Secondments

27/09/2023-28/01/2024, work package 2 (Practices)

Arts-based evaluation of Coventry Biennial

The policy cycle is currently failing to effectively capture the lived experience of a variety of stakeholders and citizens, when evaluating social value and impact. Recent social developments since 2020 have accelerated the search for methods that gather meaningful, contextual qualitative data that evidence impact in innovative ways. In response, in my secondment project, based on the case of the Coventry Biennial, I have researched, together with Coventry University colleague Dr Charlie Ingram, an applied-theatre scholar, how arts-based methods of evaluation can contribute to the need for valuing the voices of citizens in evaluation processes. This project tested a recently developed and innovative methodology, ‘Evaluation Performance’, and investigate what “added value” the method can provide, given the need for an expanded set of evaluative practices by policymakers. It provided insights into the value of alternative approaches to capture lived experience and provide unique and affectual evidence bases to evaluate impacts. 

We were interested in how alternative strategies might be employed to provide a contextual understanding of the values created by arts organisations. With the Coventry Biennial as a case study, we set out on a journey whereby we wanted to find out what the Biennial valued about itself, and how that manifested from the perspectives of, and between staff, stakeholders, artists and members of the public. We interviewed respondents from these different groups, whose thoughts and experiences on the Coventry Biennial were presented in a piece of headphone verbatim theatre performance. This was an experimental process, and the performance was developed with a short rehearsal period, which took place over three days. Despite the time constraints, the impact of the theatrical presentation of the evaluation of Coventry Biennial confirmed the potential of arts-based evaluations for the effective communication of the values of art. Some of the most relevant stakeholders of Coventry Biennial who attended the performance, the officers of the Arts Council of England and of Coventry City Council, both funders of Coventry Biennial, expressed their appreciation for the effectiveness of the evaluative performance in communicating those experience-related values of the Biennial that remain hidden in conventional forms of evaluation reports. The intention is to foster cooperation with applied arts colleagues and cultural organizations to conduct further experiments of arts-based evaluations and to test their effectiveness in communicating the values of arts and culture to all relevant stakeholders in society. 

Ingram, C. and Chiaravalloti, F. 2024. …like a shortcut through the brambles, an Evaluative Performance. Recording of the theatre-based evaluation of Coventry Biennial 2023, Ellen Terry Performance Studio, Coventry (UK), 19 July 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqRiI1TJws8

6th-21st February 2024

Site-specific Dublin

I seconded in Dublin in February for the first part of my secondment. My research activities were various and split among networking, teaching, and researching. 

First, I visited the Projects Art Centre, a cultural and performative reservoir in the heart of Dublin’s Temple Bar, where I connected with Sara Greavu, visual art projects curator and fellow Space X researcher, and Cian O’Brien, curator of performance projects of PAC. 

I am very grateful to Prof. Emma Mahony, Space X researcher, for inviting me to NCAD to give a lecture about the history of immersive performance, and to attend her class. Both experiences were very enriching. Very important for my research was the encounter with Prof. Fiona Whealan, Space X researcher, coordinator and dramatist of the project What does he need?, who invited me to visit Rua RED CENTRE OF DUBLIN and introduced me to the Rialto Youth Project.

In these days I also connected with Marley Treloar, fellow Space X researcher, also visiting Ireland for her secondment in Cork, and with the coordinator of the Rialto Youth Project.

In two weeks, I had the chance to experience the performative scene of Dublin in very different contexts and areas of town. 

I was very fortunate for connecting with such interesting researchers and research contexts and I am thankful for the networking and the sharing of ideas and projects.

I plan to finish my secondment following the project What does he need? and attending to part of the Fringe Festival.

Further activities during my stay: 

Lecture of the artist İz Öztat at NACD, National College of Art and Design, Dublin.

Lecture of Pedagogical Art at NACD, National College of Art and Design, Dublin.

Visit to IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art)

7th-14th January 2024

Rediscovering Nature in Urban Spaces 

The first part of my secondment in Coventry took place in January 2024, during the last week of the Coventry Biennial 2023. The events of the Biennial were displaced in Coventry and in its surroundings, precisely in Leamington Spa and in Compton Verney. My research activities were split across visiting the events of the Biennial, networking and collecting material for my research about site-specific immersive performance in urban spaces. 

