Academic literature on the topic 'We Make Carpets (Artists' collective)'

The cultural industries participate in building collective memory because, in many cases, public decision-makers have chosen to elevate individual memories to the rank of collective memory. Cultural industries are faced with systemic discrimination (Eikhof and Warhurst, 2013), which suggests the collective memory of these industries face the same challenges. In this theoretical article, we propose a framework based on Boltanski andThévenot’s (1991, 2006) theory of justification in order to make collective memory in cultural industries more inclusive. First, we conceptualize collective memory as a compromise between the domestic and civic worlds of Boltanski and Thévenot (1991, 2006). Then, the artists and their individual memories are presented using the world of inspiration. Finally, we propose using the world of projects to make the collective memory of cultural industries more inclusive. We, therefore, propose greater openness and democratization of collective memory in the cultural industries due to the world of projects.

In my short manifesto I consider the interrelation of the emergence of performance philosophy and the simultaneous emergence of practice-based or artistic research in the humanities and the higher education in arts. The need for performing artists to have recourse to philosophical discourse is motivated by an attempt to establish their new political and academic role as artist-researchers, as well as to understand the nature and the significance of the knowledge they produce. Performance philosophy opens up a new academic practice in which performance, performance makers and performers can make contact with philosophical thinking without the advocacy of intermediary disciplines and in equal dialogue with them, learn to think in their own terms, and become understood by others. It builds upon a collective attempt to give an answer to what performing arts and artists can do in an age where ‘performance’ has become a denominator of global capitalism.

This study explores the eco-artivism of women's art collectives for ecological sustainability by looking at actor-networks, eco-art as a non-human actor, and women's art collective negotiations. In Indonesia, eco-artivism is used to raise ecological awareness and strengthen socio-environmental protests in the ecological crisis. To explain the relationship of ecological sustainability in the artistic works of women's art collectives, we underline the connection between ecofeminism and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). We used a case study method with the Perempuan Pengkaji Seni (PPS) community, an art collective of female artists, workers, and researchers based in East Java, Indonesia. We find that the eco-artivism of women’s art collectives is an attempt to make women and nature become active subjects. These efforts can be seen in three resulting themes: the PPS network as a women's art collective, eco-art from the scars left by natural disasters to the impact of industrialization, and the negotiation of PPS as a women’s art collective for environmental sustainability.

Making With Place explores expressions and desires of queer, Indigenous, and racialized young artists on place, community, and culture. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (from spring 2020 to fall 2021) community-based researchers engaged in participatory arts processes with young artists, culminating in public art installations theorising evolving inquiries and ideas into place. In this paper, we showcase six artworks to exemplify three conceptions of place that emerged from this collective work: (a) place holds histories; (b) place is relational; and (c) place as a verb. We consider how learnings from this project can help to more equitably reclaim public space through (re)mapping and (re)visioning as living processes of place-making. Community arts, in public space, can inform how we create, investigate, and make place through the arts. Who does this inviting, and who is ultimately assembled, is of vital importance. Place is where we encounter each other.

This article examines theatre as a creative journalistic media deployed by theatre practitioners to map experiences of Zimbabweans during the COVID-19-induced lockdown. When the first positive case of COVID-19 was reported in March 2020, the Zimbabwe government, like many other countries, responded by introducing restrictions for public gatherings and ultimately a lockdown including arts events. Yet, theatricality has refused to capitulate. Artists re-invented their theatre productions into theatrical comic and satirical works posted on various social media platforms, in an effort to make sense of the pandemic, bring laughter and address a serious complex situation. We examine how artists deployed theatre to journal, capture and document the citizen’s collective experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, for both the present and posterity. We are specifically interested in analysing the different ways art is deployed to provide entertainment, a broader understanding and awareness of the social, psychological and economic impact of COVID-19 for the present and future generations.

