Sophie's upcoming events in April and May 2009
8 May–30 May 2009 (Opening event 7 May)
FUNding FACTORY exhibition, Open Space, Vienna.
Opening soon is a project I have been working on with Open Space gallery in Vienna. The project is connected to my PhD research and is an attempt at investigating the ways in which artists, commissioners, critics, curators and funders negotiate ‘the cultural production line’. The FUNding FACTORY attempts to interrogate the desire that many artists share: to disrupt expectations of the function of art whilst fighting for the right to be paid to do that dismantling. The gallery will be transformed into a factory for the metaphorical mixing, compressing, tinkering, testing, rejecting, approving, wrapping, packaging and distributing of culture.
Found, discarded and donated material from skips, studios and galleries is recycled to build the make-shift cultural production line. Embedded in the factory are video portraits I have made of staff and associates of Open Space about their experiences of negotiating these dilemmas of survival, ideology and criticality. Students at the University of Applied Arts have been invited to intervene into the factory to reflect on their own positions as future ‘creative industry-workers’.
Participants include: Fahim Amir, Fatih Aydogdu, Gulsen Bal, Barbara Holub, Fran Hope, Domenico Mühle, Tina Raffel, Walter Seidl, Christoph Srb, Corina Vetsch and Reinhold Zisser.
image above: part of an illustration by Fran Hope for the FUNding FACTORY
http://fundingfactory.blogspot.com/
24 April, 2009, 18:30:
Book launch of Emotional Cartography - Technologies of the Self, edited by Christian Nold at SPACE, 129 - 131 Mare St, London, E8 3RH
Emotional Cartography is a collection of essays from artists, designers, psychogeographers, cultural researchers, futurologists and neuroscientists, brought together by Christian Nold, to explore the political, social and cultural implications of visulising intimate biometric data and emotional experiences using technology.
Essays by Raqs Media Collective, Marcel van de Drift, Dr Stephen Boyd Davis, Rob van Kranenburg, Sophie Hope and Dr Tom Stafford
http://emotionalcartography.net/
13 May 2009:
Council for Galician Culture, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia.
I will be doing a presentation as part of the Council’s programme, ‘Arts and Public Space’.
www.consellodacultura.org
26 May 2009, 18:00:
What is Engagement? Contesting ‘socially engaged practice’, Banqueting Room, Chelsea School of Art
I will be taking part in a panel discussion with Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, and Dave Beech, organized by Sonya Dyer as part of the Chelsea Conversations series.
To book a place contact Sonya: s.dyer@chelsea.arts.ac.uk
1 July 2009:
Tactical Play: Playful enquiry as a tactic for change in socially engaged art and the social sciences, Birkbeck, University of London.
Fellow PhD student Elaine Speight and I are organising a symposium with the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research in July that aims to bring together artists and social scientists who are using play as a method.
More details to come soon about the speakers and booking details.
Your feedback requested on new writing!
I have commissioned two new articles for the ixia website. They are the case study report on The Blue House in Amsterdam by Paul O’ Neill and a report on ‘How people experience built environments’ by Dr Begum Basdas, Dr Monica Degen and Professor Gillian Rose. There are now 8 articles on the site and we are inviting feedback on these articles.
Read them at: http://www.ixia-info.com/new-writing/
If you would like to feedback on the writings please contact info@ixia-info.com and title your email ‘New Writing feedback’.
Ongoing project:
I am currently working on a project called Critical Friends with the arts organisation Stream (formerly Independent Photography) in Greenwich. Critical Friends is a group of people who live or work in the area, including staff of Stream, who are developing creative ways of investigating, critiquing and feeding into the commissioning of art, specifically in relation to Stream's Peninsula art programme in Greenwich. We have a magazine, workshops and blog as sites for writings, documentation, performances and presentations which we have created.
Critical Friends is facilitated by Sophie Hope and Rebecca Maguire.
Critical Friends magazine: http://en.calameo.com/books/000013925ebd57db8363a
The next magazine is due out in May 2009!
Other links:
27 April 2009: Useful Discomfort: Direct Action, Art, and the Urgency of Slowness, Presentation and discussion with interdisciplinary group PLATFORM
Queen Mary, University of London
http://www.qmul.ac.uk/artsweek2009/programme/monday/index.html
4 April – 22 May 2009: On the Origin of Wishes, SKART’s retrospective exhibition at SPACE 129 - 131 Mare St, London, E8 3RH