The Irish Recession: Massive queues for Londis Jobs
On Wednesday, 22 April, a massive queue occurred in the centre of Dublin. It wasn't for concert tickets or a book signing. This was a queue for Sales Assistant positions with Londis. Joerg Steegmueller (Dublin Free Event Guide) reported that the queue stretched from the Londis Shop on Stephen's Green (between Grafton Street and Dawson Street) down all the way into Grafton Street until Korky's or the "3" shop. Hundreds of people queuing for hours to apply for work in a Londis shop? Is this a sign of the times?
24 April - 6pm - What Isn't Socially Engaged - Faisal Abdu'Allah in conversation with Mick Wilson
25 April - 12pm - Producing Communities - Paul O'Neill
27 April - 6pm - Towards a Critical Pedagogy - Milena Dragicevic Sesic in conversation with Jesse Jones
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[From CREATE's website]
To be launched by Peggy Shaw, international performance artist on 23rd April at 6pm.
From Context to Exhibition presents the work of undergraduate arts students made collaboratively with communities of place and/or interest. The ‘exhibition’ explores and questions the politics of translating the work from the context of production (the community) to a formal arts space (the gallery). The ‘exhibition’ will be accompanied by a Talks Series. All events will all take place at The LAB, Dublin City Council Gallery.
In 2009, the Learning Development Placement Programme has brought together students from NCAD, IADT Dun Laoghaire, DIT and the Tisch School of the Arts (New York University).
April 23 From Context to Exhibition Launch. 6pm
Peggy Shaw, New York based performing artist to launch and Create guest tutor to the Learning Development programme.
April 24What Isn’t Socially Engaged? 6-8pm
Faisal Abdu’Allah in conversation with Professor Mick Wilson.
Faisal Abdu’Allah is an artist whose work evolves primarily from the interface of photography, the printed image and lens-based installations. He graduated in Fine Arts at the Royal College of Art in London. Abdu’Allah appropriates iconography from popular culture to constantly reposition values and ideologies pertaining to representation. Recent projects include: Britannia Works (Xippas Gallery, Greece 2004), Garden of Eden (Chisenhale Gallery, London 2003). He is a recipient of the “Decibel Visual Arts Award” (Visual Artist 2004-5) and is currently Artist in Residence at The Serpentine Gallery (London).
April 25Producing Communities. 12 - 4pm
Open Roundtable with participating communities and students artists. Chaired by Paul O’Neill.
Dr Paul O'Neill is an artist, curator and writer. He is GWR Research Fellow with Situations at the University of the West of England, where he is leading the international research project Locating the Producers.
April 27 Towards a Critical Pedagogy. 6-8pm
Professor Milena Dragicevic Šešic in conversation with artist Jesse Jones.
Professor Milena Dragicevic Šešic UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Management (Interculturalism and mediation in the Balkans) University of Arts, Belgrade Former President of University of Arts, Belgrade, now Head of UNESCO Chair in Interculturalism, Art Management and Mediation, professor of Cultural Policy & Cultural Management, Cultural studies, Media studies. Commandeur dans l`Ordre des Palmes Academiques, 2002. Member of National Council for Science and Technology (since 2006). President of the Cultural Policy Research Award (European Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam). President of the Board of the European Diploma in Cultural Project Management (Foundation Marcel Hicter, Bruxelles). Chair of Art & Culture Subboard of OSI (Soros network). Former ENCATC and ELIA Board Member. IUC Dubrovnik Board member (since 2008). Pro Helvetia Regional Board member(since 2008). Advisor to the Minister of Culture Republic of Serbia (since 2007)
How do landscapes change? How are we involved in their becoming? If they are just abstract concepts or human projections onto the world, how can we better mediate those projections to negotiate our ecological interactions?
These are some of the questions that the Pop-Up Landscapes project is raising through its year long series of workshops, installations and happenings. Headed by Teresa Dillon, Tuomo Tammenpää and lok Arquitectura, the project seeks to explore the becoming of different landscape forms in urban, rural and natural environments in Spain, Portugal and Finland. The project will realise an interactive media-installation or playspace where people can dynamically alter and ship digital triptychs through their physical presence.
The year long series of workshops and installations have already begun with the construction of prototypes in Barcelona at Hangar. For more information on the becoming of the project, you can follow it here.
Searching for the abandoned tunnel under Phoenix Park with Paddy Bloomer, Dublin, March 2009
Exploring the gaps in urban fabric, the Tactic Project in Dublin has been exploring forgotten spaces and creating new gaps for social activity. Recently completing a residency at the Lab on Foley Street, the group has been reflecting on their productivity and impact on Dublin city.
From the group's mission statement:
"Tactic is a cross-national laboratory for tactical art making: investigation, intervention, discovery, testing and application. It is a space for activists and artists to meet in Dublin and inform each other's practice, develop projects and engage a public."
“Tactics... are isolated actions or events that take advantage of opportunities offered by the gaps within a given strategic system, although the tactician never holds onto these advantages. Tactics cut across a strategic field, exploiting gaps in it to generate novel and inventive outcomes.”
Philosophically basing their activism within the thought of Michel de Certeau:
“These "ways of operating" constitute the innumerable practices by means of which users reappropriate the space organized by techniques of sociocultural production... the goal is to perceive and analyze the microbe-like operations proliferating within technocratic structures and deflecting their functioning by means of a multitude of "tactics" articulated in the details of everyday life;... to bring to light the clandestine forms taken by the dispersed, tactical, and makeshift creativity of groups or individuals already caught in the nets of "discipline:" Pushed to their ideal limits, these procedures and ruses of consumers compose the network of an antidiscipline..”
Contextualising the groups aspirations within the work of more familiar art-agonists K Foundation or the NSK, there is always a question or criticism of to what extent such initiatives actively engage with urban communities or whether they skate along the surface of the city in indulgent flaneurie. Whichever the case may be, the energy, enthusiasm and initiative is something to be embraced and supported critically.
Street intervention by Paul Hickey, Dublin, March 2009 (photo by Ralph Borland)
Placing Voices - Voicing Places is a collaborative investigation and mediation of the contemporary heritages and material cultures of inner-city Dublin. Clanbrassil St and the Monto will be explored throughout Autumn and Winter 2008 through archaeology, art, digital storytelling, photography and sociology. The project hopes to inspire news understandings of the co-temporal qualities of the things both known, forgotten and sometimes remembered about the places we civically share.