Demographic change confronts us with an ever-increasing number of elderly people who face isolation and socialization issues. Background: The main challenge of this study is to inject emotional and aesthetic aspects into the design process of a virtual reality (VR) social space for the elderly. In this context, we asked architects and artists to improve the perception elderly people have of their way of communicating with others. Artists, in collaboration with computer engineers, designed experiences that evoke positive cognitive and emotional feelings and memories by following design trends and aesthetic values likely to be appreciated by older people, which were integrated in VR. Methods: We approached our goal by implementing an innovative art-driven methodology, using a plethora of technologies and methods, such as VR, artificial intelligence algorithms, visual analysis, and 3D mapping, in order to make design decisions based on a detailed understanding of the users’ preferences and collective behavior. Results: A so-called virtual village “Cap de Ballon” was co-created, having a public space inspired by the villages of Santorini and Meteora and a private space inspired by the 3D scanning of an elderly person’s apartment. Conclusions: The overall concept of the VR village‘s utility, design, and interior design were appreciated by the end users and the concept was evaluated as original and stimulating for creativity.

The term “site-specific” is generally used to describe art self-consciously made to exist in a certain place, effectively making the site a static background for the dynamism of art. If we accept this definition, then how are we to account for the fact that sites themselves have histories? This paper addresses this question by analyzing four performances by the Chicano/a collective Asco: Stations of the Cross, First Supper (After a Major Riot), Walking Mural, and Instant Mural. Whittier Boulevard carries a portion of El Camino Real, which once connected the Catholic missions of Alta California. We know Asco was aware of this fact because a member of Asco once “used the phrase ‘el camino surreal’…to describe Whittier Boulevard as the setting where everyday reality could quickly devolve into absurdist, excessive action.” Contextualizing these performances within the geography of colonial California challenges interpretations of Asco as merely opposing contemporaneous events like the Vietnam War and gentrification, whereas Asco had a more nuanced and expansive understanding of oppression linking the Latin American diaspora. Together, these performances show us how a group contests domesticating and folklorizing stereotypes. Although preexisting scholarship explains these gestures as “protest art,” situating them against Whittier Boulevard allows us to appreciate the radicality of Asco. By engaging with Catholic and muralist imagery, Asco draws parallels between their experience as racial minorities and the history of Latin American colonialism, which highlights both the composite nature of Chicano/a identity and how artists might make site-specific work when sites themselves have histories.

The Allegory of Transience by Philipp Sauerland (Gdańsk 1677 – Wrocław 1762), an artist specializing in still life and animal painting, was purchased in 2015 by the National Museum in Gdańsk. The painting allows us to deepen our knowledge of Sauerland’s artistic roots, as well as the interpretation of the painting in the socio-cultural context of the development of Europe in the early 18th century. In the paper a thesis is put forward about the Leiden sources of Sauerland’s work, which are connected with the painting tradition of the so-called fijnschilders, especially the work of Willem van Mieris. In the first decade of the 18th century, Sauerland painted The Young Woman in the Kitchen Interior, surrounded by perfectly rendered victuals, showing a similar gesture as in the famous painting by Van Mieris The Mouse Trap. In the signed painting from a private collection in New York, Sauerland chose historical themes. He presented a rare scene of David Giving Uriah a Letter to Joab. The painting refers to two famous works by Pieter Lastmann, but it is placed in an architectural set design analogous to Van Mieris’s paintings. An important element of the Allegory of Transience, in turn, is the relief visible by sliding down a carpet. This motif is also taken from the work of Van Mieries, but the iconography of the sculptural representation refers to Gerard de Lairesse’s print showing Chronos prevented by Prudence from destroying the statues. Sauerland is therefore close to the artists from Leiden in terms of the choice of themes, motifs, and the way they are painted. He also usually used a similar format of paintings. Like Van Mieris, the artist from Gdańsk signed his works with longer inscriptions. Although references to the Leydians are obvious in Sauerland’s early works, he does not make copies of their works, but focusing on the still life genre, he transforms them in his own style. The second thesis of our essay is related to the transformation of vanitas motifs, which in Sauerland’s work reveal their secularized character. The traditional symbolism of transience, which draws on religion, is replaced by the ideas of rationalism, accompanied by the idea of reason that opens a possibility of overcoming sensual and emotional limitations. The work becomes an expression of emancipatory processes that take place at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries in European culture. Referring to the philosophical work of Baruch Spinoza (notion of knowledge), we interpret Sauerland’s work as an expression of the emerging modern ideal of freedom, which was based on a rationalistic paradigm. It is thanks to wisdom (sapientia) that the subject is able to transcend the reality of the sensual guise. In the last part of the text we point to the important role of practical wisdom (prudentia) and art (ars) in the process of liberalization that accompanied the social changes of the time. Using illusionism, Sauerland proposes an interpretative key to the viewer: the meaning of life is complemented by art: by making art, understanding art, or collecting artworks, the rational man can free himself from the fear of his own finiteness. The function of this still life is not to remind us of death, but to point out that contemplation of art is an intellectual and spiritual exercise that allows us to find the right attitude to life.

