Centrifugal: For Critical Interdisciplinary Practices In and Around the Edges of Europe
Centrifugal is a platform that brings together cultural producers from three European locations positioned close to the edges of Europe: Belfast, Helsinki and Zagreb. The project seeks to evaluate the idea of the European project from within, exploring the exchanges that take place within these “margins”, the micro-political ways in which the members orient themselves and what links distinguish the local situations. Centrifugal explores this turbulent field by investigating the relationship between historical European kingdoms, empires and their inherited and colonial peripheral lands, and how these histories haunt the contemporary European project.
The seminar reflected on past work and examined the dramatic shifts in our context over the last two years: the rise of “Austerity Europe” and its democratic shortcomings, the surge of populist and right wing discourses of anti-migration, nationalism and protectionism. How can artists challenge these discourses and propose new forms of interconnectedness, orientation and mobility?
The event was supported by KulturKontakt Austria and The Arts Council of Finland.
Susan KELLY is an artist, writer and educator currently living in London. She writes, does performances, public artwork and installations and is a lecturer in Fine Art and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Susan Kelly works independently and collectively with the Micropolitics Research Group, the Carrotworkers’ Collective and the Precarious Workers Brigade. Over the last ten years she has worked in Belfast, New York, Toronto, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Krasnoyarsk, Tallin, Zagreb, Innsbruck and elsewhere.
Aisling O’BEIRN is a Belfast-based artist whose recent work is derived from research into various informal accounts of place, e.g., urban myths, anecdotes, place nicknames, etc.
www.aislingobeirn.com
Daniel JEWESBURY is an artist and writer. Recurring themes in his work include the relationship between people and the places they inhabit; the construction and nature of subjectivity and the relationship between biography and memory; the perpetual regeneration of the contemporary city, the contests and conflicts that this produces, and, not least, the politics of representation itself.
www.danieljewesbury.org
Nicole HEWITT is an artist and researcher who lives and works in Zagreb and London. Her recent works are films concerned with the rehearsal, performance and recitation of self as manifested in the ballroom dancing schools of Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro.
Minna HENRIKSSON is a visual artist currently based in Helsinki. One of her main topics of research is nationalism, an issue she addressed both in her artistic work and theoretically—particularly its connection to contemporary art—together with her partner sociologist Sezgin Boynik.
Kalle HAMM & Dzamil KAMANGER are both artists based in Helsinki. Their work examines cultural encounters and their impacts, both in historical and contemporary contexts.
www.spicetrade.org
www.afaryan.org
Location
Künstler:innenhaus Büchsenhausen