News

(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

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

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.

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

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: [email protected] (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.

THE WALK, THE PARADE, THE PAVILION AND THE STICKER Read More »

Values and (E)valuations of or as Cultural Practices? Entering a time of pragmatic experimentation.

SPACEX Training Event on Cultural Policy, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 21-22 September 2023

The research group “Artistic Knowing: Research in and on Art and Cultural Practices” of the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture at the University of Amsterdam is pleased to welcome the SPACEX community for a two day discussion on the present and, above all, the future of one of the most controversial practices within contemporary cultural policies: Evaluation. In particular, we will try to envision how managerial evaluations of cultural practices, as the ones imposed by “New Public Management”-oriented reforms, can be replaced by artistic evaluations as cultural practices, as the ones that are organic in artistic work.

Values and (E)valuations of or as Cultural Practices? Entering a time of pragmatic experimentation. Read More »

SPACEX Training Event 3: Summary Report by Emma Mahony

There’s an Irish seanfhocial or old saying that goes ‘Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na ndaoine’. The English translation is ‘we live in each other’s shadow’. In other words, we rely on and need each other. Therefore, to survive the permacrisis that we and our planet faces, we must find new ways, or rediscover old ways, of living and being together. This overarching issue of our interdependence on each other, on other non-humans and on the planet shaped this two day symposium, and it also underscores the remit of the SPACEX research action.

The growing interest in commoning today comes from dissatisfaction, and often deep despair, with the status quo and the manner in which it suppresses social life. Unlike social movements that engage in protests actions from within the hegemonic coordinates of the neoliberal state, commoning is prefigurative. In other words, it seeks to create this better and more equitable future by actively testing out ‘in an embryonic way’ a world beyond capitalism. Commoners experiment with new collective and collaborative forms of living and being together, and by shaping new radical political subjectivities based around interdependence, mutuality and radical care. An essential component of the commons is the will to remain open to all. A commons can only continue to function as a commons as long as it remains open to all newcomers.

Over the course of the two days we discussed how artists, communities and cultural organisations variously engage in commoning practices and practices of radical care. We considered the differences between communities in the Global South that practice commoning as a means of escaping the ‘unlivable live’ neoliberalism has crafted, and how artists, academics and community organisations in the Global North internalise commoning strategies in their day-to-day lives and operations; and whether publicly funded organisations and artistic practices can be considered as commons?

Day 1 kicked off with An Introduction to Behavioural Economics by Kevin Denny (UCD SPACEX researcher). In this session, Denny discussed how psychological insights help explain economic decision making. He also touched on some of the key ideas that shape the field of behavioural economics including bounded rationality, heuristics, and the implications for pro-social behaviour that arise in terms of the ‘problems’ of the commons.

Session 2 saw the participants playing the cooperative boardgame World of Work designed and hosted by Michelle Browne (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD).

Working in teams of 6, the players worked together to deal with external forces, tech innovations and societal changes that assist or reduce job creation in a town like St Helens in the North of England. The aim of the game was to gather a number of social benefits such as housing, sustainable environment and basic income, to improve the lives of those who live in the town.

After lunch on Day 1 (provided by Luncheonette, a long term art project centred around hospitality and food, started by the artist Jennie Moran in 2013), Paul O’Neill (SPACEX Researcher, University College Dublin) led a discussion based workshop that focused on Counter-Mapping the Materiality of the Internet in Dublin City. Working in two groups, the participants critically reflected on our relationship with networked technologies, while considering more sustainable ways of communicating.

Session 4 was a walking tour of Dublin’s ‘The Liberties’ led by Seoidín O’Sullivan (SPACEX researcher NCAD) and Anthony Freeman an artist, beekeeper and community worker who co-founded In Our Shoes is an award winning walking tour charity. https://citiesgovernancesustainability.eu/current-projects/urban-grit/.