At the beginning of the 19th century, in a context in which Eastern Europe drew most of the media’s attention, the means of communication provided the public opinion with images and news from this region. The Russian-Romanian-Turkish War (1877–1878), also known as Romania’s Indepen dence War, sparked a lot of interest abroad, due to the considerable number of military observers and artists sent as war correspondents and accredited by the belligerent parties. We will make ex tensive reference to a work comprising a set of informative articles whose documentary value is enhanced by engravings which cover a wide array of topics. It is a collective volume with contri butions from war correspondents and artists-illustrators, some attracted by the landscape and the urban environment (Ladislaus Eugen Petrovits, Themistocles von Eckenbrecher), others by the combatants’ faces and appearance (Auguste Lançon), others by the uniforms, military equip ment and war scenes (Dick de Lonlay, Johann Nepomuk Schönberg), or by the inhabitants’ way of life and activity (José Luis Pellicer). We can also mention the following illustrators who depic ted scenes from the Russian-Romanian-Turkish war: Mathes Koenen, Emil Volkers and Friedrich Kaiser. There are also superb images capturing crucial moments of the conflict, whose author is the engraver Carol Popp de Szathmári (Károly Szathmári Pap). Our approach is an interdisciplinary one, given that it contains elements of geography, history, anthropology, sociology, geopolitics, economy and art, which turns it into an analysis of cordial geography, calligeography or beautiful geography

