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OPEN CALL: SGSAH Researcher in Residence

A dot of light is caught on the palm of an open handImage: Yvette Bathgate, Summer Residency 2018.

Deadline for applications: Monday 16 September 2019

The ecological crisis demands more, rather than less, attention to material processes that constitute our world – in ways that build upon but push beyond existing political-economic frames – (Carr, 2016)[1]

Makers work in a world that does not stand still – (Ingold 2010)[2]

We are much better at admitting that humans infect nature than we are at admitting that non-humanity infects culture, for the latter entails the blasphemous idea that nonhumans—trash, bacteria, stem cells, food, metal, technologies, weather—are actants more than objects – (Bennett 2009)[3]

Project description

We are looking to work with a ‘Researcher in Residence’ (from across the spectrum of arts, humanities and social sciences) to support the development of learning at SSW. Within our residential workshop facility, artists entangle their making/ material practices with the wider ecological social-economic and political concerns of our rural locale, bringing diverse approaches and practices together through residency, open access and artist-led projects.

Projects such as Turf to ToolsFrontiers In Retreat and Into The Mountain have aligned artists’ activities in the workshops and studios with explorations of ecological (un)learning, multi-species discourse and material knowledge. The overlaps and tensions between the making skills we foster, developed through extractive, industrial processes (and associated material knowledges), and the skills needed to ‘stay with the trouble’[4] are brought to the fore in many of these projects. These are important areas of exploration at SSW as we develop our workshop facilities and emerging learning programmes in the coming years.

In particular we are interested in working with a researcher in a hands-on manner within the workshops to explore:

  • How a multi-species discourse informs future material practices and pedagogies
  • How we support the cultivation of vital skills needed to make, repair and repurpose in a future with limited resources
  • Making as a means for relationship building
  • How our rural open-access workshop can inform the autonomy of its communities and the possibility for these communities to to exist outside hegemonic governance models

We would hope that the Researcher in Residence is interested in working with a range of staff and users at SSW to inform their outcomes in whichever form they may take.

How to apply

Apply for this residency via the SGSAH website.

DETAILS

This residency is funded through the SGSAH Artist Residency programme. The programme is open to arts and humanities PhD students in Scotland, regardless of funding source. Any doctoral researcher that meets the criteria as outlined on the SGSAH website can benefit from this programme.

To support project activity, the selected researcher will receive:

  • 3 month’s residency at Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Lumsden. The timeline for this residency is flexible and can be taken in a 3 month block, or over several shorter visits depending on the researcher’s schedule and requirements.
  • Funding at the current UKRI stipend rate of £14,553 (pro rata), for the duration of the residency.
  • Simple, shared accommodation throughout the residency period.

Timeline

The residency will take place ideally between Monday 18 November 2019 – Friday 20 March 2020.

Access

We are happy to discuss how we can support artists/researchers with children to access this residency.

If you have any specific access requirements you would like to discuss please contact us prior to making an application. Information on disabled access at SSW can be found here. If you have any questions please contact SSW Programme & Communications Manager, Jenny Salmean: jenny[at]ssw.org.uk

References

[1]Chantel Carr/ Christopher R. Gibson (2016), Geographies of making: rethinking materials and skills for volatile futures, University of Wollongong.

[2]Tim Ingold (2013), Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, Routledge.

[3]Jane Bennett (2010), Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Duke University Press.

[4]Donna Haraway (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, Duke University Press

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