Dis da Lavur
Residency and Symposium in Tschlin (CH)
How can we bring an artistic and curatorial practice to the field that is meaningful and sustainable? How can we situate an artistic and curatorial practice locally in a meaningful way?
A local context is not a static given. The local relationships and interdependencies which artists and other cultural workers enter into are constantly being formed and changed through the involvement of the participants. Not only does this dynamic have a great influence on the practical work of conception, organisation and production, it also shapes the content of the projects, the way they’re perceived, and their significance.
Does raising awareness of different kinds and levels of situating enable a more sustainable and visionary artistic and curatorial practice? Is it helpful to discuss the quality of such projects? If artists and cultural professionals see themselves as local actors and actively participate on the ground, the desire for harmony or acceptance alone won’t suffice; they must also be able to distance themselves and rely on the quality of their professional field.
On this topic, the cultural initiative SOMALGORS74 and the art researcher Michael Hiltbrunner initiated the collaborative working days ‘Dis da lavur’. Together with committed residents of Valsot and the Dalvazza Group for Rural and Peripheral Art (Swiss Artistic Research Network SARN), these days are intended to encourage people to imagine and devise different kinds of situating.
SYMPOSIUM "DIS DA LAVUR"
Part 3 "VIRTUAL SITUATING"
Local und digital situating: Sascia Bailer und Lene Markusen 'Projekt Field Narratives' (Talk), Njomza Dragusha, Gemeinschaftszentrum Termokiss, Prishtina (Talk), Badel/Sarbach (Talk), moderated by Seraina Dür and Sally De Kunst.
Review:
Sascia and Lene introduced their project on field narratives, that brings together stories from Danmark, Germany, and Cameroon on agrarian memories and intergenerational dialogue. Field narratives are collecting female storytelling and questioning notions of fertility, ecology, and farm labour and are giving a feminist and queer perspective on the acriculture. Sascia wrote as a statement on their presentation: "The virtual and the spatial are mutually dependent and interdependent. To what extent locally situated practices can be translated into the digital is a context-specific question that must be negotiated locally. Just as in physical space a curatorial practice of care must think about breaking down barriers to access, so too must this happen in digital space. What resources, what knowledge can the organization share to enable participation, including by older people in rural areas? What linguistic, spatial, communicative and technical foundations must be created for this?
My own participatory curatorial practice at M.1 in Hohenlockstedt has sought to explore these areas of tension and continue locally situated practices in digital space.
The working group "Field Narratives" (Sascia Bailer, Andreas Doepke, hn. lyonga, Lene Markusen) has emerged from these virtual meeting spaces and has developed as a platform for exchange on rural space, each of which links to locally situated practices of the participants, but which is itself virtual. By tracking down, bringing together, weaving together stories that originate in rural spaces, we aim to create a feminist and decolonial virtual platform that places a different value on the rural, the agrarian. "Field Narratives" is thus in tension with a cultural production that is mostly located in the urban and thus continues to marginalize central questions and narratives of the rural."
In Prishtina, but also in Biel and in Brussels, started an initiative for a local culture centre, Termokiss. Njomza described how happy she was, that this center was enabled by the Swiss and Belgian squatters. But she also described the estrangement how the squatters had great difficulties in accepting and respecting the local culture. She enjoyed being part of Termokiss, but had to step back after a while, feeling extremely exhausted. Luckily a new group of organizers did take over and continued Termokiss as a cultural center. Njomza had no background as social worker, but she definitely had the role of somebody doing important social work in Prishtina at the time.
Flurina and Jérémie made a digital presentation. The artist couple Badel/Sarbach normally lives in Guarda, a village similar to Tschlin on the other end of the lower Engadine. The odour of Swiss pine trees is a stereotype – but this odour follows them in Berlin. They presented an inner journey around the pines.
Seraina Dür did grow up in Tschlin, she’s now living in Zurich and working on the utopian potential of local associations. Sally de Kunst did run the artist residency Arc artist residency in Romainmôtier, a village in the French speaking part of Switzerland and is now organizing the collaboration of museum in the city of Bern. This third part of the day was the most challenged: What is an online community? What is virtual? At the same time is was clear for everyone that the digital is changing the local very much, defining it in a new way.