Sevven Kucuk, director of operations at the Biennial and member of Space X, was an important point of reference during my stay. I was glad to connect Dr. Francesco Chiaravalloti (Amsterdam) and Dr. Charlie Ingram (Warwick), both Space X researchers, and to spend some time together at the Biennial. Furthermore, I am very glad of the connection with the curator of Mothers Who Make Coventry, Adele Reed, with whom I am keeping in touch for further research-related projects.

A particularly enriching focus of the exhibits and of the talks I managed to attend was nature, nourished as a necessary element of urban landscapes, studied as an artwork, transformed into a manufact, artificially (re)created, used as a performative setting. 

Events and exhibits I attended:

Symposium: Transformations – Herbert Museum, Coventry;

… LIKE A SHORT CUT THROUGH THE BRAMBLES AT THE OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL – Old Grammar School, Coventry;

Coventry Biennial in the Glasshouse – Leamington Spa;

Jo Gane: Liquid Silver – Compton Verney.

I am very grateful to all the people I met, and I talked to in this full week, who gave me new impulse to my research. 

I will finish my secondment before September 2024.

June 2024

During this residency, I decided to draw only on things I find locally, then return them to the place where I found them. I was inspired by fellow SPACEX artist Carlos Noronha Feio. His practice involves collecting objects, often taking what he call a rhizomatic approach: sometimes he’s looking for something but finds something else of interest. 

Forta de Santo António da Barra was built to repel the English. From my observations, it has not been entirely successful.

In this project I was also inspired by mystical maps of Lisbon created by designer Maria da Gandra. She writes: “the words ‘saudades’ and ‘saudade’ are possibly unique to the Portuguese language, and although used interchangeably today, they represent two distinct meanings: saudades refers to the loss of something; but when you miss something that you never had but you long to have, even if it is unattainable or doesn’t exist yet but will exist, then the right word to use is Saudade.”

See @maisportuguesia to see her beautiful maps & research.

Da Gandra writes: ‘Considered the capital of the Fifth Empire since the Middle Ages, Lisbon has often been the favoured place to apply profound esoteric prophecies and theories to architecture, urbanism and the arts.’ 

The sea bream is known in Portugal as Sargo, living deep in the coral reefs, caught with a line. 

The local supermercado where I stayed receives these fish in typical styrofoam containers filled with ice, then the containers are discarded.

Your ouroboros was a handle to a door that led to the center of the Earth.

I had to ask around, ‘Who is that guy on the wall?’ An antique dealer told me: Almada Negreiros was born in the Portuguese colony of São Tomé to a Portugese father and Santomean mother. He became a multi-talented artist (mostly drawing) and writer.

I finished this project where I started – with inspiration from @mariadagandra. She writes that 17, the sacred number of Portugal, is related to forgetfulness, in terms of the definition of apocalypse: ‘what is hidden must be revealed’. 

‘Why not attend to some small detail,’ writes Fernando Pessoa, ‘instead of the grand indifference of the stars.’

My thirty-one days secondment started on the 11th August 2024 in Nicosia, Cyprus. Nicosia is a city divided into pieces, with north, south, and the buffer zone being the dominant ones. I began my journey from Ledra Street’s crossing [check] point to immerse my body, for the first time, into the complexities of the buffer zone or as it is also called, a no-man’s land. Soon I realised that it is not technically a no-man’s land as such, since the so-called peacekeepers (UN soldiers)—who are the representatives of those in charge of the production of this highly politicised space—are allowed to walk through the abandoned space. 

Practicing my walking methodologies, the social engagement with the city did not quite go as planned since my body had to wrestle with two visceral barriers: a) streets empty from people as the summer holiday in Cyprus begins on 12th August which lasts at least for one week, and b) the suffocating heat of 39-40 degrees that pushes the remaining limited number of people inside. Lacking spontaneous social interaction with other bodies of walkers, I instead used a multisensory interaction between the auditory, visual, and thermal dimensions of the city to connect to the thresholds: the city’s edges, boundaries and limits.  

Two imposing lines shape one’s spatial consciousness in Nicosia, with five conspicuous flags (Republic of Cyprus, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, and the United Nations), and with all the ruins, flora and fauna and militarised bodies in between. The lines, identifiable by walls, barricades, sandbags, fences and closed doors, symbolise the political power dynamics over division or a will to remain separated and divided. Separation turns into connection only through two checkpoints in Nicosia where some pedestrians can pass the edge by showing their documents such as ID, proof of marriage, visa and so forth. There is, of course, a kind of tension bounded within this dual process of connection and separation: the desire to connect and to border at the same time.  

