FTHo

Workshop led by Kathrin Böhm for Constellations 2019-2020

Constellations  supports artists to develop their practice, collaborate with others, and access new networks. The programme places a strong focus on ideas of co-authoring and self-organising and addresses the importance of collaboration in moments of crisis and the key role arts and culture can play in facilitating social cooperation. This year’s iteration also considers the digital realm as a platform for collaboration, engagement, and exchange as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic with workshops taking place both online and offline.  

Running between July 2020  and  February  2021, the programme will explore different approaches to artistic research and collaborative practice through  eight  self-led sessions (including one session facilitated by  Constellations  alumna Beverley Bennett)  and five workshops led by Larisa Blazic,  Languid Hands (Imani Robinson and Rabz Lansiquot), Paul Purgas, Stine Marie Jacobsen, and  Srećko Horvat.  Full details of the 2020–21 programme structure can be found here.

Constellations has been conceived by Flat Time House and UP Projects in response to an increasing need to support artists interested in working within socio-political contexts. This will be the third iteration of the programme. Drawing on the history of John Latham’s house as a site for experimental art education where students, artists and the wider public can come together to test the boundaries of what is teachable and knowable, the programme builds on the legacy of Latham's work as a founder member of the Artist Placement Group, a pioneering organisation in the history of socially engaged practice initiated in 1966 by Barbara Steveni.    

Artist Biographies 

Adam Moore is a London-based interdisciplinary artist exploring themes of multiculturalism, unity and resilience.  Applying embodied processes across various disciplines, Adam investigates emergent transdisciplinary forms and their potential to amplify and transcend meaning. Using dance, writing, drawing, collage, sculpture, video and sound, he explores how transdisciplinary practice entails a deeper understanding and synthesis of experience. He limns poetics and theories of sustainability through his practice, inviting others into new ways of perceiving and connecting, through performance and artistic collaboration. For Adam, sustainability is a life-cycle of trial and improvement, enquiring personal and collective exchanges across cultures,  identities and experiences. Sustainability explores how these exchanges soften hardened institutions and attitudes, simultaneously revealing alternative visions of the future where life can thrive more fully. Recent performances include: leave your vessels, ΛΣK - with Esme Lewis-Gartside and Kaivalya Brewerton (The Yard, 2020 & Guest Projects 2019), Maybe there will be stars (Haarlem Arts Space, Wirksworth, 2019), Unanthemic (Newham Spoken Word Festival, 2019), Cæsura (RAW Labs, 2018), Healing Forward (London Laban Centre, 2017).

Hussina Raja is a British-Kashmiri artist and actress based in London. Her work explores social-political issues surrounding notions of identity, heritage and culture through film, photography, installation and performance.  She is interested in the historical emergence of subcultures and how they inform politics, popular culture and social constructs to-date. Her artistic approach is based on research, experimentation and most importantly collaboration with artists across disciplines, and community groups, particularly those marginalised by the mainstream. She often uses her personal experiences and encounters as a starting point for creating work. Hussina works across the arts, theatre and film world from directing short films, exhibiting photographs, video installations and curating interactive art shows and events. She studied Criminology, Law and Performance, all of which lend themselves to her multi-faceted perspective on subject matters. Her most recent work was screened at BFI's London Film Festival and Oberhausen International Short Film Festival. She has exhibited at Index on Censorship, RichMix and for Amnesty International.

Lady Kitt is a socially engaged artist and drag king based in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Their work is driven by an insatiable curiosity about the social functions of stuff that gets called art. Kitt uses paper crafting, performance and research to create objects, interactions and events. Some of the things that have happened as part of their work are: super-sized origami boat races, policy changes, & the creation of an international feminist art magazine for and by children. Kitt is a member of the Social Art Network (UK), DISCONSORTIA (UK) a consortium of 18 North East based  disabled artists and of global art activism movement Nasty Women, having co-convened the 1st Nasty Women International Conference (2017), and acted as chair of the judging panel for  the Nasty Women International Art Prize (2018). They have recently shown work at Atlanta Contemporary (USA) and Saatchi Gallery, (London, UK).  Kitt is a panel member for the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead, UK) Open Submission Exhibition 2020.

Mark Bleakley lives and works in Glasgow and graduated from Newcastle University in 2013 with a BA in Fine Art. As an artist and choreographer Mark presents work in both dance and visual arts contexts. His work is informed by his continued practice in social dance, in particular the black diasporic dance forms: Bboying (Breakdancing) and House Dance. Mark’s practice incorporates contemporary choreographic and improvisational practices while also developing compositions that combine video, the body and text to explore choreographic relations between gesture, context and their affects. Between 2015-2016 Mark took part in Dance Base’s DEBS with mentor Luke Pell and Collective Gallery’s Satellites Programme. Recent exhibitions and performances include: UR- Prototyping, CCA Glasgow, Future Fictions festival (2019); How we handle Things, Rhubaba Gallery and Studios (2019); Schema chapters I-III, research commission, Talbot Rice Gallery (2018); Fathoms, in collaboration with MollyMae Whawell, Embassy (2018); Collision. Colliding. Part of 'We Were Arguing About...' Kingsgate workshop (2017).

