short residencies

Short residencies

From the open call and brief

PS² offers artists and creative practitioners its space for a series of short, 2-3 daylong residencies in January and May 2019.
Used for exhibition, performance, research, office, hide out, craft workshop, studio, cinema, meeting place, museum, living room, sound studio, rehearsal room, kitchen, shop, gym, observatory or more, the space will change in a fast turnaround, giving exposure to anything creative.

PS² will provide
-its space
-equipment: data projector/ tvs/media-dvd players/ boards/ internet /tool box/ coffee machine…
-practical assistance and invigilation
-web presence
-small fee. Unfortunately we are very limited to contribute to any travel costs or accommodation.

Please send your short proposal (max 200words) + max 3 images or links in one PDF (not more than 2MB) to pssquared[at]btconnect.com

PS² has initiated similar projects in the past, giving artists and non-artists the chance to realise and test a project idea and open it to the public: 9-5 residency, 2009 and Rehearsal room, 2013/14.

Part 1

07–27 January 2019
Jan McCullough, Utopia Ducks, Janie Dogherty, Izzy McEvoy, Rory Buckley, Henry Bradley

Part 2

06 May–01 June 2019
Justine McDonnell, Clare Gallagher, Áine O'Hara, Susan Hughes, Jane Walker, Soft Fiction Projects (Emily McFarland, Alessia Cargnelli), The Warzone Collective, Jordan Hutchings, Ella Bertilsson & Ulla JuskeMay residencies 15–6

RESIDENCY 15

Jordan Hutchings - Trapping cosmic rays

Thursday 30 May–Saturday 01 June

For Jordan Hutchings the short residency is a testing ground for a project that was never given proper exposure. To date it has only been seen as part of an online review by the art critic Slavka Sverakova.

'Since the body of work has not been seen collectively nor in a physical setting I would like to print a number of images from the series and display them in the space provided. There is an ephemeral nature inherent of the work that I would like to explore. What interests me is the scale and the medium used and I would like to experiment with this.'

RESIDENCY 14

Ella Bertilsson & Ulla Juske - WhatsApp conversations

Tuesday 28–Wednesday 29

PARTICIPANTS WANTED!

Tuesday/ Wednesday 28 and 29 May!

Ella Bertilsson and Ulla Juske are filming people doing readings of their script on Tuesday the 28th and Wednesday the 29th of May between 10.00-16.00 and would love to get people involved! They are asking people to come in for 30 minutes’ slots each. It will take place in PS² as part of the short residency program. Wigs are available to use, they are kindly asking people to dress in happy, poppy, bright and colourful over-the-top type of clothes. Please respond to email only bertilssonjuske@gmail.com if interested to participate.
The reading will take place on both days from 10am-4pm

Ella Bertilsson (SWE/IRE) and Ulla Juske (EST/IRE) use conversation as the generative ground to produce narrative-driven, multidisciplinary work which uses symbolism, staging and sound to produce a mood of absurdity and unresolved suspense explored through performance, installation and video. They are exploring the narrative of every-day life through an unfiltered continuous dialogue. The artist duo has developed a script based on an archive of 650 pages of our personal WhatsApp conversations from 07/02/2016-21/10/2018. In this work, they are exploring the political argument from the second-wave feminist movement that the personal is political. The connections between personal experience and larger social and political structures are constantly evident in the text as it portrays two foreign women living in Ireland dealing with contemporary issues.

In this work, we are exploring the political argument from the second-wave feminist movement that the personal is political. The connections between personal experience and larger social and political structures are constantly evident in the text as it portrays two foreign women living in Ireland dealing with contemporary issues

The performance will be open to the public for eight hours a day.
The performances will be infront of  a stage-like set and with the use of different costumes, wigs and props to evoke curiosity with the audience.
Ella Bertilsson and Ulla Juske both have their individual arts practice and work collaboratively see ullaellaullaellaullaella

RESIDENCY 13

The Future Was (AND IS) Punk - The Warzone Dialectogram Project—Jim Donaghey, Billy Woods, and The Warzone Collective

