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C. Maintenance is a drag; it takes all the fucking time (lit.)
(Mierle Laderman Ukeles, M A N I F E S T O FOR MAINTENANCE ART 1969!)
The first in a series of symposium-like gatherings organised by writer and artist Cally Spooner, studying the visibility of management, power and neuropolitics.
The event consists of a series of talks and discussions, starting from considerations of maintenance and the maternal. It asks what durations, pragmatics, and cooperative arrangements might upset contemporary, patriarchal states of chrono-normativity; where time is strictly controlled and ordered to generate visible, verifiable productivity.
Lisa Baraitser, reader in Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck speaks on the work of artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Writer and lecturer Marina Vishmidt addresses mapping assorted scales of management – from the micro to the planetary. Kate Coyne, dancer, producer and Assistant Director of Michael Clarke Company shares her experience on how to validate performers’ labour inside and outside a rehearsal room, and the methods necessary to keep artists’ work and a company of dancers alive.
This is the first in a series of gatherings that form part of Cally Spooner’s Stanley Picker Fellowship, realised with support from the PSY and Playground Festivals. The symposium is hosted, on this occasion, by Whitechapel Gallery, marking the half way point in Spooner’s time as Writer in Residence at the Gallery.
Subsequent symposiums will take place at STUK, Leuven, 28th April. The third at Serpentine Gallery, 20th May with more to be confirmed.
Cally Spooner is an artist and writer born in London in 1983, where she is currently based.
Her recent solo shows include New Museum, New York, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2016); she has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Aspen Art Museum and REDCAT, Los Angeles (2015). The artist’s essays/writing have appeared in Flash Art and Artforum; her book of scripts is published by SlimVolume (2016) and she is the author of the novel, Collapsing In Parts published by Mousse (2013).
Cally Spooner recieved the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists and is Writer in Residence at the Whitechapel Gallery.
Read an introduction to Cally Spooner’s practice and ambitions for her Writer in Residence project on the blog.
Read about the Writer in Residence programme, including projects by Heather Phillipson, Felix Melia and Information as Material.
