Seminar 11th - 13th September at Treveal Farm
(courtesy of Jon & Wyn Brookes and the National Trust)
click here to download information PDF
This seminar will bring together artists and people from across a range of disciplines to look at what could be said to be an increasingly contested territory: the rural. The seminar will explore an approach to practice that sites itself amidst the complexities of context, that concerns itself with questions beyond the specificity of place: change, complexity, systems and power relations.
Against the back-drop of credit crunch and ecological imperatives, the rural is increasingly becoming a site to which people are drawn to find alternatives. People who perhaps ten years ago might have been drawn to escape the rat race, to re-embrace the good life, in today’s climate, may well make a similar journey but frame it as a political or ecological choice.
On the other side of the coin, many people living in Cornwall feel like they are ‘living in a museum’. Now derelict landscapes were once thriving with activity and a resident population. What is the meaning of these sites in a contemporary world of instant connection? Are they still places that can be actively lived and worked? And what of preservation? What are we preserving – granite, landscapes, memories or shared histories? Whose history, whose story?
It is a context that ranges from the picture post-card image, the poetic and the idyllic to contemporary issues that leave it as politically contested as at any time in its past.
What strategies can we use to engage meaningfully in these complexities?
We are interested in looking at the organisation of projects, the processes involved in making work and the resultant discourses, which often incorporate experimental methodologies, cross disciplinary exchanges and together result in the building of relationships and the formation of non traditional knowledge.
The seminar will be set against the backdrop of the BOS-09 project This weekend…? curated by Ruth Gooding. www.thisweekend.org.uk
You can expect this years seminar to again feature camping, sea dips, coastal ambles, lots of good conversation, stimulating dialogue and ideas exchange, chilling, good food and amazing company...!
To book a place or get more details please email Veronica
Speakers
Chris Freemantle
On the Edge Research and Ayeshire Artists Network
Annie Lovejoy & Mac Dunlop
Caravanserai, Roseland, Cornwall
Caravanserai is an arts residency project initiated by Annie Lovejoy and Mac Dunlop at Treloan Coastal Holidays (http://www.treloancoastalholidays.co.uk), a caravan and camping site on the Roseland peninsula in Cornwall. In partnership with the campsite owners, Pete & Debs Walker they are working to promote sustainable tourism through hosting creative activities that engage with, and celebrate the local environment and culture.
The project is envisaged as a creative way to engage in issues that are resonant with Cornwall. From local food to transport to energy, from waste to water & wildlife ..without a sustainable approach to tourism that protects the specific qualities of place and people we are faced with losing the amenities and meeting places that are central to our communities.
Jem McKay
This Weekend? and Swarm TV
An enquiry into the political structures of open, non-heirachical collaborative filmmaking. Jem designed the website for the This Weekend? project and has an interest in the use of inter-active technologies in rural environments.
Alex Murdin
r u r a l r e c r e a t i o n
countryside and leisure: access: environment: inclusion
Immersion: A Strategic Framework for Eco-recreation in British Waters delivers a unique perspective on the future of sustainable water recreation.
Essential reading for strategic organisations and others in the UK whose work impinges on water environments. Drawing on major social and ecological themes it:
- Sets out the case for more sustainable leisure use of waterscapes in the UK.
- Explores the major challenges for water ecologies in the 21st century.
- Visions a radical new future for redundant lidos and pools as facilities for recreation, aquaculture and education
David Paton & Jane Ansell
TEND Trewidden Garden, Penzance
TEND is an ongoing project that originated as a year-long research residency; as it continues we will be condensing ideas, exploring further locations and processes of collaboration. We are also currently developing a publication.
Trewidden Garden is an important example of the links between industrial expansion and horticultural research witnessed in the South West of England throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
TEND references both the tending of plants and the nurturing of an idea over a sustained period of time. The aim of the residency was to develop a specific understanding of the garden in relation to broader geographical, cultural and ecological thinking through a sustained period of residence. We have witnessed the porosity of its borders and encouraged the role of emergence and open encounters in the realisation of ideas. During a process of exploratory micro-projects, gardening and exchanges between visitors and staff we are also unraveling the contemporary role of the garden within the context of its industrial and horticultural heritage. Over the course of the residency the two sheds, that we sited in the garden, evolved to become studio, archival space and artwork. TEND has developed as a conversation between ourselves where collected works are situated in relation to each other to form new perspectives.
Amy Plant (Pilot Publishing with Ella Gibbs)
Energy Cafe is reinvigorating Gunpowder Park with a feeling of the original ‘commons’ where land was used as a resource for all. The construction of the Energy Café, which began in Autumn 2008, has turned normal planning procedures on its head, and is being developed organically, out of necessity, through people’s involvement from the local area. Pilot Publishing is working with ecologists, permaculture specialists and the local community to harvest wild food from Gunpowder Park and source farm or home-grown produce within a five mile radius.
Veronica Vickery
BOSarts
This Weekend, BOSarts
Transport and accommodation details... please click here
Please note - the track to the farm is long and narrow with high Cornish 'hedges' (read granite...), so it is a good idea to come by train if at all possible - we will be laying on transport to and from Penzance railway station, click link above for details. |
