RADICAL CARE MASTERCLASS SUMMER 2020
With its inaugural program taking place in July 2020, the guiding principle of AfA is that mentorship, solidarity and knowledge exchange are central to the art-making process. AfA describes this principle as a form of radical care – one of many crucial, yet often overlooked strategies for enduring immediate crises, precarious lifeworlds, and unstable futures.
AfA works in the knowledge that radical care is about feeling with others, rather than feeling for others. Moreover, radical care is about working with others, rather than for others. AfA works to achieve this through its masterclass platform, and its peer-to-peer funding structure.
At a time when educational and cultural institutions have closed their doors, AfA bypasses institutional intermediaries – aspiring to open new pathways for guidance and direct lines of communication between established artists (advisors) and those in their early career (participants).
We are very happy to report that our inaugural Radical Care Artists for Artists Masterclass wrapped up on Monday, July 20th. With a suite of lectures from Advising Artists Terike Haapoja, Ahmet Ogut, and Stefanos Tsivopoulos, and six workshops beamed across 17 cities including Manila, Santiago, Tunis, Sydney, New York, and Berlin – the results of the AfA have truly exceeded expectations. We are very excited by the international network and peer to peer support generated, and touched by the impact the program has had on Participating Artists.
AfA Masterclass SUM 2020 Participating artists
We were thrilled by the international interest in our program, and by the strength of applications received from over 30 different countries. The final group consists of 24 exciting international artists working across a broad range of practices, and from diverse backgrounds and geographies:
Orestis Athanasopoulos / Paris; Sophie Chalk / Brisbane & New York; Lara Chamas / Melbourne; Alisa Chunchue / Bangkok; Karin Cuyul / Chonchi, Los Lagos Region; Alkisti Efthymiou / Santiago ; Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson / Perth; Eliza Evans / McMinnville; Zoe Fitzpatrick Rogers / New York; Itamar Gov / Berlin; Gabriel Hensche / Stuttgart & Berlin; Raul Hott / Santiago; Soukaina Joual / Fez; Vishal Kumaraswamy / Bangalore; Josephine Lee / Vancouver; Alfred Marasigan / Manila; Engy Mohsen / Cairo; Hilo Mur / Melbourne; Laura Sofía Pérez / New York; Pernilla Philip / Amsterdam ; Ivan Sikic / New York; Ebun Sodipo / London; Kate Stodart / Narrm, Melbourne; Justine Youssef / Darug Land, Sydney
AfA Masterclass Meet & Greet Session
AfA Masterclass Closing Session
We are humbled by the feedback received from AfA Participating and Advising Artists which has been extremely positive. Comments from artists include:
“What I found really remarkable about this structure, coming from a school environment – being used to being in synthesized safe spaces you need to work at to feel safe…this [AfA] just had that already… I didn’t feel any risk of being completely vulnerable in sharing my work with everyone here.”
Sophie Chalk, Participating Artist
“We can generate meaningful intellectual exchange, collegial exchange without having to raise a huge amount of funds…it allows for people to participate wherever they are and also be more tapped into whatever context they are in…this is a different experience talking with people in their homes and homelands”
Terike Haapoja, Advising Artist
Workshops and Advising Artists
Crucial to the success of AfA Masterclasses was the generosity and ethos of Advising Artists, and the pairing of these Advisors with AfA Participating Artists for workshops. Conducted over six sessions, these workshops consisted of 1 Advising Artist working with 8 Participating Artists. Tackling diverse issues including theoretical approaches, studio/practice constraints, ethical issues, and the legacy of projects, the approach and overarching theme of each AfA workshop was shaped and developed by Advising Artists.
Terike Haapoja: Mediating Political Ecologies
Terike drew carefully considered connections between intersectional theoretical approaches, international art practice, and the work of each participating artist in her workshop. In doing this, Terike established a space of critical engagement and meaningful connection. The collective generosity shared by all in the Mediating Political Ecologies Masterclass leaves a resounding and lasting impression on all involved.