After supper, the participants moved onto Project Arts Centre for a tour of the exhibition Being Horizontal / Sínte (curated by Nora Heidorn). The tour was led by Sara Greavu (SPACEX Researcher, Project Arts Centre). In contrast to the standard enlightenment representation of the human body as a singular, upright, able-bodied man, gazing forward, this group exhibition paid caring attention to reclined bodies and to bodies inclined towards each other, favouring a model of the human as interdependent and reliant.

The evening ended with a Performance of Manifest also at Project Arts Centre, which forms part of What Does He Need?  – a long term collaborative project by Fiona Whelan (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD), Brokentalkers, Rialto Youth Project and a Dublin city network of individuals and organisations.

Manifest was a frank and unflinching performance exploring the current state of masculinity. Taking the form of a workshop, a group of men were facilitated in a conversation about what it means to be a man.

The second day, which saw the symposium opening out attendance to NCAD staff and students and invited guests, began with Theories of Commoning. This event interrogated some of the ‘theories of commoning’ that emerge in the writings of two contemporary theorists of the commons. Stavros Stavrides (SPACEX Researcher, LUC) explored the ‘Emancipatory Potentialities of Urban Commoning’ with a focus on Latin America’, and Gary Hall (SPACEX Researcher, CU) interrogated ‘The Commons as Coming Together of Those with Nothing in Common’.

This was followed by Elevenses for the “Hungry Months” hosted by Gareth Kennedy (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD), and Students from NCAD FIELD. Since 2020, Gareth has been charged with running the Studio+ NCAD FIELD module in a derelict brown field site beside the College which is in the process of being reappraised as a Novel Ecology. FIELD students served the participants pancakes cooked on a reclaimed manhole cover over a camp fire and also offered tours of the site.

The third event of the day saw participants move to NCAD Gallery for Principles of Space Detection a

performance by Irina Gheorghe that focused on how processes of obstruction, deception and camouflage shape interactions between members of the same social group, and between a society and what it perceives as alien to it. This event was curated by Anne Kelly (SPACEX research, NCAD)

After lunch, Susanne Bosch led The 60 min Commoning ParKour: An embodied commoning experience in the concourse at NCAD. The ParKour involved “seeing” and experiencing the environment in a new way and imagining the possibilities for movement in, with and around it.

The afternoon sessions focused on Commoning as Care Practices. Part 1 saw representatives of cultural organisations Rosie Lynch, Callan Workhouse Union, and Siobhan Geoghegan, Common Ground discuss the role that cultural organisations embedded in local communities play in the development of inclusive and empowered communities capable of producing collective responses to issues of spatial and social justice, care, housing development, climate change, ecology and the urban environment.

Part Two explored how the practices of artist’s Evelyn Broderick, The People’s Shed and Fiona Whelan (SPACEX researcher, NCAD) are embedded in local communities and they role they play in the development of inclusive and empowered communities. The People’s Shed, established by Broderick during her residency in studio 468, is a space for the sharing of skills and social knowledge through collective making. Dr. Fiona Whelan’s practice explores and responds to systemic power relations and inequalities through long-term cross-sectoral collaborations with diverse individuals, groups and organisations.

The symposium drew to a close with an introduction to Our Table by Ellie Kisyombe, co-founder, who discussed  how thi ssocial enterprise focuses on producing an inclusive community through multi-cultural food and campaigning to end direct provision in Ireland. This was followed by a delicious feast laid on by Our Table whileparticipants in The People’s Shed led a live Trad music session

SPACEX Training Event 3: Summary Report by Emma Mahony Read More »

Talk to the Land: The practice of Commoning and Real Montage in the work of the Partisan Social Club. Wednesday 22nd March 2023, 5–6.30pm GMT

Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan (Partisan Social Club) in conversation with art historian Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes to reflect upon their recent exhibition, entitled Talk to the Land at SIRIUS.

