STUDIO 468 ARTIST 2018
CITIZEN 2016—
Common Ground
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CONTENTS 4 Hostility and Hospitality Siobhán Geoghegan and Glenn Loughran on behalf of the Studio Team
10 CITIZEN ARTIST Timeline Logan Sisley and Siobhán Geoghegan
13 CITIZEN ARTIST Residencies Laragh Pittman, Seoidín O’Sullivan, Fiona Reilly, Mark Holburn, Pat Curran
50 An Alchemical Proposition – Time to Think: Subtracting the Citizen-Artist from the Command to “Be Active” Aislinn O’Donnell
62 The Visiting Programme Aislinn O’Donnell and Glenn Loughran List of Illustrations Acknowledgements
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Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
Studio 468
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For many, citizenship is becoming a normative project whereby social membership becomes increasingly comprehensive and open-ended. Globalisation and human rights are further enabling this tension, and therewith furthering the elements of a new discourse on rights.1
HOSTILITY AND HOSPITALITY Siobhán Geoghegan and Glenn Loughran on behalf of the Studio Team
— Saskia Sassen The nation state is formed around complex negotiations between hostility and hospitality. For Immanuel Kant these negotiations are grounded by a “cosmopolitan right”, that is, the “right’ of all individuals to be welcome in other foreign states. He writes, “Hospitality [Wirtbarkeit] means the right of a stranger not to be treated as an enemy when he arrives in the land of another.”2 Globally, Ireland presents itself as the nation of a “hundred thousand welcomes” – Céad Míle Fáilte. However, when we conceive of “hospitality” as a “right”, we question the extent to which “charity” and “philanthropy” can be the basis for inclusion in a political community.
As Philosopher Richard Kearney has noted,3 these
historic distinctions emerged in the 14th century Statutes of Kilkenny, which formed a connotation of the nation state through the use of the term gens, from the Latin words, genus (birth, race or stock) or genitus (generated or made). Originally the terms nation – natio and gens – were affixed, identifying citizens of a sovereign nation against those who do not possess a natural birthright. Those inside the Law were gens, living within the wooden palisade and boundary wall surrounding Dublin and those outside were de-gens, labelled “beyond the pale”. De-gens outside the boundary wall were considered uncivilized; if they married outside the pale, outside their class and religion, they were seen as degenerate.
Today, these strategies of inclusion and exclusion, citizen
and non-citizen, are played out internationally through the migration crisis and the 2016 Brexit referendum. Where the migration crisis has seen a new politicisation of the sea, signified by the rise in precarious crossings throughout Europe, Brexit has produced a long and protracted negotiation between the United Kingdom, the European Union and the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The current rise in applications for Irish passports marks 4 CitizenArtist_174x249mm_80pp_030419.indd 4-5
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a distinct shift towards increasing uncertainty, at a time of national
8 area is now subject to the city father’s obsession with cultural
commemoration.
tourism and gentrification. The consequences of which these factors on
lived experience means that many localities feel isolated by the national
Since 2013 Ireland has revisited the pivotal events that
led to the creation of the modern Irish state, including the 2018
implementation of social, economic and cultural developments.
centenary of voting rights for women. While the significance of these
events has influenced our sense of identity and the political community
of discussions between local community groups and artists who had
formed around the celebrations and commemorations of the past,
previously engaged with studio 468. Through a series of podcasts
we are still nevertheless fragmented by the inheritance of the past, in the
on citizenship and art, Aislinn O’Donnell was commissioned to write
present. These fractures were evident in the referendum for marriage
a reflection on the changes taking place within the community and
equality in 2015, the campaign to repeal the 8th Amendment and
the role of artistic engagement within those changes. Titled Epistemic
legislation for abortion in 2018, the anti-water charges movement, and
Injustice and the Policing of the Artworld (2016), this paper produced
more recently the Homes for All (Right to the City) demonstrations,
a number of propositions and provocations on the relationship between
which address the rise in homeless figures nationally.
the artist-citizen and community development, which informed the
conceptual motivations of the CITIZEN ARTIST initiative. A key aim
Reflecting critically on the various ways that cultural
branding can gloss over social and political tensions in contemporary
CITIZEN ARTIST 2016–2018 initially emerged out
emerging out of this process was:
society, sociologist Saskia Sassen suggests that “the tension between the How could studio 468 act as an open model for building a
formal status and the normative project of citizenship has also
critical debate around the “epistemic injustices” that silence
grown.” In the Irish context, brands such as “Global Ireland 2025” and 4
5
many in society?
“City of Culture” promote specific global and public manifestations of active citizenship and artistic engagement. Whilst consensus forming brands may have a place in the creative economy, in the visual arts
On this basis, studio 468 and Common Ground sought proposals that
and the community development sector there is a much deeper
could expand on the challenges of engaging with diverse communities
political alignment with disagreement, dissent and critique. Within
of place and interest around the subject of citizenship and identity
this context, the CITIZEN ARTIST initiative aimed to support artists
through arts practice. Central to the exploration of these themes was the
to reflect critically on the complexities of citizenship and creativity at
interstitial space of studio 468, which hosts a diverse range of artistic
a time of cultural paradox, between fragmentation and migration,
practices and groups outside of traditional gallery settings. Over the
commemoration and branding.
two-year period that CITIZEN ARTIST ran in studio 468, Common Ground and the studio team extended their engagement with Aislinn
citizen artist
O’Donnell, commissioning a set of research dialogues on the parameters
Since studio 468 was established in St Andrew’s Community Centre,
of citizenship. These dialogues are reflected in the essay, An Alchemical
Rialto, in 2003, Dublin city’s urban landscape has altered fundamentally.
Proposition – Time to Think: Subtracting the Citizen-Artist from the
Planning applications evidence an increase in student accommodation,
Command to “Be Active”, included in this publication. Instrumental to
new apartments and aparthotels are erected in parallel with the loss
the development of this essay was a pedagogical experiment developed
of social housing stock like St Michael’s Estate and St Teresa’s Gardens.
with studio team member Glenn Loughran, titled The Visiting Project
Across the city, the palpable reality of precarious working lives
(2017 – 18). The Visiting Project was organised around a series
struggling to survive in a city too expensive for its citizens, has resulted
of performative dialogues on Love, Peace and Nationhood between
in a deeply unsustainable urban environment. In particular, the Dublin
unnamed, anonymous individuals. The richness of these events and
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discussions prompted political and critical reflection on the subject of citizenship and interrogated the role of artists within this context. At the same time, it became an opportunity to reflect critically on the current state of socially engaged arts practice and to inform new thinking about the intersection between those practices and the nation state.
The proposals selected as part of CITIZEN ARTIST
sought to explore these diverse themes and practices and are described by each artist in this publication: Laragh Pittman’s exploration of artefacts and the creation of an Invisible Museum with women from the Amal Women’s Group that highlights the complexity of identity and place between cultures in Ireland; Fiona Reilly’s Department of Time Keepers that enabled research into the precarity of work with local citizens and as an artist; Seoidín O’Sullivan’s Hard/Graft that seeks to expand the commons and loss of green space, art, biodiversity and open food access; Pat Curran’s painting practice which invites local residents to bring in old photographs which he paints and curates as a series of images responding to Fatima Mansions, Dolphin House and St Michael’s Estate; and Mark Holburn’s challenge to himself to continue his art practice in public spaces. A selection of their explorations and manifestations were presented in Kilmainham Courthouse in April 2019.
CITIZEN ARTIST sought to generate collective energy
around the production of ideas, values, and beliefs in contemporary society. It was an experimental process that circulated power in public and private spaces, supporting individual and collective formations. Such artistic collaborations demand significant time and energy to build relations and process shared ideas. Collective imagining of alternative ways of living and belonging are complex and often challenge our desires for singularity and authenticity. These processes can often appear inconsistent and incomplete to those outside of the studio space, because they are, like citizenship, an incomplete and evolving project. SG/GL 2019
1 Saskia Sassen, “The Repositioning of Citizenship: Emergent Subjects and Spaces for Politics,” Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Vol. 46, 2002, p.12; http://www.columbia.edu/~sjs2/PDFs/webpage. RepositioningCitizenship.pdf, accessed 26 February 2019 2 Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay, 1795 (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1903)
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3 Richard Kearney, “Welcoming the Stranger,” in All Changed? All Changes Culture and Identity in Contemporary Ireland (Dublin: Duras Press, 2011) pp.167 – 178 4 Sassen, op. cit., p.12 5 Global Ireland: Ireland’s Global Footprint to 2025 (Dublin: Government of Ireland, 2018) pp.41 – 42; https://www.ireland.ie/media/ireland/stories/ globaldiaspora/Global-Ireland-in-English.pdf, accessed 2 April 2019
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The open call for applications for the CITIZEN ARTIST residencies was made early in 2016 and shortlisting took place in March 2016. The panel that reviewed the applications comprised Siobhán Geoghegan, Eilish Comerford, Ray Hegarty, Helen O’Donoghue, Katy Fitzpatrick and Logan Sisley. Interviews followed and the selected artists were confirmed:
CITIZEN ARTIST Timeline Logan Sisley and Siobhán Geoghegan
Kerry Guinan and Rosi Leonard, Laragh Pittman, Seoidín O’Sullivan, Fiona Reilly, and the Citizen Artist Collective of Marja Almqvist, John Bissett, Pat Curran, Mark Holburn and Chris Maguire.
Kerry Guinan and Rosi Leonard’s proposed the creation
of a people’s museum set in Ireland 2116, the centenary from the fictional Feminist-Socialist Revolution, which they imagined taking place one hundred years on from the Easter Rising. Due to other commitments, Kerry and Rosi did not take up the residency.
