20.9.-23.9.2023 + 1.2.-10.2.2024 + 11.10.-18.10.2024 + 15.-22. 10. 2025 (planned)
I completed my secondment at the Van Abbemuseum in The Netherlands in 2024. This institution is shifting its focus to become a Constituent Museum where ‘museums put relationships at the centre of their operations.’(1) The museum is also in the process of developing new guidelines for the museum’s archive. The institution is asking ‘What does a constituent archive look like’ in the context of the development of a new curatorial plan for the permanent exhibition in 2025 that will embody the practices of the constituent museum.
My practice sits within the field of socially engaged participatory and collaborative practice and I am concerned with how we might preserve or archive the participatory element of the work as another medium or foundational aspect of the work. For the museum, as a commissioning body and exhibition/social I’ve spent three weeks in Amsterdam and The Hague so far, and plan to complete my secondment in February 2025.
On my trip I visited the Stroom den Haag several times, where I had the opportunity to study and debate especially with a curator Vincent de Boer, which was very beneficial for my gallery practice. Vincent de Boer and I have continuously co-organised several events in Prague: 23-24 Sep 2024 an international conference on new landscape aesthetics and artistic research, attended by four SPACEx researchers – see here. A peer-reviewed collection of papers will be published, with SPACEx as a partner. As I’m working on a project caled Cultural and Sustainable Landscapes through Deep Mapping. Opportunities for artistic strategies in public space in urban post-industrial areas. (Case studies of several European sites.), I am very grateful for the network that working within the Spacex community provides. For next years we are planning with the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University in Prague another international conference directly on the aesthetics and artistic research of post-industrial landscapes. On November 15, 2004 we are also organizing a thematically related conference with the participation of three of SPACEx members – program here.
I had the opportunity to have inspiring cooperation with Christa Maria Lerm Hayes (UvA) – during her visits in Prague and my visits in Amsterdam, and through her I got to know curator Megan Hotger (UvA), with whom Im intensely collaborating on a large exhibition and publication Art of Activism, which will take place at Prague City Gallery in autumn 2025.
The Prague City Gallery had the opportunity to host quite a number of Spacex researchers from different countries – Christa Maria Lerm Hayes (UvA), Vincent de Boer (Stroom den Haag), Jasper Joseph Lester and his students Carmen Maria Mariscal and Marissa Ferreira from the RCA London, Paul Jackson from University Northampton), Charis Nika (University of Cyprus). We are also in close proffesional contact with Chiara Valci Mazzara and Susanne Prinze (Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin), Paul Rajacovicz, Barbara Holub, and others.
Martin Netocny and I also joined a conference organized by University of Cyprus in Nicosia (SPACEx member) in May 2024: AESOP Cyprus International Symposium “Constructing Peace through Public Space: What Publics? Whose Commons?”.