Saturday 25–Sunday 26

The Warzone Dialectogram Project has been a process of creative ethnographic research by Jim Donaghey (Queen’s University Belfast) and the Warzone Collective. Warzone, a punk anarchist collective active since the 1980s, were evicted from their most recent social centre on Little Victoria Street in September 2018, as another victim of gentrification in Belfast.
The dialectogram is an A0 floorplan-style diagram of that space, annotated with notes and quotations, illustrated with drawings, comic strips, and graffiti reproductions. The large, dense image functions as a social history of the Warzone Centre, while encouraging a critique of their cultural activism with a view to opening a new space.

The dialectogram will be the centre-piece, supplemented with graffiti by Collective members, and 24 portrait photographs taken at the Warzone Centre by Billy Woods.

A series of events is proposed to recreate (a taste of) the life of the Warzone Centre: ‘Hangover’ craft and vegan food market; activist meeting; DJs playing music by Warzone bands; film screenings detailing the early history of Warzone. The dates suggested coincide with ‘Dancing With The Fallen Fest 2019’, hosted by Warzone at nearby music venue, Voodoo, with an invitation to festival-goers to visit the exhibition.

RESIDENCY 12

Soft Fiction Projects - Pop-Up Shop (Emily McFarland, Alessia Cargnelli)

Thursday 23 - Friday 24

As part of the 2 day residency Soft Fiction Projects – an artist run publishing imprint based in Belfast – will test the idea of a pop-up shop for the production and distribution of a publication and launch a selection of short artist editions.

Soft Fiction Projects is a collaboration between Emily McFarland and Alessia Cargnelli.

PS²' s shop front will be used to launch the first publication in a series, the first titled ‘DORIS’ with
contributions from artists; Rosa Barba, Aideen Doran, Jacqueline Holt, Rosie O'Grady, Valentina Roselli, Anahita Razmi and Sofia Silva; alongside new limited edition tote bags and digitally knitted posters created in partnership with a Belfast based textile artist.
During the residency the artists will also simultaneously use their time to put together their newest publication ideas and designs based on a series of workshops they have facilitated since November 2018.

RESIDENCY 11

Jane Walker - The Meaning of Line in Space

Monday 20–Wednesday 22
Open: Wednesday 12-5pm

Jane Walker wants to look at the meaning of lines in space, at implications such as barring a way, guiding vision, creating an entry point. Like a stage set where people imagine, act and move. The lines will be under different tensions and made with materials that are not usually art materials. Picking up on sound and vibration, she aims to look at extending visual art in this direction. The lines will connect things creating an image of connections between the many different surfaces that there are in the project space.

RESIDENCY 10

Susan Hughes - flipping through my memory catalogue

Thursday 16–Saturday 18
Open Thursday 6–8pm and Fri–Sat 12–4pm

Her fiddle playing has always informed her practice as a visual artist through the relationships she build and the experiences she glean from learning tunes. It is this dialogue Susan Hughes wishes to explore in her residency. 

'I propose to play a fiddle tune from my repertoire of traditional music (Irish, Appalachian, Norwegian) tailored to individual gallery visitors. I would place myself in residence in the space and invite people to engage in a short dialogue with me where I will chat to them while mentally flipping through my memory catalogue of tunes to find a tune that fits my experience of them. And then I will perform the tune for them. The link may be explicit and obvious or it may be tentative and abstract. Time devoted to each person can go from 1 minute, to a long afternoon, depending on demand. Flow charts of references leading to the selected tune will be populated and given as a memento to take away. Then they can look up the tune in the future if they wish. The music will provide a solid foundation where unexpected conversations and connections may reveal themselves, where there will be a space for celebration and vulnerability.'