In the summer of 2016 CITIZEN ARTIST began with Laragh
Pittman and her initiative, The Invisible Museum, a flexible, migratory and virtual space designed to act as a repository of the experiences of people settling in Dublin. It emerged out of the work Laragh has been doing since 2015 with the Amal Women’s Group from the Dublin Mosque on the South Circular Road. Her time in the studio was split over two periods, and she was in residence again from April to August 2017.
The first stage of Laragh’s residency was followed by
Seoidín O’Sullivan and Fiona Reilly from January to March 2017. Seoidín had previously held a studio 468 residency in 2006/7, resulting in the establishment of the South Circular Road Community Garden. She developed her Hard/Graft project for CITIZEN ARTIST. This continues Seoidín’s practice that investigates sustainable cities and access to land and food. Fiona Reilly’s proposal evolved into the Department of Time Keepers project in the studio. This was established as a way to think about how we spend our time and visitors to the Department were invited to engage through conversation, workshop activities and elongated bureaucratic procedures to consider time in relation to labour and value.
The Citizen Artist Collective was awarded a residency from
September 2017 to May 2018. The application by Marja Almqvist, John Bissett, Pat Curran, Mark Holburn and Chris Maguire originally stated “We are Citizen Artists. During our residency in studio 468 we will host a series of seminars and public events that explore the local history of socially engaged arts practice, some current manifestations and future directions.” 10 CitizenArtist_174x249mm_80pp_030419.indd 10-11
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John, Marja and Chris hosted their first Citizen Artist
Seminar in January 2018, where they explored with an invited audience of 19, past and present socially engaged arts activity in Rialto over a 20 year period. During the course of their award period the Collective’s practice priorities changed with John, Marja and Chris deciding to focus on joint opportunities to research and explore future socially engaged arts practices. They describe this piece of research as being “something that is of longer-term relevance, both historically and into the foreseeable future cultural life of the Rialto community.”
At the same time former members of the Collective, Mark
Holburn and Pat Curran, decided to focus on the art of making artworks in the studio on a daily basis in response to the CITIZEN ARTIST theme.
CITIZEN ARTIST Residencies
This led to a joint exhibition, THIS CITY LIFE, in Ballyfermot Library in July 2018. Pat invited the residents of the wider Rialto area to call in or drop into studio 468 with images of Dolphin House or Fatima Mansions and during this period he created paintings in response to their photographs.
Seoidín O’Sullivan shared the studio with Pat Curran
from June to August 2018. Fiona Reilly re-entered the studio in September 2018 and continued in the residency until March 2019. Work by both Seoidín and Fiona was included in the exhibition, I Slept Like a Stone, at Dublin City Council’s The Lab Gallery on Foley Street, Dublin 1. Curated by Sheena Barrett and Julia Moustacchi, the exhibition explored the potentials of collaborative and socially engaged arts practice. Fiona and Seoidín were also included in Periodical Review #8, selected by James Merrigan, Aisling Prior, Mark Cullen and Gavin Murphy, at Pallas Projects, Cork Street, Dublin 8, from December 2018 to January 2019.
LARAGH PITTMAN SEOIDÍN O’SULLIVAN FIONA REILLY MARK HOLBURN PAT CURRAN
The studio was open to the public for numerous events
organised by the resident artists, including each of the citywide Culture Nights from 2016 to 2018. The CITIZEN ARTIST programme culminated in an exhibition by Laragh Pittman, Seoidín O’Sullivan, Fiona Reilly, Pat Curran and Mark Holburn at Kilmainham Courthouse in April 2019. LS/SG 2019
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Laragh Pittman
Citizen Artist: The Invisible Museum The Archaeologist digging down through layers of the city ruins came to a pavement of mosaic tiles. She brushed carefully at the mud-caked surface and uncovered gradually the blues, turquoise and yellow ochre of an arabesque design. She imagined the journey these hand painted fragments had taken from distant lands to settle in the Dublin soil or maybe they were part of the foundation of the city itself. My response to the CITIZEN ARTIST 2016 open call by Common Ground was to propose the setting up of an Invisible Museum. This is a flexible, migratory and virtual space. It is designed to act as a repository to capture the complexity of experience of new people settling in Dublin city; and visualise the often transient and unacknowledged contribution they make to the fabric of Irish life. The role of an artist can be many things, but I see it as an opportunity to question society and I interpret the role of citizen to bring with it a responsibility to contribute positively, in this case to intercultural communication.
A hundred years after Ireland started its route from
colony to republic, it would be refreshing to move forward into the future to truly embrace the idea of common wealth, that the people in all their complexity and diversity are recognised as part of Irishness and share equally in the richness of the State.
A starting point for the archive is the local area, in
particular that of the South Circular Road in Dublin 8. This was colloquially known as ‘Little Jerusalem’, and is an area of previous and historical Huguenot and Jewish settlement, textile industry and working-class labour and now has the longest established Mosque in Ireland and a growing Muslim population.
The Invisible Museum idea has emerged from work that
I have been doing since 2015 when I first met the Amal Women’s Group in the Dublin Mosque on the South Circular Road. My aim is to make known to a wider audience the experience, agency and rich 14 CitizenArtist_174x249mm_80pp_030419.indd 14-15
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cultural heritages of these new citizens who are often misunderstood, marginalised and rendered invisible to the state. The first project, Tessellations, an exploration of geometric pattern making led us to explore connections between Islamic and Celtic interweaving designs. During 2016 we worked together on a textile artwork, Cover of Dreams, which has become the first artefact for the Museum. The process of making this piece, made up of many crafted elements, included many discussions, shared tea, food and language exchanges. The work took the form of a Khayamiya, which is a type of decorative appliqué textile designed to form a roof space and historically used to decorate tents across the Arab world. The flexible nomadic nature of the finished piece has enabled it to be used in several installations: Culture Night 2016 in studio 468; as the holding of a space for dialogue between Muslim and non-Muslim women in the 5 Lamps Arts Festival in 2017; and in Dublin Mosque Open Days.
As a key element of my CITIZEN ARTIST residency in
studio 468, and as a research phase towards building the Invisible Museum, I opened a Culture Clinic in the space during the summer of 2017. Over six weeks I invited people to join me in a laboratory workshop space to explore the statement, “We are all part of the changing culture that is Ireland today!” The invitation was open to everyone and was advertised widely but I particularly sought to include people from many different cultural backgrounds including women from the local Muslim population. Taking an experimental approach to examining the structure of culture I proposed that it is dynamic and complex and could be explored through colour, pattern, texture and words. Culture is fluid rather than static, which means that culture changes all the time, in subtle and sometimes almost intangible ways. I invited participants to discuss what belonging to a place means, what belonging to several places means or maybe how can culture be transnational? How does language, landscape, climate and the smell, taste and feel of a place affect us? The outcomes of this research resulted in a collection of place names, cities, villages and townlands; a map of the world criss-crossed with interweaving coloured threads; a growing wall grid of coloured and patterned squares; a collection of collaged stacked paper boxes and a stack of notes.
This research stage of the project concluded in a lively
discussion and workshop session with a wide range of women with 16 CitizenArtist_174x249mm_80pp_030419.indd 16-17
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Common Ground hosted at the Richmond Barracks Museum in April 2018. Some of the artefacts from the Culture Clinic were also shown in the gallery in Rua Red, Tallaght, as part of Forum: Transcultural Dialogues, a cultural diversity research project commissioned by South Dublin County Arts Office and undertaken by Dr Zoë O’Reilly.
The first iteration of the Invisible Museum will be an
assembly and catalogue of material items that speak to people’s experience. I have invited the participants of the Culture Clinic to loan me a small object whether memento, textile, utensil or article. This collection aims to capture something of the complexity and layering of identity and place and the diversity within culture as well as between cultures in Ireland. Future plans for the Invisible Museum include engagement with cultural institutions in Ireland especially longestablished collections of culturally diverse artefacts to further explore how to decolonise the archives. LP 2019
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Seoidín O’Sullivan
HARD/GRAFT: Towards Community Orchards “When I used to be a kid we used to get our push bikes and cycle up to Harold’s Cross and at the back of the chapel it was called the Priesters. The Priesters Orchard, it was like the Garden of Eden. And we got baskets and push bikes and we ‘d get over a few houses over the wall and into the Priesters. And there was a little dog there and we initially thought oh we can’t get down. But the dog was real friendly so we got in and filled; we had jumpers down our trousers and we filled our jumpers full of apples. One would be minding the bikes outside in the lane and then we get back up to the flats and sell them. But they had goose gobs, plums, peaches, pears and an apple tree. The only thing that they hadn’t got was bananas. And then we’d sell them in the flats.” Eddie Wilton, Dublin 8 Men’s Shed “I came from Inchicore. The present church in Ballyfermot – was a farm there called Grafters Farm. They used to have apples. We were actually caught one night. The barracks was in Chapelizod and we were all taken by the ear and brought up there and our mothers had to get on their bikes and collect us. We weren’t charged.” John Scally, Dublin 8 Men’s Shed
‘To graft is to create unlikely encounters, hybrid mixes, and novel surfaces.’ Michael Marder, Grafts: Writings on Plants, (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2016)
The orchard fascinates me as it is a place that lies between the domestic and agricultural. It is a type of hybrid space. What does it mean to graft? To graft is to cut a branch or scion from a mature fruit tree and attach it to a rootstock in order to propagate that fruit. It is how fruit trees are reproduced. Using a sharp blade, we splice the branch at the right angle so that the two cadmium layers of the root stock and 20 CitizenArtist_174x249mm_80pp_030419.indd 20-21
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branch meet, match and mingle. We then bind the root and branch with plastic tape and dip the connection in wax to protect the wound from disease. This wound then heals and the tree begins to develop and grow. I have become attracted to this act as a metaphor of healing. It is a process that requires great care and concentration to ensure you have the right cut, the right join. How do we repair our landscapes, our cities and our relationships? In the current political climate, it feels like it is going to take a huge amount of collective graft to get there.
