simularr’s Nayarí Castillo has been invited to take part in the
Techno-disobedience week work session in Graz (23–27 October 2023),
co-organised by Constant Brussels and esc medien kunst labor Graz. The workshop focused
on collective processes, technological environments, and projects that
contest capitalist forms of art production. This environment allowed
Castillo to present and discuss different findings of simularr, mostly
on collaborative practices and forms of disobedience. Castillo provided
input from simularr with a specialised workshop on walking as a method
for research. For this occasion, she presented question walks as a
research method and discussed possibilities for implementation with the
workshop participants.
simularr and the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisboa are happy to announce a call for participation in the workshop Simultaneous Mapping Practices on speculative forms of collaborative space mapping. The interdisciplinary workshop is directed at artists-researchers with practices across different media. In close collaboration with the Department of Communication Design, Department of Multimedia Art, and the Department of Sculpture at FBAUL, we encourage PhD students, MA students, and other practitioners-researchers to participate.
We are happy to announce the Swap Spaces catalogue, which we celebrate
with a simularr Soirée – Swap Spaces Catalogue Presentation, Wed 25 October, 19:00h, at Grazer Kunstverein, Burggasse 4. Some of the contributing artists will be present, sharing in a round table, and accompanied by a musical improvisation and other contributions.
We celebrate the first year of simularr with the presentation of Swap Spaces — a catalogue recollecting the experiences of the pilot phase of the project. Edited by Nayarí Castillo and Hanns Holger Rutz, the book gathers the stories of the different participants by revealing ways of artistic production and research, acknowledging influences between artists, and highlighting positive contaminations among practices. With texts from Shane Finan, Franziska Hederer, Jackie Karuti, Alisa Kobzar, Johanna Lettmayer, Consuelo Méndez, David Pirrò, Daniele Pozzi, and the editors themselves, this catalogue paves the way for understanding other forms of working together.
It has been three months now that incoming artists-researchers Ludvig Elblaus and Charlotta Ruth have left the in-situ phase with the resident simularr team in Graz, concluding thus the first interval of the project. Yet, we are only beginning to work through the many materials produced, thoughts and concepts, sketches, sonic and performative actions. While in-depth analyses are saved for forthcoming articles and chapters, and the digitised materials remain, for the time being, in our internal repository, this blog entry will provide a glimpse into our doing.
A good amount of techniques, concepts and formulations were brought in by each member of the team in the end of March and beginning of April, put to test and transformation in the group. What are the connecting surfaces between compositional, choreographic, installative and architectural thinking that would make it possible to share our processes? Is it possible to think while doing, or need there be rhythms of making and reflecting? What is everyone’s individual working rhythm, and what happens to these rhythms as they meet and overlap?
