of The Mirror with artists-in-residence Ed Atkins, Nicolas Deshayes, Philomene Pirecki and Elizabeth Price, chaired by Kettle's Yard associate artist Jeremy Millar (Sun 2.30pm).
IN THE OPEN STUDIO: Artists' spoken word performances (Sat 2-6pm); film screenings (Sun 4-6pm) and a round-table discussion on the metaphor of The Mirror with artists-in-residence Ed Atkins, Nicolas Deshayes, Philomene Pirecki and Elizabeth Price, chaired by Kettle's Yard associate artist Jeremy Millar (Sun 2.30pm).
ACROSS THE SITE: Artists' studios are open, the group exhibition Recollect is in the gallery and ice cream based refreshments are available from Grantchester Pottery (artists Giles Round and Phil Root). Plus free artist-led, drop-in family workshops, in our recycled building Amphis, from 11am-4pm on both days.
WITH: Ed Atkins, Liz Ballard, Better Futures Forever, Erica Böhr, Amy Budd, Jackie Chettur, Phil Coy, Patrick Coyle, Elena Cologni, Annabelle Craven-Jones, Nicolas Deshayes, Mat Do, Sean Edwards, Bettina Furnee, Clare Gasson, Grantchester Pottery, Aaron Head, Claire Hope, Lizzie Hughes, Glen Jamieson, Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau, Shama Khanna, Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry, Una Knox, Jeremy Millar, Flora Parrott, Rosie Pedlow & Joe King, Kit Poulson, Philomene Pirecki, Elizabeth Price, Kari Rittenbach, Anna Reckin, Florian Roithmayr, Solveig Settemsdal, Rob Smith, Alan Stanners, Amy Spencer, Helen Stratford, Mark Titchner, Caroline Wendling, Lisa Wilkens, Simon Woolham and Caroline Wright.
9 June — 15 July 2012
Recollect was a gallery exhibition exploring architecture, memory and experience and part of the Love Architecture Festival.
A series of events took place that explored themes and ideas within the exhibition. With artists Better Futures Forever, Jackie Chettur, Phil Coy, Sean Edwards, Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry, Una Knox, Rosie Pedlow & Joe King.
DISCUSSION
Saturday 16 June, 2-5pm
An afternoon at Wysing exploring connections between art and architecture.
2.15-2.30pm: Wysing Curator Elinor Morgan introduces the gallery exhibition Recollect.
2.30-4pm: Artist Lothar Götz, architect Tetsuro Nagata and Rob Wilson, curator and editor of Block Magazine discuss the connections between art and architecture.
4-4.30pm: Break. Tea, coffee and an opportunity to explore Wysing's site.
4.30-4.45pm: A new performance by artist Phil Coy developed in response to Wysing's RIBA Award winning studio building, designed by architects Hawkins\Brown. Listen to Phil Coy's performance here
PLAY WYSING
23&24 June 2-4pm
Drop-in family events exploring the whole range of playful spaces across Wysing’s site using our new props box.
Run by artists from Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination.
PRESENTATION
28 June 6.30-8.30pm
Artists Elena Cologni and Caroline Wright explore notions of present memory and real and fictional memory in rural East Anglia. Listen to this event here
During The Cosmos residency Wysing explored the past, origins and knowledge with artists-in residence Salvatore Arancio, Flora Parrott, Nilsson Pflugfelder andStuart Whipps, alongside Escalator writer-in-residence Patrick Coyle and with contributions from invited individuals who helped expand on ideas around the subject. Contributions from members of the public were also invited through a series of events.
1 April — 16 May 2012
From talks on UFOS and astronomical time, to family workshops and more. During The Cosmos we explore the past, origins and knowledge with artists-in residence Salvatore Arancio, Flora Parrott, Nilsson Pflugfelder and Stuart Whipps, alongside Escalator writer-in-residence Patrick Coyle and with contributions from invited individuals who help us expand on ideas around the subject. Follow Patrick's ongoing blog here
TALK
Thursday 12 April, 6-8pm
Adam Davison, Research Associate with the High Energy Physics group at University College London talked about his work searching for the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider with CERN. Listen here
FAMILY WORKSHOPS
Thursday 12 & Friday 13 April, 2-5 pm
Drop-in, artist-led family workshops making star gazing dens, mapping constellations and more.
TALK AND AUDIO WORK
Friday 20 April, 6-8 pm
Sound artist Kaffe Matthews presented new audio work made from the sonification of constellations for a star-gazing project whilst astrophotographer Paul Beskeen shared his images of space taken from the Pumpkin Patch Observatory in Bourn village.
