Wysing Arts Centre announces Futurecamp residencies

The artists who will be in-residence at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire, across a ten week period, from 9 June to 15 August, include:

Bonnie Camplin (UK)
David Raymond Conroy (UK)
Patrick Goddard (UK)
Daniel Keller (USA)
Rachel Maclean (UK)
Shana Moulton (USA)
Ahmet Öğüt (TR/NL)
Rachel Reupke (UK)
James Richards (UK/D)
Tracey Rose (ZA)

For Futurecamp the artists will live and work from Wysing’s 11 acre rural site. Two artists, David Raymond Conroy and James Richards, will be in-residence for the entire 10 weeks, with the other eight artists joining them for shorter periods and to contribute to a series of public events that explore different aspects of the future. For these events, individuals from outside the arts including academics, philosophers and activists will also make contributions.

Following an Open Call for contributions earlier this year, neuroscientist Luca Lemi and the German arts collective d3signbur3au, and artists Yuri Pattison, Soheila Sohkanvari, Ben Vickers and Jessica Wiesner will also contribute to the events.

The events, which are an intrinsic part of the residencies, will include talks, discussion, screenings, performances and workshops, and will explore different aspects of what the future might hold for us all; from advances in digital technologies, through to changes in the environment and the future of education, gender and politics. The events take place every other Saturday throughout Futurecamp:

14 June, 12–6pm - The Way We Act Now: Psychology and Behaviour in the Digital Age
28 June, 12–6pm - Private vs Public: Activism, Economics and Politics Today
12 July, 12–6pm - The Way We Live Now: Environmental and Social Consequences
26 July, 12–6pm - Alternative Methods: Art and Education
9 August, 12 – 6pm - A Post-Gender World
  

ARTISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES    
Bonnie Camplin
Bonnie Camplin (b. 1970, UK.) broadly describes her work as ‘The Invented Life’, which has included eight years as a para-theatrical producer, director, dancer and performer of experimental club nights in Soho London as well as work across the disciplines of drawing, film and video, performance, music and writing. She has shown in London and internationally and her work has included collaborations with artists Enrico David, Mark Leckey, Lucy McKenzie and Paulina Olowska. She is currently a Lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and was Guest Professor of the Film-Class at Städelschule Frankfurt from 2008 to 2010. Recent projects include a workshop on the metaphysics of surveillance at Hayward Gallery London during Wide Open School (2012) and the solo show No More Car Sick at Cabinet London. She will be presenting new work at the South London Gallery and Liverpool Biennial this year.

David Raymond Conroy
David Raymond Conroy’s (b.1978 Reading, UK) compositions investigate the performance and construction of subjectivity within shared social space. Utilising commercial display strategies and theatrical staging techniques, Conroy assembles products, texts, images and performances that position the idea of faithfulness or fidelity in relation to desire. Central to Conroy’s work is this circular overlapping of production and consumption – how authenticity meets artifice in the formation of the self. Conroy presented the solo project, PPE, or It is spring and I am blind at Modern Art Oxford in 2013, other projects include a solo presentation L’homme qui voulait savoir at GP & N Vallois, Paris, a staged reading Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, (with Andy Holden), ICA, London and Arnolfini and the exhibition A Plea for Tenderness, Seventeen Gallery, London. He lives and works in London.

Patrick Goddard
Patrick Goddard (b.1984, UK) is an artist and writer working in East London, graduating from a Masters at Goldsmiths in 2011. Recent works have taken the form of videos, books, performances and sculpture, all with an emphasis on observational anecdotes or research led articles, often utilising visual games or puns to offset sociological observances. Without becoming politically illustrative, many works explore socio-politically loaded issues from conceptions of evil to class politics, sociology to anarchy, the uncanny to the absurd. Recent and forthcoming shows include Revolver II, Matt’s Gallery, Solo Show, London, (2014); Operation Paperclip, Comic launch and performance at Matt’s Gallery, London, (2014); Open Film, Outpost Gallery, Norwich, (2013); Vanguard, the Jewish Museum, Salonica, (2013); Apocalipstick performance as part of the Art Licks Weekend, (2013); and Dear Serge, The De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill (2013).

