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Vittorio Iervese at Verein zur Förderung von Kunst und Kultur am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz e.V.

Secondment dates
27/01/2023 – 28/02/2023

NABLA – An interdisciplinary art project that performatively narrates the different layers of the Rosa-Luxemburg Platz in Berlin. (29/01/2023)

Based on the experience of the first lockdown in 2020, a narrative was created in which the Rosa-luxemburg Platz is seen as hermetically sealed from the rest of the world. It thus becomes the ultimate setting in a future in which humanity no longer leaves its homes and can only remember a past civilization that still had a public sphere based on information about its immediate living space.

The NABLA performance/tour takes place live on site and is a kind of “Performative Introduction” to the discourse surrounding the area, the Podcast tells a different story with a real background in videos with audio plays in each episode, and the Fandom, in turn, represents an online encyclopedia with space for all facts about the area written from the perspective of the future. This is an excellent example of how performance art, storytelling, archives and urban exploration can not only co-exist but also reinforce each other.

Kevin Walker at Festival dei Popoli, IT

My objective in this secondment was to initiate some practical experiments in ‘ethnographic AI’, which I define as an investigation into whether artificial intelligence can gain specific cultural understandings. Engaging with Festival dei Popoli’s ethnographic film archive online and on-site, I used ml5.js to create experiments in AI image classification, image and video generation, pose tracking, and object identification.

I also included experiments in creating randomised compositions, using the Festival’s archive of posters and programme leaflets. Alan Turing, in his 1950 paper ‘Computing machinery and intelligence’, proposes that randomness might be an important element of creativity.

In using the coding environment ml5.js, I uses small, portable datasets for two reasons: (1) to explore whether small, highly curated datasets could facilitate specific cultural understandings; and (2) to mitigate the high environmental cost of AI by minimising processing and network operations.

The work raises questions about AI in terms of identifying, classifying and describing humans in terms of what and who is seen, and what can be inferred from individual and collective actions. Also, the training datasets used in many existing AI systems (including the ones I used) are very limited and culturally-specific, for example in the objects they are capable of recognising. This relates to the programmer’s expression ‘Garbage In Garbage Out’ which describes how the outputs of a system depend on the quality of its inputs. I found that the ‘seams’ in AI systems – for example the unnatural joins between surfaces in images, or the artificial ways Large Language Models attempt to replicate human writing – expose the artificiality of such systems, yet perhaps keeping these seams visible is important for maintaining transparent AI systems.

I made all my code freely available – the code and the experiments can be viewed at https://ai.postdigitalcultures.org

Carmen Mariscal at Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg Platz, Berlin, Germany

Secondment dates
1st part: 21st July– 3rd August 2023 (13 days)
2nd part: July 2024 (18 days)

Berlin Maps of the Tiergarten area, 19th and 20th Centuries, Cartography Library, Staatsbibliothek, Berlin

The project for this secondment consists of carrying out research on the geographical site that the Mexican Embassy in Berlin occupies today, its transformation over the years, especially during the 20th century and its probable problematic history. I am interested in researching urban palimpsests and the layers of memory of places, whether present or destroyed.

As a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art, a British institution, I am interested in investigating this area of Berlin, since the land that I am studying belonged to the British Sector in the years following the Second World War (1945-1949). I will look at events that took place at that time and in that specific site, linking it later with the events that took place before and during the war, the History of West Germany, Unified Germany, and the origins of the Mexican Embassy there in 2001, the construction of the building, its symbols, and its relationship with the architecture of the Bauhaus.

In this research, I will experiment with the methods that I am applying for my doctoral thesis. The methodologies used are critical, empirical, and embodied.

From this transdisciplinary investigation that is taking place over two summers, (13 days in July 2023 and 18 days in July 2024), I will create sculptures, videos, and texts that will be included in my thesis, in publishable articles and an exhibition.

This research questions erasure and oblivion in the history of Mexican diplomacy in Berlin. My aim is to create visibility to the layers of memory contained in the space that the Mexican Embassy in Berlin occupies today, opening doors to stories that include Germany, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and perhaps other countries.

My Space X secondment in Berlin is taking place with the Kunstverein am Rosa Luxemburg Platz with the additional support of the Mexican Embassy in Berlin. The research will culminate with an exhibition presented at one or both spaces.