Read more:
Dis da Lavur
Residency and Symposium in Tschlin (CH)
How can we bring an artistic and curatorial practice to the field that is meaningful and sustainable? How can we situate an artistic and curatorial practice locally in a meaningful way?
A local context is not a static given. The local relationships and interdependencies which artists and other cultural workers enter into are constantly being formed and changed through the involvement of the participants. Not only does this dynamic have a great influence on the practical work of conception, organisation and production, it also shapes the content of the projects, the way they’re perceived, and their significance.
Does raising awareness of different kinds and levels of situating enable a more sustainable and visionary artistic and curatorial practice? Is it helpful to discuss the quality of such projects? If artists and cultural professionals see themselves as local actors and actively participate on the ground, the desire for harmony or acceptance alone won’t suffice; they must also be able to distance themselves and rely on the quality of their professional field.
On this topic, the cultural initiative SOMALGORS74 and the art researcher Michael Hiltbrunner initiated the collaborative working days ‘Dis da lavur’. Together with committed residents of Valsot and the Dalvazza Group for Rural and Peripheral Art (Swiss Artistic Research Network SARN), these days are intended to encourage people to imagine and devise different kinds of situating.
SYMPOSIUM "DIS DA LAVUR"
Part 3 "VIRTUAL SITUATING"
Local und digital situating: Sascia Bailer und Lene Markusen 'Projekt Field Narratives' (Talk), Njomza Dragusha, Gemeinschaftszentrum Termokiss, Prishtina (Talk), Badel/Sarbach (Talk), moderated by Seraina Dür and Sally De Kunst.
Review:
Sascia and Lene introduced their project on field narratives, that brings together stories from Danmark, Germany, and Cameroon on agrarian memories and intergenerational dialogue. Field narratives are collecting female storytelling and questioning notions of fertility, ecology, and farm labour and are giving a feminist and queer perspective on the acriculture. Sascia wrote as a statement on their presentation: "The virtual and the spatial are mutually dependent and interdependent. To what extent locally situated practices can be translated into the digital is a context-specific question that must be negotiated locally. Just as in physical space a curatorial practice of care must think about breaking down barriers to access, so too must this happen in digital space. What resources, what knowledge can the organization share to enable participation, including by older people in rural areas? What linguistic, spatial, communicative and technical foundations must be created for this?
My own participatory curatorial practice at M.1 in Hohenlockstedt has sought to explore these areas of tension and continue locally situated practices in digital space.
The working group "Field Narratives" (Sascia Bailer, Andreas Doepke, hn. lyonga, Lene Markusen) has emerged from these virtual meeting spaces and has developed as a platform for exchange on rural space, each of which links to locally situated practices of the participants, but which is itself virtual. By tracking down, bringing together, weaving together stories that originate in rural spaces, we aim to create a feminist and decolonial virtual platform that places a different value on the rural, the agrarian. "Field Narratives" is thus in tension with a cultural production that is mostly located in the urban and thus continues to marginalize central questions and narratives of the rural."
In Prishtina, but also in Biel and in Brussels, started an initiative for a local culture centre, Termokiss. Njomza described how happy she was, that this center was enabled by the Swiss and Belgian squatters. But she also described the estrangement how the squatters had great difficulties in accepting and respecting the local culture. She enjoyed being part of Termokiss, but had to step back after a while, feeling extremely exhausted. Luckily a new group of organizers did take over and continued Termokiss as a cultural center. Njomza had no background as social worker, but she definitely had the role of somebody doing important social work in Prishtina at the time.
Flurina and Jérémie made a digital presentation. The artist couple Badel/Sarbach normally lives in Guarda, a village similar to Tschlin on the other end of the lower Engadine. The odour of Swiss pine trees is a stereotype – but this odour follows them in Berlin. They presented an inner journey around the pines.
Seraina Dür did grow up in Tschlin, she’s now living in Zurich and working on the utopian potential of local associations. Sally de Kunst did run the artist residency Arc artist residency in Romainmôtier, a village in the French speaking part of Switzerland and is now organizing the collaboration of museum in the city of Bern. This third part of the day was the most challenged: What is an online community? What is virtual? At the same time is was clear for everyone that the digital is changing the local very much, defining it in a new way.
Read more: