Occasional Groundwork

Plankton seen through microscope in Seili, Archipelago Research Institute, Finland Sept-20. Photo Jussi Virkkumaa, New Performance Turku and CAA
Occasional Groundwork

Occasional Groundwork is an alliance of three European biennials EVA (Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art), GIBCA (Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Sweden), and LIAF (Lofoten International Art Festival, Norway) that are each concerned with re-proposing the model of the international art biennial. Seeking a rooted infrastructure for the production and dissemination of contemporary art, Occasional Groundwork serves as a peer group for thinking-through the existing and speculative frameworks of organisational practice.

Groundings

The first initiative of Occasional Groundwork is Groundings – a series of co-commissioned texts by writers, artists, curators, and academics, exploring themes of internationalism, sustainability, audience, and infrastructure within the context of the contemporary art biennial and the shift in conditions imposed by the ongoing pandemic.

Groundings#1: Time to Take Time to Get Grounded by Taru Elfving

Groundings #2: Composing the Near And the Far by Grégory Castéra

Groundings #3: Reflecting on Reflections; Speculating on Speculating, All At Once — Dr Omar Kholeif

Groundings #4: Rebecca O’Dwyer, Somewhere and Nowhere At All, 2022

Groundings #5: Dylan Huw, Fire and Fire and Fire

Groundings #6: Eszter Szakács, Create It To Make It: But What Can An International Alliance Do?

Groundings #7 – Olivia Berkowicz & Amanda Ferrada Making new worlds: considering internationalism from sites of local knowledge production

Olivia Berkowicz is a curator, writer and editor. Her practice explores the intersection of critical studies and contemporary art theory. She is interested in vocabularies and practices which challenge modernist-colonial principles of exhibition histories, art production, and collaborations. Together with Marianna Feher, she organises Tentative Transmits (2020-2022), a discursive radio project investigating the ‘former East’, supported by the artistic research funding of the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and the Swedish Arts Council. She is a former fellow of the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. Amanda Ferrada holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Entrepreneurship. She is currently working as project manager and coordinator for outreach work at the contemporary art museum Grafikens Hus. Stockholm. Ferrada’s focus of interest is cultural policy issues on diversity and inclusion within the context of the arts and cultural sector. She is currently working as a cultural strategist for the Public Art Agency’s Contemporary Art Days programme. She has written for numerous magazines and journals, including Konstnären magazine, Brand, Fempers, Kvinnotryck, and APLACE.

Groundings #8 – Ben Eastham Frictions

Ben Eastham is a writer and editor, currently editor-in-chief of art-agenda, the division of e-flux devoted to contemporary art criticism. He is the author of The Imaginary Museum (Harper Collins, 2020) – a speculative fiction about the way that material culture shapes individual and collective identities – and the editor of numerous books including including Luis Camnitzer: One Number Is Worth One Word (Sternberg/e-flux, 2020), Fabio Mauri: Before or After, at the Same Time(Hauser & Wirth, 2019), and The White Review Anthology (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017). His writing has been published in ArtReview, frieze, the London Review of Books, the New York Times, Mousse, the Times Literary Supplement, and many other publications.

Groundings #9 – Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars & Nick Thurston Public co-learning tools: a meta-politics of the simple for postdigital infrastructure

Valeria Graziano is a media theorist, activist, and (together with Marcell Mars) is convenor of the international project Pirate Care, which fosters a transnational network of activists, researchers and practitioners against the criminalization of solidarity and for a common care infrastructure. Marcell Mars is co-founder of the shadow library network Memory of the World and head of the development team behind the Sandpoints publishing platform. Nick Thurston is a writer and artist who has written extensively on DIY publishing and open access arts resources, in magazines and journals including Frieze and Art Monthly.