Joy Corcec

Coventry Biennial, UK

I am a marketing and communications specialist, with a background in art history, digital curating, and environmental sustainability.

Building on seven years of experience of working in museums and galleries, I have effectively raised the profile of various organisations, including Culture Coventry and The Barber Institute of Fine Arts. Currently, I am Marketing Manager at The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Coventry Biennial.

My knowledge of multi-platform marketing and particularly the digital landscape for the cultural sector has helped me build strong relationships and inspire diverse communities, including leading on campaigns for Turner Prize 2021, Machine Memoirs: Space, Life and Work of Frida Kahlo, and UK City of Culture.

I’ve also proudly collaborated with national galleries across the UK and Google Arts & Culture, further expanding the reach and impact of cultural initiatives.

Throughout the SPACEX project I will seek to build international relationships and knowledge in support of Coventry Biennial’s impactful work with artists and communities.

www.coventrybiennial.com

Secondment destination
Athens

Benedetta Bronzini

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia – ITALY

After a MA in German Studies (Università di Firenze/Humboldt Universität zu Berlin), a PhD in Germanic and Comparative Studies (Università di Firenze/ Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) with a dissertation on the interview as performance and historical document, and a Post-doc fellowship at the Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia on heroes in contemporary European theatre, she teaches at SSML Carlo Bo (IULM) as adjunct professor and cooperates with the Universities of Florence and of Modena e Reggio Emilia (adjunct professor for Digital Theatre – Master DHIALOGUE). She is member of the Internationale Heiner Müller Gesellschaft,co-founder of the Florentine theatre company Genius Loci Performance and trained to be a professional social theatre worker (Teatro Civile, Roma-Prato). Focus of her current research are: digital performance, site-specific and social theatre and European identity in contemporary dramaturgies.

http://dslc.unimore.it

Secondment destination
Dublin, February 2024

(gestures and signs will carry on where language fails!) A titled conversation with artist and researcher Carlos Noronha Feio.

Please join the ArtSpaceCity group for a talk by visiting SPACEX RISE Researcher Carlos Noronha Feio on 11 October @ 11.30.

The talk will take place at the Institute for Creative Cultures, Coventry University and online

Microsoft Teams
Meeting ID: 315 297 150 281 
Passcode: ixbEpC

Carlos Noronha Feio consumes juxtaposes and performs media as research into cultural local and global identity adopting culturally significant images locations and symbols as a form of creative interference with meaning demonstrating the almost arbitrary nature in which cultural significance is interpreted. 
Repeated in several texts the sentence above can be broken into the following logic: Noronha Feio’s work is a bit all over the place. He follows his interests and curiosities, his eagerness and needs in a manner akin to a collector. His is a rhizomatic practice where research (whatever that might mean) plays an important role. Noronha Feio is driven as much to produce as well as to have and to hold, to show, to understand himself as well as some social construction in his surroundings. He sometimes tries to communicate with his work with words: without a promise of being clear…
From 2020 until 2022 he was a core member, and the coordinator for Art and Creativity, of Oeiras’ bid to European Capital of Culture 2027.
Noronha Feio is seconded from The Reserva, Lisbon to Coventry University

www.a-reserva.org

Art, Society and the Public Domain: Stroom’s role in delivering art in the city of the Hague, NL. A talk by Ilga Minjon.

Please join the ArtSpaceCity group for a talk by visiting SPACEX RISE Researcher Ilga Minjon on 28 September at 13:30.

The talk will take place at the Institute for Creative Cultures, Coventry University and online.

Microsoft Teams
Meeting ID: 316 132 838 114
Passcode: 5dyKqG

Ilga Minjon is a curator, researcher and advisor working at Stroom Den Haag and a tutor at Design Academy Eindhoven with a background in Art History, and interests in societal questions around public space, ecology, and technology. She aims to weave future imaginaries from artistic practices that speculate on the senses and (networked) relations, as well as on queer, decolonial and feminist re-writings of belonging. At Stroom she has curated Attempst to Read the World (Differently): Three Exhibitions in Five Acts, with Max de Waard, Monira al Qadiri and Jean Katambayi Mukendi, Lawrence Lek: Nøtel The Hague, Yvonne Dröge Wendel: To Be To Gather; and most recently From the Sea to the Clouds to the Soil a group exhbition mapping kinship relations across time and technologies with Femke Herregraven, Risk Hazekamp, Urok Shirhan, Yeon Sung and Natasha Tontey. Since 2017, Ilga has initiated the Uncertainty Seminars an ongoing cycle of experimental exchanges, platformfing interdisciplinary ways to imagine doubt as a cultural strategy.

