On day one of our residency we worked with the quality of care and how it might relate to physical spaces of body and landscape and proximities of space between them, of being both near and far. These ideas are also related to Bojana Kunst‘s Open Letter to Artists written during the start of the pandemic in which she suggests that artists have become similar, in some sense, to care workers by ‘[…] inventing expressions, choreographies, and situations of care with a lot of affective investment’. She goes on to say that ‘[…]performance is a space of imagination of a better world and living, an unexpected, rich, and poetic practice of reciprocity and entanglement’. This poetics of expression of care is also very often a product created within precarious working contexts, leaving artists to neglect a caring of the self. Therefore, Kunst suggests a caring with –  in experimenting with, and searching for, other modes of working, shifting and distributing the value of your work in another way, collaborating and building a practice together, settling into the environment of many different relations’. These many different relations and new, or possibly older, ways of working – of collaboration and living within a shared environment, allowing for cross-fertilisation of ideas, shared resources and abundant support (including paying artists) are part of the iM Konsthall ethos.

As part of this ecology we have been able to come here to focus and to explore the qualities of the human moving body and changing landscapes through dance and filmmaking whilst engaging with other artists whose practices both overlap with and challenge our thinking about making in our contemporary moment. This entanglement of thoughts are emerging an environment of openness and learning.

Our first day included a circular walk at the edge of the village and experimenting with being close to and far away from as a way to explore aspects of care. How do we care, as humans, with the spaces and places we move through and with each other? What is it to listen in, to look closely and, also, to take distance? How is care an act of moving in and of touch but also a gesture of giving space for the people, places and things we care so much about?

We welcome your comments and thoughts…

Christian Kipp & Sara Wookey

www.christiankipp.com  /  www.sarawookey.com

References

Kunst, B.(2020) Lockdown Theatre (2): Beyond the time of the right care:A letter to the performance artist