Work by Pernilla Philip
Ahmet Ogut: Artworks Made at Home
With an energy of openness and with characteristic humor, Ahmet drew carefully considered connections between diverse international art practice and the work of individual AfA Artists. Offering individual guidance often drawn from personal experience, Ahmet’s Artworks Made at Home workshop generated a spirit of solidarity and support that leaves a long-lasting impact on AfA Participating Artists.
Work by Raúl Hott
Stefanos Tsivopoulos:
Private Goes Public
With characteristic energy of enthusiasm and encouragement, Stefanos’ Private Goes Public workshop drew a connection between personal/collective experience, diverse contemporary film/art practices, and the theoretical and practice-based concerns of AfA Artists.
Work by Ebun Sodipo
Micro-grants / Peer-to-Peer Funding
The AfA masterclasses generated a novel form of peer-to-peer funding. This was achieved through Participating Artist enrolment fees (50 euro pp) being pooled into a fund that was redistributed by workshop groups autonomously according to criteria decided upon by Participating Artist peers. Inaugural AfA micro-grants were awarded to:
Alisa Chunchue is a visual artist known for her sculpture, mixed-media installation, performance collaboration. Currently living and working in Bangkok, Thailand - her exhibitions include ‘Solo-Sans-Solo’ A.farm, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, ‘Absurdity in Paradise’, Kasseler Kunstverein, Museum Fridericianum , Kassel (2018), ‘Forecast Platform’, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2018).
Mentored by Terike Haapoja and the peers in her AfA group, Chunchue further developed the project The Resonance - a work inspired by the journal of her hospital experience and by reading ‘When Breath Becomes Air’, (a book written by an American neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi). The project was developed as an analogy for written evidence and then interpretatively expressed through artistic practice. The project consists of two main parts: drawing and sculpture.
Vishal Kumaraswamy is a Bangalore based New Media Artist & Filmmaker. He graduated with an MA in Photography from Central Saint Martins, London. Vishal was recently awarded a commission by the Royal College of Art and Furtherfield and will shortly be exhibiting at The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. Working with Advising Artist Ahmet Ogut and AfA peers, Vishal further developed the over-site work during the AfA Masterclass. over-site is a collaborative writing performance examining sites of algorithmic production and the encoding of bias into neural networks. Conducted over video call apps, it brings forward the human biases encoded within the language models used by text-based neural networks.
Filipino artist Alfred Marasigan uses live streaming as a primary medium in his transmedial practice to conduct serendipitous research. He graduated from Kunstakademiet i Tromsø with an MA in Contemporary Art; currently, he is a faculty member of the Ateneo de Manila University’s Fine Arts Department. In AfAs masterclass working with Ahmet Ogut and AfA peers, Marasigan further developed the work ‘Omehen: The Garden as Chronicle and Strategy of Resistance’. The work is an ongoing experimental collaboration that focuses on the creation, maintenance, and survival of a precarious vegetable garden inside a university campus by Ateneo de Manila’s and Lumad Bakwit Schools’ artists, students, faculty, administrators, and staff under an oppressive national regime.
Ebun Sodipo is an interdisciplinary artist working and living in London. Engaging with black study and multiple personal and social archives, they craft an oblique, affective language to narrate their self-construction as a black, trans-femme, African migrant living in the wake of trans-Atlantic slavery. Working within the workshop group of Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Ebun worked with peers to further developed a current work that meditates on feminine and queer images, the marks they have left on, and the desires they produce in my body-mind. The work is an attempt to devise new language to make sense of trans-feminine desire by recalling and connecting with the body-mind of trans-ancestors.
Artists for Artists (AfA) is an educational and funding platform for early career artists.
The Artists for Artists Masterclass program facilitates direct connection between internationally established artists, and those in their early career stages.
The Artists for Artists Funding program operates as a peer-to-peer exchange for the production of new works by artists participating in its programs.
