Days 2 and 3 continued…
To ensure that what we were proposing remained part of the Prinzessinnen community we also proposed that at the end of each residency we would host a weekend of events.
Each artist would present the work cultivated by their respective residencies. We would also invite guest speakers to discuss topics relating to art and the notion of community. For the first weekend of events we proposed to invite Dr Helen Pheby, curator of Yorkshire Sculpture Park. She would give a seminar discussing the topic of her doctoral thesis, Making Sculpture Public. We would also invite artist Yorgos Sapountzis to give a talk entitled Collective Memory Through Public Sculptures.
On the final day of the weekend we would introduce the incoming three resident artists, one of which would be Sapountzis, the others would be Katharina Grosse and Cyprien Gaillard.
The weekend would be rounded off by a screening of Jan Svankmajer’s Alice, alluding to the utopian, magical nature of Prinzessinnengarten.
The future of Prinzessinnengarten was not something we wanted to consider head-on. Our main focus was always to find the best way to integrate art into the garden. By doing that, if we aided awareness of the garden’s troubles then that was a bonus. We did however want the residency programme to continue through the leadership of the community. It was our intention that we would be able to build a foundation, to pass on our knowledge to the community so that they could take on the role of curator and lead the residency programme after our departure.
In essence, we just wanted to plant a seed in the garden.
Not bad for two days work, I think.