This project is one small attempt to instigate a different
way of being in the city, introducing public spaces that are ‘taskscapes’, landscapes that you act in, feel part of and connected to. Grafting is an affordable way of reproducing trees in great number and with little or no budget. Essentially the scion or branch is free and the rootstock costs all of €1. It is not a skill many gardeners know about or practice. The Hard/Graft project revives this lost knowledge and brings it back to community.
Hard/Graft’s research continues my interest in issues of
sustainable cities, land access, food access and spaces of ‘commoning’. Through this project I playfully tie a planting (grafting) project to an unearthing of questions of labour (graft). Hard/Graft: Towards Community Orchards begins with fruit tree grafting. The graft is the tree’s rhizome. By cutting branches (scion) we can quite quickly graft and reproduce many trees. By collectively grafting, planting and meeting we create solidarity and alliance. orking with community groups in Rialto in St Andrews Community Centre and Dolphin House and with other local groups from the area, heritage apple trees from University College Dublin are collectively grafted towards future orchards for Dublin 8. These final orchards will include the grafted trees and other mixed fruit and nut trees. The project has negotiated with community members and stakeholders on where these orchards will be planted.
In putting forward a proposal for Citizen Artist in 2016, I
took into account the current climate and moment we are living in. It feels like a difficult moment to introduce a sense of optimism, openness, otherness and ideas of abundance when we are hounded with ideas of scarcity, fear and protective nationalisms daily. I see the graft with all its rhizomatic potential and the Hard/Graft project as creating a counter narrative to the depressing, narrow-minded, ecologically and socially damaging politics of this moment. Embedded 22 CitizenArtist_174x249mm_80pp_030419.indd 22-23
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in the project is the idea of developing a local commons. Silvia Federici states: “The idea of the commons is the idea of reclaiming the capacity to control our life, to control the means of our (re)production, to share them in an egalitarian way and to manage them collectively.”1 Community Orchards are a commons, they are green spaces in the city where communities are able to access free food and be connected with a seasonal cycle. They create spaces where people can relax and meet and provide a place for pollinators. The future orchards are spaces that are held in common ownership; no single individual owns the trees. The trees are there for any resident who cares to picnic under, climb on, or harvest from. The orchard space becomes a place to observe and stay connected to the seasonal cycles – something often quite invisible for numerous city dwellers surrounded by glass, brick and concrete.
Through two community grafting workshops in 2017 we
have grafted 50 fruit trees and in spring 2019 we are grafting another 100. These will become future orchards for sites across Dublin 8. We planted our first orchard in November 2018 in Dolphin House. Many of the men in the Dublin 8 Men’s Shed relay stories of robbing orchards in their youth, often from the wealthy landlord’s grounds or the church. Alongside Common Ground, Dolphin House Community Development Association and D8 Men’s Shed we negotiated with Dublin City Council Architects towards securing two orchard sites within the current regeneration of the social housing project. These orchards will be used by the Health Project in Dolphin House to connect in with food sovereignty, outdoor health and cooking classes. Orchards were often sited on properties of the wealthy and privileged. What does it mean to bring an orchard to a public housing project? Kate, a Dolphin House resident, used to visit the community garden on South Circular Road with her dog. She relayed a story that has always stayed with me about living in the flats there. She explained how there is so much green space in Dolphin House flats complex, but nobody ever hangs out on it. No families picnic or relax out on the lawns “as you feel like you are always being watched”. The design of the buildings and landscaping means social housing tenants are made to feel like they are under constant surveillance. I wonder what this means for mental and physical health to not have had access to leisure spaces, green spaces, opportunities to work with the land or connect to the aimlessness of 27 CitizenArtist_174x249mm_80pp_030419.indd 26-27
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clouds floating by while you lie on a lawn doing nothing.
The Orchard in IADT (Institute of Art, Design + Technology)
near my home has offered inspiration for the planting project as it is a site I walk through with my dog and children all year round. My children celebrate the spring floral bounty by observing the buzzing of pollinators. We rest in the shade and climb trees in high summer. Then in autumn the fruits – pear, plum and apple are ready for picking across different times over a period of three months. We harvest bake, stew and make jellies from the fruit. These new orchards in Dublin 8 will be there for current and future families. SS 2019
1 Silvia Federici, “Commons Against and Beyond Capitalism”, Upping the Anti: a journal of theory and action, no. 15 (September 2013), pp. 83 – 97
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Fiona Reilly
The Department of Time Keepers When I saw the open call for CITIZEN ARTIST what grabbed my attention was the question, “What might true equality look like?” I was in receipt of social welfare payments in the form of the Casual Job Seekers Allowance, a weekly payment from The State to supplement my income because I was in part-time employment. This can be a difficult system to navigate as an artist. Similar to the activities of a care giver or stay at home parent, The Government can have difficulty in comprehending artistic labour as something that is work. The nature of art making means the results are often intangible and not reducible to figures or statistics. We don’t have a universal yard stick for success and failure and a day spent making art can involve both of these things. I personally feel this is something crucial to art, something to be celebrated and not simplified, but when engaging with a Case Officer in a Dole Office they do not always see it that way. To surmise, I was being told that what I was doing was not work. As a citizen I was entitled to some state benefits, but not as an artist. It was this idea of the deserving and the undeserving worker that resonated with me.
The Department of Time Keepers was established
as a way to think about how we spend our time. How do we decide what is time well spent or time wasted? What criteria do we use to make these evaluations? If time is a resource then who owns it? Who decides what work has value, and what are the mechanisms for measuring that value?
People who visited the Department were invited to
engage through conversation, workshop activities and elongated bureaucratic procedures that opened up a space for considering time in relation to labour and value. In contrast to how many Government Institutions and State Bureaucracies usually operate, the Department encouraged open dialogue, personal stories, strong opinions, unanswerable questions and/or multiple answers. Anonymity was paramount and visitors could choose to engage with the Department to a level they saw fit. Precarious work, unemployment, accountability, efficiency, productivity, invisible labour, conflicting definitions of value, 30 CitizenArtist_174x249mm_80pp_030419.indd 30-31
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the work of looking for work and alternative economies were some of the topics which arose and were discussed.
One method of engagement at the Department was the
Declaration of Time Spent form. This three-page form divides your day into ninety-six fifteen-minute segments. You are invited to write down what you do for each of the fifteen minutes and then classify that activity into one of six categories: Survival: time spent staying alive Functional: time spent assisting in staying alive Leisure: time spent doing things for leisure and/or enjoyment Paid labour: time spent doing work you receive remuneration for Unpaid labour: time spent doing work that you receive no remuneration for Other
In completing the form, you are simultaneously the
subject being investigated and the investigating authority; it is up to you to determine which activities belong to which category. Completing the form requires a level of self-surveillance and judgement.
The Declaration of Time Spent form began as a way to
deal with my Chrono-anxiety. Chrono-anxiety is best described as an overwhelming feeling that whatever it is that you are doing, it is the wrong thing; a feeling that you should be doing something else. Symptoms of Chrono-anxiety include difficulty or the inability to make decisions, both small and big, maniacal writing of lists, the setting of unattainable goals, an inability to prioritise tasks, lack of satisfaction/ sense of achievement, zero leisure time, difficulty focusing on one thing and an omnipresent sense of guilt.
I assigned myself the role of the Department of Time
Keepers’ Administrator. This involved transcribing the Declaration of Time Spent forms that the Department received (to further render them anonymous) and producing a pie chart illustrating each person’s day using colour codes to illustrate each of the ninety-six fifteen-minute segments and the classifications given to them. I embroidered the pie charts as this was the slowest possible method of production I could think of. This deliberate slowness was a way of wresting back time from the ideologies of productivity and efficiency.
What began as a playful exaggeration of the feeling that
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one must account for oneself, the Declaration of Time Spent forms developed into an archive of sorts. Each anonymous daily account lists quotidian activities. The similarities in how people spend their time is glaring obvious, but so are the differences is now people evaluate that time. For some filling in forms is Survival. Commuting to work can be considered unpaid labour. Dancing in the Kitchen is Functional.
The Department of Time Keepers is an evolving project.
It is an active archive that can be presented in different contexts and situations to pose questions about the topics of time labour and value. Conceived of and developed at studio 468, the Department has also travelled to Ormston House, Limerick, as part of their Workspace Social Program and The Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark, as part of Swop Projects’ Café Invisible Heart. I’d like to thank all the visitors to the Department and in particular those who Declared their Time. FR 2019
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Mark Holburn Citizen Artist
I approached the residency at studio 468 at all times with an open mind. I always felt like a CITIZEN ARTIST because of the nature of my work. Ten years ago, I worked full time and then suddenly found myself unemployed. I used to work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. I used the same amount of time and energy into creating art work and ended up going to NCAD. My work is all about when imagination and reality come together. For me this is where life happens. In my former job I was used to valeting super cars, like Ford GT40s, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Maseratis and Aston Martins. There was a sense of occasion when driving and handing them over. They always created an opinion and conversation.