Daniel Keller
Daniel Keller's (b.1986 Detroit, USA) wide-ranging output engages with issues at the intersection of economics, technology, culture and collaboration. His current focus of research is on notions of progress, technological disruption and the role of the post-studio 'prosumer imagineer' artist in the global networked economy. As Aids-3D, he has exhibited throughout Europe and the United States since 2006. In 2012 he became Director of Absolute Vitality Inc, a Wyoming based corporation that is used as a "special purpose vehicle", a corporate entity set up to manage ownership of itself and its parts. Along with Simon Denny, he is co-organizer of TEDxVaduz which was held at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein in December 2013. Recent solo exhibtions include eVita, Casa Maauad, Mexico City (2014); 63rd-77th steps, Bari, Italy (2014); Lazy Ocean Drift, New Galerie, Paris (2013); abc, art berlin contemporary, with Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin (2013). He lives and works in Berlin.

Rachel Maclean
Rachel Maclean (b. 1987 Edinburgh, UK) makes videos that combine a multitude of aesthetic and performative tropes from pop videos, YouTube performances and commercials to nursery rhymes, creating day-glo, hyper-real compositions, in which she performs all the characters herself. These works address contemporary identity and consumption in work that could only have been made in today’s ‘post-Internet’ world. Maclean graduated from BA Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art in 2009 which included a student exchange, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Recent and upcoming solo-exhibitions include The Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; Glasgow Film Festival, (2014); I HEART SCOTLAND, as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival and Germs, for Channel 4 Random Acts (2013). Maclean was recently shortlisted for The Jarman Award and is the recipient of the Margaret Tait Award 2013. Rachel Maclean lives and works in Glasgow.

Shana Moulton
Shana Moulton (b.1976 Oakhurst, USA) grew up near Yosemite, California, earned her BA from University of California, Berkeley in Art and Anthropology and her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. Over the past ten years she has been developing her ongoing video/performance series Whispering Pines, in which she plays the role of ‘Cynthia’, a middle age woman, who is both a fictional figure and the artist's alter ego. Moulton has had solo exhibitions or performances at The New Museum, SFMOMA, MoMA P.S.1, Performa 2009, The Kitchen, Electronic Arts Intermix, Art in General, The Andy Warhol Museum, The Palais De Tokyo in Paris, The Migros Museum in Zurich and the Times Museum in Guangzhou. She is a featured artist at Electronic Arts Intermix and Art21 and teaches art at The Kunstakademie Münster. Shana Moulton lives and works in New York and Munich.

Ahmet Öğüt
Ahmet Öğüt (b.1981 Diyarbakir, Turkey) is a socio-cultural initiator, mediator, artist, negotiator and lecturer, whose work addresses social situations, communications, and recently, alternative forms of educational and institutional systems. Working across a variety of media, Öğüt's recent institutional solo exhibitions include Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto (2014), Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina (2013), Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Stuttgart (2012) and SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul (2011). He has taught at the Dutch Art Institute, Netherlands (2012), Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Finland (2011 and 2013), Yildiz Teknik University, Turkey (2004-2006), amongst others. Ögüt was awarded with the Visible Award for The Silent University (2013) and he co-represented Turkey at the 53rd Venice Biennale together with Banu Cennetoğlu (2009). Ahmet Öğüt lives and works in Istanbul.

Rachel Reupke
Rachel Reupke (b.1971, UK) works primarily with the moving image. Recent videos deal with the idea of worry – worry about health, money, social status, relationships etc. She is interested in the exploitation of worry for marketing purposes and how it is represented within the context of commercial image production. She is also interested in the difference between an explicit illustration of a worry and the counterpart depiction of a fantasy life without that worry. Recent screenings include Assembly: A Survey of Recent Artists’ Film and Video in Britain 2008–2013 at Tate Britain (2014); Getting In at South London Gallery and Flatness: Cinema after the Internet at Oberhausen Film Festival (2013). She was awarded a FLAMIN production award from Film London in 2011 and the resulting film Wine & Spirits was shown at Cell Project Space, London in 2013. She is currently working on a new performance commission for Whitstable Biennale. Rachel Reupke lives and works in London.

James Richards
James Richards (b. 1983, Cardiff, UK) works primarily between moving image, sound and sculpture, often merging these forms within individual works to interrogate the experience of what it is to view and be viewed. He creates collages using images and sound, taken from a range of sources – such as viral web video footage, mainstream cinema, experimental music and intimate video portraits of friends – to address the cultural and emotional resonance of moving image. Richards was a 2012 recipient of the Derek Jarman award and participated in the LUX Associate Artists Programme in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions include The Screens, RODEO, Istanbul (2013); James Richards at CCA Kitakyushu, Japan (2012); and Not Blacking Out, Just Turning the Lights Off at Chisenhale Gallery, London (2011) and Tate Britain (2010). He lives and works in Berlin and London.