RESIDENCY 9 

Áine O'Hara - Political History of Gaelic Games

Monday 13–Wednesday 15
Open Tuesday 6–8pm and Wednesday 12–4pm

Áine O'Hara is developing a series of works investigating the political history of Gaelic Games in Ireland. This work is rooted in her love of both GAA and art and is an exploration of the preconceptions and often misconceptions we have about people who love sport. She is particularly interested in the parallels of Gaelic Games and activism in Ireland both historically and in recent years.
Áine O'Hara has been contacting clubs all over the country and wants to expand her research to Northern Ireland especially as this year the GAA launched a five year plan to increase engagement across Belfast. She will use the residency to interview players, film these interviews and create live performances in response.

RESIDENCY 8

Clare Gallagher - The Second Shift

Thursday 09–Saturday 11
Open Thursday 6–8pm and Saturday 12–4pm

The Second Shift by Clare Gallagher is the term given to the hidden shift of housework and childcare primarily carried out by women on top of their paid employment. It is physical, mental and emotional labour which demands effort, skill and time but is unpaid, unaccounted for, unequally distributed and largely unrecognised. Hidden in plain sight and veiled by familiarity and insignificance, the second shift is largely absent from photographs of home and family. This work is an attempt to recognise the complexity and value of this invisible work; it is also a call for resistance to the systems and structures which ignore it. 

'I have been working on this series since 2014, giving talks and workshops on the subject of photographing home. Having been working in video for the first time I want to explore ways of incorporating projection into the presentation of the work. I am publishing the series as a photobook in autumn 2019 thanks to a Jelgavas Tipografija & Backlight Photo Festival prize and support from Ulster University.'

It Clings To Me Like a Leech is concerned with the second shift – the term given to the hidden shift of housework and childcare primarily carried out by women on top of their paid employment. It is physical, mental and emotional labour which demands effort, skill and time but is unpaid, unaccounted for, unequally distributed and largely unrecognised.

Hidden in plain sight and veiled by familiarity and insignificance, the second shift is largely absent from representations of home and family. This work is an attempt to recognise the complexity and value of this invisible work; it is also a call for resistance to the systems which ignore it.

‘Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition. The clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.’
de Beauvoir

‘I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes – and six months later you have to start all over again.’ 
Rivers

‘And what’s worse is that all of it, all of this work that I shouldn’t be doing, is taking place in the one place I shouldn’t have to be doing work at all: in fact, the one place I come to get away from work. It is taking place at home.’
Hollis

‘In 2016, the value of the UK’s unpaid household service work was estimated at £1.24 trillion…; overall unpaid household service work was equivalent to 63.1% of gross domestic product (GDP).’ 
Office for National Statistics

RESIDENCY 7

Justine McDonnell - You Repeat Your Never Ending Soundtrack

Monday 06–Wednesday 08

Justine McDonnell will further develop a sound installation that will culminate in the staging of a live work. She is currently testing a fragmented narrative using analogue answering machines and a range of analogue and audio equipment in the creation of a new narrative space. 

With a particular focus on the physicality of the voice, the work will explore externalising an inner dialogue. Elements of scripting and staging will be used to unravel the female voice in a choreographed and overlapping sequence, sometimes conversing with another, rupturing a linear narrative sequence.

short residencies, part 1

07–27 January 2019

Opening hours/ public events varies with each project

For the first part of the short residencies programme in PS² we received 36 proposals, more than we expected and far more than we could host. Many of them were outstanding and we had to make a selection what we thought might work best in the short time and also reflecting the diversity of approaches, themes and media forms.

RESIDENCY 1

Jan McCullough - 3D objects

Monday 07–Wednesday 09

Jan McCullough will explore some technical ideas in the large space. With some leftover scraps from the Vision Board parties she recently had as a subject, she plans to blow up shapes very big and see what they are like as 3D objects.

RESIDENCY 2

Utopia Ducks (Bernadette Hopkins and Rebecca Strain) - Climate action

Thursday 10–Saturday 12 January

The two artists from Donegal, Bernadette Hopkins and Rebecca Strain came together to form an inter-generational collaboration. With a shared concern about inequality, social justice and the environment they recognize these global issues in their local context. With their actions they draw attention to the impacts, facilitate dialog and communality. In 2018 Utopia Ducks delivered five live art events in the Donegal area that addressed and questioned decision making that had a direct affect on the environment and food production.
Utopia Ducks will use the short residency to infiltrate the media and make use of the imagery and texts generated during these events.