Since 2010 making art is a way for me to create that
similar sense of occasion and conversation. Hugely important for me is creating happy, safe, enjoyable spaces. Art is my escapism, it makes me happy and animates my world. I find it hard to make any kind of living as an artist, yet I have yet to make a living as an artist. There’s more to it like funding, paperwork and finding recognition with wages. Sadly, all art, music, etc is the best lifestyle choice but the worst career choice. I used to always find it hard to validate what I do until I took part in CITIZEN ARTIST. If nothing else during my time as CITIZEN ARTIST, I grew a greater acceptance for the plight of the poor painter. It is a harder way to make a living but culturally, for me, it’s a more meaningful experience.
When I’m happy with what I’ve created I’m still hungry.
There are only two things I do with great certainty: making art and being a Dad. I’m not good at paperwork but being a part of CITIZEN ARTIST challenged me to think about being a part of a publication, writing words down and being more attentive to the written word. I find this very hard but the support from the other artists and Common Ground really helped me through this. That’s as valuable as creating the sense of occasion that I described above. TIME and MONEY
I have a painting at home with 430 estimated hours that went into it. 38 CitizenArtist_174x249mm_80pp_030419.indd 38-39
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That’s 11 weeks. How do you get paid for that? Do you sell it and undervalue your time? Or keep it as a testimony to doing something more constructive with your time? ACHIEVEMENTS
Participation in and completion of the CITIZEN ARTIST residency for me is an achievement. To be part of the publication and exhibition is brilliant as it’s validation for me as an artist that I’m making progress within the ‘art industry’. It’s good for me to have something to work towards.
I’ve had a variety of experiences that I wouldn’t otherwise
have been involved in if I hadn’t taken part. I’ve made lots of artworks, made lots of friendships and continue to be included and invited to a lot of the community events that take part in St Andrew’s. DEFINE NORMAL?
Because I’m an artist I feel like I’m living my days the way I choose. Not clocking into a machine as such. I used to clock in when I was working as a glass bender making neon signs. SHARING / WORKING WITH PAT
Personally, in sharing the studio, I was looking forward to learning how to paint from the master, Pat Curran. He didn’t teach me much about painting, but I learned a lot about both of us. He’s a great guy and a lovely painter. We had a joint show in the library in Ballyfermot. I exhibited Sheep People and Life Lessons, which were all related to the conversations we had within the studio.
First off Pat and I needed somewhere to sit. So, the ‘couch’
was born on the first week of the residency and just in time for Culture Night. It was a big hit, a great night and a lovely way to open the residency. It was followed by an open-door policy which was introduced by Pat. A new way of working for me but very successful, and I welcomed it.
There was a lot of team building with the staff of
St Andrew’s, particularly Stewie and Trish, to install a series of works that were built around a Halloween event for adults. The installation added to the atmosphere. It was great to see ’non- artists’ working with me on the installation of the works and to see how they worked. It was a very collegial experience within the centre. Drop-ins were really 42 CitizenArtist_174x249mm_80pp_030419.indd 42-43
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interesting as the conversations grew between the staff and those
MENTORING
who dropped in and me. People were really curious to see what Pat and
Working with a curator like Aisling Prior was really valuable. It taught
I were at in the studio. We shared a lot of cups of tea and cake.
me that you need to get visible and its part of the learning process and how you have to live as an artist beyond college.
REFLECTION / CONVERSATIONS / DIALOGUE ARE REALLY IMPORTANT
Working with the men’s group as planned didn’t really work, although
CONCLUSION
there were interesting ideas, as they had other personal commitments
It costs nothing to imagine. If you can think it, I can build it. This has
and the stuff of life to deal with. We had many conversations, but it wasn’t
led to many crazy and memorable adventures. I got a bit of light out
the right time and it just wasn’t possible to get projects off the ground.
of it and it’s still shining, having a purpose to make art rather than being
I did discuss ideas of making a boat that would float down the canal and
alone. There’s work to be done like showing work in other spaces
converting the back of a VW van to have a slide show installation. I learned
and making new work.
an understanding from the artist’s point of view that there are constraints
and slow progress in trying to get projects going.
thought what would the kids say when I was gone? And then I smiled,
and I can’t help but smile for all the crazy happenings/occasions and
I was asked to do an installation for Happy Heart Day for
I nearly died two years ago. I had a heart attack and I
Valentine’s Day in St Andrew’s. It was only supposed to be installed for 24
madcap adventures. We laughed so many times and always because I
hours to mark the day but ended up staying in the foyer for the rest of
said, “It’s for Art”. MH 2019
the residency. I was heckled when I was taking it down. It ended up being a conversation piece and I enjoyed different cultures passing through.
I learned a lot being a part of CITIZEN ARTIST; particularly
that it’s really important to have clear boundaries around funding, people’s roles and expectations about what everyone wants and needs.
I decided to paint with only three palette knives to restrict
myself and to learn more about paint and technique. It was a great success – it was a long old process. I’m used to instantaneous building / working and this challenged me to work slower.
I had talks with students in the Master’s in Socially
Engaged Art at NCAD, these were reassuring and confidence building. The feedback was great, and it was an opportunity to learn and understand more about audiences. I also talked about my work to a South African delegation who visited with the Arts Council. This was very important to me as an artist as it was a new experience not only within a community, but it was validation for my role as an artist. That felt good. I always say every job leads to another but you’re only as good as your last.
I enjoyed evenings spent with Aislinn O’Donnell and
the other artists. It was a brilliant way to hear opinions, ideas, practice and experience. I got a lot from it and now I like halloumi.
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Pat Curran
Reflections on being in CITIZEN ARTIST The ideas that interested me in my work where stories and images of the people that grew up and lived in Rialto, Dolphin’s Barn, Fatima Mansions and the general Dublin 8 area. I explored the concept of citizenship by creating a social documentary of life in this predominantly working-class area of Dublin that was inspired by images supplied by local residents.
studio 468, situated in the heart of this area of the city in
St Andrew’s Community Centre, Rialto, proved a great help in establishing an opening for the rich grain of material that was to come forth as my tenure grew in the studio.
At times it was a painful journey, as having been born
and bred in Dolphin’s Barn myself, a strong connection was always going to be there in the images of the people and the flats I portrayed in my work. I was reminded of people I knew, times that I had gone through, and places that I had been. Yes, it was at times painful, but it also helped me establish and strengthen my new identity as an artist working in the community, the community that I GREW up in and always had a place in my heart.
Reflecting on one of these times is the painting Piddler
On the Roof; an image that came about when a news crew was filming a meeting of concerned parents against drugs in Dolphin House. Against this backdrop a news crew photographer from the vantage of the flats’ balcony captured this classic image of a young boy having a pee on top of an old banger of a car. This is a humorous episode from trying times in the 1980s when parents resorted to desperate measures to keep their children safe.
Providing further insight for me into the process and
development of my work was the regular audiences/residents that trooped into the studio through the open-door policy that was there throughout my tenure in studio 468. Their presence made the year-long residence a very joyful experience. By constantly sharing excerpts from the works in progress as well as discussions with the residents about the process
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and what they were seeing, I felt was “for me” validation, e.g. convinced by what I had done in my tenure as a Citizen Artist. And it has just set me up for lots more to follow. PC 2019
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A Letter to the General Populace on the Thresholds and Limits of Citizenry Dear Citizen – please give an account of yourself (to our satisfaction), If you do not meet our set of criteria for productivity (visible),
An Alchemical PropositioN — Time to Think: Subtracting the Citizen-Artist from the Command to “Be Active” Aislinn O’Donnell
engagement (visible), or in any other way fail to meet our (measurable) standards for continuing citizenship, your (temporary) citizenship may be withdrawn, suspended, removed or put into special measures. You will then be free then to circulate the earth, stateless. There are, of course, camps in far-away lands that may house you. For some of you, existence in a state of limbo and exile is precisely what you deserve, though we can’t rely on the Law always to permit us to effect this. We have sometimes managed to do so. Remember Shamima Begum. Just remember citizenship is a privilege and not a right.
Where we are successful in subjecting you to exile,
even if your other parent country, the parent you never knew, decides it doesn’t want you any more, this is not our problem. We wash our hands of you. We find you too troublesome. There was, we must remind you, a social contract to which by virtue of your birth or naturalisation on this land you were an implicit signatory and subject by default (most of you at least), but you have not met the terms and conditions of this contract. We hereby deem that contract null and void.
For some of you, birth on our lands guarantees nothing.
We need to be suspicious of your parents’ motivations for having you – you are the suspect peoples, those who give birth as an insidious mechanism to secure entry and rights. We like blood, soil and territory, but not always, for not all people are part of our (unspoken) spheres of belonging. This is why we have our boundaries and borders. We have made this land territory, we have made life a series of identifiable and gradated categories, the expanses of the universe are our property, the earth, the soil is ours to do with what we will, to master, plunder, to exploit and exhaust. Just keep that in mind. Although we don’t have a clear definition of the ‘natural’ citizen, we can 50 CitizenArtist_174x249mm_80pp_030419.indd 50-51
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generally spot unnatural citizens, and though we have some
i. seeing like a state: counting and being called to account
measures to make you ‘naturalised,’ they are imperfect. Even
James C. Scott’s writings describe how people seek and sought to avoid
if you are good, you will always remain suspect.
the domesticating gaze of the State. There are multiple strategies of
refusal, sabotage, and avoidance. Early humans over tens of thousands
We remind you that citizens should be of good character.
