Talk:
The places and paradoxes of participation
Kristine Samson
The talk wishes to discuss various places of participation. How is it linked to an empowerment of people and how participatory spaces are linked to spatial, aesthetical and social powers. Viewers or citizens are often encouraged to engage but an invitation is constructed by artists, curators, cultural institutions. So what is the space of participation, how does it model our engagement and what are the empowering infrastructures – economical, technical, political, spatial – when we are invited to participate. Through various examples from contemporary art and culture, the talk will discuss paradoxes of this phenomenon as a distributed but also often disguised power.
Kristine Samson is associate professor at Visual Culture and Performance Design Unit, Roskilde University. Her recent research concerns events and participation in contemporary urban culture.
Artist talk and film presentation
Iza Rutkowska
Iza Rutkowska will give a presentation of her artistic practice which focuses on big collaborative projects in public spaces. By giving new forms and shapes to the reality she turns sites into places where one can interact with art. Likewise, she creates interdisciplinary projects mobilizing dialogue between architects, gardeners, philosophers, musicians, graphic designers, farmers, cooks and physicists. Iza will present several of her projects and launch the film “The All Residents Yard” which be be screened in rum46 during following 2 weeks.
Film “The All Residents Yard”
In summer 2015 a 7-meter long “Hedgehog” was appearing on one of backyards in Wroclaw (Poland) for several weeks. A large-scale, inflatable toy designed by Iza Rutkowska was to help with an integration activities realized in Triangle – a neighborhood infamous for a neglected condition of apartment buildings and their tenants. The “Hedgehog” with its thirty soft spines became a platform for meetings, workshops and activities initiated by the artist. Gradually it was transforming a commonplaceness of residents of the yard, who wanted to make it feel at home. One year after the first meeting, thanks to crowdfunding, the artist took the children together with the “Hedgehog” on holidays to the Rehabilitation Centre for Hedgehogs in Kłodzko, where the kids from Triangle played a role of animators and were organizing fun with the “Hedgehog” for children from a local orphanage. After returning to the yard Rutkowska organized a contest, in which anyone could submit an idea of an action advantageous for the neighbors. A proposal to build a recreational and sport complex in the backyard was a winner. The film “The All Residents Yard” will tell about the process of the competition and the realization of the winning idea.
Iza Rutkowska is a Polish visual artist, founder of The Forms and Shapes Foundation PL.
These talks are a part of GROUND WORK – a series of talks, texts and visual presentations on participation, urbanity, alternative economies in January – May 2017 in rum46.
