MashingUp: Curating/Practice

University of Glasgow and UWS event 
Translating Russian & East European Cultures

Centre for Russian, Central & East European Studies
supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

GoMA Roundtable Event

Thursday 12 May 2011

Top Floor Studio GoMA

2:30 to 6pm

To include a roundtable on knowledge exchange as participatory practice - exploring links

between play and visual pedagogies and the private view of the exhibition Blueprint for a

Bogey, which includes the artwork, Women@Play

This event is part of GoMA’s ‘Blueprint for a bogey’ season.

Programme

2:15 - 2:30 Tea and Coffee

2:30 - 2:45 Introduction

Katarzyna Kosmala, Jon Oldfield, Katie Bruce

2:45 – 3:45 Workshop

women@play, led by Katarzyna Kosmala

This session will involve the project co-ordinator, Katie Bruce; the

artists Rachel Mimiec and Anne Elliot as well as the Development

Worker from the Red Road Family Centre, June Aird, talking around the

project. There will also be time for Q&As.

3:45 – 4:30 Impulse paper session

Short impulse papers will be delivered on aspects of knowledge

exchange as part of participatory practice. These will be given by

Rebecca Kay, Zuly Mail Zada, and Jon Oldfield.

4:30 - 5:00 Group activity/discussion

Revolving around the themes of participation as learning/knowledge

exchange, experiential learning, and related areas.

5:00 – 6:00 Exhibition

Viewing, guided by curator Katie Bruce followed by drinks reception.

Symposium ‘Mashing Up: Curating Practice’, CCA

Friday 13 May 2011

Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA)

2pm to 6pm

Programme

2:00 - 2:15 Introduction

Katarzyna Kosmala and CCA staff

2:15 - 3:30 Symposium

• Ryszard Kluszczynski, “Curating Art@ Science; curating

Mediations: Reflections on the working in-between”

3:30 – 4:00 Tea and Coffee

4:00 – 5:15 Symposium

• Brendan Jackson, “Small world, isn’t it?”

5:15 – 5:45 Question and Answers Session

Facilitated by Graham Jeffery

About the participants

Ryszard Kluszczynski is the Professor of Cultural and Media Studies at Lodz

University, Poland and Head of the Department of Media and Audiovisual Culture. He is

also a Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz.

He writes about the challenges of media and multimedia arts, cyber-culture, theory of

media and communication, information and network society. He critically investigates the

issues of contemporary art theory and alternative art. Until 2001, Kluszczynski was a Chief

Curator of Film, Video and Multimedia Arts in the Centre for Contemporary Art,

Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. He has curated numerous international art exhibitions. In

2010, Kluszczynski co-curated, Beyond Mediations, the main exhibition of The Second

International Biennale of Contemporary Art in Poznan, Poland (mediations.pl). He is editor

of Art Inquiry, a yearbook on contemporary art, and Cultural Studies Review.

Curating Mediations, curating Art@Science”, Reflections on the working

in-between.

Ryszard’s talk will focus on two recent curatorial projects, discussing complex aspects of

collaboration, exchange and the idea of transfers. He begins with the initial concept of the

Biennale and ‘cultural exchange between Europe and Asia’, via collaboration with

Tsutomu Mizusawa. He will explain how the concept of ‘cultural exchange’ has expanded,

leading towards a sort of ‘controlled chaos’.

His most recent curatorial project deals with the question of relations between art and

science. The project is expected to end in 2016. Ryszard will distinguish three different

types of exhibition conceptualisation, dealing with art & science problems. 1. Placing

art@science into the context of a general art exhibition. 2. Curating an exhibition purely

devoted to art@science. 3. Curating exhibitions dealing with the history of art@science.

Brendan Jackson is an independent writer, producer and artist. Trained in visual

communication, receiving a Fellowship in Photography at the Photographic Gallery,

Southampton University, under the stewardship of Leo Stable, and was part of the

development team for the John Hansard Gallery.

For some 20 years he worked as an artist and developer of community arts programmes

with Jubilee Arts, partnering with a range of statutory and non-statutory organisations to

develop a wide range of projects where community engagement was paramount.

Brendan produced the CD Lifting the Weight with Geese Theatre, which won the IBM

Community Connections Award and a BAFTA. His interests encompass collaborative

projects using photography and film, visual arts, oral history, writing and digital media.

The aim of his work has always been to build a sense of community, using creative

activities in everyday life. Brendan works internationally, with specific trans-national

projects over the past decade with the Institute of Polish Culture at Warsaw University and

the Borderland Foundation in Sejny, Poland.

Small world, isn’t it ?

Brendan’s talk will focus on community arts practice, which others might describe as

socially-engaged practice or as cultural animation, based on exploring synergies between

institutions, ideas and disciplines and - most of all – people. He will reflect on working

across boundaries and borders, in multiple Europe’s, drawing on his experience of working

with diverse groups of artists in a range of community contexts – exploring participation,

collaboration, inspiration and serendipity. On the one hand, there is an ever diversifying

and fragmenting ‘community of interests’ and on the other a drawing together and

merging of interests that are cross-border and permeable. There is a role for the

community artist in navigating these shifting cross-cultural tides, in re-imagining and

sharing our practice. Brendan will draw on a recent programme, which was part of the

European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. The project consisted of exchanges between three

partners (based in Birmingham & Black Country in England, Bela Rečhka in Bulgaria, Sejny

in Poland) and the development of wandering/travelling workshops, engaging with local

particularities and peculiarities. The project culminated in the UK with an international

symposium in April 2010, followed by the publication of a book We No Longer Talk in the

summer.

“MASHING-UP...” A Public Lecture Series presented by UWS and CCA. This ongoing lecture series stimulates critical, transdisciplinary research communities to discuss advanced knowledge and to build networks of excellence among producer communities. ‘Mashing up’ [definition] "a mashup is a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration...to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data" (Wikipedia, 2009). The lecture series exhibits the values of new media culture to explore synergies between institutions, ideas and disciplines. This aspiration originates with the UWS and CCA partnership, which extends to the specific areas of inquiry that we pursue. It advances the core mission of each organization to initiate applied, international research opportunities through experimental, local dialogue to foster collaborative, bottom-up, sustainable practices of development. #mashingup We want attendees to blog, photograph, film, tweet and do all they can to share the content of these talks to democratize access to knowledge.