Niki Colclough is an artist and educator based in Manchester. Having undertaken projects and commissions across the UK and internationally, Niki currently teaches on the MA Socially Engaged Art Practice at the University of Salford and is the Lead Artist on the Youthlab Programme at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art. She is interested in processes that support alternative modes of learning and is developing methods for digital engagement alongside the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust & The Turnpike (Associate Artist). In 2019 she worked with Manchester International Festival, Manchester Art Gallery and Tania Bruguera to realise the ambitious ‘School of Integration’. Niki has completed residencies and exhibitions at Matadero Madrid (Spain), 501 Art Space (China), Bradford University and Staffordshire University (UK). For the last five years she has been part of the Islington Mill Art Academy, an artist-led, independent and alternative art school based at Islington Mill, Salford.

Sophie Seita is an artist, writer, and educator based in London who works with text, sound, and translation on the page, in performance, and often in collaboration. She is the author, most recently, of My Little Enlightenment Plays (Pamenar Press, 2020) and Provisional Avant- Gardes (Stanford University Press, 2019), the translator of Uljana Wolf’s Subsisters: Selected Poems (Belladonna, 2017); and the editor of The Blind Man (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017). She works internationally on various projects and has performed at La MaMa Galleria, Bold Tendencies, the Royal Academy, the Arnolfini, Kunsthalle Darmstadt, JNU (New Delhi), Raven Row, Parasol Unit, the Drawing School, Art Night London, and elsewhere. In 2019, she had a solo exhibition of text, videos, and performance props at [ SPACE ]. Sophie has taught at a number of universities in the UK and the US and is committed to queer-feminist, intersectional, interdisciplinary, and provisional pedagogy. At the moment, Sophie is working on: a book of lyric essays called Lessons of Decal; a research-based and speculative collaboration with musician Naomi Woo in the form of The Minutes of the Hildegard von Bingen Society for Gardening Companions; and Pearl & Theory Make Compost, a piece about intergenerational dialogue with the artist Kate Clayton.

Tom Pope lives and works in Hastings and graduated with an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art in 2011. Upon graduating he won the Deutsche Bank Artist Award for the project Time Bound: a performative project where he travelled from London to Geneva in a hearse and destroyed a grandfather clock at the centre of the Large Hardron Collider, CERN. Pope has been artist in residence at Atelier de Visu, Marseille, with Antoine D’agata, HAMK Finland and the Archilse artist in the residence in the Jersey Photography Archive at Société Jersiaise. Recent shows include, Where You Are Not, Copeland Park Gallery London, Conceal/reveal at Photo Oxford, Window Project at Gazelli Art House, Agitated Interruptions at Photofusion and Brighton Photo Fringe. 2019 saw Pope take his performance work and world's most exclusive private members club, One Square Club, to Los Angeles where he performed at Frieze Art Fair. Most recently Pope performed his online exercise video and participatory performance Art Workout at Frieze New York. Pope has work in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, National Museum of Wales as well as various private collections and he has been commissioned to make films, photographs and performances and undertake various residencies internationally.

Winnie Herbstein graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2014 (Environmental Art). Since then, she has been a Committee Member at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, studied on the Women in Construction course at the City of Glasgow College and is a member of Slaghammers, a feminist welding group. Herbstein's recent work has focused on gendered labour and materials, historical and contemporary forms of feminist organising, and the architecture and formation of space. These are explored through practice-based research, finding their output in the medium of video, sculpture and text-based works. She is currently researching for a film exploring the histories of Housing and Health in Glasgow. Recent solo exhibitions include: Brace (Jupiter Woods, London, 2019), STUDWORK (Glasgow International, 2018) and Riprap, Atelier am Ecke, Düsseldorf. She has shown in numerous group shows and film screenings and was shortlisted for the Margaret Tait Award 2019/2020. She has been a visiting lecturer at Glasgow School of Art since 2017.

Youngsook Choi is a London based artist and researcher with a PhD in human geography from King’s College, London. Youngsook's practice relates to her subjective position as a woman, mother, and migrant of Korean heritage coming from a working-class background. Her works often develop narratives of ‘non-fiction fantasy’, a mixture of research evidence, folk tales, mythologies and performative instructions for audience participation. Youngsook's works have been shown in various institutions such as Barbican Centre, Rich Mix, Milton Keynes Art Centre in the UK and Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz in Berlin. Currently, she is taking up residency with Asia Art Activism at Raven Row, exploring the concept of 'political spirituality' and intimate aesthetics of community actions.