By Darshana Vora

The UK Commons Assembly was held at the Tate Exchange on July 20, 2018 by the School of Civic Action, and Art&Critique were invited to make a presentation and conduct a workshop.

Torange Khonsari (Public Works) spoke about her practice in relation to The Commons as ‘social relationships that can mobilise a change through agency, trust, generosity and connectedness’. She, along with Tim Flitcroft (Commons Rising) were responsible for organising the event with a view to bring together the various Commons operating in the UK with the hope of expanding the scope of this discourse through the MA course on Design for Cultural Commons at The Cass.

The morning session consisted of introductory presentations under various categories such as Health, Food production, Energy, Digital, Technology, Culture, Urban commons, Common Law, Governance and Land. It was a real eye-opener for me to hear about so many community-driven alternative initiatives that challenge the hegemony and empower people to creatively re-think their ownership of ‘the commons’, be it the NHS (‘The NHS belongs to the people‘) or land occupancy (Urban Commons, Shared Assets). Sophia presented the ethos and work of A&C as well as similar alternative art-education networks like the the School of the Damned, Alt MFA, TOMA, and collaborative venues like The Field and Unison. It was great to see that Rosanna Thompson from The Field was there to corroborate A&C’s work in their presentation, and Sophia attended their workshop later that day. Sophia also led A&C’s workshop for around 8 participants, and got people engaged in the session, to address questions of the model of Alternative art education.

There were many ideas, models and case studies in those presentations that A&C could perhaps use to further its development plans, particularly those relating to the co-operative model. I suppose we could reach out to some of the presenters to advise us on aspects that they have encountered and overcome, so that we can begin to form a working timeline on some of our goals.

Signature Event Context

Thanks to all who came along and contributed to an excellent discussion on Jacques Derrida’s Structure, Sign and Play last week! I have included below the quotations that I forgot to bring along for the introduction. On the plus side, I suppose they might make more sense now.

The consensus was to stick with Derrida, so we’re discussing Signature Event Context at the next book club on 11 May 2018. Thanks to Nat Pimlot for preparing the material.

Save the date! The next art crawl is on 26 May 2018, and we’re visiting Deptford for a whole day of discussions on art and gentrification, and much else besides.

Join us in June for the second in the series of book clubs on Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, continuing with chapters 4-5 (pages 21-38). This book club will take place on *UNISON, a lifeboat-turned-project-space. We will meet at Yurt Café near Limehouse station at 2:30pm and depart at 3pm to reach the boat moored nearby.

If you would like to facilitate one of the book clubs in the series on Capitalist Realism please get in touch.

[SYMPOSIUM] BOOK CLUB
Derrida: Signature Event Context
Friday, 11 May 2018, 18:30–21:00
LARC, 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES
Facilitated by Nat Pimlott and Sophia Kosmaoglou
Suggested donation £2, booking via Eventbrite

[ART&CRITIQUE] ART CRAWL
Deptford Art & Gentrification Walk
Saturday 26 May 2018, 12:00 -19:00
Meet 12pm at Deptford Railway Station, London SE8 3NU
Curated by Sophia Kosmaoglou
All welcome, booking not required

[SYMPOSIUM] BOOK CLUB
Mark Fisher: Capitalist Realism Part 2
Saturday, 9 June May 2018, 14:30–17:30
Yurt Café, St. Katharine’s Precinct, 2 Butcher Row, London E14 8DS
Part of Antinuiversity Now 2018
Suggested donation £2, booking via Eventbrite

[ART&CRITIQUE] COURSE
Curating Contemporary Art
2–6 July 2018, 10:00–16:00
Chelsea College of Arts UAL, 16 John Islip Street, London SW1P 4JU
Tutor Sophia Kosmaoglou
Booking via UAL

[OPPORTUNITIES & ANNOUNCEMENTS]
May 2018
The list of opportunities, open calls, deadlines, announcements & vacancies is updated regularly.
If you would like to post your listing for open calls, opportunities or vacancies on the list please send us the details.

