My SPACE X secondment was at Home for Cooperation, a community centre in the buffer zone in Nicosia, Cyprus. I made several trips here during two secondments between 2023 and 2024.
My first trip was in January 2023. One of the questions I asked myself during this first week was what I, as someone from the UK, could do or bring in a social and politically complex context in which the UK is historically responsible for harm.
I asked an artist from Cyprus what value I, as a visitor, could bring. She replied that as a first-time visitor, my newness and my first impressions might reveal something that someone who is embedded in living there cannot see.
I tried to cultivate a practice of listening during this first week by noticing the strong feelings and observations that happen with initial impressions. I tried to stay alive to my instincts. I attended events, walked the streets, visited museums, drank pomegranate juice, read books in the ADHR library, and tried to slow down. I stopped to listen to sounds and tried to meet as many people as possible. Saying yes to things, meeting people, and walking down paths where I don’t know where they go.
This first week was generously supported by Home for Cooperation. They introduced me to artists and NGO workers in Nicosia who are leading workshops in an intercommunal context. I heard about different projects, such as Peace Players, a basketball-playing project with Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot young people, and the UN Youth Champions. This connected to my existing practice-based PhD research about the role of art workshops in the UK during a time that is described as a polycrisis; the interconnection of different global crises that are greater than the sum of their parts. My practice looks at the role of togetherness, imagination and dialogue in the art workshop during this time.
I was particularly moved by the time I spent at the Home for Cooperation Cafe. The Cafe was opened in the buffer zone in 2011. I noticed the incredible mix of people using the space. Children crossing the buffer zone for school play in and outside the building. People holding language classes. People crossing from south to north and from north to south. Friends meeting for a beer. Groups of people sitting on the long benches outside. I noticed the visibility of institutions —NGOs at work – people in meetings with laptops and notebooks. UN peacekeeping force drinking iced coffee. Italian, Irish, British patches of flags on arms.
My next visit in October aligned with the Home for Cooperation festival Buffer Fringe. This extraordinary performance festival takes place over several days in venues in the north and south. The opening night was in the buffer zone. The festival brings conversation, conviviality, and artistic performances from international contexts to this highly political space. It is both surreal, incredible, and moving. The wild graphics of the Buffer Fringe give the event a science fiction-like atmosphere.
During this visit, I propose to interview artists who have experience facilitating intercommunal workshops. I am thinking about how to hold space in the art workshop for people who have different experiences, and opinions. I am reflecting on this in relation to heightened divisions in the UK, and I am thinking about the research questions of the Space X project. I am thinking about the role of the art workshop as a space for difference and empathy. I go to workshops and write about them. I go to Taking the Floor- Body and Voice in the Space by Paula Carrara, which takes place as part of the Buffer Fringe programme, and A Space of Our Own, organised by the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research exploring gendered experiences of public spaces and the role of public monuments with educators from the north and south of Cyprus.
During this trip I talk with artists and NGO workers about their practices in cafes, in their homes, on the streets. Some conversations are recorded, and others are not. One evening in a bar I meet community facilitator and cultural producer Argyro Toumazou. I am moved by a map she shows me of Nicosia, as though the city is not separated by a buffer zone.
I stay with Barçın Gökbörü who runs MultiKulti parties near the buffer zone. I meet many people who pass by through the accommodation. I talk with him about the partie he hosts. I think about what a party can do that a workshop can’t. I think about feeling, and empathy when dancing. I meet dancer Arianna Economou over a shared love of the word rehearsal and a chance meeting at a presentation of work. We meet at a cafe near her studio to talk about a history of incredible intercommunal projects she has led.
My time is latticed by meetings, and chance encounters. I see a poster about a contemporary art festival called Xarkis in a village called Kornos. I take the bus there. I find myself in a workshop around experience of pain. As a village famous for ceramics the artists have built a clay pit in the centre of the village, outside a ceramics workshop. After the workshop we all go in there. My face is covered in clay. I join a walking performance around the village, culminating in a gig played in an empty shop. One artist gives away ice cream from an ice cream van, telling stories, memories. Is this post-capitalist ice cream based on new forms of relational exchange?
In October, during this time, the war starts in Palestine. Geographically we are close, and share the same climate, the same skies. I think a lot about the UK’s colonial history in Cyprus, and in the Middle East. I start to imagine workshops that haven’t happened.
I stay in an accommodation with a host from Cyprus, and guests from Syria, from Germany, and from the UK. We share dinners together. We eat walnuts in syrup, made by the hosts aunt. All of us have a story about walnuts in syrup.
I visit Cyprus twice more. I see Cyprus at all points of the year. In the sunny and cold days of winter and the extreme summer heat. During these later trips I transcribe interviews, write about the workshops I attend.
In winter I run a workshop at Home for Cooperation about care and rehearsing future worlds. How can I talk about a workshop without running one? In the workshop we reflect on care practices in our own lives, and how they might use as principles for society more broadly. We create posters based on these small acts of care in our own lives, imagining them as principles for society.
I create a small intervention in the Home for Cooperation cafe based on reflection about workshop practices and the cafe itself. I sublimate the text ‘We are all rehearsing futures’ on mugs that Home for Cooperation uses for plants. I want to think about how actions in the present are forming futures. The text acts as a mirror and a prompt.
On my final trip in the heat of summer where mostly I am out at night due to the heat of the day. I reflect on running workshops and what this means. I think critically about how I run workshops. I reflect on planning workshops. I try to imagine another way to plan, which is less about time and more about care. I spend time Cyens maker space and learn printing techniques.
I plan to print a small run of the publication, and a copy will go in the library at the Home for Cooperation cafe .
Thanks to Home for Cooperation, Buffer Fringe, Andri Christofides, Barçın Gökbörü, Maro and her family, Christina Skarpari and Xarkis Festival, Nihal Soğancı, Paula Carrara, Arianna Economou, Natali Touloupou, The Association for Historical Dialogue and Research, Cyens Thinker Maker Space, Fiona Whelen, Hoi Polloi, Rüstem Kitabevi, all attendees of the workshop at Home for Cooperation, and all the other people and places I had encounters with during my time in Cyprus. Thank you for your generosity.