Listen to Kaffe's work here
Listen to Paul's presentation here
TALK
Tuesday 24 April, 6-8pm
John Wickham of the British UFO Research Association discussed UFO related events in history. Author and musician Nigel Pennick made a presentation on The Cosmic Axis and the Seven Stars, as part of his research into symbolism and the landscape. Listen here
SYMPOSIUM AND GALLERY EXHIBITION LAUNCH
Saturday 12 May, 2-8pm
Artists in residence presented new ideas that emerged during their residencies alongside experts, specialists and hobbyists.
2pm: Arrivals. Tea and coffee
2.30 - 3.15pm: Professor Gerry Gilmore of the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, presentation on The Artistic Perception of Astronomical Time. Listen here
3.15 - 4.00pm: Dr Kenneth McNamara, Director of The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, in-conversation with artist Flora Parrott. Listen here
4.00 - 4.30pm: Break. Tea, coffee and sandwiches available.
4.30 - 5.15pm: Tim Heath, Chair of the Blake Society, presentation on The Artist As Universe, William Blake's Cosmogony. Listen here
5.15 - 5.45pm: Panel discussion with speakers and residency artists.
6 - 8pm: Launch of THE COSMOS exhibition with new work by Salvatore Arancio, Flora Parrott, Nilsson Pflugfelder and Stuart Whipps. All welcome.
6.30 - 7pm: Performative tour of the exhibition by Artist/writer in residence Patrick Coyle.
8pm: Ends
10 March 2012, 2-6pm
A day long event that explored some of the themes within Wysing's gallery exhibition The Starry Rubric Set. Click on the image to see photos from the event.
PERFORMANCES
2pm Emma Smith ∆E=W
An ongoing project by artist Emma Smith developed from a series of experiments involving touch, the gaze and spatial harmonics. A group of pre-selected members of the public were invited to reconsider the experience we have in a gallery through a series of vocal and physical responses to artworks on display. By interacting with the artworks in The Starry Rubric Set and each other, the players experimented with moving beyond a solo and contemplative relationship to art to explore the energetic relations between people, practice and space. Developed with the support of Artsadmin, London.
2.30pm Francesco Pedraglio The Evidence of an object
"No one is ever the last person to recount anything anyway, there is always someone else talking, reporting, remembering...there are always elements to be collected, discovered, connected, reduced to something else, to something more". Focusing on both the conceptual and practical difficulties of storytelling, the work reflected on the idea that any narrative, as much as it creates dependency for its listeners, it depends from their interpretative will. Practically, while addressing directly the public and trying to gather enough elements to construct the story (a credible protagonist, a solid structure and a climax etc.) Two hand-held projections with two almost identical videos played a chasing game around the space's walls. Overlapping and fitting the different shapes together, they struggled in the attempt to create a temporary equilibrium in third images.
2.45pm Mark Essen Unstoppable Descent Mark Essen presented a new video work which formed a short film interruption to the day’s events
2.50pm Cally Spooner Potentially, not necessarily, and not forever; Notes on a new Production. Cally Spooner gave a reading of the score for a new theatre production on the possibility of not performing.
3.15pm Gil Leung & Ed Atkins A Methodology for a Phosphorescent Screen A screening programme for a glow in the dark surface put together in collaboration with artist Ed Atkins and Gil Leung of LUX.
4.30pm John Latham The Government of the First and Thirteenth Chair as reinterpreted by Mark Aerial Waller with students from Norwich University College of the Arts. This performance was the first of a series of new ‘re-workings’ of Latham’s sculptural installation and performance The Government of the First and Thirteenth Chair. A number of artists worked with the framework provided by Latham’s original script and stage directions to develop new versions of the play, for live audience, for camera, or for publication. The performance stages Latham’s concept of a Time-Base Spectrum made up of 36 bands, from ‘least event’ (1) to universe as event (36). It told a version of the story of humanity, which occupies the 13 bands from 17 - 30. The previous performances of the work took place at Riverside Studios in 1978 and at the Ruskin School in 1991. The Government of the First and Thirteenth Chairwas been developed in collaboration with Elisa Kay, Hana Noorali, Claire Louise Staunton, Flat Time House and NUCA.
