Mohammad Barrangi Fashtani, working on ‘Wonderland’, Tate Exchange, 2018.

Date: 30 July 2019 
Time 11:00–16:00
Location:  Firestation Artists’ Studio, Dublin
Type:  Learning Lab

A Counterpoints Arts/Firestation Artists Studio Learning Lab: Landscapes of Hope and Displacement

Trauma is inherent in displacement….I am displaced but I have found forms and ways, including writing, in fact primarily writing, in which that displacement is productive and not perpetually traumatic.

            What it Means to be Displaced, 2019

Artists, cultural activists and arts organisations are increasingly witnessing or experiencing local events and practices catalyzed by global displacement. How, then, can arts organisations respond to this social phenomenon, through creative programming, audience development, infrastructural change and international co-production and networking?

How do we move beyond doing work that merely runs in parallel to mainstream programming, and, instead, recognize and embed the everyday realities of displacement – as a vital aesthetic element – into the heart of our organisations? Creating dynamic and new ways of thinking, making, doing and reaching wider audiences?

How to sustain this way of future working, simultaneously challenging and building upon existing practice rather than having to reinvent the wheel?

How easily does the language of arts and culture sit with or alongside the discourse of human rights, equality and diversity?

How might we dynamically design and do cross-sector work that helps to seamlessly bridge the language of arts, policy and civic activism?

How might practical initiatives in the form of residencies, new modes of commissioning, curation and learning facilitate the widening of participation and help to centre the work of artists who have experienced displacement?

How can this work help to transform and re-imagine arts and culture infrastructures and feed into contemporary public debates about identity and belonging?

Join us for a conversation where we will explore the above questions. This Learning Lab continues a conversation between Counterpoints Arts and Firestation Artists Studio initiated by Art on the Frontline (2016). It will take the form of a roundtable discussion, lunch/networking and a studio reflection of work-in-progress from current artist in residence Rajinder Singh, recipient of the CREATE/Firestation Artist Studio Residency Award 2019; together with 2018 Residency Award recipient, Hina Khan, and writer and researcher, Evgeny Shtorn.

Moderator: Áine O’Brien, Co-Director – Counterpoints Arts