RADICAL IMAGINATION
SAN LDN is excited to invite you to an online Discuss & Exchange session with invited guest speakers. Open to everyone interested in the intersection between art & society.
WEDNESDAY 16TH SEPTEMBER, 6PM
REGISTER FOR FREE ON EVENTBRITE!
The Radical Imagination finds us as social practice artists at the nexus of activism and the art we make on the multiple platforms that we use; here we shall explore what this emerging practice feels like from the inside out.
IN THIS SAN DIGITAL MEETUP, WE THROW THE DOORS OPEN TO EXPLORE THE DIVERSE WORKS OF TEN SOCIAL PRACTICE ARTISTS IN SMALL DECENTRALISED WORKSHOPS, AND ASK HOW OUR COLLECTIVE PRACTICES CAN INFORM AND LEAD THEORY AROUND THE RADICAL IMAGINATION, RATHER THAN THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
The enforced ‘hiatus’ that we are experiencing during the Covid19 pandemic has led many of us out ‘on to the streets’ either physically or in digital real time, during the huge social and political upheaval and resistances taking place across the world; Critical responses to the inequalities thrown up by the violence of capitalism have created opportunities for us to foster collective resources to inform a symbiotic Social Art Network that values differences at the heart of The Radical Imagination.
We know from Me Too, LGBT+ rights, Black Lives Matter, the fights for climate, housing and poverty justice, that intersectional struggles require us to decolonise ourselves as a part of developing new ways of working. So what mutual support structures do we need to develop as new, radical forms of collaborative practices come into being?
“ONLY WITHIN THE INTERDEPENDENCY OF DIFFERENT STRENGTHS, ACKNOWLEDGED AND EQUAL, CAN THE POWER TO SEEK NEW WAYS OF BEING IN THE WORLD GENERATE, AS WELL AS (SPAWN) THE COURAGE AND SUSTENANCE TO ACT WHERE THERE ARE NO CHARTERS”
The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. Audre Lorde
GUEST BIOGRAPHIES
Fran Cottell is an artist making performances and creating installations since the 1970s. Her work questions how to present life, or rather the breath of aliveness within the fixed frame of the art institution.
She has performed in performance art festivals and lectured about her work worldwide. Her work has been presented at the South London Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, Camden Art Centre, London, Ulster Museum, Belfast, the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham and other institutions nationally.
For 19 years she has been staging live installations displaying the contents, visitors and occupants of her house as offsite projects for CGPLondon, (now Southwark Park Galleries) and Raven Row, documented in House:from Display to Back to Front; published by ktpress and supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation. Fran is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Camberwell College of Arts, UAL www.francottell.com
Cristina Morales is a London-based Spanish cultural activist, known for her interdisciplinary blend of socially engaged curatorship, writing and art. With a background in socio-cultural anthropology and a creative and holistic approach to activism, Cristina is the founding curator of the first decolonial thinktank mapping Cultural Activism worldwide, Counterspace.
She is the founding artist of the Situationist brand of political designs and performances Totem Taboo. And she writes periodically in English, French and Spanish on Decoloniality, on human and community development through art, and on African and African diaspora arts & culture, published by national, international and specialised media such as the London Institute of Contemporary Arts (London); El Mundo (Madrid); Humanities, Arts & Society (Paris); A Beautiful Resistance (Seattle); Inhabit (Paris); Ouvrage (Montreal); Wiriko (Barcelona); and Radio Africa (Barcelona). www.moralescristina.com
Ignacio Acosta is a Chilean-born, London-based artist and researcher working with photography and film, in places made vulnerable through the exploitation of ecologies by colonial intervention and intensive capitalisation. Through, investigative and ethical practices, his individual research contributes to vibrant collaborations with artists, historians, political activists and Indigenous Peoples.
Recent projects in South America and northern Europe focus on resistance to extractivist industrial impact on valuable natural environments. Ignacio Acosta ignacioacosta.com
Sophie Hope is a practice-based researcher producing works with pluralised perspectives using diverse methods such as performative interviews, audio installations, card games, flow diagrams and communal dinners. She has four areas of investigation: physical and emotional relationships to work (Manual Labours with Jenny Richards); criticality, governance and intersubjectivity in the socially engaged art economy (Cards on the Table and Social Art Maps); histories, theories, geographies of cultural democracy (MIAAW podcast with Owen Kelly and 1984 Dinners) and practice-based research as a methodology (Corkscrew).
She is a lecturer in Arts Management at Birkbeck, University of London. https://sophiehope.org.uk/
Sally Labern is a multidisciplinary artist committed to social art practice. She is co-founder of the drawing shed, an artist led social practice organisation hosted on two housing estates in east London since 2009.
She is coming to the end of a P-Doc led by her / others’ practices exploring how the autonomous imagination manifests in collaborative practices, translates into co-authored works, and wrestles with notions of a false separation when thinking about the radical imagination, the individual and the power of the social.
Sally is a socialist, works internationally and is passionate about climate justice, collaborations and sharing resources in the commons. @wordinthehand @spittingstars
R.M. Sánchez-Camus Marcelo is a creative practitioner whose practice incorporates community co-authorship into installation, performance and text. His work focuses on collaboration, interaction, psychogeography, and community wellbeing.
An important strand of his practice the building of support and exchange systems for artists, curators, activists and scholars working in social art practice. He runs Applied Live Art Studios (ALAS) co-founded Social Art Network (SAN), is a creative consultant of Axisweb’s Social ARTery and Social Art Library (SOAL), and co-convened the conference Facing Death Creatively since 2016. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram: @appliedliveart
E-J Scott is the curator of The Museum of Transology a bold, brave and profound collection of objects and photographs that began with donations from Brighton’s vibrant trans community and is now the largest collection representing trans people in the world.
Each object donated to the Museum of Transology has a brown swing tag attached to it, with a hand written message explaining its significance to the owner. This means both the story and the object are archived as two parts of a whole, never to be erased or overwritten. This is a deliberate strategy to ensure the experiences surrounding trans, non-binary, and intersex people’s everyday lives are recorded in our own words, forever.
Daniel Edelstyn Co-founder of the Optimistic Foundation with artist Hilary Powell. Through our current project ‘Bank Job’ we have come together to create a platform to investigate and tackle urgent economic, philosophical and social issues of our time through anarchic, joyful cultural production.
We bring the community into the heart of the production process, strengthen marginal voices and bring critical issues into mainstream debate through provocative cultural action.
We may have moved out of our ‘rebel bank’ –HSCB (Hoe Street Central Bank) in Walthamstow at the end of 2019 but the the ‘rebel bank/house/shed’ increases its operations as we prepare for the release of the Bank Job film and book and its ongoing impact whilst plotting the next big project – a DIY green new deal.
We believe in the subversive, radical imagination, in the power of and indeed urgent need for the surreal and comic in dark times – to open up possibilities of more just ways of organising and living when everyday life and democracy are corroded.
Timetable:
17:50 Zoom open to registered participants
18:00 Greetings, guidelines and introductions
18:15 Decolonisation of Self by Cristina Morales
18:20 Guest Artists present practice – Breakout rooms 1
18:40 Presentations on Radical Imagination (Live Streamed)
19:10 Discuss & Exchange session – Breakout rooms 2
19:40 Proposals for future practice
19:55 Artwork as closing
20:00 End
*Only the presentations will be broadcast, the Discuss & Exchange sessions takes place only to registered participants.