5-6pm Drinks in reception area
PERFORMANCES AND PRESENTATIONS
2.00pm Ruth Beale - Vignette 1
2.15pm Call & Response - Land Ownership to Data Ownership, Enclosures to Open Source
2.30pm Richard J. Evans, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University - an introduction to E.H. Carr’s What is History, a seminal work of critical historiography, and his own work, In Defence of History, followed by a Q&A session with An Endless Supply
3.30pm – 3.45 Ruth Beale - Vignette 2, on Giles Round's The Matrix Stage
3.45pm Reuben Henry & Karin Kihlberg - introduction to and screening a new film marking the launch of their book Apeirophobia
4.00pm Dr Henriette Hendriks, Head of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at Cambridge University on how language marks the present and future grammatically and marks ongoingness versus completedness
5pm Ruth Beale - Vignettes 3 & 4 with David Knight on Planning and Infrastructure, Snobbery to Bureaucracy and Nigel Pennick - Folk Melange and Selective Anthropology: The Reworking of Tradition
5.15pm Panel discussion with residency artists, Dr. Henriette Hendricks and Professor Richard J Evans
7.30pm – Emma Smith, Campanalogia: composition 1 - Bell Ringing performance in Bourn village church
In Aide-Mémoire (0.7), Uriel Orlow presents salvaged material of a future film and explores the territory between travelogue, slide-show, obscure history lesson and immersive sound-scape. Followed by an in-conversation with writer Jessica Lack.
Chains of association, visual clues and narrative fragments are woven into new configurations of past and future. Biblical Mount Ararat, a Ghost Town in Northern Armenia on the site of an earthquake, a Kurdish village in Turkey built out of the rubble of an ancient Armenian monastery, death masks of Soviet luminaries conjure more symbols, ghosts from the past and constructions of the future.
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8 October 2011
Grizedale Arts' Harvest Festival
TALKS AND WORKSHOPS PROGRAMME
10.30am Big Draw workshop with Emma Smith, artist in residence
11am Talk on Coniston Mechanics Institute by Alistair Hudson, Deputy Director of Grizedale Arts
12pm Artist talks on the history of printing presses by An Endless Supply, artists in residence
12.30pm Artist talk by Erik Sodjin on the super food Azolla
1pm Lunch of Emi Uemara's 'Ruskin Soup' with artist’s film
2pm Artist talk by Kathrin Bohm
2.30pm Big Draw workshop with Emma Smith, artist in residence
2.30pm Artist talk by Will Clifford on ¬super food solutions
3pm - Film presented by Maria Benjamin Programme Manager at Grizedale Arts
3.30pm Adam Sutherland, Director of Grizedale Arts introduces George Chan’s research on Innovative Eco systems
17pm Harvest Supper with readings and films
23 July — 24 July 2011
Open Weekend
23 -24 July
An opportunity to look around the studios of over twenty artists on site, plus the gallery exhibition OH, DELIRIOUS REVINDICATIONS! which was an attempt to create a dialogue between artistic interpretation and psychedelic experience.
A critique – via a single allegorical intervention – some of the norms that govern the standard hermeneutic situation of a viewer engaging an artwork and deciding to say or write something formally ʻmeaningfulʼ about it. The exhibition was devised by curator Paul Pieroni in response to an invitation from Wysing to produce a project with the resident artists from the Department of Psychedelic Studies.
On display in the main gallery were four artworks,respectively by Kate Owens, Hilary Koob-Sassen,Damien Roach and Mark Essen. At the far end of the gallery was a film. The film documents an earlier encounter between each of the works on display and Lawrence Upton and Benedict Taylor. In their collaborative performances Upton and Taylor channel a poetical mode of reading artworks that transgresses the basic rules and codes of artistic language and interpretation. In this qualified sense, Peroni considered their actions productively and positively ‘psychedelic’.
Saturday 2 July 2011, 2 – 9pm
Wysing’s Psychedelia Conference marked the launch of The Department of Psychedelic Studies, the second of three departments within Wysing’s programme for 2011: The Institute of Beyond - an informal research institute that will host a range of 12 artists’ residencies and events throughout the year.
Schedule for the conference
Welcome by Gareth Bell-Jones & Ellie Morgan
2pm Jonathan Harris – 'Psychedelia,Social Crisis and the Counterculture'
2.45pm Discussion
3pm Artist Presentation by Damien Roach
3.15pm Lux Screening Part 1: Expand / Alter
Outside Looking In [Extract], Timothy Leary, 15 mins
Videospace, John 'Hoppy' Hopkins, 13 mins
3.45pm Artist presentation by Kate Owens
4pm William Rowlandson – Borges and Terence McKenna. Links Between Mysticism, Psychedelia and Creativity
4.45 Discussion
5 Break (food & drinks available to buy)
5.45pm Professor Roger Buckley – Visual Perception and Its Complexities
6.30pm Discussion
6.45pm Artist presentation by Hilary Koob-Sassen
7pm Lux Screening Part 2: Illusion / Abstract
New Improved Institutional Quality: In The Environment Of Liquids And Nasals A Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops, Owen Land, 10 mins
Abstractions Quotidiennes, Laure Prouvost, Various lengths (1 - 4 mins)
7.30pm Mark Essen
7.45pm Discussion (plenum)
8.15pm Lux Screening Part 3: Stench / Rhythm
A Primer for Cadavers, Ed Atkins, 17 mins
Straight And Narrow, Tony Conrad, Beverly Conrad, 10 mins
8.45pm END
15 January 2011
An alternative conference with performances, performance lectures, discussions, screenings, a book launch, and the launch of Wysing’s new project that ran throughout 2011: The Institute of Beyond.
