DE.a.RE – DEconstruct And Rebuild
Project
—
Promoted and developed by the international association BJCEM-Biennale des jeunes créateurs de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée and co-funded by the European Union (Grant Agreement Project 101052900), DE.a.RE is a three-year long research project supported by the Creative Europe Program. DE.a.RE has the objective of enhancing the competencies of artists, fostering the visibility and circulation of emerging talents and artworks in Europe and beyond and reflecting and debating on the role of artists as vectors of change in contemporary societies.
DE.a.RE is managed by BJCEM Executive Office and by a Scientific Committee comprised of:
Denise Araouzou
Alessandro Castiglioni
Simone Frangi
Svetlana Racanović
YEAR 2 / 2023
Survey
The curatorial team of DE.a.RE invited cultural organisations and workers across Europe and the transMediterranean to answer to a survey. The answers are the building blocks of a participatory educational platform, Gathering Spells, catering to identified needs and unique concerns in a time of converging crisis and emerging alternatives. Therefore, we would also like to invite you to become a participant by applying to the open call here. Even if you will not be joining the program, we kindly ask you to answer the survey anyhow. We are very grateful for dedicating your time. The survey has been sent out to more than 200 cultural organisations in more than 20 countries as part of the DEconstruct and REbuild (DE.a.RE) program organised by BJCEM, and co-funded by the European Union (Grant Agreement Project 101052900).
Gathering Spells
Gathering spells is the title of the second online educational program and it will be built based on the survey completed by two hundred cultural and contemporary arts organisations, developed in collaboration with sociologist Bernardo Armanni. Gathering spells departs from the multifaceted difficulties and responsibilities cultural organisations face across Europe and the transMediterranean today. We are building a participatory educational platform for fifty cultural agents who wish to contribute to local socio-ecological transformation and trans-local solidarity through their organisations. We invite participants to explore with us pluriversal perspectives and knowledge systems and how they shape their practices. We will share tools, tricks and rituals that will contribute to a collective ideation and experimentation of alternatives that respond to deeply-rooted political and economic structural issues. In addition, we will critically reflect on what it means to implement a sustainable operational framework as a cultural organisation by acknowledging and including pluri-geographical perspectives. Gathering spells will also delve into how organisations could become agents of regeneration for their local multispecies (human and more-than-human) communities. Beyond the local, how can just, trans-local networks be cultivated sustainably in an era of hypernationalist rhetoric and urgent energy transition? And in terms of a just energy transition, how could the increasing dependence on digital infrastructure for promoting artists and exhibiting art align with the sector’s significant carbon footprint? How does increasing online circulation of art and the globalisation of culture impact precarious cultural producers and marginalised sites of artistic production? These questions, along with the answers we receive from the survey will become the building blocks for Gathering spells. The results of the course feeds into a day-long conference organised in collaboration with Fluks – Centre for Young Art in Kristiansand, Norway.
The program organised by BJCEM, and co-funded by the European Union (Grant Agreement Project 101052900).
A study day on artistic research and structural change
October 21, 2023
The study day Gathering Spells is the closing event of the second year of the Creative Europe project DE.a.RE – DEconstruct and REbuild organized by BJCEM – Biennale des jeunes créateurs de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée. This set of conferences and panels concludes a 50 hours online program held between July and September 2023 by the scientific committee of DE.a.RE (Denise Araouzou Alessandro Castiglioni Simone Frangi Svetlana Racanović) with the complicity of several guests (Corina Șuteu, Suzana Milevska, Marianna Takou, Emanuele Braga, Grégory Castéra, Justin Randolph Thompson, Giulia Gregnanin, Cristina Da Milano, Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfaù, Krystel Khoury, Chiara Cartuccia, Sinthujan Varatharajah). The final study day of Gathering Spells in Kristiansand will address the need for transnational artistic platforms that critically look at the ideas of territorial remoteness and smallness through the lens of artistic research, by looking at decentralization as a political and social alternative that is more just, inclusive and ecologically aligned. It will dwell into collective possibilities to defamiliarize from stereotypes that populate our geographical imaginaries, especially those linked to the eurocentric interpretation of the “Mediterraneans”, plural notion formulated by David Abulafia to identify those connective spaces in the middle of the lands – seas, deserts, oceans – where the deep relationality of exchanges is always associated with forms of hostility. It will then speculate on if and how artistic research can be intended as a pedagogical and transformative tool towards social and political phenomena such as marginalization, colonial legacies and nationalisms: can art enact or support political and social structural changes?
The program organised by BJCEM, and co-funded by the European Union (Grant Agreement Project 101052900).
Screening program
Sarah Kazmi, Test and Taste the Norwegian Water, 2023
The reading Test and Taste the Norwegian Water is a speculative yet poetic study around the politics of sea, the relationship between maritime commerce, migration, and resource extraction. It was commissioned by Coast Contemporary for their 2023 assembly OCEAN EYES and was performed at Arbeider’n in Lofoten, Norway.