We herewith reiterate that if you are not a good citizen, we may
of years tried to ward off the prospect of the State, refusing to be part
revoke the privilege of citizenship (if we can).
of the Domos by preserving nomadic ways of existing and being. This
counter-story undermines the so-called progressivist and civilisational
No longer will your citizenship status be something
you treat with complacency. You must become active, you must
discourses that see humans as slowly evolving by building the City and
show that you are deserving, you must work, get involved,
the State. Instead, the art most valued is the art of not being governed.
do things, achieve. There are observables that show your impact,
Indeed, the best option for some bodies today, suggest Fred Moten and
individually or in community. Our active citizenship audit
James C. Scott, is to run before the State sees you.
will measure and calibrate your levels of citizenship across a
range of spheres of life. In instances of failure to ‘act up’, where
see and count? Wheat was cultivated, Scott argues in Against the Grain,
we cannot suspend you or expel you from the polity, we
because of its visibility – it is easy for a tax collector to count. Practices
may publicly shame you for your inactivity and clear disdain
of domestication change the relation to the land by privileging mono-
for your fellow humans.
culture, sameness, the segmented, the sedentary, and homogeneous.
When citizen and subject are understood through imperial logics
If you are not a citizen of this land, and in particular
What is it to see like a State and what does the State
if you are seeking protection, please note all of the above
(counting) and hierarchical planning (top-down administration), and
criteria. We have standards. Be grateful that we let you stay
when only certain kinds of knowledge, planning and administration
in the land of citizens. Be happy with our camps and temporary
are valorised, this dismisses the importance of local, practical
accommodation. Be good, and you may get leave to remain
knowledges and the immanent forms of organisation of grassroots
here. But we don’t want too many of you so we shall build our
civil society. It undermines and corrodes the pluralism of social life
walls, our borders, and our gates and we will imprison those
through its standardising measurements – making the same in order
who try to help you, we will call them people traffickers, and
to compare (think of a civic life audit). When caught up in the
if you drown in our seas we will see this as a natural law. States
abstract logics of equivalence of capitalism, one commodity
have their limits, you know. We will however keep up contact
is rendered like any other, one worker is replaceable with another, and
through our bombs, our industries, our armaments, our
the abstract logic and symbols of exchange and profit come to
travel, and, where possible, our ideologies. We reserve the
colonise the social world and destroy the earth by reifying profit and
right to cognitive dissonance in this regard. We will maintain
growth. When Nation and State merge this further entrenches binary
our grievability rankings and continue to determine who has
logics of inclusion and exclusion of citizens/non-citizens; think
most right to life and whose life is of most value.
of slavery or simply of nations’ formulations of citizenship through birth-right and inheritance.
Yours,
So let us take a step further with these images in mind
The Nation-State
and dare to imagine citizenship without the Nation-State. We might think about the ways in which its logics circumscribe the possibilities of civic, social and political life, undoing and de-legitimating ordinary forms of conviviality, hospitality, solidarity and love.
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At the same time, we can reflect on how what feels most
that ‘follow the rules’. Make live and let die.
visceral, certain, personal and even natural might have been otherwise,
acknowledge the contingency of our existences and the relics of violent
repressed histories?
recent histories in the present. Uncoupling citizenship from blood-
belonging imaginaries matters when lives are hierarchalised by
themselves like a second skin into everyday modalities of classification,
grievability, when some bodies by virtue of their gender, religion, sexual
standardisation, distribution, categorisation and identification (tick
orientation or race are seen as enemies of the State, when migrants are
boxes, check boxes, forms, procedures). The rich abundance of human
vilified, and when historical legacies and national narrative, including
life is impoverished, reduced to thin marks of status or activity, creating
those of countries subjected to colonialism like Ireland, intersect with
pain, inadequacy and division. These same logics operate in
assimilationist models of identity, policing boundaries and privileging
the Social Welfare Office and the Reception and Integration Agency.
whiteness. Prescribing and circumscribing what is proper to ‘Irish
They ‘legitimate’ the securitisation of European borders, justifying the
identity and culture’ permits statements like “You’re not from here”, “Go
drowning of thousands in its seas and the criminalisation of those
back to where you came from” or “This is how we do things here”.
who seek to save them. They are evident in the operationalisation of the
What is the statement “You’re not from here” really say-
Who and where are our forgotten, our ghosts, our Imperial counting and measuring logics insinuate
assumptions that land is property, housing is investment opportunity,
ing to someone and about oneself? What does it perform as an utterance?
life must be profitable, and all must labour (for their own good). Fiona
(Get out!). What is it saying about who the citizen is or can be?
Reilly’s Department of Time Keepers project reveals the violence
of those logics that determine what counts as a ‘good use’ of time and
Note: Forms of control can persist and operate even
in those communities that are marginalised. Divide and Rule, it used
what counts as work, whilst ignoring the chrono-anxiety produced
to be called.
by our contemporary condition.
“Everyone here is from here” re-frames the idea of the
ii. violence and the citizen
citizen. On the one hand, it’s a radical position in terms of the systems
A prosaic example exemplifies another underside in the idea(l) of the
changes that would be required to realise it. If it is believed, it becomes
citizen: Active Citizenship. “Be active” is the mantra and maxim
a descriptive statement, even an axiom that re-orients our relations
of our age. When the European Commission’s Eurostat office provides
to one another. It’s also radical because it uncouples the question
statistics, levels and percentages on ‘civic activity’, it calculates levels
of citizenship from birth-right and inheritance and ushers in another
of engagement through a metric that views an active citizen as
thinking of the citizen that sees citizenship as a source of renewal,
one who attends meetings, signs petitions, or participates in activities
of company, a necessary component of human life, not just a mechanism
related to political groups, associations and parties. Fiona Reilly’s
for solving or mediating social problems. Without citizenship, there
Declaration of Time Spent form gives precise categories to account
is political death even if there is social life. For Hannah Arendt, the
for one’s time and oneself as a parody of this kind of audit. Measuring
status of the citizen means that one’s rights can be protected
activities to seek to demonstrate and prove worth and value
and defended by the (Nation) State and claims in this regard are empty
de-legitimates and even sometimes criminalises other ways of being
cries without the structures, institutions or mechanisms to assure
a citizen, worker or human being.
protection and defence of such rights. This is true but insufficient, but
we need to go further to think through the State/Nation/Citizen nexus,
The blood, soil and territory of Nation-logics are
asserted in everyday life by shaping those State-logics that legitimate
as Arendt knew.
deportation or non-entry, incarceration or homelessness, that never
speak of those murdered or persecuted by bureaucratic decisions,
beings and as a normative claim, and its underside is of necessary
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exclusion: currently world-citizenship or cosmopolitanism or planetary
in, and wants to think about the question of the citizen. How this is done
humanity are dreams. Purportedly necessary limits to State-guaranteed
must ultimately be determined by the person and not because of an
citizenship means that the violence of allowing people to drown in
imposed position that pre-frames ‘how one must work in a community/
our seas is legitimated, that wasting in our camps and direct provision
social/institutional context’. By disjoining the terms ‘citizen’ and ‘artist’
centres is seen as unfortunate but necessary, and that feeling powerless,
from an identity, ideology or action position, the content and form
silenced and worthless because of State bureaucratic mechanisms is
of thinking, questioning, gathering and engagement remains open.
seen as an unintended consequence of practical procedural requirements
and a failure of personal resilience.
the question of the citizen.
Natural Citizenship, premised on birth-right or
So the citizen-artist is the artist who is interested in Why does it matter to frame it in this way? Firstly,
naturalisation, brings its own violence. Stories of Citizen, State and
for the reasons above and because understanding and imagining the
Nation are part of violent histories, of brutal exclusion, of the
question of the citizen in ways that help us to see the outside of
commodification of humans, and of interdiction of certain kinds
our own situation, our times and our specific contexts matters. Indeed,
of speech from certain kinds of bodies, the legacies of which continue
Susan Buck-Morss suggests that differences that matter are not
to benefit some and degrade others; stories too complex for inclusion
necessarily those related to class, identity, sexual orientation, gender,
in audits of activity. This we know. The contemporary claims of Real
ethnicity, and so on. Those depend on context. The differences that
Citizenship entwine Birth and Blood with the Logics of the Busy State,
really matter are often more particular and specific: Am I employed?
the Productivity of Capitalism, and the Responsible Citizen.
Have I got a prison record? Am I in danger of being deported? Am I at risk of being detained or even shot or imprisoned by the State by virtue
iii. the citizen-artist
of my skin colour or class? Is my sexual orientation criminalised?
The frameworks, protocols and theoretical commitments of bureaucracy
Answering these in the affirmative reveals where one is placed in the
and capitalism have a tendency to insinuate themselves into the
hierarchy of citizens and aliens.
normative language of diverse spheres under the guise of making value
appear – produce, show, evidence, engage, be valuable, be of value, have
of the citizen, State, or community by going deeper into history,
an impact, do something, connect, build.
ancestors, locality, practice and story involves being more specific and
not less. It can open the frame so that these stories and ideas become
It thus seems wise to detach the citizen-artist from the
Moving beyond ‘identity politics’ and accepted definitions
injunction to activity. A citizen-artist need not see their role as
matters of concern for all humans, albeit in different ways. For example,
necessarily contributing directly to the common good, engaging with
the artist Arthur Jafa says that he addresses black people in his work but
community, collaborating, ‘being a good citizen’ or supporting others to
underlines that everyone else can listen in and be transformed. Pat
become so. The underside of the citizen-artist is that those in that
Curran’s paintings address those who lived in certain areas of Dublin
category are too often those most precarious who are interpellated into
city at a given time, inviting dialogue and co-remembering with those
pre-defined ideological positions or forced into unpaid work (alongside
for whom those images deeply connect with their lives; the rest of us
other paid professionals in community) as a moral imperative. Of course,
can listen in. (Some of us already get enough airtime.) His work moves
some can and will choose to work directly with people in community,
from that form of address into other spaces of solidarity and horror that
but this needs to remain a matter of choice and solidarity.
emanate from being in that skin to show everyday terror.
