COMMUNITY TRANSMISSIONS
How might art futures flourish in a viral world? Community Transmissions is an artist-run initiative that asks ‘so now, what next?’ A digital space for viral thinking, intra-active worlding, utopic experimentation and speculative possibilities as we adapt art practice to an uncertain future.
Created and facilitated by Luna Mrozik Gawler and Ana Tiquia, Community Transmissions was a six week, online residency for live artists based in Australia during COVID lockdown in 2020. Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and The City of Melbourne, the program provided support, stimulus and a digital community to twelve artists exploring ideas of the future arising from, and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic highlighted the fragility of Australia’s arts and cultural sector. This crisis raises existential questions about the future of artistic practice as we face restrictions on how and where work can be made, presented and engaged with. What is the role of the artist in the face of rolling crisis?
In this unfolding social, economic and ecological upheaval, what agency do we have to imagine and create post-pandemic futures? What digital dreams/nightmares/visions has COVID sparked or disrupted? How might we move from states of emergency into states of emergence?
Encouraging the development of new works, collaborations, and initiatives, live artists based in Australia were invited to join us in the experiment as we reimagined/ reconfigure / adapted / dismantled / disrupted / repaired / regenerated art and its expectations to explore future visions of the pandemic imaginary and its bodies/intimacies/ temporalities / velocities / spectres / intimacies / ecologies across all types of research and practice.
Over six weeks, artists in residence developed a range of key questions and projects, whilst engaged in themed workshops, readings and presentations from local and international guest speakers.
At the conclusion of the program new works and works in progress were presented in online exhibition UPLOADING: New Futures in Progress.
You can read more about the project on its website here, and see the instagram here.
CT 2020 ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE:
Mara Erin Staller
Jessie Powell & Angela Louise Burrows
H.Mur & Bigoa Chuol & Arkia WauluWilliam McBride
CT 2020 GUEST SPEAKERS:
Katrina Sedgwick – Director & CEO ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image)
Dr Jaz Hee-jeong Choi – Director Care-Full Design Lab, RMIT University
Ruth Catlow – Artist, Curator, Co-founder & Co-artistic director Furtherfield, UK
Chloé Luchs -Tassé– Plurality University, France
Cherie Minniecon, Futures Practitioner
Emily Sexton – Artistic Director, Arts House
