Art and the Rural Imagination Conference

29 June–4 July 2020 Art and the Rural Imagination

SPEAKERS MTP (independent artist) More Than Ponies Katarzyna Depta-Garapich (Slade School of Art) Catherine Elwes (independent scholar) Jenny Holt (Manchester School of Art) Anna Sofie Hvid (Founder, Ruralagentur, Denmark) Feral Practice (independent) Lucy Reynolds (University of Westminster) Ben Roberts (Artistic Director of Brighton CCA) Rosemary Shirley (University of Leicester) (The Courtauld Institute of Art) Marina Velez (Anglia Ruskin)

MICRO-COMMISSIONS

Paul Finnegan (Arts University Bournemouth) Victoria Lucas (Sheffield Hallam University) Harry Meadows (Arts University Bournemouth) Standart Thinking (independent artist) ZOOX (independent artists)

Convened by Colin Perry (Arts University Bournemouth) With More Than Ponies (MTP).

Conference Details

DATE 29 June, 30 June, 1 July, 3 July, 4 July 2020

WEBSITE + ZOOM The conference will take place online using Zoom and a password-protected website. See: https://www.morethanponies.info/ari

NOTE: Website password and Zoom link will be emailed to participants a day before the conference.

TICKETS https://www.morethanponies.info/events/2020conference

CONTACT Colin Perry [email protected]

#artandtheruralimagination Schedule

MONDAY 29 JUNE 2020 1: FARMERS AND TOURISTS 7.15–7.20 pm Colin Perry Conference introduction

7.20–7.50 pm Rosemary Shirley Farm Noir and other Rural Mythologies

7.50–8.10 pm Jenny Holt New narratives of labour and landscape in rural : The Great Bear

8.10–8.20 pm Breakout groups

8.20–8.40 pm Anna Sofie Hvid Architecture as a Rural Machine

8.40–9.00 pm Katarzyna Depta-Garapich ‘Polar Bear from Krupowki’: Mass tourism and rural life in the Tatra Mountains, Southern Poland

9.00–9.10 pm Q & A

TUESDAY 30 JUNE 2020 2: GARDENS AND CULTURES 7.15–7.45 pm Catherine Elwes Faking It: Parks & Gardens in Artists’ Film and Video

7.45–8.15 pm Lucy Reynolds Charlotte Prodger, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson

8.15–8.25 pm Breakout groups

8.25–8.45 pm Fiona MacDonald/ Sexual Libertarianism and Reproductive Slavery in Honeybees Feral Practice

8.45–9.05 Marina Velez Art at the Periphery: other knowledges and other cognitions as resistance to monocultures of the mind

9.05–9.15 Q & A

WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020 3: PRACTICES AND THE RURAL IMAGINARY 7.15–7.45 pm Julian Stallabrass Entangled in the Forest of Brexit

7.45–8.15 pm Adam Chodzko The Hostile Environment

8.15–8.35 Ben Roberts Embodied Research Practice

8.35–8.45 Breakout groups

8.45–8.55 Q & A

FRIDAY 3 JULY 2020 10.00 am – All Conference Speakers Plenary session: Discussion and Q&A 12:00 noon

7.30 pm ZOOX Performance Live Online: Brekekekéx koáx koáx!

SATURDAY 4 JULY 2020 11.00 am Victoria Lucas Performance Live Online: Standpoints: Testsite #2,

4.00 pm All Commissioned Artists In-Conversation and Q&A 3 ABSTRACTS

ADAM CHODZKO THE HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT

The ‘rural’ was introduced as an es- tive rural’; the rural as a place that cophancy and anger at both our be- sential term that needed to be learnt inadvertently clarifies vision and lief, and our lack of belief, in it. The and understood, by aliens, in order directs focus. Perhaps like the func- city presents a mask of speed but, in for their natural and safe assimilation tion of the urban gallery reality, is reliant on being lugubrious into the UK’s landscape(s) and peo- space, but with the addition of sub- and coagulated in order to generate ple(s). It appears (along with sonnet, versive and complex cycles of trans- its capital. The rural presents a mask Quaker, oratorio, Gothic and 16 oth- formation, growth and decay which of nostalgic timelessness, obscuring ers) as glossary terms added to Life parallel the processes of art making its aberrant fluidity and dynamism, in the : A Guide for and thinking, and then develop into its elfin slipperiness. New Residents, 2013 (3rd edition) by meshes that extend way beyond the the Cameron government. Terms that limitations of ‘art’. The rural also I will try to find a new path through arose from an awkward dream based offers the mind the magic of its my artwork (it might run through on the memory of an insular history abject, a wholesome abject; cow that bracken over there); gypsy lesson in a dusty classroom at an shit, fungi, a rotting sheep, silage… urban-planners, migrant hop pickers expensive boys’ boarding school in fewer and fewer buses. involved in media post-production, the late 1960s. liquid barns in the woods, buried ar- The rural does its own thing with its chives, sexual shame and fig leaves, It is not necessary for foreigners to back to us, staring instead at some- intimate flows along littoral zones of understand the way of our lichens. thing happening, out of our sight, on estuary mud for insomniacs and the Most of my art practice is made from the edge of a copse; the city is far hyphae revenge of ash dieback. a space we could call the ‘specula- more needy, vacillating between sy-

KATARZYNA DEPTA-GARAPICH: ‘POLAR BEAR FROM KRUPOW- KI’: THE CLASH BETWEEN MASS TOURISM AND RURAL LIFE IN THE TATRA MOUNTAINS, SOUTH- ERN POLAND.

