On the 8th and 9th of November, we celebrate the wrap up of the TALES OF CARE AND REPAIR project. Sharing with you our learnings, views, stories, declarations and journey over the last 10 months (Feb-Nov 2021). Reaching out to our collaborators, colleagues, project partners and inspiring repair practitioners, scholars, designers, makers and menders from across the global, we invite you to join the conversation, which will run online during the second week of COP 26, that is the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference, which will be held in the city of Glasgow, Scotland, between 31 October and 12 November 2021.
Registration:
Event is free but registration necessary via Eventbrite.
Agenda: Tuesday 9th Nov 2021
12.15-12.30: Welcome & Orientation
12.30-13.30: Repair Conversation 5: Repair Economies: Francisco Martínez, Tallinn University & Nicolas Nova, Geneva School of Arts and Design: Moderator Teresa Dillon
13.30-13.45: Break & Online showreel: TALES OF CARE & REPAIR
13.45-14.45: Repair Conversation 6: The Community Repair Movement: James Pickstone, Restart & Pedro Belasco, International Development Innovation Network: Moderator Fred Paulino
14.45-15.00: Break & Poster Exhibition: Marta Celio & BA Graphic Design Students, University of the West, Repair Declaration
15.00-16.00: Repair Conversation 7: The Politics & Aesthetics of Repair: Linda Brothwell, Artist & Aishwarya Tipnis, Architect: Moderator Ravi Agarwal
16.00-16.15: Break & Online Exhibition: Marta Celio & BA Graphic Design Students, University of the West
16.15-17.15: Repair Conversation 8: Reflections on Tales of Care & Repair from the Ground-Up: Teresa Dillon, Ravi Agarwal & Fred Paulino: Moderator Alma Clavin
17.15-17.30: Break & Online Mingle
17.30-18.30: Repair Conversation 9: Temporalities of Repair: Steve Jackson: Moderator Teresa Dillon
18.30-19.00: Closing Online Drinks & Mingle
Exhibition: A Thing of Beauty, London. This year, the City of London Corporation’s Outdoor Arts Programme presents A Thing of Beauty, commemorates the bicentenary of the death of the poet John Keats and celebrating beauty, which was a recurring motif in his work. The season will focus on beauty, love and truth, exploring these concepts through the lens of art, nature and relationships and addressing themes of diversity, the environment and sustainability. As part of this exhibition, TALES OF CARE & REPAIR has been selected by the British Council, Creative Commission team to be one of the selected projects that will be showcased as part of a street exhibition. Running from the 1 November to early December the exhibition will take place across three central London locations: Paternoster Square, Aldgate Square and Guildhall Yard.
Speaker and Moderator Biographies
Alma Clavin is an urban geographer and social sciences researcher in the School of Geography, University College Dublin. Over the last two decades Alma has worked for a number of public, private and non-governmental organisations in Ireland and the UK on community planning, energy and sustainability issues with a focus on grassroots practices and the relationship between green areas, health and wellbeing in densely populated urban areas. While this work is primarily rooted through the discipline of Geography, it’s interdisciplinary in practice, drawing on the fields of art, architecture, planning and design. From 2019-2021 Alma coordinated the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – a funded collaborative action research project, creating a community-led greening strategy in Dublin city and is currently undertaking a project funded by the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) to examine place based approaches for Just Transitions. This work focuses on how we can create decent work and quality of life as we move to a low carbon economy. In collaboration with Teresa Dillon, Alma is the receipt of a Creative Ireland, Climate Action grant (Sept 2021-Dec 2022), which focuses on past, present and futures repair histories, narratives and imaginaries in Ireland.
Aishwarya Tipnis is an award winning architect, educator and heritage conservationist based in New Delhi. In 2016, her work was recognised by the UNESCO Award for Heritage Conservation in the Asia-Pacific Region and in 2018 she was conferred Chevalier Des Arts et Des Lettre (Knight of the Arts and Letters), by the Government of France in 2018 for her outstanding commitment to preservation of French Heritage in India. In 2019, she co-founded Jugaadopolis a social innovation enterprise to work with youth in making the rich tangible and intangible heritage of India relevant in the contemporary context through a process of co-creation. She is a published author and currently visiting faculty at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi.
Dr. Francisco Martínez is an anthropologist dealing with contemporary issues of material culture through ethnographic experiments. Francisco currently holds the post of Associate Professor at Tallinn University and convenes the Collaboratory for Ethnographic Experimentation (EASA Network). In 2018, he was awarded with the Early Career Prize of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, which supported his research in repair cultures and he has published of two monographs – Ethnographic Experiments with Artists, Designers and Boundary Objects (UCL Press, 2021) and Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia (UCL Press, 2018). Francisco has also edited several books, including Peripheral Methodologies (Routledge, 2021); Politics of Recuperation in Post-Crisis Portugal (Bloomsbury, 2020), and Repair, Brokenness, Breakthrough (Berghahn, 2019), He has also curated different exhibitions – including ‘Objects of Attention’ (Estonian Museum of Applied Art & Design, 2019), and ‘Life in Decline’ (Estonian Mining Museum, 2021).
