Socially Engaged Adventures

Anthony Schrag at Standpoint Futures Residency Programme!

Focusing on the physical sensations of the body rather than intellect / ideas, Anthony Schrag’s practice occupies an area of artistic practice that integrates performance, participatory events and socially engaged activity.

For his public presentation, Schrag presents the culmination of a project developed specifically for Standpoint and the surrounding area. The work explores the assumptions within social engagement agendas and public arts policy that advocate a utopian ideal where ‘everyone gets along’, and recognises the iimpossibility of this. Schrag proposes that we embrace conflicts and divisions as a natural and positive part of culture and offers instead the potential for a ‘good tension’ wherein alternative views and life experiences can thrive side by side.  

Thursday 28 July 2011 12-8pm

Artist’s talk and drinks at 6.30pm

Friday 29 July 2011 12-6pm 

More info: http://standpointfutures.tumblr.com/

This fall, Creative Time will present Living as Form, an unprecedented, international exhibition exploring over twenty years of socially engaged cultural works that blur the forms of art and everyday life, emphasizing participation, dialogue, and community engagement. “Increasingly, we find socially engaged projects that exceed traditional categories of art by utilizing sociality, pedagogy, community outreach, architecture, publishing, and numerous other methodologies to engage the peculiar spectacle-driven thing we know as civic life. Living as Form is an attempt to take the temperature at this particular historic moment to encourage profound forms of social-based action that can alter the course of history,” states Nato Thompson who conceived of the exhibition with the advice and assistance of twenty-five curatorial advisors, including Caron Atlas, Negar Azimi, Ron Bechet, Claire Bishop, Brett Bloom, Rashida Bumbray, Carolina Caycedo, Ana Paula Cohen, Common Room, Teddy Cruz, Sofia Hernández Chong Cuy, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Stephen Hobbs and Marcus Neustetter, Hou Hanru, Shannon Jackson, Maria Lind, Chus Martínez, Sina Najafi, Marion von Osten, Ted Purves, Raqs Media Collective, Gregory Sholette, Superflex, Christine Tohme, and Sue Bell Yank. Living as Form will document over 100 artists’ projects in a large-scale survey show at the historic Essex Street Market building, commission nine new projects, and provide an online database of nearly 400 projects addressing this complex field of cultural production. Living as Form will be open September 24-October 16, from 12-8 PM Thursday-Sunday.

For more info visit: http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2011/livingasform/

Below info about shows/ projects we are looking into and which are culminating this summer – if you are in London check them out!

Only until Sunday 17th July you can Katerina Seda at Cubitt / That’s The Way The Cookie Crumbles.

http://cubittartists.org.uk/index.php?section=10&a…

Until 30th July Emma Smith at The Showroom / Playback

http://www.theshowroom.org/programme.html?id=481

From 21st July till 12th August The Cut – Jessie Brennan, Chris Dorley – Brown and Daniel Lehan at [ space ]

http://www.spacestudios.org.uk/whats-on/projects/t…

Education Seminar: CLASSROOM CONTROLTuesday 19 July 2011, 6:00PM to 9:00PM

Cubitt Education opens the Festival of Blackboards – summer programme exploring arts education, with a timely seminar focusing on art in schools.

Speakers include: Dr Howard Hollands (Programme Leader: PGCE Art and Design, Middlesex University); Steve Moffitt (Director of A New Direction); Rob Bird (Head of Art and Competence at Oasis Academy, Enfield)

The event is free, but booking online is strongly recommended to secure your place.

http://festivalofblackboards.blogspot.com/

I went to engage International Summer School to Ljubljana in Slovenia – a peer-led weeklong event for gallery educators, artists, curators and academics. As part of the summer school I run one of the workshops that was simply asking the question ‘Why?’ I keep noticing that projects and organizations I am involved in constantly lacking time for ongoing reflection around this simple but crucial question- what motivates us and what are the reasons for us to continue the work?

I wanted to create environment where we could talk about personal ‘whys’ as well as organization – specific ‘whys’ and explore and self-reflect on these questions. I have used Open Space Technology as a tool to aid the discussion.

http://www.openspaceworld.org/

Whys raised by the group of people who joined me for this session included:

Why do galleries engage communities?

Why to work with audience that is not interested in art or other art activities?

Why do I like the idea of collaboration so much?

Why do we need to reach new audiences? Why can’t we stick with the old ones?

Why would artists want to work with galleries?

Why do we do this job? (gallery education)

What is community?

Why do I think art is a positive way to engage with people?

Why education departments and programming departments are not one department?

Should art galleries be all things for everyone?

Why do I work so hard to engage/ collaborate/ work with local residents?

Why is art important to children?

What is the position and place of artists in gallery – community relationship?

Does respect goes with love? (in relationship with public and institution)

What is the value of artists in learning programmes?

Why galleries / arts organisations want to work with the communities around them?

To learn more about engage International Summer School visit:

http://www.engage.org/training/engage_iss_2011.aspx