In the past, Zakopane (in literal The romantic vision included a close of local species – in particular brown translation, ‘buried under’) was a cohabitation of local folk, mostly bears. The conflict between the local rural, traditional mining village. In the shepherds and small-scale farmers community, tired of the never-ending late 1800s it became a place where with the wave of strangers who soon influx of strangers and the town hall the Polish Arts and Crafts Move- dominated the local landscape. supporting mass tourism is strangely ment developed, thanks to Stanislaw nothing new. This paper is aimed to Witkiewicz and other artists and Zakopane became the victim of its introduce the conflict spanning over intellectuals who started to visit the own success as it is now a polluted, 100 years and the project I’m devel- mountains, mostly due to the climate busy and expensive tourist resort oping with an artist from the Tatra which was considered beneficial with its unique architecture style Mountains, Malgorzata Mirga-Tas, in the treatment of tuberculosis. overrun by ugly developments. Re- titled ‘Polar Bear from Krupowki’. Zakopane became an important cently, Zakopane has seen a series place of art and intellectual creativity. of protests against planned organisa- Informed by a romantic vision of a tion of New Year’s Eve celebrations proximity to nature, a unique style at the border of the Tatra Mountains was developed that merged the rural National Park. One of the main rea- and local traditions with the urban. sons for protest was the protection

4 CATHERINE ELWES: ‘FAKING IT: PARKS & GARDENS IN ARTISTS’ FILM AND VIDEO’

One of the earliest films in the cine- and twenty-first centuries, artists for ristic films the effluence of domestic matic canon is Louis Lumière’s 1895 whom gardens remain heterotopian life spills out into their gardens in a silent comedy L’Arroseur Arrosé. The places of trickery and invention, of sanctioned ‘expansion of acceptable 36-second vignette is set in a walled creative resistance to norms. These domains of discourse for women’ jardin potager where a gardener is artists find a natural home among (Sipe in Dorrian and Rose, 2003: 93). watering his summer vegetables with gardeners, among propagators of The staging of nature is clearly evi- a hose. A mischievous boy creeps unruly growth and cross-fertilisa- dent in materialist experiments of the up and with one clogged foot, steps tion. I shall focus my discussion on 1970s and ’80s, including Nam June on the hose pipe thus cutting off the practitioners who have queered the Paik’s satirical TV Garden (1974), flow of water. The puzzled garden- landscape of parks and gardens, Tony Hill’s Downside Up (1985) and er peers into his waterless nozzle on the hoof. These include Barbara Chris Welsby’s Park Film (1972) all of whereupon the boy releases the flow Hammer and Sarah Pucill, and also which track the incursion of media- causing it to spray up into the old Derek Jarman, for whom the shrub- tised representations of nature that man’s face. This satirical gem at the bery and meadows of Hampstead make visible the artistry, if not the dawn of cinema encompasses layers Heath hosted sexual encounters wholesale re-invention of gardens of deception including the prank and whose ‘active modelling of the and parks, through the lens. In spite itself, the illusionism of moving pic- land’ (Andrews, 1999: 204) outside of the declared artifice of both film tures and the artificial nature of gar- his at Dungerness became and the landscaped garden, a sense dening. The constructed nature of a the site of private rituals celebrating of awe is retained in all these works park or garden, of a locus amoenus, his loves and friendships as well and these places; as Alistair Camp- allows the human imagination to as his confrontation of the physical bell observed in a rare moment of invest anthropogenic meaning in a depredations of AIDS and his own sagacity, ‘nobody can control nature. domesticated wilderness. mortality. I shall also consider works We can mow the lawn and prune the by women artists such as Margaret flowers, but it is other forces that Gardens and public parks have Tait and Nina Danino in the UK and make them grow’ (2008: 253) drawn to them experimental film- Marie Menken and Anne Charlotte makers working in the twentieth Robertson in the USA, in whose dia-

JENNY HOLT: ‘NEW NARRATIVES OF LABOUR AND LANDSCAPE IN RURAL NORTHAMPTONSHIRE: THE GREAT BEAR.’

This paper explores new narratives pact on the area’s culture, economy visualised as source and product of of labour and landscape in rural and landscape. The participants – a labour. Integrating activities of rural Northamptonshire through The Great shepherd, arable farmer and forester labour tied to the past with more Bear, a short film made in 2019 as from the local area and warehouse recent transformations of place, the part of Animate Projects’ ‘WORK’, a worker from Brazil – live and work film considers how local and global socially-engaged arts initiative inves- within a mile’s radius of one another, cultures and economies coexist in tigating ideas and realities of working with filming taking place over the today’s rural environments. lives in the UK today. The Great Bear politically turbulent spring and sum- is located in and around Thrapston mer of 2019. Drawing on Ingold’s Northamptonshire, an area with a concept of ‘taskcape’ – landscape strong farming identity and visible as lived environment of dwelling and agricultural legacy in the landscape, labour – the film brings participatory, and a growing logistics economy observational and improvisational established out of and dependent methods of documentary portraiture on its close proximity to arterial road in dialogue with pictorial structures networks. The film focuses on four of landscape. Intensified by the young people starting out on their film’s focus on the young, embod- working lives in farming, logistics ied and subjective approaches to and forestry – key place-based econ- work oscillate with rhythms of time omies with historical roots in and im- and seasonal change, landscape