With its inaugural edition taking place in July 2020, the guiding principle of AfA is that mentorship, solidarity and knowledge exchange are central to the art-making process. AfA describes this principle as a form of radical care – one of many crucial, yet often overlooked strategies for enduring immediate crises, precarious lifeworks, and unstable futures.
Artists Terike Haapoja, Ahmet Ogut, and Stefanos Tsivopoulos will be leading the 2020 AfA Masterclass Radical Care as Advising Artists. Each Advising Artist will present a lecture and lead a workshop engaging the theme of radical care as it relates to interdisciplinary practices and diverse themes including ecology, sovereignty, political community, institutional critique, public memory, private space, and labor.
Ahmet Ogut, No Poem Love Its Poet. Video Installation, Modular LED Screen, Found Objects | 2020 | Commissioned by YARAT Contemporary Art Space; Azerbaijan, Baku
We invite early career artists from around the world to take part in the 2020 AfA Masterclass program as Participating Artists. We encourage applications from artists working across disciplines and media, and from diverse backgrounds. Applicants must submit a work-in-progress that is conceptually affiliated to the Masterclass topics developed by the Advising Artists and the broader theme of radical care.
Advising Artists include Terike Haapoja, Ahmet Ogut, Stefanos Tsivopoulos
The AfA Masterclass and Funding programs consist of three key components:
AfA Lectures: Advising Artists will introduce thematics and content of their practice in connection to their forthcoming workshop. Each online lecture is 1 hour long, includes a Q&A session and is delivered via Zoom. All lectures are open to all Participating Artists.
AfA Workshops: A maximum of 8 Participating Artists are assigned to attend the online workshop by one of the Advising Artists. Each Participating Artist presents a work-in-progress for 10 minutes and then receives feedback from the Advising Artist and the rest of the group (a total of 30 minutes per participant). The duration of the workshop is 4 hours.
AfA Funding: It involves peer-to-peer support for the production of new artworks. This is achieved through the enrollment (50 Euro pp) collected from all Participating Artists. These funds are pooled into a ‘development fund’ which is re-distributed to up-to three Participating Artists selected through a voting system. All artists admitted to the AfA Masterclass are automatically eligible for AfA Funding. All Advising Artists volunteer time and expertise.
Exhibition: After the July Masterclass, AfA will continue working with the artists and invest in seeing their works develop, resulting in an online group show that will take place later in October 2020. Curated by Abhijan Toto (Curator, The Forest Curriculum > Bangkok/Seoul) the show will use a unique and inspiring format to expand on the concept of radical care.
Terike Haapoja, Closed Circuit – Open Duration. Nordic Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2013. Photo Ugo Carmeni.
Friday—Sunday
17—19 July 2020
Remote—
Synchronous
Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Alternative Economies An Archive And A Manifesto, 2019. Video, photography, text, performance, architectural installation. Rubin Foundation New York.
Info Masterclass Radical Care:
Artists for Artists (AfA) Masterclasses are provided by Advising Artists Terike Haapoja, Ahmet Ogut and Stefanos Tsivopoulos. With a maximum of 8 participating artists per workshop, AfA will invite a total of 24 applicants. Friday July 17th - Sunday July 19th, 2020 (lectures and workshops will be held in English)
During workshops each participating artist will present a work-in-progress and will receive direct advice by Advising Artist and peers, on conceptual analysis, working methods, research and technical tools, and future steps.
All participating artists will be able to attend lectures provided by Terike Haapoja, Ahmet Ogut and Stefanos Tsivopoulos.
All participating artists have access to the Artists for Artists development fund. Selected through a voting system, the fund supports the production of new art-works and is distributed to up-to three projects.
Works by participating artists will be showcased in the curated group show taking place in October 2020.
Part of AfA’s ecosystem of support is to nurture international networks of artists with aligned artistic practice, building ongoing dialogue, and adding further to a sense of community, solidarity and care.
Masterclass dates: Friday July 17th - Sunday July 19th, 2020 (lectures and workshops will be held in English)
All AfA Masterclass sessions will be held on ZOOM