In his famous essay “Bridge and Door” (1994), German sociologist and philosopher George Simmel, discusses the correlation of separateness and unity through the bridge and the door. He indicates how the bridge accomplishes the connection between what is separated (for instance, we must first conceive the existence of two riverbanks as something separated in order to connect them by means of a bridge), and door represents in a more decisive manner how separating and connecting are only two sides of precisely the same act. The human being cut a portion out of the continuity and infinity of space and arranged this into a particular unity by means of a door. The door forms a linkage between the space of human beings and everything that remains outside it and transcends the separation between the inner and the outer. 

Walking in Nicosia, I realised the door for politicians, creates a disciplinary force to control the threshold and to manage the act of bordering between the different sides. This is perhaps one of the reasons that in my first crossing from south to north, I was asked whether I have planned to stay in the “occupied” Cyprus. Or when coming back from north to south, I was questioned whether I am married to a “Cypriot Man” from the South. Nevertheless, the forceful and top-down system of control always produce counter social dynamics that tend to negotiate or negate the disciplinary measurements beyond the political control. Nicosia is no exception and people from both sides stamp their marks on these edges by adding different layers, taken from graffiti, or writing political messages of unity and connections, or organising creative methods in occupying the space in-between or creating forums for dialogue within and beyond the buffer zone.   

One of the places that officially negotiates the top-down political will in remaining separated is Home for Cooperation in Nicosia wherein I was seconded to work during my stay in Cyprus. Home for Cooperation is located in-between the two checkpoints of Ledra Palace Gates with a short walk from one gate to another. Sitting in the Home café, one can observe that there are only two directions to walk in this piece of land; it is either from south to north, or from north to south. It is worth noting that dozens of refugees reside (in limbo) within the buffer zone since they have already managed to cross one edge but never been able to cross the other. For those who can cross the two separating/connecting points, the buffer zone turns into a bridge, connecting them to the other side.   

Walking at the edges of the buffer zone from both sides of Nicosia, getting engaged to the soundscape of the city with the sound of cicadas from within the buffer zone dominating the sonic space, sitting at the doorsteps of the abandoned buildings with locked doors to get away from the scorching sun rays, crossing the checkpoints multiple times during the day to understand the politics of space, and spending time at Home for Cooperation to observe the two directions of bodies moving in space inspired me to think about how connections are made where separations exist, and how separation is created where connections exist. This therefore turned into the theme of a workshop entitled “Bridge and Door”, which I conducted at the Home for Cooperation. I invited the people of Nicosia to represent their perceptions of connection and separation through an object or telling a story. I decided to distribute, and hand out the workshop flyers physically while walking in the city, speaking to passers-by, engaging in conversation with shop owners, or putting up the posters in public spaces of the city. I felt the first place to put up the posters could be inside the buffer zone, within the ‘no-man’s land’, in between two passport control offices of the south and the north. I kind of let the social power dynamics of my posters to embody a bottom-up will to connect, though metaphorically, while competing the top-down, highly political wills of separation. Through this workshop, I invited people to share the space of Home for Cooperation to make a bridge between what makes us feel separated and to open the doors to our shared senses of connection by indicating how they define connection and separation through objects and memories. 

Dates of Secondment
19/11/2023 – 02/12/2023
9/05/23 – 23/05/23

My SPACEX secondment took place split in two instalments. This allowed me to spend the first part researching and visiting relevant areas to begin my research and then for the second secondment to consolidate some of these ideas and my own practice in the form of an artist talk and pick up on connections and key areas in more detail.

I investigated how Red Vienna had shaped Viennese living and learnt about the housing system to draw comparatives to the history of housing and urban planning in Ireland and its current policies. During the secondment I visited over ten different Superblocks such as Karl Marx Hof, Metzleinstaler Hof, Rabenhof etc.

I met with SPACEX researchers Jaspar Josef Leseter, Paul Rajakovics, artist and Social Design tutor Christina Schraml, artist Marlene Hausegger, Elke Rauth who runs Bikes and Rails and URBANIZE! INT. FESTIVAL FUER URBANE ERKUNDUNGEN and the curators of Hoast.

My meeting with Elke Rauth and others who she introduced me to at Bikes and Rails a passive housing project she co runs and lives at was extremely informative and beneficial in seeing a contemporary project successfully realise excellent quality housing which is gives back to the community, costs little to run, is passive and is funded through lending.