5 ANNA SOFIE HVID: FIELD TRIP TO THE DANISH COUNTRYSIDE

There is an ‘environmentally friendly’ finished architectures in the Danish ing in producing a specific notion of pig farm with circular manure man- countryside, which can be seen as rurality as a hyper-managed, clean agement producing 120,000 pigs vehicles of bodily movements, ener- and environmentally friendly place per year for the global food market. gy flows and narratives: they serve leaving little room for the unexpect- There is a crematorium in the hinter- the production of a new notion of ed, the mis-fitted and the messy. lands of a provincial city processing rural space as an Operational Land- This presentation is a performative 8,000 human bodies per year turning scape – simultaneously a metaphori- lecture on ‘Architecture as a Rural the released energy into heating for cal territory and a real geography for Machine’. Departing from my day- the local state school. There is a humans and non-humans. to-day practice with architecture in remote art museum in a conserva- a rural context, I will unfold the role tion area running an exhibition on In my work as an artist and founder of new architecture forms emerging the ‘anthropocene landscape’ for of a research-based architecture stu- in the Danish countryside looking some 30,000 visitors per year, mainly dio, which focuses on the changing at case studies and mapping sit- tourists, who enjoy the view on the concepts of rurality, I am interested uations, and flows energy and of natural site from the large museum in how new types of architectures bodies (human and non-human). windows. are emerging in the countryside. Looking at the Danish countryside in The pig farm, the crematorium, and particular, buildings and places serve the art museum are three newly increasingly as ‘machineries’ partak-

FERAL PRACTICE: SEXUAL LIBERTARIANISM AND REPRODUCTIVE SLAVERY IN HONEYBEES

The forest stimulates liberatory and bee trees were considered and agri-corporations perfect their imaginaries and practices in more- sacred, uncuttable. Hollow trees still genetic manipulation and repro- than-human worlds. Forest crea- shelter wild beehives. Male bees ductive control of honeybees to tures operate and relate outside of cannot forage or feed themselves, maximise profit. In every hive, the human domestic agendas. Sexual- they are made just for love. They reigning Queens’ wings are clipped. ity’s self-organising creativity is the spend every warm afternoon cruising After one season, she is squeezed fundamental wellspring of differing, in secret gathering places, known to dead to be replaced by a bought of ‘variation as nature’ (Vivieros de the bees down generations; how is and shipped, artificially inseminated Castro, 2014: 74) Insects, plants and still mysterious. Virgin queens fly to- Queen. Stereo steel syringes pump animals are continuously engaged in wards the sun, mating ten to twenty semen into fragile, pinioned bodies. asymmetric intercourse. While hon- times with different males. In their eybees feed, their vegetal collabora- moment of climax, the males die. An tors are orgasmically fertilized. overwhelming petit mort.

In medieval times, honey rained Meanwhile, among nearby monocul- down from abundant forest hives, tural crops, commercial beekeepers

LUCY REYNOLDS: ON NANCY HOLT, ROBERT SMITHSON AND CHARLOTTE PRODGER

Nancy Holt’s six-minute 16mm film I-phone camera. Is the landscape the front of the lens, but the particularity Swamp (1971) can be viewed as point? Or the body behind it? Whilst of the body behind it. both a landscape film, and a film never explicitly depicted, both films about how to film a landscape, frame other unseen yet palpable made by two land artists attempting presences – of the camera, of more to cross a boggy stretch of land. ancient bodies delineated through Charlotte Prodger’s 2016 filmBridgit myth and story in the case of Bridgit, traverses different stretches of Scot- and of the artist herself. This paper tish landscape, tracing a personal speculates on how Swamp and cartography in its cliffs, roads and Bridgit use camera apparatus to hills, gathered cumulatively on her navigate more than the landscape in 6 BEN ROBERTS: EMBODIED RESEARCH PRACTICE landscape, pastoral, impoverished, foundations of the popular rural Ben Roberts reflects on his work isolated, dangerous, functional, and conception — in entirely unexpected with Brighton Centre for Contem- so on. While we can think of ‘the ways through photographic process, porary Art (CCA) and the Artists’ rural’ in these diverse manifestations, botany and social engagement. In Research Centre as platforms for we should also think of research in changing what we value in research contextualising artists’ practice as a different ways – as conceptions they practice we can make space for a form of research. He explores ways are both multifaceted and to limit richer form of understanding. of generating support for artists over oneself to a single version is to limit the longer term and the need to re- one’s understanding and knowledge. align commonly held perceptions of Roberts’ recent projects with artists, the relationship between knowledge including Becky Beasley, Alexan- and understanding. He will argue dra Leykauf and Dog Kennel Hill that there is no one kind of art prac- Project, offer insights into how art tice or way to carry out research. practices can embody conceptions Similarly, the idea of the rural has of landscape, history and travel — multiple meanings – bucolic, tranquil,

ROSEMARY SHIRLEY: FARM NOIR AND OTHER RURAL MYTHOLOGIES to recent cinema, its analysis centres ogies. It concludes by exploring the Over the last ten years the Nordic on the recent British films:God’s appetite or national mood for noir Noir genre has become a familiar own Country (2017), The Levelling renderings of rural places in relation component of TV programming. (2017) and Dark River (2018). These to the contemporary political con- Most often it takes the form of a films take contemporary farms in text, drawing on the Lords Select police procedural drama set in a England as their primary setting, and Committee Report (2018) which distinctive landscape and centring as this paper will argue, articulate asserted that rural communities had on the solving of one or more grizzly a specific form of what might be been failed by the government, news murders. The genre’s popularity termed Farm Noir. It considers differ- reports of increased suicide rates has influenced UK based televi- ent components of Farm Noir which amongst farmers and the characteri- sion dramas with rural settings like include: isolation, silence, death, and sation of the Brexit vote as the will of Hinterland and Shetland which both extreme bodily engagements with a disenfranchised rural population. engage with noiresque plotting and both the land and the elements. It aesthetics. This paper takes the con- then goes on to construct a historical temporary noir genre as a starting context for cultural representations point to question the representation of the dark rural and considers how of rural places in the popular imagi- these films act to both reinforce and nation. Moving from the small screen challenge these established mythol-

