Knowledge Is A Does

Revolution is not a one-time event

WE SEE THE HORIZON: ABOLITION NOW!

Abolition is a perennial and open invitation to take the potential of revolutionary love seriously. In direct opposition to carcerality, abolition is a life-making principle: one concerned with creating new practices, spells and rhythms that make planetary life habitable for all. Abolition is the desire for more; a rejection of all the tenets of the world sustained by the catastrophe of policing, carcerality and their rootedness in anti-Black, anti-queer, anti-trans, white heteropatriarchal, racial capitalist state power. As this moment of upheaval unfolds, abolition has taken centre stage, expanding the realm and threshold of potential. This state of emergency has always been forever. Abolition reminds us that the world has never been habitable and that everything is possible.

In daring us to demand more for ourselves and others, abolition orientates us towards what Mariame Kaba describes as a horizon. We see the abolitionist horizon just beyond burning police cars, abandoned prisons and open borders. The time of abolition is both in the distance and already present. In the words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “abolition is presence”: a form of faith that we can and will change everything. Abolition is the gift of the unfinished Black freedom struggle and its constant radicalisation, its ceaseless extension.

In Revolution is not a one-time event. activists, academics and artists reflected on abolitionist praxis and thought, exploring covergences with gender, poetry, technology, performance, speculation, aesthetics, film and culture.

Revolution is not a one-time event was a programme held throughout August 2020 organised by Che Gossett, Lola Olufemi and Sarah Shin in collaboration with Arika and hosted by Silver Press.

Rupert invites all to a presentation by curator Taraneh Fazeli, followed by conversation with artist Katherine MacBride and Q&A with the audience. The talk will take place on Zoom on 1 December 2020, 19 00 (EET) and is open by registration only.

PRESENTS is an online screening of short video works that don’t require an abled or physically present body in order to be performative. Ten sick and disabled artists come together to expand the idea of ‘performance’, presenting work that is embodied, immediate, and present without forcing bodies to conform to ableist norms of art-making.

Some works offer ways for us to dance together and feel connected to sick and queer community from our rooms. Others challenge us to radically slow down and match the pace of their words or their movements through the world. Many do not have a visual or do not have an audio component, highlighting what is present and what is absent. Each work feels like a gift, giving new possibilities for accessible art-making and relating to each other.

In addition to their video work, each artist has created a “score” for you to perform yourself alongside their work in your own home. The scores are invitations, instructions, challenges, and meditations that aim for you to feel the presence of the artist in the room with you.

Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre

Annual General Exchange 2020 - Provisions

31st October - 8th November

To those far and further,

In summer, we wanted to send a broad message of reliability in a sea of uncertainty – to say: AGE, our Annual General Exchange, will take place (but perhaps not form) this year, just like always.

Over the past years of AGEs, a lovely cohort of engaged practitioners has grown, finding ways to gather around research, exchange support and share in one another’s practices. It would be a loss, and a harder winter not to touch in with each other before the nights draw in.

But then, every week there seemed to be shifts – in R numbers, in policy, in legality, which made us stumble. As a centre for the meeting of people, BOARC wouldn’t risk those people. And as a communal space, BOARC feels it shouldn’t decree the ways in which communities come into contact. Yet – we all have to navigate this pandemic together as organic mass, and alone as potential carriers.

In the past two months, we’ve experimented with different modes of being together: from hypervigillant, sanitised and masked with people who have greater immuno-necessity; to aware and accepting with standard-week stayers.

Through all of this, it has been very important to the team here to resist narratives of viral shame – who’s ‘had it / caught it / passed it’ is not of interest. Instead, the focus has been: how do we protect those who need protecting, and enable those who need enabling?

So – how to bear this in mind for this year’s Annual General Exchange?

As of last week there were new restrictions in the North West of England, which includes the Wirral where the observatory lays. Everyone should work from home, and there are fines for more than six people gathering. From today, the restrictions grow tighter and it is advised not to travel into or out of the area.

Nevertheless, we'll still hold space for AGE20 - with an online proposition.

This is not to supplant us being in one space: AGE20 will be a different kind of animal. We would all like to try to give each other provisions for the coming months: as such, it will be a quiet and dedicated hunkering down, concentrating together on what we need feedback on. As always, the programme will expand or contract with the offers of those who’d like to join.

We’re proposing a rhythm of intention, attention and rest, in three cycles:

Intention days:

Are brief preparations. Send an email, share what you’d like to focus on, collect resources and we'll quickly schedule the next day.

Attention days:

Are whole days. We'll be grouping around the proposed workshops, lectures, cooking and co-study moments. We'll be basking our practices in focus.

Rest days:

Are breaks. Rest, relax, repose away from the screen.

