Son[i]a #356
Eva Rowson
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In 2010, unable to find spaces to show their work in London, Eva Rowson and her partner Luke Drozd started organizing exhibitions in their flat at 38b Peckham Rye. What began as an exhibition in their emptied out living room soon became a welcoming, hospitable space that hosted shows, gigs, radio broadcasts and book fairs over the course of eight years.
Since then, Eva has been bringing some of that caring and inclusive ethos to cultural institutions such as the Lighthouse in Brighton, Bergen Kunsthall, and Bergen Kjøtt in Norway. Through a triangulation of artistic, curatorial, and managerial practice, she draws attention to the crucial internal structural work that keeps institutions going but is pushed into the background in favor of academic, intellectual work. This reimagining requires everyday maintenance, actively working for greater diversity and a focus on being “nice”: a deceptively simple concept put forward by Eva herself that calls for a broadening of the boundaries of what and who we care for. By drawing attention to unnoticed yet fundamental aspects while carefully looking at the specifics of how organizations work, Eva stubbornly challenges theory through her down-to-earth hospitality practices in order to enable possible new worlds in which to find strength.
In this podcast, Eva Rowson talks about her early contact with hospitality, collective learning experiences such as Open School East, the value of uncharismatic work, throwing parties with Andrea Francke, life lessons of a croissant, and how the best theory comes from practice.
Kathrin Böhm
In this podcast, we open up a glossary of concepts that affect and leave their mark on Kathrin Böhm's many constellations and collective projects. From the notion of compost—which triggered a radical shift in her way of working and interacting with her material archive in recent years—to a reassessment of the very idea of economy, which, as Katherine Gibson writes, helps us discern spaces of value production that are not immediately apparent. We talk about how these other strategies and ways of doing things lead us to qualify and problematise alternative ways of understanding social and/or participatory practices, and even to read the idea of community critically.
Dani Admiss
Dani Admiss is an independent curator, researcher and educator who spent part of her childhood in Dubai before emigrating to the UK and settling in Edinburgh. Her projects are situated at the intersection of art, design, technology and cultural practice and—in a constant search for a sense of belonging—explore infrastructures and relationality. "Sunlight Doesn’t Need a Pipeline" emerged in response to the simple and complex question: “How can I be useful?” The answer—by creating a decarbonisation plan for the gallery—gradually took the form of a conversation of many voices, involving various communities in an exercise in social justice and collective learning to rethink the processes of the art world in times of climate emergency.
Janna Graham
Janna Graham talks about critical and radical pedagogy, about the educational turn, and about how pedagogical practices interact with cultural practices and social struggles. She discusses her experiences at different institutions, reflecting on the risk of the museification of activism in the midst of the neoliberal mélange, and talks about "parasitic" processes in the redistribution of cultural resources into social justice projects, and about the challenge of actively integrating the voices and demands of the marginalised groups that the museum works with.
Sofia Olascoaga
Artist, curator and researcher Sofía Olascoaga gives an overview of the activist history of Cuernavaca, a small city, around 80km south of Mexico City, which from the 1950s to the 1980s attracted several generations of intellectuals and activists, and reflects on how community and self-managed spaces can drive social change, while also looking at the processes of cultural and institutional colonisation by the West in Latin America.
Andrea Francke
Hablamos con la artista Andrea Francke sobre su interés en las infraestructuras y proyectos participativos. Inclusión, hospitalidad y los ecos del proyecto colonial aparecen en la conversación. Andrea va deshaciendo la idea de fracaso mientras reflexiona acerca de los desafíos que conlleva la elaboración de políticas y marcos legales institucionales. Hablamos también de categorías de arte importadas, de trabajos invisibles y de la idea de caridad como un callejón sin salida.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with curator, artist and cultural producer Eva Rowson that we were unable to include the first time around. Eva expands on her proposition of being nice as an integral part of her curatorial and managing work, while taking into account the challenges of maintaining safe and welcoming spaces. The questions of quotas and infrastructure pop up in the conversation too.