JULIAN STALLABRASS: ENTANGLED IN THE FOREST OF BREXIT

Epping Forest, once a royal hunting through the forest, sometimes ground, known for its ancient oaks following tracks and streams, and (symbols of England) lies on the sometimes straying into dense thick- outskirts of . Now given over ets. I followed it as best I could using to the public, divided by roads and map and compass, on a meandering hemmed in by private property, it is and doubtless erratic path, looking a suburban woodland. Brexit – the for signs of social disaffection on the vote to leave the European Union hinge of English county and global – sharply divided remainer London city. from the neighbouring county of , which voted strongly to leave. The border between the two runs

7 MARINA VELEZ: ART AT THE PERIPHERY: OTHER KNOWLEDGES AND OTHER COGNITIONS AS RESIS- TANCE TO MONOCULTURES OF THE MIND

There is a direct relationship, says focus on Belalcázar, Spain, where I interventions. It will do so by looking scholar and activist Winona LaDuke, have been working during the past at the contradictions of the periph- between the loss of biodiversity and seven years and it will look at art ery, allowing for them to coexist and the loss of cultural diversity. Losing at the periphery through the works staying with the discomfort without the ability to connect to and under- about the rural produced in these exercising exclusion. stand the land are in themselves fieldworks. This paper will investigate acts of desertification. Based on the idea that new values and re-valu- the idea that valuing other forms of ing can emerge from working-with knowledge needs to happen in order local farmers and shepherds and will to develop new empathies and new look at these through the lens of the sensitivities in relation to humans’ re- works produced as well as through lationship with nature, this paper will conversations, pastoral walks and

8 ARTWORKS

PAUL FINNEGAN and ground, but also between ani- mate and inanimate, organism and Dappled World (2020) is a video environment, nature and artifice. The work commissioned for Art and The work seeks to rethink animal being Rural Imagination. The work sim- after nature in response to certain ulates the effects of the dappled critical demands of the Anthropo- light that is characteristic of forests, cene. Dappled World locates this under which objects and surfaces endeavour specifically within Adrian become visually fragmentary. In the Johnston’s concept of ‘dappled video animals with dappled markings world’ – which functions both as appear and disappear in dappled metaphor and reality within the con- spaces, some their piebald surfaces text of the presentation of the work. (a result of domestication) betraying The new insight is that the future of their liminal status between nature rural landscapes may to some extent and culture. The artwork proposes a be dependent on this way of thinking dappled world as that of continually and seeing. shifting boundaries between figure

HARRY MEADOWS

A climate sensor sculpture installed that feeds back data on the human in the New Forest will record re- imagination. al-time local weather data. The comically anthropomorphic sculp- An outcome of motor car infrastruc- ture supports delicate instruments: ture is a detailed climate map gener- anemometer, barometer, thermome- ated by an integral network of road- ter and rain gauge. These machines side weather stations. Known to the are designed to act as extensions Highways Agency as Environmental to our human bodies, amplifying our Sensor Stations, these machines understanding of the environment report on local road conditions and of which we are a part. Through this inform the way we navigate our en- combination of sculpture and ma- vironment. The feedback of climate chine, the work blurs boundaries of sensor and climate agent creates a sense and sensor, and questions the poetic loop. The data gathered from objective supremacy of digital data. the climate sensor sculpture will be Mechanical sensors, far from benign, used to generate a musical score, are imbued with human bias and exploring the poetic quality of sen- offer a reading of our environment sor/data/environment relationship.

VICTORIA LUCAS in the landscape that provide hetero- topian standpoints for the audience, This new sculptural performance as an offering to the women from commandeers the rural landscape as whom the land was originally taken. a feminist heterotopia. Drawing upon The witches, the heretics, the com- documents relating to the Enclo- moners. sures, in which women were displaced and marginalised through Through women’s labour, earth is the privatisation of the commons carved, clawed, shovelled, carried, (Federici, 2004), this piece comprises dropped, sculpted, reshaped a series of small island constructions and reformed with implements and bare hands. The heterotopia is would women do with such a space? created, a placed frame that ‘exerts How would they shape new a sort of counteraction’ against the language, how would they use their occupied position (Foucault, 1970). A bodies and voices to claim this boundary forms at the heterotopia’s space as their own? These are edge, the place in which old world sites of revisioning, reordering and meets new. This line delineates and reimagining. They temporarily unrav- defines a space of emplacement el the constructs that bind within which structural transforma- humans to culture, to society – to tion can take shape as critique. the matrix of power that orders and excludes – and invite us to Carving out a space for women, in think and exist in another dimension: a world that is collapsing under the another place free from this interfer- weight of late capitalism, ence. holds political resonance. What

STANDART THINKING (JAVIER Cultural Paths is a window exam- RODRIGUEZ) ining local and global discourses, perceptions and practices rooted in Cultural Paths is an ongoing re- the geographical borders of the rural search project focusing on the domain in the circumpolar north. recognition and valorisation of cultur- It questions the current dichotomy al practices and heritage across that plays down the relationship villages and rural sites in the arctic between city and countryside, and region. The project aims to establish the need to creatively preserve and a long-term inter-regional platform validate cultural expressions across committed to the dissemination of the region. Nordic rural culture, implementing a multi-layered set of events and Permaculture 59 is a 59-second vid- actions across the network such as eo exercise aimed at communicating educational activities, forums and concisely the pragmatic nature of art programme. Valuing traditional permaculture as a broader design knowledge in coexistence with an tool applicable to systems and awareness of contemporary trends, fields of action not only pertaining to Cultural Paths intents to contribute agriculture. The footage was taken to the revitalisation of regional cultur- during a period of work and coop- al wealth through the agency of arts eration with agro-ecologist activists and crafts. groups based in Caracas, Venezuela.