A helpful definition of the citizen-artist might therefore
be: The citizen-artist is the artist (and we can understand the term
iv. free space and the commons: refusal and thinking
in the most expansive way possible) who is concerned with, interested
José Muñoz, reflecting on the words of artist Félix Gonzales-Torres,
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notes the importance of not just loudly declaring who you are because
any object of common attention that we talk about together. It has a
this risks pre-empting showing an audience what you see, something
monastic feel to it.
often far more powerful. Suspending (temporarily) the claim to
identity can allow for something else previously invisible or inaudible
the problem when the world and the earth are in crisis?
to be seen or heard. Showing what you see, he says, calls dominant
normative subjectivities that rely on a single vision, idea or story
Enquiring Classroom project, Ailbhe Kenny spoke of a woman who had
to account. Dis-identification is a refusal to be that citizen-subject who
fled from Syria who said, “In war there is no time to think”. What does
performs the shame-laden excessive affect that the state indexes as
it mean to have no time to think? What does it say of the nature
a justification for discrimination. It is a refusal to be the ‘good citizen’, a
of one’s existence? bell hooks notes in conversation how the enforced
refusal of simplistic pluralism and weak multiculturalism, a refusal
leisure and solitary time of prison led to critical consciousness for
to be seen through the eyes of dominant norms and culture. Asserting
a number of Black leaders in the United States; prison, however coercive
who you are can become bound up with ego, righteousness and power
it was, also gave the time for intellectual life and contemplation that
and silence others. Resonant with this position is Laragh Pittman’s
was impossible to find in ordinary life, a time of study which activated
Invisible Museum, an assemblage of making, talking and thinking
thinking and transformed the mind. Leisure, thinking, contemplating,
together that is a living refusal to remain invisible. In a different way,
talking together are radical forms of collective existence that need
keeping the door open, as Mark Holburn and Pat Curran describe
freedom, spaciousness and purposeless time. They are sometimes more
their practice, creates a space for the unexpected, for conversation and
radical than activism when they allow us to see through the world.
conviviality, for co-remembering, for ‘useless’ time.
They are needed like we need to breathe. Practices of social poetics,
says Moten, help us to inhabit the Earth, to have the courage to
Arthur Jafa is helpful here. He says that he is not an
But isn’t too much thinking and theorising precisely In a talk at the Chester Beatty Library as part of The
activist with some legislative proposition in place but rather an alchemist
sit with nothingness, and refuse to be subjected to the cruel logic
trying to embody the complexity of what is. This invites another way
of outputs, comparison and ranking. It allows us to release the desire
of thinking about the citizen-artist that extracts it from the activist
for normative subjectivity, be with and let be. Everything in the world
impulse or command. Alchemical spaces invite experiments in
today seems to forbid, preclude or denigrate thinking.
living by bringing diverse elements into relation in new ways with
unpredictable outcomes; bringing the question of the citizen to the
impersonal logics of the im/possibility of slavery that delineated and
table is an alchemical invitation. Seoidín O’Sullivan’s concept
formed the administered world of the subject/citizen, subjecting
and practice of grafting, bringing together things in unexpected
millions to political death and to a life as thing/commodity, to critically
ways, shares this alchemical commitment and opens it to the question
reflect on the drive and imperative to action and activity is a moral
of the commons by inviting different ways of being in, occupying and
call. We can take a cue from Mark Holburn’s accumulated objects which
re-purposing public spaces.
care for that which is useless and discarded to generate an expansive
ecological vision of renewed and unexchangeable matter, bringing forth
A poetics of the undercommons arises as people come
In the wake of the devastating consequences of the
together in different ways, over cups of tea, in street corners, libraries,
different models of exchange and communication. A radical re-thinking
and a multitude of other spaces that can be activated as quasi- or
of political and administrative logics could upturn the imaginary
temporarily public spaces. Spaces of non-action or refusal, spaces
perspective of a political subject which privileges knowledge, mastery,
of thinking, study, reflecting and/or dialogue can open and extend the
agency, ownership, sovereignty and self-possession in favour
framing of the citizen-artist. Fred Moten and Stefano Harney call these
of something other, something unknown as yet. This needs the invention
practices ‘study’, a deliberatively open and provocative term involving
of fugitive practices that suspend common sense, the ‘everyone knows’,
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Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
for another kind of commons, another way of thinking the citizen, another way of understanding the human and the earth, a time and space for thinking and listening together. AO’D 2019
Further Reading
Further Reading
Susan Buck-Morss, “A Commonist Ethics” in Slavoj Žižek (ed.), The Idea of Communism 2 (London: Verso, 2013) pp.57 – 75
Saidiya Hartmann, Lose your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008)
bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking (London: Routledge, 2009)
José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999)
Arthur Jafa, A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions (Cologne: Walther König, 2018) Achille Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017) Fred Moten, The Universal Machine (Consent not to be a single being) (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018) Fred Moten and Stephano Harney, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (New York: Minor Compositions, 2013)
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James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (New Haven: Yale University, 2017) James C. Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University, 1999) Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016) Jacqueline Stevens, States without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010)
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Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
Introductions Tuesday, 31st January 2017
The Visiting Programme Aislinn O’Donnell and Glenn Loughran
[T]o think with the enlarged mentality – that means you train your mind to go visiting. — Hannah Arendt Good afternoon everyone, Please take a minute to consider the following invitation. We would be delighted if you would agree to being part of this project which involves a small invited group of people coming together once a month to reflect on, respond to, and discuss the question of the citizen in its broadest sense. In our world today, we are experiencing a shift towards reactionary positions and naïve nationalisms in the face of uncertainty. Sometimes the response to this complexity and risk is to make absolute distinctions between oneself and the ‘other’, and to create clear lines of inclusion and exclusion. Sometimes it is to try to empathise and feel how the other feels. In this project we want to have another kind of conversation that starts with and preserves the complexity of our relations and that values our different perspectives on, and experiences of, our shared world. In an attempt to think about the political question, that is, the question of living and existing together in our plurality and difference, studio 468 invites you to participate in an embedded pedagogical programme with a small invited group. Our meetings will take place on a Tuesday evening, once a month, over 6 – 7 months. We will think about different experiences of citizenship by expanding our understanding of the self, whereby loss of control and an ability to face risk and contingency is experienced as a process of liberation rather than an experience to be marginalised and mastered. A key element in this process will be the ability to listen to others, in particular those with whom we disagree. We want to have a group where people have commitments, beliefs and even convictions, and come from different standpoints and experiences, but are
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Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
also committed to listening to others. Everyone can choose how he or she wants to participate in the sessions, including remaining silent. The approach we will take refuses the traditional practice of asking participants to identify themselves, and in so doing to identify and classify one another. Instead, participants will simply introduce themselves by name, and over time as the conversations unfold, different ways of seeing, thinking, sensing and imagining will unfold. The conversations will aim at developing an enlarged understanding of the world through storytelling, different exercises, and through discussing ideas, rather than trying to create directly moments of activism and engagement. Concepts that we may discuss include the following: Citizenship; natality or birth; the stateless; resistance; security; plurality. These may change depending on the group. The format will be broadly as following: 1. 2. 3.
Connecting concepts to experiences and/or one’s own position; Reflecting together about an example related to a given concept; Bringing an object or artefact that somehow (however loosely) connects to the concept or idea under discussion to create a different kind of space for conversation.
Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
any attempt to communicate with the ‘other’ such as: assimilationism (making him or her the same as oneself); egocentrism (always relating back to oneself); and relativism (not engaging with others but simply saying ‘we are all entitled to our own opinion’). What is at stake in the concept of ‘visiting’ is the creation of an open process of dialogue that involves disorientation. This is a critical process whereby we ‘visit’ the world imagining it from the standpoints of others that differ from our own, without trying to feel exactly what others feel. Our first meeting will be on February 28th from 6 – 8 in studio 468 in St Andrew’s, Rialto. Subsequent sessions are provisionally scheduled for the following dates: March 21st, April 18th, May 16th and June 13th. We can cover local travel costs and we know some of you may need a babysitter, so we should have cover for that. There will be food at 6pm — vegetarian at a minimum, meat options if Glenn is inspired. We really hope you will be involved — we’ll be asking people to try to make a commitment to all the sessions (one a month). We’d appreciate it if you could let us know either way. Please feel free to email us with any questions. Aislinn & Glenn
Why Visiting?
studio 468 is located in the diverse and lively community centre, St Andrew’s, located on the South Circular Road in Rialto, Dublin 8. It acts as a working space from which artists and/or communities of place and interest or groups individually or collectively develop their arts practice within a specific local area of Dublin.
Visiting is contrary to parochialism, which means staying at home; contrary to tourism, which means providing myself with all the comforts of home even as I travel; and contrary to assimilationism, which means forcibly making myself a home in a new place by appropriating its customs. — Hannah Arendt
Since 2003 studio 468 has hosted over 20 artists and collectives from all disciplines. Its development is a joint partnership between Common Ground, an arts development organisation, and Rialto Development Association.