Located in central Cambridge at The New Hall Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, and the Corpus Christi Playroom.
1-2.45pm
Julie Myers, Dr Andrei Bejan, Jo Cobb and Dr Janneke Balk
Head Gardener at Murray Edwards College, Jo Cobb, led a tour of the College garden including a viewing of Julie Myers’ Flora Data, 2010*, developed in collaboration with the Departments of Computer Science and Plant Science at Cambridge University. Followed by an in-conversation.
Break for tea / coffee.
3-3.50pm
Andy Holden and Peter Holden
A factual exploration of the structure of bird’s nests and nesting behaviour by Andy Holden and his father Peter Holden; who spent 40 years working at the RSPB and has published numerous books on the subject of birds and wildlife.
4-4.30pm
Dr Heidi Radke
A diagnostic performance by Dr Heidi Radke who explained the inner structure of sculptures by Emily Rosamond, through x-rays taken at Cambridge University Vetenary Hospital. Followed by a screening of the two short films by Rosamond Object Lessons and Dry Pond, 2010*.
4.30-5.30pm
A reception with drinks and an opportunity to view Kettle’s Yard’s new exhibition, Lucia Nogueira: Mischief.
6-6.20pm
Mark Aerial Waller
Mark Aerial Waller’s Event for a Mille Feuille 2011 brings together patisseries, a text recital and artist John Latham’s group of works Noit Intercourses, 1960-1988.
Location: Corpus Christi Playroom, Cambridge, CB2 3PL. Suitable for adults.
6.30-6.45pm
During 2010 Wysing Arts Centre hosted the International Camp for Improbable Thinking. Artist Jeremy Millar produced a fictive text based on traces left by artists who were part of the Camp in a new book, launching at the Conflab. Included a break for a complimentary sandwich meal.
7-8pm
Sally O’Reilly with Doug Fishbone, Hayley Newman, Michelle Owoo and Bedwyr Williams
This crew of artists turned comedy writers devised scenarios and invented characters for a new radio sitcom based in the artworld. The Last of the Red Wine is a collaboratively written, improvised and directed radio sitcom in the making. |The audience was invited to join in as the group mimed comedy gold from the artworld, with all its absurdities, tragi-comedies and jokers.
8.15-9pm
Asli Çavuşoğlu & Francesco Pedraglio
Three actors performed the scripted dialogue by Çavuşoğlu and Pedraglio I have built my case on the evidence that vaporised in front of your eyes which describes inanimate or invisible objects encountered as a result of fictitious crimes. Followed by footage from Çavuşoğlu’s film (10mins).
9-9.30pm
Bedwyr Williams
A solo performance Stepping Razor, 2010* influenced by farming subcultures and agricultures, about revenge and the rural.
9.30-10pm
Fabiano Marques
A double-screen projection of the work Ridge, 2010* transformed the Corpus Christi Playroom into a pilot’s logbook to end the day.
*Denotes work developed during Wysing Arts Centre’s International Camp for Improbable Thinking, 2010.
4 December 2010
4-7pm
In early December 2010 Bedwyr Williams built a spectacular sculpture, Beehive Skyscraper, in the woods at Wysing. At 26ft tall, the sculpture could be one of the tallest beehives in the world.
The hive is based on a design by William Broughton Carr (WBC), which has sadly fallen out of fashion with beekeepers because of the complexity of its construction and use.
Williams built the sculpture in the company of local beekeepers, who were on hand to talk to. Honey products were also on sale and mead was served. The event celebrated the end of the Year of the Improbable at Wysing.
Bedwyr Williams is an artist who is well known to Wysing. During the summer of 2010 he was an artist in residence at the International Camp for Improbable Thinking. During this time he investigated farming subcultures and agricultures from an improbable perspective. He created new artworks such as Woolley Back – a Ram-bicycle and Buzzing Beehive, which was shown at Ceri Hand Gallery’s Pop Up Space during the Frieze Art Fair 2010, London.