Tracey Rose
Tracey Rose (b.1974 Durban, South Africa) works with performance, film and photography to make work that addresses the complexity of gender, sexuality and racial identities, usually performing as multiple characters, allowing her to play with the ambiguity that this creates. Rose has had solo presentations in South Africa, as well as in Europe and the Americas, has been featured in major international events such as the Venice Biennale in 2001 and group exhibitions such Africa Remix (2005), Hayward Gallery, London. Tracey Rose: Waiting for God, the artist’s mid-career retrospective, was held at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (2011) and Bildmuseet, Umeå University, Sweden, (2012). In 2006, she was named one of the 50 greatest cultural figures to emerge from Africa by The Independent newspaper in London, UK. She currently has a solo exhibition at the Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid including a newly commissioned film made in the city and around the museum. Tracey Rose lives and works in Durban, South Africa.

EVENT ABSTRACTS

Saturday 14 June, 12 – 6pm
The Way We Act Now: Psychology and Behaviour in the Digital Age
Behaviour and human interactions have been radically affected and changed by the impact of the digital and Internet revolutions – causing dramatic changes that we are still living through. The pleasure of our networked lives is played out publicly via social networks of image and text, and the immediate access to information and entertainment this enables is now considered essential. However, the anxiety caused by living in this network of constant communication mean many of us work all hours of the day via smart phones and tablets. Alongside this, our emotions are now instrumentalised via technology and the virtual world and we experience relationships and emotions through a screen.

Saturday 28 June, 12 – 6pm
Private vs Public: Activism, Economics and Politics Today
The relationship between the economy, politics and the way we are governed, is irrevocably intertwined and the future of one cannot be considered without the others, in today’s age of late-capitalism. In conjunction with this, there is both a culture of apathy and an ongoing appetite for extreme activism and protest, alongside more public talk of change, or even revolution, being necessary for society to continue. The ability to forecast what may happen to the economy accurately, will affect political thought and models, whilst widespread public dissatisfaction urges people towards more extreme viewpoints. Alongside this, the prevalence of surveillance via digital and drone technology creates a culture of secrecy and fear and needs to be questioned openly.

Saturday 12 July, 12 – 6pm
The Way We Live Now: Environmental and Social Consequences
The environments we live in, be they man-made or natural, are essential to our future development and possibly survival. The design and construction methods of the places and space’s we inhabit affect our physical and psychological experience by framing the way we live, alongside their long-term sustainability and impact on the environment; therefore, are inextricable from the social, political and environmental eco-systems we inhabit. The increasing lack of affordable socially and economically viable alternatives has led to many people being unable to sustain a reasonable standard of living. As such, what are the alternative ways of living and who will propose and instrumentalise these?

Saturday 26 July, 12 – 6pm
Alternative Methods: Art and Education
Art education has become an urgent issue, at both secondary and university level, due to cuts in funding and the politics and public discussion surrounding its relevance to society. As such, the formal routes for education and engagement with art are failing, and access is becoming socially and economically more divided than ever. Artists have long created alternatives to the established institutions and methods. However, recently there has been a resurgence in this form of activity and discussion, in part in response to the general need, but also in relation to more specific questions of social and economic access for different parts of society and culture.

Saturday 9 August, 12 – 6pm
A Post-Gender World
Is there a future in which humans can, and will want to, move beyond the biological and social constructions of gender? The ever increasing mediatisation of life has created a form of self-objectification unlike ever before, for both men and women. However, the discussion surrounding the presentation of girls and women has led to a heated public debate and a dramatic resurgence of feminist discourse within the media and public sphere. Within this, the consideration of the discourse surrounding gender identity, in its broadest sense, seems lacking, as the complexities of social and philosophical interpretations of how gender is formed and enacted, are marginalised within the main-stream.

*******
For further information please contact:
Mark Searle, Wysing Arts Centre
01954 718881 [email protected]

WYSING ARTS CENTRE develops new ways to support artists and enables art and ideas to engage a wide range of people in unexpected ways. Wysing’s large rural site near Cambridge comprises artists’ studios, education and new media facilities, a gallery and project spaces, a 17th century farmhouse and outdoor sculptures and structures. Wysing offers a unique environment for art to be developed and presented; with an ongoing and innovative artistic programme of events, exhibitions, retreats and residencies; and a unique programme for young artists.
_______________________________________________________________