The concept of ‘visiting’ is inspired by and named after a similar concept developed by Hannah Arendt, the political theorist. For her, ‘visiting’ is an attempt to avoid some of the pitfalls inherent in
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In 2016 studio 468 created a new awards programme CITIZEN ARTIST that seeks to interrogate our current
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Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
SESSION ONE Tuesday, 28th February 2017
state of being and inform new thinking and artistic practices. CITIZEN ARTIST asks us to challenge, explore and respond to; what possibilities does art provide? What is the art of politics? What is the place of arts and culture in our Republic? What is the place of artistic practices in Dublin 8, Dublin City, in our present and future Republic? How have we constructed our state’s value systems? What might true equality look like? How did we, or can we truly embrace all our citizens, culturally, socially and economically? What do we mean by community? What is or could be a Republic beyond 2016? Aislinn O’Donnell is Professor of Education in Maynooth University. Publishing widely nationally and internationally, and engaging in international networks like the Anna Lindh Foundation, ERASMUS+, H2020, New Research in Philosophy of Education, and COST. Aislinn has developed a number of creative research and teaching projects that seek to introduce philosophy to settings like the prison, probation projects, and drug projects, as well as schools. She has an ongoing collaborative project in primary schools called Art and Philosophy in the Classroom with gallery educator and curator, Katy Fitzpatrick. Aislinn is interested in exploring innovative and experimental approaches to teaching philosophy, fostering cross-disciplinary dialogue between philosophy and other subject areas, and developing pedagogical strategies to help us to reflect upon ethics, inclusion, diversity, and the global refugee crisis in educational institutions and society. She is also interested in thinking about how public institutions in Ireland can become more pluralistic and participatory, creating more opportunities for the voices of all those who are part of those institutions to be heard. Further information can be found. www.maynoothuniversity.ie Glenn Loughran is an Artist and a Lecturer in Fine Art at the Dublin Institute of Creative Arts and Media (DIT). He is also programme Chair of the BA in Visual Art (B.A.V.A) on Sherkin Island. Originally from Belfast, N. Ireland, Loughran has studied Art and Design at The Ulster University (1991), Dun Laoghaire College of Art Design Technology (Diploma / 2002), Fine Art Painting at the National College of Art and Design (BA / 2003), Sculpture at NCAD (MA / 2005), and has a doctorate at the NCAD/Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM) (2013). Throughout this educational trajectory Loughran has worked across two disciplinary fields, Informal Education and Socially Engaged Art. Exhibiting nationally and internationally, his work has developed hybrid forms of artistic research at the intersection between pedagogical process and artistic intervention. www.bavasherkin.com
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Hello everyone, Thanks so much for agreeing to be part of the Visiting Programme. We know that a couple of you have not yet responded, so perhaps let us know whether or not you would like to participate and if you prefer not to we will take you off the mailing list. As we said in our previous email, the idea behind this project is to think about what it might mean to train the imagination to go visiting. This means imagining the world from the standpoint of others, rather than trying to imagine how they might feel, or to look too quickly for agreement and consensus. The broader context is to find a way of exploring questions of citizenship and politics without rushing too quickly to action. The space that we would like to create is one of reflection, of dialogue, of ideas, and of stories.
Introductions without Identifications For this reason, we have a strange request that runs against conventional responses to meeting strangers. Please introduce yourselves by name only. If you arrive early, we would ask you not to identify yourselves. (e.g. Don’t say, I am Aislinn, I work in philosophy and philosophy of education, I have done this and that...). Or if you know others, don’t reveal to everyone else who that person is, what they do, and where they come from. Who each one of us is should, says Arendt, reveal itself through our conversations and the different perspectives that each one of us brings to, and that each one of us is of, our shared world. By identifying one another too quickly, there is always the risk of prejudgement, categorisation, power relations, and even prejudice so we’d rather bracket that risk temporarily and would appreciate it if you would accompany us in this strange exercise of non-identification. Of course, talk about anything other than yourselves! We won’t be doing introductions other than names, but hopefully this will allow us to encounter one another with fewer assumptions. We’d ask you, if at all possible, to keep this up for as long as possible
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Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
Studio 468
over the months and try to find out as little about the ‘facts’ about one another. In other words, no interrogations about identities and connections after the session either, please.
Peace. We are not so interested in you understanding it all, but rather that you try to find a quote that resonates with you and/or provokes you in some way. We know that not everyone is used to reading these kinds of texts, and the purpose isn’t to have an academic reading group, but instead to think about this strange idea from Kant of ‘Perpetual Peace’. Misreadings, unfaithful readings and even no-readings are equally welcome.
This programme isn’t a space for debate, constructing arguments, and making points. There are lots of other spaces for that. Rather we’d prefer that it be a space for ideas, reflection, dissent and listening, so that means it will probably be a bit uncomfortable at times. Each session will have a clear structure, building on the conversations and ideas of previous weeks. In the first session, we will also spend a little time introducing the project and our ideas and hopes. To begin, we felt that perhaps one of the most unfashionable ideas to talk about now is ‘peace’. It feels so naive and utopian. We are also aware of how it is framed as consensus-making and can eliminate dissenting ideas and views when it is framed as a narrow political project. For that reason, we wanted to talk about it in the context of Immanent Kant’s famous essay Perpetual Peace. This essay touches on questions of peace, conflict, citizenship, democracy, republicanism, and has recently been the subject of a large-scale public engagement by the Slought Foundation. www.perpetualpeaceproject.org/resources/
Tasks i.
ii.
We’d like to ask you to bring something, ideally an object, that in some ways opens up, is associated with, or symbolises, a different way of understanding peace, from your experience. In this respect, it doesn’t need to be about politics. You can imagine, you can associate, you can work intuitively. Even if you don’t wish to speak, it would be great if you could have your object present, even if hidden. Please don’t over-think this.
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
No one will be compelled to participate in discussions so if you wish to stay silent, you can, but hopefully some of you will speak!
Logistics We know some of you can’t make the first session or two but are looking forward to you joining us soon. We’ll be making two dishes, one vegetarian and one meat so it would be good to have numbers for each. We’d appreciate it if you can confirm you are coming and let us know which dish you prefer. As we said before we are keen that, if you can, you come to as many sessions as possible. The studio is in the St Andrew’s Resource Centre. It is the small building with its own door to the right of the main building. We’ll keep an eye out for you. Aislinn’s number is XXXXXXXXXX and Glenn’s is XXXXXXXXXX so please feel free to contact us, in particular if you get lost. For your diary, the dates of future meetings are: March 21st, April 18th, May 16th and June 13th. We may schedule an extra one but will see how things proceed. We are looking forward to seeing you! All the best from Glenn and Aislinn, in partnership with studio 468.
We’d also like you to look at the first section of the attached document Perpetual
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Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
SESSION TWO Tuesday, 21st March 2017
Hello everyone, We are really looking forward to seeing you again next Tuesday from 6 – 8pm in studio 468, St Andrew’s Community Centre, Rialto.
the one may treat the other, when proclamation is made to that effect, as an enemy. All the best, Aislinn & Glenn
You’ll be glad to hear that we’ll be starting with food this time. All going according to plan, there will be meat and a vegetarian option. It would be great if you could let us know if you can’t come. This will help with shopping, cooking, and the wobbly bike journey carrying the food. For those who weren’t at the last session, we’ll distil last meeting’s thoughts on peace, and give a little more introduction and rationale, but only a little more… This time we won’t be giving you a specific task, but we are asking you to look at the first two sections of the Perpetual Peace text. Again, mis-readings, non-readings, unfaithful readings, careful readings, all kinds of readings are welcome. You won’t be asked to speak or contribute, but perhaps, spend a moment thinking about even this phrase ‘Perpetual Peace’ before we begin. In some way, we’ll be engaging with this quote. It’s not an academic seminar, as such, so the purpose is to mobilise this as a prompt for our thinking. Perhaps you might also reflect on this.
SESSION THrEE Tuesday, 25th April 2017
THIRD DEFINITIVE ARTICLE FOR A PERPETUAL PEACE “The Law of World Citizenship Shall Be Limited to Conditions of Universal Hospitality”
A state of Peace among men who live side by side with each other, is not the natural state. The state of Nature is rather a state of War; for although it may not always present the outbreak of hostilities, it is nevertheless continually threatened with them. The state of Peace must, therefore, be established; for the mere cessation of hostilities furnishes no security against their recurrence, and where there is no guarantee of peace between neighboring States – which can only be furnished under conditions that are regulated by Law –
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Here, as in the preceding articles, it is not a question of philanthropy but of right. Hospitality means the right of a stranger not to be treated as an enemy when he arrives in the land of another. One may refuse to receive him when this can be done without causing his destruction; but, so long as he peacefully occupies his place, one may not treat him with hostility. It is not the right to be a permanent visitor that one may demand. A special beneficent agreement would be needed in order to give
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Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
SESSION Four Tuesday, 16th May 2017
an outsider a right to become a fellow inhabitant for a certain length of time. It is only a right of temporary sojourn, a right to associate, which all men have. They have it by virtue of their common possession of the surface of the earth, where, as a globe, they cannot infinitely disperse and hence must finally tolerate the presence of each other. Originally, no one had more right than another to a particular part of the earth.