Vlad Plisetskiy, What You will do when the War starts?, 2023
This brave story by an anarchist Plisetskiy from Ukraine pivots around the unbreakable Kyiv Underground foundations. First missiles are falling on Kyiv, first sirens are singing and first video documentation shots are taken by the guardian angel of the Kyiv underground. In the moment of an absolute common tragedy on 24.02.2022, Plisetskiy takes his camera to defend the free spirit of his home-town and community. There is no place for the tears when you are facing your enemy. The power of self-organization and the usage of any tools available to defend humanity from the “Z – virus” are fundamental. During 2022-23 Ukrainian community is on the battlefields, workshop studios, clubs, galleries, and underground stations… literally everyone is doing their best to save all EU continent from a bloody dictatorship. The world film premiere by Vladyslav Plisetskiy will infect the viewer with the spirit of resilience and give strength to survive this difficult battle period that we are all going through together – “What You will do when the War starts?”.
Sue Jane Taylor, Beatrice Voices from across the Moray Firth, 2018
For nearly 40 years, the Beatrice oil field, located in the Moray Firth, has been part of the eastern Highlands contemporary maritime landscape. Unlike most oil and gas installations located far out to sea, Beatrice field, consisting of Alpha, Bravo and Charlie platforms, is visible and close to land. When the oil boom hit the north, Beatrice played a part in that big shift: Nigg Oil Terminal in Easter Ross was constructed on top of sand dunes and beach shore line to accommodate huge storage tanks containing the black-tarry crude oil from Beatrice’s pipeline. In September 2018 Sue Jane Taylor gained permission to visit Beatrice Alpha platform for one week; three months before this field was fully decommissioned. Onboard she filmed and interviewed people in their working environments and invited offshore workers, James Able and Phil Hodgson, to use her GoPro camera to film their own platform ‘viewpoints’. This film is a valuable documentation of portraying an aspect of offshore working life within the North Sea oil & gas industry.
Hamid Waheed, History is a Black Circle, 2023
History is a Black Circle is an experimental video essay that revolves around questions of desire, queer experience and history. It is a story that transcends the fabrics of time and space to inhabit the bodies of past, present and future – and it does so through an array of video sources and formats. The film is a recorded documentary, told as speculative fiction and a reflection on the notion of ‘black’.
Tinne Zenner, Nutsigassat, 2018
“Go outside. The lovely mountains two, Sermitsiaq and Kingittorsuaq, look at them.” While the housing blocks carry a past of the national diaspora, layers of snow cover a future development in the city of Nuuk, Greenland. The landscape acts as a scenery for collective nostalgia and industrial production, as the film studies glitches in translation of language and culture in a post-colonial modernity.
The program organised by BJCEM, and co-funded by the European Union (Grant Agreement Project 101052900).
Program
PROGRAM
h 9:30 am
Launch of the screening program with audiovisual contributions from Sarah Kamsi, Vlad Plisetskiy, Sue Jane Taylor, Hamid Waheed, Tinne Zenner
h 10:00 – 10:30 am
Welcome speeches
Professor Lisbet Skregelid (University of Agder)
Inger Margrethe Stoveland (FLUKS)
Municipality Kristiansand
Mercedes Giovinazzo (BJCEM)
h 10:30 am – 12:30 pm
Panel session
Remoteness, marginality, and smallness in nordic waters: What impact does decentralisation have on the arts?
Moderator Alessandro Castiglioni (DE.a.RE)
Joachim Aagaard Friis (Denmark/Norway)
Jóhan Martin Christiansen (Denmark)
Eva Lín Vilhjálmsdóttir (Iceland)
Eduardo Cassina (Norway)
h 2:30 – 4:30 pm
Panel session
Coloniality and extractivism in the North(s): diasporic and indigenous narratives VS toxic nationalistic rethorics
Moderator Simone Frangi (DE.a.RE)
Giulia Gregnanin (UK)
Sue Jane Taylor (UK)
Sergey Kantsedal (Ukraine/Italy)
Tinne Zenner (Denmark)
Elmedin Zunic (Norway)
h 5:00 – 7:00 pm
Conversations
Can art be a pedagogical strategy for structural change? Defamiliarization as a method: from hegemonic approximations to accurate imaginaires in the plural Mediterranean
Evagoras Vanezis (Cyprus)
Marie Nour Hechaime (Lebanon)
Sustainable art practices at the age of ecological collapse: what to produce?
Giulia Colletti (BJCEM)
Davide Ronco (Denmark)
The program organised by BJCEM, and co-funded by the European Union (Grant Agreement Project 101052900)
Gathering Spells is implemented by BJCEM and is co-funded by the European Union within the framework of the Creative Europe Programme. Contents developed and contributions made within Gathering Spells are the sole responsibility of the authors and participants and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of BJCEM or of the European Union.
