As cultural producers who hold space for artist residencies, incubators, and exchanges, we are confronted with constraints of all kinds. Responding to the ever-changing conditions of the contemporary world, we must adapt to the limitations encountered and decipher the possible.
In a moment of climate crisis, international pandemic, and political polarization, we are challenged by the limits of place, mobility, and infrastructure. How will we create together when the borders are closed? And when they open, how can we justify transoceanic flights that further destabilize the climate? Yet without these connections across distance and difference — without being embodied in each other’s presence — how are we going to feel together? Can we build community in place by constructing digital infrastructure — networks and video conferencing and online collaboration platforms? With a space of co-creation built, who will we invite to come together and how will they relate to each other?
Together we will wrestle with existing models and contemporary responses to these questions. Join Ellen Pearlman, Jule Phelps and Shamsher Virk for a discussion of these topics — part panel, part round table. We will share ideas, tools, and tactics as a group.
Ellen Pearlman (US): Ellen Pearlman is a new media artist, curator, critic and educator. A Research Fellow at MIT, she is also Co-Founder and Director of ThoughtWorks Arts and a Senior Research Assistant Professor at RISEBA University in Latvia. A Fulbright World Learning Specialist in Art, New Media and Technology, Ellen has been a Vertigo STARTS (EU) Laureate, a Zero1/American Arts U.S. State Department lead artist, and an Alumni Ties (Fulbright) Artist Grantee.
Julie Phelps (US): Julie Phelps is a dancer, performer, curator and creative producer living and working in San Francisco, currently the artistic & executive director of CounterPulse. She intentionally translates herself across multiple public roles because she values hybridity as a solve for dogmatics, maintaining mutable specialization in her creative work. Across all her work, Julie consistently uses the economy (as structure, system, and notion) as a lens for examining, understanding and taking action in life.
Shamsher Virk (US): Shamsher Virk is the executive director of ZERO1. He amplifies the impact of mission-driven organizations with strategic leadership, community engagement, communications, program development, and design. He has worked internationally on four continents, entering new communities with a sustained commitment to inclusive process, responsive adaptation, and shared leadership. Shamsher holds a BA in human ecology from College of the Atlantic.