Hello everyone, Sorry for postponing last week. We know that some of you had the session in your diaries but now can’t make this next session because of the change of date. We look forward to seeing you again in May. In our previous sessions, we’ve spoken about peace and we’ve spoken about war and conflict. This week we would like to ask you to think of a story or example that represents hospitality or friendship. This can be a story from your own life and experience or a story that you’ve heard. If you wish, do look at the section of Kant’s text and perhaps listen to Achille Mbembe’s words on padlet. (In this respect, do please also feel free to add to padlet in whatever form you like — I’ll put up last session’s recipes soon.) We will see you at 6 on Tuesday in studio 468. Again, if you could let us know whether not you’re coming would be very helpful to gauge our shopping requirements. Thanks and all the best, Aislinn and Glenn
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Hello everyone, We are very much looking forward to seeing you next Tuesday 16th May at our fourth meeting of the “Visiting Programme”. Do please let us know either way if you can come, in particular so that we don’t over-prepare food. We know that it was difficult for a number of you to make our last meeting so perhaps a short précis might help to give a sense of the tenor of our conversation that evening. We asked you to think about the concept of hospitality, once more from your experience or from stories you had heard. This time we spoke about refusing the hospitality of those who had little or nothing to give, and the lies and fictions we sometimes construct to somehow make this intelligible or acceptable to those whose gift we refuse. We spoke of kindness of strangers, and the histories of fostering in the Irish context and beyond, where a child could be cared for by family or wider communities. We spoke of front rooms and parlours and the hierarchies of guests. We reflected on the violence of procedure, again thinking of fostering roles and those children who have lost everything and will be separated from the strangers who care for them, simply because those strangers aren’t kin, and how the world would have to change to think first of the child. The image of hospitality and the land of the thousand welcomes is a powerful image in the Irish imaginary, but perhaps the thousand welcomes grades and selects those welcomes, and maybe had we just one welcome, one gesture of hospitality, given to all, that might suffice. We wondered about what real hospitality, infinite hospitality, would look like and whether it still makes a claim to ‘home’ that maintains the otherness of those seen as ‘other’ to this land. We listened to tales of generosity, giving without expectation of return or recognition, and harbouring without judgement. We wondered about citizenship and who are these Irish...? In all of this, the stories that exemplify either hospitality or the lack thereof brought the ideas to the tangled
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Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
Studio 468
concrete domain. And we imagined developing compendia and inventories of tiny acts of kindness, rather than the assiduous and relentless documentation of compliance.
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
of organic life. It is related, rather, to the human artifact, the fabrication of human hands, as well as to affairs which go on among those who inhabit the man-made world together. To live together in the world means essentially that a world of things is between those who have it in common, as a table is located between those who sit around if, the world, like every in-between, relates and separates men at the same time.
Next week we want to speak about another powerful image in the political imaginary. The concept/image of the contract as a response to the state of nature or the state of war. We might here recall the famous image of the Hobbesian Social Contract — the figure of the Leviathan, an image of sovereignty with the people as the body of the State. Rousseau gives us another contract with his rousing line “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains” and his concept of the general will (the will of the people — a familiar trope from across the water today). Locke provides another version of contract based on property that some say justified the expropriation of indigenous peoples and others think is liberatory. Carole Pateman spoke of the Sexual Contract that showed how the public/private was gendered, and John Rawls theory of justice describes a veil of ignorance and thus another kind of contract premised on blindness. Michel Serres today writes of the natural contract and Charles Mills of the racial contract.
The public realm, as the common world, gathers us together and yet prevents our falling over each other, so to speak. What makes mass society so difficult to bear is not the number of people involved, or at least not primarily, but the fact that the world between them has lost its power to gather them together, to relate and to separate them. The weirdness of this situation resembles a spiritualistic séance where a number of people gathered around a table might suddenly, through some magic trick, see the table vanish from their midst, so that two persons sitting opposite each other were no longer separated but also would be entirely unrelated to each other by anything tangible. — The Human Condition, p.53
Let’s think about what we would like to ‘put on the table’. So the task this week is this. Kindest regards, We ask you to bring with you a story or experience associated in some way with the concept of contract (natural, social, relationship, peace, parenting, pedagogical, social, dancing, walking, spatial, expressive, business, love…), again however minor or however important. If you choose, you might also like to bring an object. Don’t over-think it!
Aislinn and Glenn
Before the session you might cast an eye over these words from Arendt. Second, the term “public” signifies the world itself, in so far as it is common to all of us and distinguished from our privately owned place in it. This world, however, is not identical with the earth or with nature, as the limited space for the movement of men and the general condition
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Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
SESSION FIVE Tuesday, 13th June 2017
Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
FINAL SESSION Monday, 23rd October 2017
Dear Visiting Friends,
Dear Visiting Friends,
Greetings from Paris on a lovely balmy night!
Over five weeks of the Visiting Project, we thought about and spoke about peace, war, hospitality, the question of the contract, and citizenship.
Glenn and I wanted to remind you of our fifth meeting next week on June 13th where we will look at the question of the citizen. We will be writing to you in the next day or so with a short task and a question to bring with you to our session. We are planning to have a final session in July. Please know that you are all welcome even if you haven’t been able to make recent sessions. Each of you brings a distinct perspective that will allow each of our imaginations to ‘go visiting’. Our hopes for this project is to foster this rich sense of plurality in our conversations without seeking consensus, agreement or even mutual understanding, and to continue this project of thinking together and of listening. As ever we are very much looking forward to it. And as ever it would be great if you could let us know if you can come. More soon. Aislinn & Glenn
Our aim was to create a space and time to ‘thinktogether’ unshackled from the pervasive need to act, refusing the assertions that contemplation, reflection, dialogue, and thinking are luxuries in which we cannot indulge in a time of crisis, or that the problems and issues of our time are pre-framed and their solutions evident. As Arendt says, it is precisely at such moments of crisis that we need time to think, lest we react through cliche and visceral prejudice, or worse, flexibly adapt to whatever diktat is imposed. To not know each other by classifying and identifying one another, to keep that opacity rather than making everything transparent, was and is a strategy to keep us listening carefully rather than projecting our fantasies of who the other is. This didn’t mean that experiences could not be discussed. Quite the contrary as we are and continue to be interested in thinking about concepts through the lens of lived experience and storytelling, but rather the communication of experiences was no longer framed through the lens of identity. As such, in the final session, there will be no grand moment in which all is revealed like in a game show or reality tv. Though we might go to the pub after...? We asked in our last session about what ‘naturalised’ citizenship means and the relationship between nature and citizenship. We asked in another session about the relationship between the earth and the human, thinking about what a ‘natural contract’ might mean and whether we need to think differently about our relation to the earth, the condition of life, and thus of politics. We thought about hospitality, obligation and responsibility and our bonds to one another beyond the imaginaries of blood, soil, and territory. Kant stated in the First Definitive Article in the
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Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
Conditions of Perpetual Peace. ‘The Civil Constitution in every State shall be Republican.’ He writes of world-citizenship, saying in the Third Definitive Article in the conditions of a Perpetual Peace. ‘The Rights of men as Citizens of the world in a cosmo-political system, shall be restricted to conditions of Universal Hospitality’, reflecting on what might be meant by citizens of one world-state (ius cosmopoliticum).
Studio 468
Citizen Artist 2016 — 2018
Even if you haven’t been in a while (or ever), attendance has been a little uneven due to the demands of the world, feel free to join us. Just let us know if you think you can be there. We look forward to seeing you again. And a big thanks to the artists in studio 468 and to Common Ground for supporting this. Aislinn & Glenn
This question of the Republic, as opposed to simply democracy, opens up a set of questions about the commons, citizenship, public goods, and, as Arendt says, the love of the world, in particular at the moments when one needs to love the world more than one loves oneself. The citizen is not the same as the self. As entrenchment into identitarian nationalisms, cynicism, and the solipsistic therapeutics of the self deepens and become more severe, when for those who have the luxury to do so it seems more comforting to turn from the pain of the world, it seems ever more urgent to think about the relation between the world, the self, and the citizen. This final session thus returns to another concept understood oftentimes as both naively utopian, escapist, and romantic — love. We are particularly interested in the concept of a world-centred love, and Arendt’s love of the world, in order to try to think about the idea of a World or Cosmopolitan Republic. What is it about the idea of the Republic that opens up to thinking about the commons, the world beyond the self?
Task We ask you to bring an object or a story that for you says something of amor mundi, love of the world. Bring a question that makes you wonder still. Whatever that might be. And if you could also read once more Kant’s Perpetual Peace, we will also think about political love and its relation to the question of the world-republic.
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List of Illustrations
CITIZEN ARTIST 2016—2018 studio 468
pp.14 – 18 Images from Laragh Pittman’s CITIZEN ARTIST residency. pp.20 – 28 Hard/Graft fruit tree grafting workshop with Kevin Kenny, March 2019. Photography by Jason Sheridan. pp.31 – 33 and 36 Fiona Reilly, The Department of Time Keepers, 2017 – ongoing, mixed media. p.39 Mark Holburn, Sheep People, 2018, mixed media. pp.40 – 42 Mark Holburn, Life Lessons, 2018, mixed media. p.47 Pat Curran, All Comes Out in the Wash and Piddler on the Roof, 2018, oil on pvc. p.48 Pat Curran, Georgie and My Arse Your Face, 2018, oil on pvc. p.49 Pat Curran, Mrs Meyers, 2018, oil on pvc.
Published by Common Ground, April 2019 The studio team wishes to thank the CITIZEN ARTIST awardees, all the individuals and organisations who have supported studio 468 and all those who engaged in its development, process and projects. These include Dolphin House Community Development Association, Amal Women’s Group, Debbie Mulhall, St Andrew’s Men’s Social and Gardening Group, St Andrew’s Community Centre staff and Board, Sheena Barrett, Helen O’Donoghue, Logan Sisley, Glenn Loughran, Aislinn O’Donnell, Stuart Bell, Aisling Prior, Liz Smith, Ray Hegarty, Katy Fitzpatrick, Kevin Kenny, John O’Donoghue, William Deasy and the Visiting Programme participants. Photography: Resident artists, Craig Anderson, Gary Doyle, Jason Sheridan and Jasko Prnjavorac. Design: Oran Day, Atelier TypoGraphic Design Printing: Print Media Services, Dublin © studio 468, Common Ground, the artists, and authors, 2019 ISBN 978-0-9539024-6-0
Studio 468 c/o Common Ground Cemetery Gate Lodge 47 Saint Vincent Street West Dublin 8 D08 X3N8 www.commonground.ie
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