THE WALK, THE PARADE, THE PAVILION AND THE STICKER

A Performative Walk & Risograph Sticker Printing Workshop & Exhibition by Barbara Holub and Jaspar Joseph-Lester From Van Abbe Museum to Onomatopee, Eindhoven

Walk: Saturday, Sept.16, 15:30 – 17:00
Meeting point: Van Abbe Museum,
Stratumsedijk 2, 5611 ND Eindhoven

Opening of the exhibition: Sept.16, 18:00
Exhibition: Sept.17-–Oct.8, 2023
Location: Onomatopee Project Space,
Lucas Gasselstraat 2a, 5613 LB Eindhoven

Walks, parades, maps and stickers function as powerful tools. They can unearth how physical and immaterial forces are interwoven, and act as a forensic exercise that reveals elements of unnoticed livelihood, traces of profound mutations, and poetic moments that stand as (in)visible markers of the life of a city.

The walk between Van Abbe Museum and Onomatopee refers to WE PARAPOM! European Parade of Apple Trees, a flagship project by Barbara Holub for the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 (2021-23), and will look at specific urban conditions of two post-industrial cities, Eindhoven and Chemnitz (former Karl-Marx-City). At first glance, these two cities don’t appear to have any obvious connections or similarities. However, through the process of walking, parading and mapping we will begin to understand how the silent and ephemeral forces that meet us on the street speak of the causal connections that bind these two cities together. Through the walk we will explore specific topics of urban and social issues and hidden poetic moments in the neighbourhood by addressing and involving the community in active and critical modes of seeing, documenting and mapping.

The performative walk will be followed by a Riso printing workshop at Onomatopee, where there will be an opportunity to design and print stickers inspired by the walk.

The Walk, The Parade, The Pavilion and The Sticker, is a zine published by Onomatopee. The publication focuses on the walk as an artistic method and addresses the ambivalence between a ‘walk’ and a ‘parade’. It accompanies the performative walk, along with the screening of the videos „Sky Pool“ by Jaspar Joseph-Lester and „More Opportunities“ by Barbara Holub.

For more information click here. If you would like to join, please email: info@onomatopee.net (subject: Walk 16/9 Onomatopee)

This program is free however there is limited space available.

The Walk, The Parade, The Pavilion and The Sticker is a project by Barbara Holub and Jaspar Joseph-Lester in collaboration with Van Abbe Museum and Onomatopee in the frame of SPACEX.

Anna Remešová

Academy of Fine Arts in Prague

Anna Remešová (based in Prague) is editor in the Czech online art magazine Artalk. Studied art theory and history at the Academy of Arts, Design and Architecture in Prague. Anna is an occasional curator and organizer, mainly interested in institutional conditions of art in the context of the current politics and society. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague where she focuses on the history of the Náprstek Ethnographic Museum and its permanent display.

https://avu.cz

Secondment destination
CASCO, 22/5–2/6/2023 and 18/9–7/10/2023

Lukasz Risso

MayDay Rooms, UK

Lukasz Risso is a member of the MayDay Rooms collective – an archive dedicated to the history of social struggles, resistance campaigns and experimental culture. The main work of MayDay Rooms consists in connecting historical materials with contemporary political struggles through collaborative education, informal research, digitisation and free distribution. In the framework of the SpaceX programme, he collaborated with URBANER – Culture Urbane Emilia-Romagna, AFOr- Archivio delle Fonti Orali, Collettivo Amigdala, Istituto Storico di Modena, AISO – Associazione Italiana di Storia Orale and Nationhood collective on a project around (sub) cultures and their connection with processes of neoliberal urbanisation.

https://maydayrooms.org/

Secondment destination
University of Modena, Reggio Emilia, 03/07/2023 to 14/07/2023