Talk to the Land explored three aspects of commoning: landlordism; how to practice a culture-led recommoning of cities; and utopian settlements in South-West Ireland. Partisan Social Club (PSC) examines alternative modes of community building arising from cooperative proposals and experiments advanced by the eighteenth-century Irish, Cork-based philosopher William Thompson. 

The event will include the launch and screening of the film, Collective Nouns II Reflections on Commoning (3mins). The film was produced in conjunction with SIRIUS and includes several contributions from friends, colleagues, and people the PSC met while at SIRIUS.

Talk to the Land is PSC’s first solo show in Ireland. It was developed through multiple residencies at SIRIUS across 2022, following dialogue initiated in 2020. Talk to the Land was curated by Miguel Amado, director of SIRIUS, and produced by SIRIUS.

Register with eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/partisan-social-club-talk-to-the-land-tickets-591281899077

Talk to the Land: The practice of Commoning and Real Montage in the work of the Partisan Social Club. Wednesday 22nd March 2023, 5–6.30pm GMT Read More »

SPACEX Training Event 3: Behavioural Economics and Commoning Practices; From Cultural Value to Social Wealth

The third SPACEX training event will take place in Dublin from 2-3 March 2023. The focus will be on behavioural economics and commoning. It is being delivered by SPACEX researchers from the National College of Art & Design (NCAD) in conjunction with the Geary Institute, School of Economics at University College Dublin (UCD) and Project Arts Centre, Dublin.

Travel to NCAD here: https://www.ncad.ie/about/visitor-info/
Please book your accommodation in Dublin early as it can get very expensive. The areas Dublin 1, Dublin 2, Dublin 7 and Dublin 8 are within walking distance to training event venues.


This is a draft schedule which may change slightly, but starting and finishing times will remain the same.

Day 1: Thursday 2nd March

Locations: From 10.00am: Estelle Solomons Room, Grace Gifford House, National College of Art and Design John St. West Campus. John St. West, off Thomas Street, Dublin 8. From 7.00pm: Project Arts Centre, 39 Essex St E, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, D02 RD45

10.00-10.30am: Registration and Coffee, Estelle Solomons Room, Grace Gifford House, National College of Art and Design John St. West Campus

10.30-11.45am: SESSION 1: Basics of Behavioural Economics, hosted by Kevin Denny (SPACEX Researcher, UCD), 

11.45am-1.00pm: SESSION 2: World of Work, Cooperative Board Game, designed and hosted by Michelle Browne (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD), 

1.00-2.00pm: Sustenance for Hungry Souls by Luncheonette, https://luncheonettedublin.com/ABOUT

2.00-3.30pm: SESSION 3: Participatory Practices and their Engagement with Urban and Digital Infrastructures and Systems. This discussion-based workshop will be led by Paul O’Neill (SPACEX Researcher, UCD)

3.30-3.45pm: Coffee Break

3.45-5.00pm: SESSION 4: Walking Tour of The Liberties led by Seoidín O’Sullivan (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD), http://www.seoidinosullivan.com/; and Anthony O’Brien of In Our Shoes Walking Tours, https://inourshoeswalkingtours.ie/

5.30-5.45: Jennie Moran introduces Luncheonette, a long term art project centred around hospitality and food, started by Jennie in 2013. It is a prolonged exploration into the complex alchemy of placemaking, centred around the provision of shared experiences using nourishment, shelter, comfort, warmth, light, and tone to treat places so that they feel easier for people to be in and more poetic, , https://luncheonettedublin.com/ABOUT

5.45-7.00pm: Sustenance for Hungry Souls by Luncheonette, https://luncheonettedublin.com/ABOUT 

7.00-7.30pm: Exhibition tour of Being Horizontal / Sínte at Project Arts Centre, https://projectartscentre.ie/. Led by Sara Greavu (SPACEX Researcher, Project Arts Centre)