Thursday, 10 January, 6pm: creative social activism in the rural.
Presentation and talk by Utopia Ducks - all welcome.

Saturday 12 January, 12pm and throughout the afternoon, Royal Avenue
Parade of waterfowl / action on the climate crisis.

12 January: action on the climate crisis, Corn Market.

For Duck’s Sake!!!

On Saturday 12 January, an artist duo are staging a parade of waterfowl on Belfast's Royal Avenue to highlight the urgent need for action on the climate crisis. A brace of ducks will waddle through the city guided by the artists.The duo who call themselves Utopia Ducks have been creating public art events that honour the natural environment and highlight climate injustice. 

“humans are the most destructive life force on the planet yet we believe we also possess within us the strength to make a positive change so that we and future generations can continue to thrive in peace and harmony. Utopia is here, it's just ducking down behind exploitation and injustice”
Utopia Ducks

Utopia Ducks are a collaboration of two female visual and performance artists, Rebecca Strain and Bernadette Hopkins based in Donegal. They are politically aware artists who engage in activism and bring their embodied knowledge as women to radically imagine and momentarily interrupt the everyday through performance art.
Utopia Ducks create utopian spaces outside the gallery space, engaging local communities and offering new possibilities.
‘Our physical location in Co. Donegal can be seen as rural, a land’s end and a periphery, while our lived experience is rooted in ‘think globally, act locally’
They work and live in impoverished communities who feel left behind by government and where employment is welcomed. Discussion such as damage to the natural environment by corporations, tends to conflict with the reality of poverty in everyday life. They research the experiential sense of place and ways in which communities can have governance in the place they live while preserving local culture and protecting their environments and food production. Utopia Ducks was conceived as a way to engage as artists embedded in communities, given the global condition of political, environmental and economic instability.
Utopia Ducks
Birds with Aspirations
January 2019

RESIDENCY 3

Janie Dogherty - Rehearsals for 'Politics of Comfort

Sunday 13–Friday 18 January

Janie Dogherty, one of our  Freelands artists, will use he space to test work in a larger sized space.

RESIDENCY 4 

Izzy McEvoy - projections and mushroom growkits

Saturday 19–Monday 21 January

Izzy McEvoy will build an installation using multiple monitors, projections and mushroom growkits. Based on her recent research of closed circuits in psychological, spatial and and art historical terms, she will use herself as a starting point to examine isolation, mental health and cognitive therapy.

RESIDENCY 5

Rory Buckley - Ball Tracks

Tuesday 22–Thursday 24 January

Rory Buckley perceives the city landscape as a marble run. A rolling, bright yoga ball captures the urban anatomy and structure, exploring the elevated city spaces of Belfast. Captured on camera, this playful mapping research will result in an audiovisual installation of the ball track footage

RESIDENCY 6

Henry Bradley - Scriptwriting: Interviews with a puppeteer

Friday 25–Sunday 27 January

In the summer of 2018 Henry Bradley undertook a residency with the cultural organisation Resina in the city of Ferrara, Italy. Whilst there he began research for a new media installation that uses animation, live actors and animate and inanimate objects. The project saw him focus on the Montedison’s (the petrochemical plant in Ferrara) history of plastic production, specifically Polypropylene, the second most used plastic in the world today.

To enter into the geo-politics of this material Polypropylene, the artist began working with an Italian puppeteer named Vittorio Zanella of whom’s father, Giuseppe, was involved in the development of Polypropylene. On the residency Henry Bradley produced a series of interviews with the puppeteer, asking him to recount the stories of fathers in­volvement with the material, and explain his personal subsequent rejection of plastic in his work whereby he only uses wooden or metal puppets.

For the Short Residency at PS² Henry propose to use the time and space to produce a finished script from these interviews, alongside working with an animator to prepare the image of the animated puppet that will narrate it. This would be in preparation for the production of the finished video in March 2019.