ZOOX led scientists to consider that the ‘Brekekekéx koáx koáx!’ frog may indeed be native. Local folklore had it that an intriguingly The last known colony of the named Mr Turner Turner, a wealthy Common Tree Frog (Hyla Arborea) in villager who made his money in the British wild was found at Hilltop casinos, had brought the frogs back Pond, near Beaulieu, New Forest. from his travels in Africa and Monte It once thrived and frog song was Carlo. However, the frogs were not reported to be heard frequently by found in the areas he visited. locals until the 1980s. By the late 1980s the pond fell silent, and the ‘Brekekekéx koáx koáx!’ is a new very last male specimen was spotted work – a song that could act as a far away from its original site in 1988, futile, ritualistic attempt to resurrect calling for a non-existent female. The the extinct (in the British wild) spe- colony was made extinct largely due cies. The song is constructed using to humans collecting the frogs as astrological predictions for 1988, colourful pets. the year that they were last sighted, as a way to retroactively foresee Previously it was considered a the extinction. These predictions ‘non-native’ or ‘alien’ species within would be taken from an Old Moore’s the UK, but the inability to trace the Almanack from 1988 that we recently origins of this particular colony has purchased on eBay. BIOGRAPHIES

ADAM CHODZKO

ism and public and private space. He Adam Chodzko is an artist work- ‘making together’. Many of Chodz- often uses a form of ‘science fiction’ ing across media, exploring our ko’s works evolve through a sense or ‘speculative fiction’ in order to conscious and unconscious be- of projecting outwards from the propose alternative realities; hyper- haviour, social relations and collec- self into the perception of, not only stitions. tive imaginations through artworks other people, but also the inanimate that are propositions for alternative through migratory embodiments with Working directly with the networks of forms of ‘social media’. Chodzko’s objects, rooms, places, institutions, people and places that surround him art explores the interactions and images. Often he works with the idea Chodzko focuses on the relational possibilities of human behaviour of an ‘end of art’ in order to ac- politics of culture’s edges, endings, by investigating the space of con- knowledge its precarity, question its losses, displacements, transitions sciousness between how we are insularity and to speculate as to its and disappearances. Ephemeral and what we might be. His practice real potential for transformation. operates between documentary and communities are frequently gener- fantasy, conceptualism and surreal- ated through these processes of

KATARZYNA DEPTA-GARAPICH katarzyna.depta-garapich.10@ucl. ac.uk Wimbledon College of Art (BA). Zakopane with the project One Hun- In 2013 she was invited to the dred Sheep. In July 2019 she tested Katarzyna Depta-Garapich is in the Grizedale Arts Artist-Reorientation the functionality of a new body of third year of her PhD at the Slade residency at Lawson Park, Lake Dis- work titled Comfort Zone during the School of Art, UCL, London. Her trict, Cumbria. Since then she has Use-full-less-ness of Experiment research is a practice-led enquiry collaborated with Grizedale Arts and conference in Cieszyn, Poland. into the relationship between art and Karen Guthrie on House of Ferment Future projects include Re-domesti- utility, ‘use-value’ of art; the inter- (in 2015 she curated and facilitated cated at Grymsdyke Farm, UK (June section between art and society and an edition of the project in Krakow, 2019), and the exhibitions Matter the reemergence of collective ap- Poland); Village Table (2015); and of Anthropocene at Mathare Art proaches to art making as well as a organised research visits to Zako- Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya (June 2019) rediscovery of the rural with transfor- pane, Tatra Mountains, Poland (2017, and Centrala Gallery, mative qualities of art. In her studio 2019) also initiating an exchange (March 2020); Simple Gestures, BWA work she explores the contradiction between the Tatra Museum and Katowice, Poland (Feb. 2020) and between ‘useful’ and ‘useless’. Grizedale Arts. In 2019 she took part Melancholia, Freud Museum, London She studied sculpture at the Slade in a residency program at the Wlady- (March 2020). School of Fine Art (MA) and slaw Hasior Gallery, Tatra Museum in

LAURA ELDRET [email protected]

Laura Eldret explores social forms Ikon, Birmingham (2013); The Gallery, at Arts University Bournemouth and and works across art forms including Arts University Bournemouth (2012); has guest lectured at RCA, Gold- installation, textiles, performance Baltic Centre for , smiths and UAL. Curatorial experi- and video. Selected exhibitions (2012); and ence includes delivering public art include Karst and The Box, Plymouth Camden Arts Centre, London (2011). and projects for Contemporary Art (2019); Firstsite, Colchester (2018); In 2016 she was shortlisted for the Society (2004-12), and co-founding Turf Projects, Croydon (2017); CCA Vordemberger Prize and awarded a and co-directing CollectingLiveArt Derry, NI (2016); Fig-2, ICA, London Gasworks URRA residency in Bue- (2007–10). In 2019 established More (2015); Focal Point Gallery, South- nos Aires. Than Ponies, a new artist-led pro- end (2015); Drawing Room, London gramme of contemporary art for and/ (2015); South London Gallery (2013); Eldret is a visiting tutor in Fine Art or about the New Forest. 11 CATHERINE ELWES