*When Cambridge University decided to give Derrida an honorary degree in 1992, a group of (mainly analytical) philosophers and academics from all over the world wrote a letter in protest, here is their critique:

…where coherent assertions are being made at all, these are either false or trivial… little more than semi-intelligible attacks upon the values of reason, truth. (Letter against Derrida’s Honorary Degree. The Times, 9 May 1992)

Another quotation that indicates the animosity that Derrida provoked in philosophical and scholarly circles comes from the British right-wing conservative (philosopher) Roger Scruton:

He’s difficult to summarise because it’s nonsense. He argues that the meaning of a sign is never revealed in the sign but deferred indefinitely, and that a sign only means something by virtue of its difference from something else. For Derrida, there is no such thing as meaning – it always eludes us and therefore anything goes. (Roger Scruton in Stephen Moss (2004), Deconstructing Jacques. The Guardian).

When asked why his work provoked these attacks, Derrida replied that it was because his work questioned and modified “the rules of the dominant discourse, it tries to politicize and democratize education and the university scene” (Jacques Derrida, 1995, Honoris Causa). The US documentary Derrida (2002 dir. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman), begins with a clip from a French TV panel discussion, where the presenter introduces Derrida as “a thinker of lightning thoughts, whose work is like that of miners who work by exploding the beams supporting their shafts”.

IMAGE CREDITS
Jacques Derrida (1988). Limited Inc. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, p.21 (detail).
Philip Guston [1973] Painting, Smoking, Eating. Oil on canvas, 196.8 x 262.9 cm.

Many thanks to those who applied for the Fee-Waiver Award and to those who helped spread the word. We received a high volume of inspiring applications across a range of media and disciplines including sculpture, installation, painting, writing, design, sound, performance, choreography,  participation, activism, curating, conservation, architecture and social research.

It was a close and difficult decision because all the candidates stood to benefit from the course. The selection was based on an objective set of criteria, which prioritised the needs of each individual candidate. These were not hard and fast rules, but relative values that emerged from the candidates’ applications. In this instance they included a correspondence between the candidates’ research questions and the course topics, a demonstrable need for a supportive pedagogical environment, a spirit of inquiry, an unconventional practice and an experimental attitude, an active interest in pedagogy and the politics of education and a motivation to collaborate with others.

Lucy Webster Award Recipient

Congratulations to Lucy Webster who is awarded the Fee-Waiver. Lucy is a multidisciplinary designer. She graduated with a BA in Design from Goldsmiths in 2017. Her work is research-based and explores themes of cultural critique, sociology, patriarchy and semiotics with performance, film, fiction, poetry and sculpture. She has developed her research and practice independently since her graduation. Lucy’s reflexive and collaborative practice, together with her research questions on politics and the avant-garde, and her desire to work in a collaborative environment earned her the award.

Renata Minoldo First Runner-Up

Renata Minoldo is the first runner-up. Renata explores intuition, sensuality and rituals through sculpture, installation and participation. She has a BA in Fashion Design and attended a residency at Banff Centre of the Arts, Canada. She has been exhibiting since 2010 with two solo exhibitions in Argentina. She is a member of School of the Damned Class 2018 and works as an arts facilitator for adults and children, exploring alternative learning and teaching methods involving interdisciplinary practices and non hierarchical education.

Alice Weber Second Runner-Up

Alice Weber is the second runner-up. Alice is a choreographer and performer. She studied psychology at the University of Sydney, trained in ballet and is completing an MFA in Choreography at Trinity Laban. Her practice includes solo work, improvisation, teaching, hosting workshops and writing with a record of public performances and residencies. Her interests lie in subjective epistemologies, the body archive, body multiplicity and her work explores agency, femininity, object- and subject-hood and body ontology. Alice teaches ballet in London and is a guest workshop teacher in Sydney.

UPDATE: Critical Theory in Practice (proposal for a collectively organised course)

In discussions following the recent Fee-waiver Award, the idea emerged to organise a course based on a labour exchange. The course will be organised collectively, giving the opportunity to those who cannot afford the fees to participate. It is also an opportunity for those who are interested in working together to develop an alternative model of free and sustainable education. Depending on how this goes, it will initially replace the Fee-waiver Award with a more equitable and inclusive alternative. For more information and to join the team and get involved please visit the proposal page on Openki.net.