On my second visit in November I was able to catalyse some of the initial discussions and meetings from the first secondment. I gave an artist talk to the masters students at the school of Social Design at the Angtewadte, made a insert for inclusion in the Derivé architecture magazine and also partook as a guest to Barbara Holubs seminar and will continue working with her and her student Lisa Napravnik on making a Manifesto for the ‘Learner and the Learned’ which asserts a set of actions and beliefs on pedagogy and examines the role of art education.

I was seconded to Sirius, in Cobh Ireland between 1st February 2024 – 2nd March 2024. My research activities across the 31 days were split across three activities, networking, creative production and writing. I will touch on my networking activities here.

I wanted to spend the first part of my residency and secondment to Sirius getting a sense of the kinds of arts organisation, museums and artist-run spaces are across Ireland. To do this I followed the networks and suggestions of the people I met, where they had previously worked, exhibited artworks, have studio space or frequented to attend events or workshops. Here is a non-comprehensive list of where these networks took me:

I spent my first 10 days in Cork, where I connected with fellow SpaceX Researcher Aideen Quirke who introduced me to her own networks and guided me to places of interest around the city.

Cork – Cobh:
Aoife Barrett – PrintVanGo, The Glucksman, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork Printmakers, Lavit Gallery, Backwater Artists, Project Guesthouse, Laneway Gallery, Living Commons Cork and SIRIUS

Thank you to the many people I met, chatted with over a tea, and shared their experiences of being an artist, facilitator, educator, activist and arts worker. Across many of these conversations points of interest kept looping together, the state of Arts funding in Ireland, the trial of the Artist Living Wage scheme and the prominence of artist-run and residency spaces in comparison to more formal institutional models. 

Next, I spent a short amount of time in Dublin, where I connected with fellow SpaceX researchers Emma Mahony, Fiona Whelan, Seoidín O’Sullivan at NCAD, Benedetta Bronzini who was also on her secondment to NCAD and Sara Greavu at Project Art Centre. I was thankful to be invited along to a guest lecture by Dr. Bronzini and attend an artist talk at NCAD by Iz Oztat who was exhibiting at IMMA.

Dublin:
Ireland Museum Modern Art, Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts, The Hugh Lane Gallery 

I was very fortunate to be able to reconnect after attending the Dublin Training Event back in April 2023 and took the opportunity to continue some of the conversations and topics with caught my interest during this first visit to Dublin. My interest in artist-led models bubbled up during this first training event where I found a book exploring the term-limited governance model of 126 Gallery in Galway. During my short stay in Dublin, I picked up another text which looks at artist-run spaces across the UK and Europe, including Pallas Projects in Dublin.

This following the networks began to inform how I learned about the differences and similarities to arts public funding models and the different struggles formal institution bodies face between Ireland and England where I am based. This period of networking will inform my PhD research as I write about social practice through institutional and infrastructural critique.

My SPACEX secondment to the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, was an opportunity to initiate fieldwork for the second iteration of my ongoing research project entitled Institution as Praxis. This is an interdisciplinary research project that investigates the epistemic capacities of curatorial programming in the expanded field of exhibition practices, against the grain of neoliberal imperatives and the coloniality of museum practices. At the Van Abbe Museum, I met with colleagues who oversee the curatorial programme – director Charles Esche, curator Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide and curator Nick Aikens – to discuss their curatorial priorities and responses to the decolonial debate. When I began my secondment, the multi-sensory collection exhibition Delinking and Relinking, curated by Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide, had just opened and provided a very stimulating and rich backdrop for these conversations. One day, Yolande and I sat in one of the exhibition rooms and teased out the multiple connections (some more visible, others more speculative) offered by the object on display and the curatorial set-up.

During the month-long secondment, I extended my practice review to other organisations in the Netherlands, including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Head of Research Charl Ladvreugd) and Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam (Head of Agency for Architecture, Design and Digital Culture Francien van Westrenen), and visited many more. I also had the opportunity to speak with artists working on related research questions, such as Aldo Ramos – who had an exhibition at A Tale and a Tub (Amsterdam) – and Jeanne van Heeswijk (Rotterdam) – currently artist in residence at Bak in Utrecht.

This experience provided a rich understanding of the diversity of views on the role of research in contemporary art organisations, and the idea of repurposing exhibition studies for a study beyond exhibition-making. A discipline capable of investigating a wider arena of contemporary cultural practices.

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.

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