Abstract At the latest with the designation of Indonesian group of artists, ruangrupa, as collective co-directors of documenta fifteen in 2022, the collective has arrived at the centre of the art world. This notion includes not only the organizational form of a group, but also designates a specific mode of cooperating with outsiders, of reflecting and of cultivating appearances. In their curatorial approach, ruangrupa present an extremely comprehensive conceptualisation of the collective, in which the various collective aspirations observable in the art field, which have been spreading for some time now, are condensed. As early as the 1990s, there has been, in the art world, an increase in individual facets of the collective. This is evidenced not only by the growing differentiation between different forms of collective associations, which can hardly be represented in a typology anymore; the turn towards the collective is also reflected in its being addressed in exhibitions, which in turn often refer to theoretical considerations derived from the fields of philosophy, cultural studies, or sociology, interpreting the ›collective turn‹ as a ›sign of the times‹. Art-historically speaking, the examination of the collective is a relatively young phenomenon which exhibits a range of subject-specific peculiarities. While art-historical classification, in particular, retains fundamental reservations about this ›unconventional‹ artistic working mode (Thurn 1991, Stahlhut 2019), rather more recent, cultural studies approaches tend to put forward typologies based on such notions as complicity (Ziemer 2013) or collaboration (Schneider 2006). In all these contributions, authorship is the central ›axis‹ of analysis. However, the breaking up of individual authorship, which in the visual arts remained virtually unchallenged for a very long time, to make room for collective associations, has been neither the only nor the most important reason, in recent decades, for artists to associate collectively. The rejection of a ›singular‹ notion of creation is nevertheless often introduced as the most important theoretical-analytical reference; social factors, by contrast, which have accompanied or even promoted the spread of the phenomenon, are often pointed out only selectively, if at all. Well-founded discussions of select examples, or instances of reasonably systematic contextualisation, may only be found from the mid-2000s onwards (e. g. Lind 2007). And it was only in the 2010s that art historians and scholars from other disciplines became interested in collective working modes. In their attempts to clarify and classify this trend, whose reality can no longer be gainsaid owing to its omnipresence, most publications and events initially started from a rather broad, and thus vague, understanding of the collective. Nevertheless, the tension between the creative individual and the collective remained central to the narrative put forward in numerous contributions. Those texts originating from artistic and/or curatorial practice – i. e., from the art world itself – often were written in a legitimating style which, combined as it often was with inventive text and image elements, appeared intended confidently to position collective forms of organisation (cf. Baukrowitz 1994; Bianchi 1999; Block/Nollert 2005). Based on this, the diversity of the formats that have since been established was emphasised, as were the advantages of this mode of working and organising. So far, there has been hardly any question as to the social structure within which this mode of working has been able to gain its considerable resonance; neither have scholars investigated how the individual groups relate to their political and social framework, what kind of self-image they derive from this, or how they relate the ›we‹ they have created to the group’s individual members. Against this backdrop, the present article proposes an interpretation of collective authorship as a complex and dynamic constellation of elements that develops and positions itself within a field of tension generated by the various notions of authorship, the organisation of work, criticism of the prevailing system, and competing models of society. The notion of a ›constellation‹ appears particularly suitable here because it suggests a ›bigger picture‹, yet at the same time allows to crystallise, for concrete situations (such as specific collective associations), »the elements of their respective special relationship, and what may conceivably emerge from them in concrete terms« (Mersch 2015, 166). The present article outlines and traces these relationships based on a selection of such collective associations, intending to show where and how – despite specific contextual difference – common concerns and overarching trends may be identified. This, ultimately, results in a complex reading of those individual phenomena.

Chapter 5 focuses on case studies of wide-ranging art projects — by Susan Philipsz, the Bbeyond collective, Phil Collins, Brian O’Doherty, Philip Napier and Mike Hogg and artist-group Factotum — that, in variously performative and relational modes, have involved staging, proposing or entering provisional situations of social encounter and collectivity. These events and interventions, it will be suggested, exhibit varying degrees of sensitivity to the challenges of the uneasy post-Troubles predicament. But in notable instances we find artists striving to make space for unorthodox perspectives and unheard voices, asking what it might mean to be part of a ‘public’ in post-Troubles Northern Ireland, and attempting to making visible — often in understated, ambiguous or anxious ways — what might otherwise remain hidden.

This proposition presents a design and artistic research focused on the soil that aims to generate active and poetic forms of reflection around the fragile interdependence of human and non-human lives in an increasingly precarious urban environment, emphasised by the current ecological crisis. In order to engage in such reflections, this practice-oriented research —led by designers, architects, artists and educators— collects relational modes of material interdependence in the region of Valparaíso, Chile, by exploring veins and clay pits for pottery making that are relevant and known by artisans and artists of this area. These spaces are threatened by the increasingly precarious environmental conditions that are exacerbated by the monoculture of the land, the reconstitution of the soil by massive urbanisation projects, and the inaccessibility to clay pits due to the replacement of the commons by the privatisation and exploitation of the land. These urban conflicts generate deterritorialisation that contrasts with the significant relevance and values that these spaces hold for artists, artisans, and other groups, that promote their protection and the respectful interaction with the soil. Against this background, this practice-oriented research explores and expects to make visible the transformation of these lands by following the uses of the soil, identifying conflicts and values that emerge around these extraction sites through immersive sensitive experiences. These immersions into different clay pits consist of walking around, observing the ground, sensing the space, collecting clay from the soil together, sensing and manipulating the material to explore its properties. Thus, by examining the materials, voices and artistic expressions —in the form of poems, sound compositions, images, drawings, photos, cartographies and clay objects— co-produced during four immersions into diverse veins of the Valparaíso Region, we expect to bring back to the fore alternative modes of reflexivity around these sites. This sum of collective experiences for exploration and creation in the veins and clay pits of Valparaíso serves to trace other relational ways of inhabiting, valuing and working with the soil. Therefore, we envisage this practice-oriented research project as a poetic alternative to critically question the modern technocratic logics of urbanisation that operate in the region through the commodification and overexploitation of the land.