Fred Paulino is a Brazilian artist, designer, researcher and curator. He holds a bachelor in Computer Science from UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) and postgraduate studies in Contemporary Art at UEMG (State University of Minas Gerais / Guignard School). He is the catalyst of the referential Gambiologia project, which since 2008 investigates art and technology in dialogue with education and popular culture, especially around the themes of improvisation and reuse. His works have been shown in many countries such as USA, Austria, Colombia, Cuba, Spain, South Africa and Japan. He is the editor-in-chief of Facta Magazine and curated three editions of “Gambiologos” exhibitions. He has been the coordinator of independent education programs such as Favela Hacklab.
Linda Brothwell is a British visual artist. Her multi disciplinary practice casts her as a maker of objects, tools and publicly sited interventions. She considers what it means to make something by hand that takes ‘care’ as its core, to not only make the ‘thing’ but to make the tools to make the thing, to spend months or years immersed in the techniques, the materials and the stories of a place. Linda’s ‘Acts of Care’ series initiated a repair movement in the arts and earned recognition through international gallery support, the Jerwood Makers Open, and a place on the Design of the Year shortlist. In 2019 she travelled to Japan as a Churchill Fellow researching ‘The Lifecycle of Tools in Japanese Culture’. Brothwell’s testimony to the value of craft skills and tools was celebrated in an award-winning co-produced BBC4 documentary Handmade in Hull in 2017. She has exhibited globally with Palais de Tokyo, representing the UK at Cheongju Craft Biennial and EXD biennial. Her work is included in the V&A and RCA permanent collections and private collections worldwide and she currently lecturers at The Royal College of Art, London.
Pedro Belasco is a bachelor in Social Sciences by the University of São Paulo – USP and Specialized in Design for Social Development IDIN/D-Lab/MIT/UFPA. He conceived and acted in projects related to the themes of social participation and dissemination of digital culture such as “Repair Cafes”, developing communication and knowledge management projects using the web as a platform and applying accessibility standards. Since 2016, he has been a member of the IDIN International Development Innovation Network.
Nicolas Nova is a researcher, writer and design researcher. An anthropologist of technology active in the field of contemporary cultures, interaction design and futures research, Nicolas is co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory, a design fiction agency based in Europe and California, and Associate Professor at the Geneva University of Arts and Design (HEAD – Genève), where he teaches digital anthropology, ethnography and design research. He is also associate researcher at médialab SciencesPo in Paris. Nicolas holds a PhD in Social Sciences (University of Geneva), and a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from the Swiss Institute of Technology (EPFL, Switzerland). He was previously visiting professor at ENSCI – Les Ateliers (Paris) and Politecnico di Milano, visiting researcher at the Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA), the Institute of Sociological Research at the University of Geneva, and co-founder/curator of Lift, a series of international events about digital culture, design and innovation.
Ravi Agarwal is the founder-director of the environmental NGO Toxics Link, which has pioneered work on waste and chemicals over the past three decades. Toxics Link has played a key role in issues relating to environmental health at various levels, including helping formulate policies and regulations for bio medical waste, municipal solid waste, electronic and electrical waste, hazardous waste, chemicals in products, POPS, and also to establish several best practice models on the ground. Alongside Agarwal is also an artist, writer, and curator. His work has been exhibited at Havanna Biennial (2019), Kochi Biennial (2016), Sharjah Biennial (2013) and Documenta XI (2002) etc. He has authored and edited articles, books and journals including the recently published ‘The Crisis of Climate Change, Weather Report’ (2021, Routledge) edited with Omita Goyal and the chapter ‘Alien Waters’ (2021) in The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change (edited by T.J Demos, Emily Eliza Scot and Subhankar Banerjee). Ravi was awarded the WHO-IFCS Award for Chemical Safety (2008) and the Ashoka Fellowship (1997). He lives in New Delhi and is an engineer and MBA by training.
Steven Jackson is an Associate Professor of Information Science and Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University. His work combines ethnographic, legal and theoretical traditions grounded in pragmatism, critical theory, and post-structuralism with an overall interest in how people build and maintain order, value and meaning in and with the worlds around them. He’s especially interested in places where new computing forms and practices meet social and material worlds, with implications for sustainability, collaboration, justice and inequality. He has written extensively on problems of infrastructure, maintenance, repair, and hope.
Teresa Dillon is an artist and researcher. Her performative and site-based practice explores techno-civic entanglements and their associated spatial relations in urban contexts with a focus on cultures of survival, care, repair, maintenance and healing. In 2018 she co-founded Repair Acts – a practice-based research programme that explores repair cultures in a pluralistic and collective manner and since 2013, directs Urban Hosts – a programme the explores alternative urban futures. Teresa’s work has been published in various contexts and she has participated in numerous exhibitions, art residencies, conferences and seminar programmes, with recent performance and academic writing exploring the relation between ritual, artistic practice and posthuman legalities. A Humboldt Fellow, Teresa is a member of the Berlin-based spatial collective, Soft Agency and she currently holds the post of Professor of City Futures at the School of Art and Design, UWE Bristol.