7.45-8.30pm*: Performance of Manifest at Project Arts Centre, which forms part of What Does He Need?  – a long term collaborative project by Fiona Whelan (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD), Brokentalkers, Rialto Youth Project and a Dublin city network of individuals and organisations. www.whatdoesheneed.com & https://projectartscentre.ie/event/manifest/

*PLEASE RESERVE A TICKET BY EMAILING [email protected]

9.00pm Move to a local pub for drinks and conversation

Day 2: Friday 3rd March

Locations: From 9.30am: Harry Clarke Lecture Theatre and NCAD Gallery, NCAD, 100 Thomas Street, Dublin 8, D08 K521

9.30-11.15am: SESSION 1: Theories of Commoning. Speakers Stavros Stavrides (SPACEX Researcher, LUC) and Gary Hall (SPACEX Researcher, CU). Chaired by Emma Mahony (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD)

11.15am-12.00pm: Elevenses for the “Hungry Months”. Hosted by Gareth Kennedy (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD) and NCAD FIELD students

12.00-1.00pm: Principles of Space Detection. Performance by Irina Gheorghe in NCAD Gallery. Hosted by Anne Kelly (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD)

1.00-2.00pm: Sustenance for Hungry Souls by Luncheonette.

2.00-3.00pm: SESSION 2: The 60 min Commoning Parkour: An embodied commoning experience with Susanne Bosch.

3.20-4.30pm: SESSION 3: Commoning as Care Practices in the Community Part 1: Organisations, Rosie Lynch, Callan Workhouse Union; Siobhan Geoghegan, Common Ground; Ellie Kisombe, Our Tablechaired by Tom O’Dea (SPACEX researcher).

4.30-4.45pm: Coffee Break

4.45-5.45: SESSION 3 Cont. Commoning as Care Practices in the Community Part 2: Artists, Fiona Whelan (SPACEX researcher); Evelyn Broderick, A People’s Shed; chaired by Michelle Browne (SPACEX researcher).

6.00-6.20: Our Table. Ellie Kisombe introduces Our Table a social enterprise which focuses on producing an inclusive community through food and campaigning to end direct provision in Ireland. 

6.30-8.30: CLOSING SESSION: Trad Around Our Table. Event in NCAD Gallery and Foyer with a live Trad music session led by Evelyn Broderick; and sustenance by Our Table.

9.00pm: Move to local pub for drinks and foot tapping conversation


SPACEX Training Event 3: Behavioural Economics and Commoning Practices; From Cultural Value to Social Wealth Read More »

SPACE-X RISE Visiting Researcher Talks, Wednesday 8 February 2023 @12pm

Please join us for two talks from the visiting SPACEX RISE Researchers – Andri Christofides & Georgia Perkins.

Andri Christofides is the director of Home for Cooperation (AHDR/H4C), based in Cyprus.

Georgia Perkins is a curator working with SIRIUS, Cork and a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths.

Both visitors are spending 31 days with the ArtSpaceCity research theme at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures at Coventry University as part of the SPACEX RISE project.

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

Join Zoom Meeting: https://coventry-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/6979025653

SPACE-X RISE Visiting Researcher Talks, Wednesday 8 February 2023 @12pm Read More »

SPACEX Training Event Artists / Writers Bursaries

We are delighted to announce three micro-bursaries for artists, writers and community activists to attend a SPACEX training event and public forum on arts and the urban commons in Coventry on June 30th and July 1st 2022. 

We have two bursaries of £150 to support creative practitioners to attend the two-day Spacex training event at Coventry University’s Centre for Postdigital Cultures. Day 1 introduces ethnographic research, field research and participant observation methods and brings researchers that have been working with publics through participation and creative practices to share their work. Day 2 is entitled the Arts and the Urban Commons Forum and is held at the LTB showrooms. Artists, curators and scholars share their work and ideas around the city and culture’s role in living together empathetically.  The bursaries are available for CV-postcode applicants who are invested in processes of commoning, community and public art in their practice, or who would like to learn about these themes. 