In this presentation we will analyze the multimedia artwork In Memorian, 2021, from the Research Group Realidades (School of Communication and Arts of University of São Paulo, ECA-USP, Brazil). The artwork is a web art that deals with the visualization of data from the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil. These data are appropriated from online databases and it works as the rule of loss of information from 1988’s Brazilian Federal Constitution, Title II - Of Fundamental Rights and Guarantees. The text is fragmented proportionally to Brazilian population and, then, loses its information, pixel by pixel, according to the daily number of deaths by covid-19 in the country. The authors of this presentation are members of the Realidades Group, thus, this analysis will be filled with our creative processes, poetic motivations and the development phases of the artwork. In Memorian exposes the precarious situation of the democratic rights guaranteed by the mentioned article of the Brazilian constitution. Brazil couldn't control covid-19 pandemic. Researches pointed out that it was due to a series of omissions and failures by public managers, mainly the federal government. However, the democratic rights have been under attack for longer. Brazil’s political scene has become dominated by openly conservative, "anti-politics" and "anti-science" wills, quite driven by desinformation and fake news. And all these relationships are fundamental to the development of the work. It seeks to materialize and illustrate hundreds of thousands of deaths in order to make visible the colossal size of human loss. The amount of deaths shatter the black words over the white background, damaging the text and making the reading more difficult. On the work’s website, the text is exhibited in perspective and can be vertically scrolled. It also contains an interactive ruler that shows the Brazilian daily and total number of deaths, enabling the interactor to move across the timeline. The visual character of a ‘monument for the dead’ complaints the governmental negligence that causes this amount of suffering, actions that must not be simply forgotten. In addition, it points out the need for more transparency of covid’s diagnosis and deaths registration and comments on the alarming political scenario that surrounds the sanitary crisis. Furthermore, this artwork is a data visualization piece, which is a very much explored technique used by multimedia artists. We will address its usage to enhances the visibility of things that are often hard to see. We will show another similar artwork in theme, 'Inumeráveis”, 2020, created by a collective of volunteer artists and journalists. Claiming that "alive or dead, we will never be [just] a number", the site is an online monument that features shared stories about the victims, giving individuality to each of them. In Memorian was in the online exhibition EmMeio#13 associated with the Panoramas 2021 event. Additionally, we point out its interaction in different social networks and its own numerical and online nature. The pandemic crisis in Brazil and around the world is not a past reality, still claiming countless lives. Unfortunately, the artwork remains operational.