After a long career in teaching and an international screening exhibition Intellect Books) and has contributed research, Catherine Elwes retired as on themes of landscape. Elwes has to numerous anthologies, journals, Professor of Moving Image Art at written extensively about feminist art, exhibition catalogues and periodicals Chelsea College of Arts in November performance, installation, landscape including Art Monthly, Third Text, 2017. Elwes is also known as a video and the moving image and is author MIRAJ, the Millennium Film Journal, artist and curator, and was active in of Video Loupe (K.T. Press, 2000), Time Out, Independent Media, Per- the feminist art movement in the late Video Art, a guided tour (I.B. Tauris, formance Magazine, Variant, Film- 1970s. She co-curated the exhibi- 2005) Installation and the Moving Im- waves (of which she was an editor), tions Women’s Images of Men and age (Wallflower/Columbia University Vertigo and Contemporary Magazine. About Time at the ICA in 1980 and Press, 2015) and is currently writing was the director of the biennial UK/ Landscape and the Moving Image Canadian Film & Video Exchange (Columbia University Press). Elwes (1998-2006) and co-curator of is Founding Editor of the Moving Figuring Landscapes (2008-2010), Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ,

PAUL FINNEGAN [email protected]

Paul Finnegan is a Fine Art Senior fictional non-human scenarios. His Gallery London, Entwistle Gallery Lecturer at Arts University Bour- current research interests are the his- London and Hamburger Bahnhof, nemouth and a PhD candidate at tory of the depiction of nature in art, Berlin. As a teacher Paul leads an University of Plymouth. His PhD is the relationship between biology and annual undergraduate symposium on practice led and is concerned with aesthetics, and the use of living sys- the theme ‘Cultures of Nature’ and making sculptures that have a dou- tems in contemporary art. Paul has an art/science collaboration with a ble-life for both humans and animals, exhibited internationally in group and medical research lab in Oxford. and films that place sculptures within solo exhibitions, including Lisson

JENNY HOLT [email protected]

Jenny Holt is an artist and docu- everyday activities in the Lake tourism at the alleged location of mentary filmmaker, and an academic District, considering landscape as a Wuthering Heights, the urban/rural at Manchester School of Art, Man- sublime site of beauty and identity as interface of a Halifax housing estate, chester Metropolitan University. well as a commodity which impacts and the play of forces at the high- Her practice is concerned with the on its resident community in multiple est point of the M62 motorway. Her relationship between place-based ways. The film seriesCaught in the recent filmThe Great Bear focuses rhythms of everyday life and pro- Fabric of World explores tensions on young people working in forestry, cesses of film practice, and tensions of place in the South Pennines as a farming, shepherding and logistics between landscapes as ‘worlds of pastoral wilderness tied to Northern in the historically rural landscape vision’ and their dynamic senses of England’s industrial histories, includ- of Northamptonshire. Her work has place. Not Giddy Yet Aerial observes ing landscape experience of Brad- screened at film festivals, in cinemas ford Muslim communities, Bronte and in galleries worldwide.

ANNA SOFIE HVID [email protected]

I am the founder and leader of the we facilitate a diverse and manifold Goldsmiths University. I hold a Diplo- three-person architecture studio Ru- concept of rurality (ruralities) through ma in Fine Art from the Academy of ral Agentur, which is based on a farm our practice? The practice of Rural Fine Arts in Munich and a Bachelor in Jystrup, Denmark. Rural Agentur Agentur was recently on display at in Philosophy from the University of was founded in 2018 with the aim of the Danish Architecture Centre in Vienna. Rural Agentur is based on creating a research-based, transdis- Copenhagen (2019–20). the family farm, Østagergård, which ciplinary architecture practice with is also a social institution for young focus on rurality as a spatial con- I moved from London to Jystrup to people with disabilities. Østagergård cept. Our aim is to work with rurality found the studio in December 2018 is a biodynamic farm which I’m also across areas which are assigned after having finished my Master’s eagerly involved in running next to ‘urban’ or ‘rural’. In all our work we Degree with Forensic Architecture, my architecture practice. are driven by the question: how can Centre for Research Architecture VICTORIA LUCAS [email protected]

The working title for my practice-led ic, set-like constructions that often Williams Contemporary at London PhD is Reclamation Ground: Con- frame imagined characters and nar- Art Fair; Haarlem Artspace, Matlock. structing Heterotopias as Visual Lan- ratives, devised to playfully re-agitate Group shows include Casa Maauad, guage to Revision Power and Agency. the voices of women. Some of these Mexico City; 91mq Gallery, Berlin; A heterotopia describes a place that characters have been created in Millennium Galleries, Sheffield. Com- sits in opposition to its surroundings, response to archival documents, re- missions include a permanent and it is used in the context of my vealing ignored, erased or forgotten touchscreen artwork for the NHS research as a feminist gesture that voices; whilst others resist inaccu- Wilberforce Health Centre in Hull and provides a tangible opportunity to rate, media-derived stereotypes. The a video artwork for the National Por- rupture phallocentric language and works reveal politicised, gendered trait Gallery, London. I am a Senior action. personas, ultimately renegotiating Lecturer at UCLan and a PhD candi- women’s social and psychological date at Sheffield Hallam University. My artistry lies in the reclamation of positions in place. landscape, agency and power. The landscapes I create, mostly in the I have exhibited in solo exhibitions at form of installation, incorporate film- Grizzly Grizzly, Philadelphia; Chiara

FERAL PRACTICE [email protected]