We are also offering a writer’s bursary of £300 for an artist to attend the Arts and the urban commons forum on Friday 1st July, and to write a 1,000 word review of the event. The bursary recipient will receive mentoring / support from Mel Jordan (SPACEX / Partisan Social Club). We are interested in supporting a creative practitioner who wants to develop their art writing and/or critical writing. The bursaries are available for a CV-postcode applicant who may have interests in arts–led regeneration, contemporary art, public and socially–engaged art.

We are keen to receive applications from Black and Global Majority artists, those who identify as living with a disability, and creative people from backgrounds which are currently underrepresented in the arts.

Please note the LTB Showrooms venue does not have wheelchair access.

How to apply

Please complete this short application form for bursaries to attend the 2-day SPACEX event, or this form to apply for the critical writing bursary by 5pm 6 June 2022.

Any queries please email [email protected]

Read more about the SPACEX Training Event here

 

Badges for opinion formation, Freee Art Collective & Partisan Social Club, ongoing
Shopping, still from Phoenix City, Duncan Whitley 2021

SPACEX Training Event Artists / Writers Bursaries Read More »

SPACEX Training Event – June 30 & July 1, 2022

Day 1: Hosted by Centre for Postdigital Cultures @ ICE Building, Coventry University, UK. Starts: 10.45 registration, 11am – 6.00pm

Day 2: Hosted by Centre for Postdigital Cultures @ LTB Showrooms (upstairs at The Litten Tree Pub) Coventry, UK. Starts: 09.30 coffee / registration, 10 am – 6.00pm

SPACEX responds to the troubling rise of populist nationalism and conflict in European societies by engaging new publics and forging a culture that embraces diversity, difference, and discursive exchange within cities, towns and urban sites.

The lack of interdisciplinary knowledge by those working in the cultural sector has significantly affected the way in which the social benefit of cultural activities is understood, articulated and applied. SPACEX proposes that inventing new and inclusive ways of living together, requires the implementation of new transdisciplinary and cross-sectoral practices and methods, that connect spatial practice with cultural sociology, cultural policy, critical pedagogies and behavioural economics

The Coventry based SPACEX training event will consist of two days of talks and presentations addressing the contexts outlined in the SPACEX research action. The aim of the two-day event is to review research methods that draw on perspectives across the social sciences and humanities, in order that SPACEX researchers can devise an approach best suited to their contribution to the SPACEX action. The first day entitled, ‘An introduction to Cultural Sociology’, will cover traditional ethnographic research, field research and participant observation methods. It will introduce researchers to action research (with others), affective methodologies and creative and arts-based methods as well as feminist approaches to new societal challenges. While day one – concerns itself with methods and processes that help to explore the social and cultural contexts of working with others, day two engages with the institutions and practices of the city. For day two entitled ‘Arts and the urban commons: new visions for the phoenix city’ we move out of the university and into the city where we will discuss the issues arising from Coventry’s year as UK City of Culture. We will hear from artists, curators, researchers and local citizens, this will give an insight into some of the cultural activities that are played out in the city as well as the broader context of arts and culture as a UK government process of regeneration. We imagine questions of agency, function and the depoliticization of arts and culture will result from the talks and conversations planned for the day.

Confirmed speakers

(Day 1) Dr. Marcus Maloney, Dr. Akilah Maxwell, Dr. Saba Hussain, Dr Adrienne Evans, (Day 2) Duncan Whitley, Ryan Hughes, Diane Dever, Dan Thompson. Poster Provocations x 5: includes Melissandre Varin (B.o.o.K), Christine Eade.

Jasper Joseph-Lester & Simon King – The Walkative Project
Public participants creating a mosaic out of recycled archaeological finds at Kingston Museum with Recycle Archaeology

SPACEX Training Event – June 30 & July 1, 2022 Read More »

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