This proposal considers the colophon as a conceptual structure for thinking through lists and listing within our creative practice(s). Conventionally, the colophon is a short piece of text that details information about the making of a publication or its intended use. Most often, the colophon specifies the how, where, and when: the typeface and paper stock; the location, date, edition number, and method of printing. It can also foreground the relational aspects of publishing – the with who or the why here. Colophons appear at the opening or the closing of a publication, and the information within them can form a kind of ballast to what precedes or succeeds them. That is, the listing of the material, processual, and relational labour that went into the making of publications is called forward in the colophon and acknowledged as structural necessity. Often, we are led to ask, how is this conception of the colophon useful in thinking about the other types of lists and listings that make their way into our collective practices? —Runsheets, Material lists, Contents, Title lists, Indexes, Captions, Legends, Rosters, Glossaries, Registers, Manifests, Chronologies— These modes of listing communicate relevant and important contexts and, in that way, become a conceptual part of creative works themselves. As formats, they are all also citational practices where the materials, processes, information, and relations are shared freely – as any written text would be in a publication’s reference list. In their book, The Hundreds (2019), cultural theorists Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart list Adorno and Agamben texts next to “An egg-cooking machine” and “A few pansies stuck in a window box” in the reference section, all alphabetised under the title “Some Things We Thought With”1. This type of list (and the concept of a colophon itself) is not an indiscriminate breaking-down into separate parts but a strategic highlighting of the conditions and abstractions of the artwork. The colophon as a structure in this context exists not only to acknowledge what contributes to a publication but also to trace possible points of departure from convention. As a tactic within creative practice, the colophon is like a conceptual abstraction; it holds all of the constituent parts that make up a project in one place. The ‘—with’ that Berlant and Stewart explore is key to the how, where, and when of relations that the doing of listing brings together. As artists working in the inter-related fields of socially engaged art, object-making, installation, and publication, our list of interests include the moon, the water, the sky; flowers, ceramics, printed matter; ducks, snails, butter. This paper will share our three perspectives on listing as a synchronous tactic with the functioning action of a colophon. Where words and images get to turn, twist, veer, bow, dip, and nod, and the conceptual form of a project takes shape with things.

The arts do not exist in vacuum and cannot be valued in abstract ways; their value is how they make people feel, what they can empower people to do and how they interact with place to create legacy. This research presents insights across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand about the value of arts and culture that may be factored into whole of government decision making to enable creative, vibrant, liveable and inclusive communities and nations. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a great deal about our societies, our collective wellbeing, and how urgent the choices we make now are for our futures. There has been a great deal of discussion – formally and informally – about the value of the arts in our lives at this time. Rightly, it has been pointed out that during this profound disruption entertainment has been a lifeline for many, and this argument serves to re-enforce what the public (and governments) already know about audience behaviours and the economic value of the arts and entertainment sectors. Wesley Enoch stated in The Saturday Paper, “[m]etrics for success are already skewing from qualitative to quantitative. In coming years, this will continue unabated, with impact measured by numbers of eyeballs engaged in transitory exposure or mass distraction rather than deep connection, community development and risk” (2020, 7). This disconnect between the impact of arts and culture on individuals and communities, and what is measured, will continue without leadership from the sector that involves more diverse voices and perspectives. In undertaking this research for Australia Council for the Arts and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture & Heritage, New Zealand, the agreed aims of this research are expressed as: 1. Significantly advance the understanding and approaches to design, development and implementation of assessment frameworks to gauge the value and impact of arts engagement with a focus on redefining evaluative practices to determine wellbeing, public value and social inclusion resulting from arts engagement in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. 2. Develop comprehensive, contemporary, rigorous new language frameworks to account for a multiplicity of understandings related to the value and impact of arts and culture across diverse communities. 3. Conduct sector analysis around understandings of markers of impact and value of arts engagement to identify success factors for broad government, policy, professional practitioner and community engagement. This research develops innovative conceptual understandings that can be used to assess the value and impact of arts and cultural engagement. The discussion shows how interaction with arts and culture creates, supports and extends factors such as public value, wellbeing, and social inclusion. The intersection of previously published research, and interviews with key informants including artists, peak arts organisations, gallery or museum staff, community cultural development organisations, funders and researchers, illuminates the differing perceptions about public value. The report proffers opportunities to develop a new discourse about what the arts contribute, how the contribution can be described, and what opportunities exist to assist the arts sector to communicate outcomes of arts engagement in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.