Fiona MacDonald works with hu- Trust Dunham Massey 2020, Ask by Invisible Dust for Whitby. Ask the man and nonhuman beings as Feral ’s Plants: podcasts and Wild with Marcus Coates: participa- Practice to create art projects and BBC Somerset radio broadcast, tory performances at Whitechapel interdisciplinary events that develop commissioned by Somerset Art Gallery, Tate St Ives, Turner Contem- ethical and imaginative connection Weeks Festival 2019. Mycorrhizal porary, Whitstable Biennale 2018. across species boundaries. Their Meditation: presented as a digital Foxing, exhibition 2017 at PEER research draws on artistic, scientific installation at Taipei Biennale 2018, London. Wood to World, exhibitions and subjective knowledge practices Radical Mycology Conference USA, 2015-16: SLBI London, Peacock to explore diverse aesthetics and Intelligent Fungi, NYC, Bánkitó Fesz- Visual Arts Aberdeen, Sevenoaks create suggestive spaces of not tivál Hungary 2019, and as live per- Kaleidoscope . knowing nature. formance at The Bluecoat, UNESCO Paris, commissioned for Finsbury Feral Practice recent projects in- Park by Furtherfield Gallery 2017. clude: Artist in Residence, National Plant Hunting, 2018: commissioned

HARRY MEADOWS [email protected]

Harry Meadows leads Critical Zone through partnerships between can, Southbank Centre and Hayward Observatory, a research framework artists, musicians and scientists Touring, as well as commissions for exploring future landscapes by working creatively with climate data. the Whitstable Biennial, Supernor- challenging the pervasive, determin- Recent projects include Climate Data mal Festival and The Black Maria at istic quality of big data and digitally Karaoke at Kiosk 7, Copenhagen The Granary, Central St. Martins. He rendered visualisations. Working (2020), Mechanical Human Matter has worked as artist in residence at through sculpture, video and partici- (2020) and Digital Ecologies II: Fic- London Metropolitan University, Bra- pation, my practice develops meth- tion Machines, Bath Spa University zier’s Park, Studio36 Spike Island, ods of visualisation and sonification 2019. Mothership and Kiosk7. Since 2014 that aim to extend our visual vocab- he has worked at Arts University ulary of the environment beyond a Since receiving an AHRC award Bournemouth as Senior Lecturer in computer-generated illustration. and completing an MFA at Gold- Fine Art. smiths College he has exhibited Critical Zone Observatory generates with institutions such as The Venice art work and musical performance Biennale of Architecture, The Barbi- COLIN PERRY [email protected]

Colin Perry is a writer and lecturer. graph, titled Radical Mainstream: P3 (2016) on painting, and Vitamin C He is Senior Lecturer at Arts Uni- Independent Film, Video and Televi- (2017) on ceramics. He is the editor versity Bournemouth. His research sion in Britain, 1974-1990 (Intellect, of a number of publications including focuses on artists’ film and video, 2020), examines how avant-garde Biennials and Beyond: Exhibitions documentary and political art forms, and activist cinema and video art that Made Art History: 1962-2002 and how art generates publics. His sought out larger audiences through (Phaidon, 2013) and Uncommon research has been published in television in the 1970s and 1980s. Ground: Land Art in Britain 1966- journals including the Moving Image His journalism and criticism has been 1979 (Hayward, 2013). Review and Art Journal (MIRAJ) and published in a range of magazines, Critical Studies in Television. Recent including Art Monthly, Frieze, Art Re- academic publications include a view and ArtAgenda. Colin’s writing chapter in Other Cinemas (I.B. Tau- appears in numerous volumes on rus, 2017). His forthcoming mono- contemporary art such as Vitamin

LUCY REYNOLDS [email protected]

Lucy Reynolds has lectured and Arts Centre, the Showroom and The published extensively. Her research Grand Action cinema, Paris. She focuses on questions of the moving is editor of the anthology Women image, feminism, political space and Artists, Feminism and the Moving collective practice. She co-ordinates Image, and co-editor of the Mov- the PhD programme for the Centre ing Image Review and Art Journal for Research in Education, Art and (MIRAJ). Media (CREAM) at the University of Westminster, and runs the MRES in Creative Practice. As an artist, her ongoing sound work A Feminist Cho- rus has been heard at the Glasgow International Festival, the Wysing

BEN ROBERTS [email protected]

Ben Roberts is Artistic Director of Independent projects include Brown Brighton CCA. Prior to this role he Mountain College of the Performing was the founding Director of the Arts (2008–10), The Brown Mountain Artists’ Research Centre, supporting Festival (2008); The World Turned interdisciplinary creative research Upside Down: Buster Keaton, Sculp- and production; connecting artists, ture and the Absurd (Mead Gallery researchers and arts audiences. Pre- 2013) curated with Simon Faithfull. viously he was Curator of Education In 2016 he was appointed Associate and Public Programmes at Modern Curator at Central Saint Martins, Art Oxford (2014–16) and Curator of University of the Arts, London Public Programmes at Camden Arts Centre (2004–13).

ROSEMARY SHIRLEY [email protected]

Dr Rosemary Shirley is an Associate nity, Everyday Life and Visual Culture MIT Press 2019). In 2017 she co-cu- Professor in the School of Museum (Routledge 2015). She was a partner rated the exhibition Creating the Studies at the University of Leicester. on the research project: The Rural: Countryside, a large scale exhibition Her research centres on everyday life Contemporary Art and Spaces of at Compton Verney featuring the and visual culture, with a particular Connection, organised by the Whi- work of over 100 artists including emphasis on rural contexts. She techapel Gallery with other partners Gainsborough, Turner, Constable, is interested in how contemporary including the Istanbul Biennial, which Grayson Perry, Ingrid Pollard, Anna artists engage with landscape as culminated in The Rural Assembly Fox, Georgina Barney and Rebecca a place that is lived in rather than conference in 2019. Her writing Chesney, she also co-edited the simply looked at or visited. She has was included in the Documents in accompanying book Creating the published widely on this subject in- Contemporary Art edition Rural, Countryside: The Rural Idyll Past and cluding her monograph Rural Moder- edited by Myvillages (Whitechapel/ Present (Paul Holberton 2017).