Williams’ overall body of work includes stand-up comedy, sculpture and painting, posters and photography and he is known for adding a comic twist to his art which is inspired by his own life experiences.
Click here for information on other outdoor sculptures at Wysing.
1 June — 30 June 2010
International Camp for Improbable Thinking
From June to September 2010 Wysing Arts Centre explored The Improbable during an International Camp for Improbable Thinking with artists Asli Çavuşoğlu, Andy Holden, Fabiano Marques, Julie Myers, Emily Rosamond, Studio Weave and Bedwyr Williams, who relocated to Wysing for its duration.
Please click here for more information.
WEEKEND CAMP ONE
5 & 6 June
2-5pm
A series of games and activities across Wysing’s site and over both days inspired by guest contributor Professor David Spiegelhalter of the mathematics department of the University of Cambridge. Prof. Spiegelhalter’s research into improbability and uncertainty involved the creation of improbable games, some of which were played over the weekend. Suitable for all ages.
WEEKEND CAMP TWO
12 & 13 June
2-5pm
On Saturday, a walking tour to Wysing’s closest village, Bourn, was led by artist Emma Smith. Departing from Wysing, forgotten places were visited and past stories and myths from the village re-enacted . On Sunday, local initiative Acoustic Café hosted an unusual musical afternoon with bands: August III, John Meed + Miguel Moreno, Brian Jeffels and Sky Station. Suitable for all ages.
WEEKEND CAMP THREE
19 & 20 June
2-5pm
On Saturday, following a reading of The Night Climbers; a novel by Ivo Stourton, philosopher and artist Angelo Di Cintio of Anglia Ruskin University, was joined by a panel of speakers to discuss different interpretations of the improbable. On Sunday Professor Nicky Clayton of Cambridge University’s department of experimental psychology showed her film Bird Tango, followed by a tango workshop led by Prof. Clayton and based on Darwinian evolutionary ideas. Aimed at adults.
WEEKEND CAMP FOUR
26 & 27 June
2-5pm
On Saturday, all the ideas that have gathered throughout June were brought together and tested out in a number of fun collective activities. On Sunday, the Weekend Camps were ended with a wild food hunt followed by an experimental cooking session. Suitable for all ages.
Every Saturday throughout June
5.30-8pm
Curator, art critic and scholar Lars Bang Larsen curated a pop-up psychedelic zone of film screenings and text readings to give a further layering of improbable ideas. Aimed at adults.
Saturday 15 May
2-4pm
Arts commissioning agency Kaavous-Bhoyroo hosted a discussion on artists’ editions. Kaavous-Bhoyroo was established in 2008 to commission new works by emerging and established artists, providing them with an opportunity to explore new ideas. For the exhibition Presents all of these editions were shown as a retrospective installation in Wysing’s gallery. Artists contributing to the discussion included Coco Crampton, David Kefford, Simon Liddiment and Lee Marshall.
4-6pm
Aid & Abet is an artist-led initiative based in Cambridge, co-founded by Wysing studio artists Sarah Evans, CJ Mahony and David Kefford. For the Special Weekend they were in-conversation with London-based letter press studio, A Two Pipe Problem, print-makers who designed Aid & Abet’s first print material featuring their name as well as two new posters from the Exquisite Corpse Series.
6-7pm
The artist group C-o-l-l-i-d-e-r created Pipeline for the Presents exhibition; a long structure of pipe material connecting a booth in the gallery and Amphis (the recycled building made on Wysing’s site in 2008). For the weekend, Katie Jane wrote a ‘snooping diary’, part real and part imagined, on those entering the booth, two poets from very different traditions were brought together and the resulting dialogue broadcast into the gallery via loudspeakers and Bettina Furnee invited visitors to play ArtFair, a one-day long word association game.
Sunday 16 May
12-5pm
Visitors were invited to bring their own picnic and join in with remote signalling games across Wysing’s fields. Artist initiative PROJECKT and Field Broadcasting artists, including Richard Bevan, Dan Coopey, Fritha Jenkins, Jen Southern, Simon Faithfull and Laura Wilson celebrate the end of Field Broadcast; a project that enables artists to stream live work from fields around the world to your computer. Visitors were asked to listen out for the bell in the gallery – when it rings there is a live broadcast. All works, whether video, animation, performance, sculpture or live data were created in the field with no editing or post-production. Each broadcast was viewed by a dispersed international audience, at office desks, in cafes, on trains and at kitchen tables, and of course at Wysing itself.
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