Here are the dates:

Saturday 31st Oct - Intention & welcome / Samhain ritual in the evening

Sunday 1st Nov - Attention

Monday 2nd Nov - Rest

Tuesday 3rd Nov - Intention

Wednesday 4th Nov - Attention

Thursday 5th Nov - Rest & Fireworks

Friday 6th Nov - Intention

Saturday 7th Nov - Attention & Annual General Meeting of the observatory

Sunday 8th Nov - Rest (Parting)

If you would like to join, please send an email to: [email protected]

We Keep Each Other Safe: Mutual Aid for Survival and Solidarity by Barnard Center for Research on Women

Spaces In/between: Critical approaches to care & collectivity online by TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

Exploring concepts of community and care in online spaces, this panel brings together artists, activists and researchers to discuss individualism, collectivity and care performed through digital technology. Speakers include writer Orit Gat, design activist Maral Pourkazemi and Dr. Francesca Sobande, lecturer in digital media studies.

20–24 Nov 2019 Tramway, Glasgow

Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre

Annual General Exchange 2019

31st October - 5th November

Our Annual General Exchange (A.G.E.) is the space of joy we leave clear in the diary every year, a spooky parenthesis between Halloween and Bonfire Night, where the blue glow of protection spells mark out space for practice and exchange.

Rather than fixing every minute of the program beforehand, the AGE is more of an invitation - an invocation perhaps - calling towards collective resourcing or collective bracing for winter.

most mornings are preserved for moments of waking, stretching and sharing

some afternoons are filled with seminars, lectures and workshops

a couple of evenings are dedicated moments of fire and wine and dance

there’ll be one annual general meeting about the organisation of the research centre

  Offerings:

This year, the proposition is to start by thinking through the cosmogonies of Technic and Magic, and to end by celebrating the soil, thinking through matters of care in compost.

Technic & Magic

Federico Campagna’s latest book, Technic & Magic, invites us to think metaphysics as a literary genre, and to consider the origin narratives which set up different reality systems. Federico will present, over two days, Technic as current hegemonic ordering, which produces a ‘crisis of reality’. The version of reality that is proposed by Technic gives primacy to absolute language and the existence of things becomes solely dependent on linguistic categories. Technic then decrees that if you fall outside of linguistic categories (not female, not trans, not male, not European, no passport, no papers), you become extinct before you die.

Magic, on the other hand, is that which cannot be included in language, the ineffable. It is the shadow side of Technic, and takes a different form in each society. What is the existential and ontological impact of magic, that allows for vanishing, for occultism for initiation and secrecy: for creating space within & without one’s own historical time? Magic as a practice allows for individuals to reset reality for themselves, at the same time as engaging in wider emancipatory projects. We’ll be looking at magic as a form of therapy and a way of addressing structural inequality.

Matters of Care

Following Maria Puig de la Bellacasa and Susan Leigh Star’s feminist technoscience practices, we’ll be thinking compost and decomposition through the body, working with the located, wormy layer of fibrous matter under our feet. Reading through Matters of Care, by Puig de la Bellacasa, and moving towards her current research, we’ll be considering soil as infrastructure, final resting place and living breathing entity. How can we think in terms of appropriate scales: how to make or craft the appropriate scale, rather than borrowing and performing never-ending techno-extententions, whilst working with the fertility and infertility of the land around? In Maria’s own words: ‘Standing by the vital necessity of care means standing for sustainable and flourishing relations, not merely survivalist or instrumental ones.’

oh seductive metaphor

network flung over reality

filaments spun from the body

connections of magic

extend

extend

extend

who will see the spaces between?

From The Net, S. Leigh Star, 1995

About AGE: The annual general exchange is the recurring event in the year, programmed by the observatory team. Most other workshops, groupings and gatherings are put together by stayers, whose meetings have different degrees of visibility depending on the research / needs of the group.

People coming to the AGE are welcome and invited to suggest and set moments for their own practice, to add to, hold-with or give steerage to the proposed thematic. There will be time for this during the loose schedule of the AGE. If you’d like to ask questions about this in advance, or would like assistance plotting, please send us a mail. Or, if you’d like to wait and see whether it feels right, that’s also good!

Input can take many welcomed forms: workshops, extended conversations, trying out new ideas or working through content. In general – we’re looking to create an atmosphere of attention and experiment, with thoughtful and feelingful critique, which might be slower and more informal than giving a lecture, and as joyous, intense or dreamy as you’d like.

Practicalities:

The maximum number of stayers is 26, and people booking for the whole duration get priority.

If you would like to participate for the duration, the suggested arrival is on the 31st in the morning, and the last event is on the 5th in the evening, however it is possible to stay longer.

The nightly fee is as usual, £15 per person, per night.

This event is communal cooking rather than self-catering. Food contribution is £10 per person per day. Please let us know preferences and any allergies when booking.

For people coming from Liverpool who’d like to engage with the program, but not stay over, there will be a public event on Saturday 2nd November. It is also possible to join for more of the program, just drop us a mail.

Folds Reparative reading of the event Thursday 11.07.2019 20:00 - 23:00 uur

AIDS VIDEO ACTIVISM: WOMEN AND INCARCERATION A VIDEO PROGRAM FOR "METANOIA"

Programmed by Katherine Cheairs & Alexandra Juhasz