JULIAN STALLABRASS [email protected]

Julian Stallabrass is a lecturer, writer, His first book,Gargantua (Verso tion of the art world, and art’s place photographer and curator with a 1996) was about aspects of visual in contemporary culture and soci- particular interest in the relations mass and popular culture. High Art ety. It has been translated into six between art and political issues. His Lite (Verso 1999) remains the only languages. In 2008 Julian curated research and teaching is in areas serious critical and analytical ac- the Brighton Photo Biennial, Memory of modern and contemporary art, count of ‘young British art’. Paris of Fire: Images of War and the War of including the globalisation of art Pictured (2002) is an account of the Images. Materials from the exhibi- and the biennial scene, the history rise and fall of street photography in tions, and essays on the subject and of photography and new media art. the city. Internet Art (Tate 2003) was interviews with photographers were Most recently, he has been working the first book about the subject, and later collected into the book, Mem- on documentary photography, film examined the challenges it presented ory of Fire (Photoworks 2013). His and video, especially in the depiction to the art world and to conventional book, Killing for Show: Photography, of war. He has also been researching critical discourse. Art Incorporated War and the Media in Vietnam and populism in contemporary art and (later updated as Contemporary Art: Iraq will by published by Rowman politics. A Very Short Introduction) (Oxford, and Littlefield later this year. 2004/ 2006) analysed the globalisa-

STANDART THINKING (JAVIER RODRIGUEZ) [email protected]

Standart Thinking is a project led by Thinking links theoretical and practi- Athens; Soil, Soul, Society, Commu- Javier Rodriguez rooted in action cal skills aiming to revitalise nity integration program for Norr- research and education set within traditional knowledge and cultural botten’s regional council, Sweden; a social-ecological framework. heritage in synergy with contempo- Cultural Sustainability in the arctic Standart Thinking aims to promote rary sensibilities. This is facilitated context, Arctic Arts Summit, Univer- practical knowledge and through the formulation of a sity of Lapland; Refinery of cultural understanding, formulating ideas multi-layered critique; spanning di- sustainable practices, Arts Pro- and alternative lines of action that verse activities such as workshops & motion Centre, Finland; Politics of challenge the predominance of rural field-trips, installation, publish- food program at Delfina Foundation, one culture over another, the prece- ing, performance and design. London and contributor to the recent dence of specialized knowledge over publication under the same title. localized knowledge and Recent projects and research in- competition over cooperation. clude: Crafting local ecologies, field- Looking at the intersection of art, work for Berwick Visual Arts, UK; culture and ecology as fundamental Panacea, for Geometries exhibition pillars to activate sustainable supported by the Onassis Founda- development processes, Standart tion and the University of Agriculture, MARINA VELEZ [email protected]

Marina Velez is a multidisciplinary UK and a member of the Dalvazza artist and doctoral researcher based Group at the Swiss Artistic Research in Cambridge. UK. Marina is an Network (SARN). affiliate and visiting lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University, Faculty of Arts, She is also the founder and organiser Laws and Social Sciences and is a of Cambridge Sustainability Residen- tutor at the University of Cambridge, cy, the Sustainability Art Prize and is ICE. She is an associate Artist at the co-editor of the ROAR publication Centre for Contemporary Art and about art and sustainability. the Natural World (CCANW) Devon,

ZOOX [email protected]

Georgie Brinkman and Alex Wight such as musicians, ornithologists Experimental Sound, and a research work under the moniker ZOOX. and botanists. We consider working trip to seek extinct avian populations Through our collaborative projects with rural or island-based commu- on a South Pacific Island as part of a we examine how human interven- nities an important aspect of our residency in Australia. tion in, and perception of, organic practice, and we are particularly environments has been reframed by interested in using artist residencies Alongside their collective work, mediated, technological experienc- as a mode of cultural exchange and Georgie runs a London-based resi- es. We explore this notion through mobility. dency program, The New Flesh, that diverse research avenues, notably explores the intersection of costume in relation to species extinction, an- Recent projects include an ongoing and moving image, and Alex co- imism, colonialism, climate change, AV series with producer Yuki Ame, runs a record label, Sticky Buttons. symbiosis, anthropomorphism, a collaboration with Dr Sosso at the Georgie is currently studying an MA endemism, biomimicry, folklore and London Centre for Nanotechnolo- in Artistic Research at The Royal mythology. Our work is characterised gy, working with an ancient choir in Academy of Art in The Hague. by working with other practitioners, rural Spain as part of a residency in About More Than Ponies

More Than Ponies (MTP) is an artist-led programme of contemporary art projects, performances and interventions. Reimagining and reanimating the New Forest, MTP investigates the many unexpected stories, histories, practices and ecologies of this unique area. An occasional programme that explores ideas of people and place, MTP generate artworks for and about the diverse populations of the New Forest, from tourists and residents to birds and four-leg- ged beasts. Like the animals that live here, MTP is roaming, moving continuously across multiple sites and venues. We aim to look beyond the infamous ponies to discover what makes this such a resonant place today. The pro- gramme is intended to be sometimes big and sometimes small. MTP was initiated by artist Laura Eldret.

The launch program will include commissions by Ox Art, Simon Bayliss, Laura Eldret and Bedwyr Williams.

https://www.morethanponies.info/ https://twitter.com/morethanponies https://www.instagram.com/morethanponies/