Open call:
This is a call out for artists of all kinds to be a part of a playful & gentle residency based at the archive of the 56A Infoshop in Elephant & Castle, an anarchist social centre that has been open to the public since 1991. Collectively run, the Infoshop offers a generous and open space for encounters around radical ideas and materials.
We are looking for artists interested in bringing these materials to life through their own practice and in collaboration with other residents; who are seeking to experiment, take risks and branch out or push the boundaries of their usual practice, register or style.
One of our jumping off points is the local legend Joanna Southcott, a popular self-enacted prophetess who left behind a ‘box of secrets’ to be opened in a time of crisis. We invite participating artists to think of the archive as a box holding secrets we might use not only to avoid crisis, but to actively (re)enchant the world.
We will start locally, exploring enchantment in Elephant & Castle, and how we might interact with the area as a collaborator and playground. Potential themes we are interested in looking at together are: magic; local myths & lore; the secrets of the city; play & collective effervescence, ritual and enchantments.
As hosts and facilitators, 56A Infoshop and holobiont will contribute ideas, stories, methods and resources, but hope the residency will be shaped by participating artist’s practices and interests. Some things we can offer as starting points are: critical walking practice, eccentric archival research, counter-cartography, auto-ethnography, and queering as a practice. If any of this intrigues you, we implore you to apply! ♥
Application:
Application link: https://forms.gle/GetvxzZtUaUUCyVR7
OR: If submitting a 5 minute video answering the questions is more accessible to you, please contact us to let us know. You will be asked to email hello@holobiont.lol with a link to your video and ‘56A Residency YOUR NAME’ in the subject line.
Application deadline: 15th of September 2024, 11.59PM
Please contact us on hello@holobiont.lol if you have any questions or concerns. We look forward to reading your applications!
Practicalities:
Available spaces: 5-6
Timeline: 29th September - 8th December 2024
Time commitment: We will meet every Sunday at the Infoshop for the first three weeks to get started, and then every second Sunday for research and sharing days. These days will be accessibly paced. The archive will be open exclusively to the residency group on these days. You will also have access during regular opening hours. We will host a collective happening at the end of the residency in December to share work, with an understanding that we do not expect fully developed outputs.
Residents should be able to attend meetings in person when possible. To make best use of this opportunity, we ask you to commit to as many of these in-person meet-ups as possible:
Grounding & Introduction: Sunday, 29th September, full day
Meeting the Archive: Sunday, 6th October, afternoon
Playing in the Archive: Sunday, 13th October, afternoon
Taking the Archive for a Walk: Sunday, 27th October, full day
Sharing Session: Sunday, 10th November, afternoon
Preparing for the Happening: Sunday, 24th November, full day
The Happening: Sunday, 8th December, tbc
Finances: This is an unpaid (read: unfunded) opportunity. We will support participants with our time, expertise and things like free access to paper and printing. We may be able to secure some funding to support material expenses, but this is tbc.
Hosts & Facilitators:
56A Infoshop
xChris is a local writer and artist and will help guide us through stories of local occult artists, mysterious prophetesses, the ecstasies of rave culture and understanding and working with ritual and myth-making. xChris will guide us through a fun bunch of local histories and resistance in The Elephant. We can think together about how we break traditional paradigms and repertoires of local politics to push towards autonomy and subversion. Where does ‘Art’ fit into this and where does our subjective creativity and imagination let itself loose in collective confidence?
xChris is a long-term member of 56a Infoshop in The Elephant and works extensively from the archive on issues of bending local histories back on themselves. Using popular education, self-publishing, walking and listening work, xChris encourages the delving into facts and myths of the local area for use in the potentials of local organising and action. They also want a whole lot more than just this!
holobiont
Anna is co-founder of the collective holobiont and an artist interested in unruly modes of cultural production. They often work with archival materials as a starting point for their practice – recently drawing on queer histories of cruising to develop the project Love Underground, which proposes the city as an erotic commons. They are also a senior lecturer on the MA Design for Social Innovation & Sustainable Futures at University of the Arts London, where they lead a unit focused on cultivating a creative practice that imagines pathways towards collective liberation.
Anna will be a sort of spirit guide for the duration of the residency: insisting on wonder, inviting play, and encouraging wild imagination. They will share their own archive of unorthodox approaches to research and creative practice, including an extensive catalogue of ‘nonsense as method’. They will also contribute through, and expand on, their own practice, delving deeper into an enduring obsession with finding ways to queer time and space.
Anna instagram
Comments