Event
DXG #3: Thinking Hydropoetics Critically
Thursday 2 November 2023
Screening and discussion between The Otolith Group, artist Natasha Thembiso Ruwona and curator Sabrina Henry (In-person)
Cooper Gallery
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design,
13 Perth Road,
Dundee,
DD1 4HT
Stemming from the concerns of their 2010 film Hydra Decapita, The Otolith Group will reflect upon questions of poesis and abstraction with relation to the aesthetics and politics of the aquatic, the deep sea and the oceanic with artist Natasha Thembiso Ruwona and curator Sabrina Henry.
Schedule
Screening
Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, what is held (between waters), 2023
The Otolith Group, Hydra Decapita, 2010
Conversation between Anjalika Sagar, Kodwo Eshun, Natasha Thembiso Ruwona and Sabrina Henry
Read more about what is held (between waters) on Ruwona's website.
Read more about Hydra Decapita on Tate's website.
Booking
The event is free to attend and open to all. Book a space via Eventbrite.
Biographies
Sabrina Henry is a curator and costume designer whose practice uses research and collaboration with artists of various disciplines, to connect pre-colonial traditions with the contemporary British experience, as a way to re-imagine the future. Her curatorial practice thinks through questions of post-coloniality as they exist in Scotland to contribute to the wider discourse around the effects of power and modernity with a focus on the geographies of the Atlantic. In her costume and textile work she uses handcraft techniques to create contemporary artefacts in an attempt to retell the history of Black diasporic presence in Scotland.
As part of the British Art Network research group The Re-Action of Black Performance, she is exploring how the state of being re-active is used as a theme in Black British performance art. Sabrina works as Head of Programme at CCA Glasgow.
Natasha Thembiso Ruwona is a moving-image artist, researcher, and curator-programmer-producer. She is interested in spatial practice and Afrofuturism as methods of thinking about place across time. Natasha also investigates processes of healing in relation to understanding our environments.
The Otolith Group is an award-winning artist led collective founded by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in 2002.
Their moving image, audio works, performances and installations are characterized by an engagement with the legacies and potentialities of diasporic futurisms that explore modes of temporal anomalies, anthropic inversions and synthetic alienation.
Approaching curation as an artistic practice of building intergenerational and cross-cultural platforms, the collective has been influential in critically introducing particular works of artists such as Chris Marker, Harun Farocki, Anand Patwardhan, Etel Adnan, Black Audio Film Collective, Sue Clayton, Mani Kaul, Peter Watkins, and Chimurenga in the UK, US, Europe, and Lebanon.
About the exhibition
...But There Are New Suns is the first major exhibition in Scotland by the Turner Prize nominated artist collective The Otolith Group; and is the third iteration of The Ignorant Art School: Five Sit-ins towards Creative Emancipation.
Visit:
13 October – 16 December
Monday – Saturday, 12–5pm
Read more on our exhibition page.
Access
The gallery is on two floors. First floor has ramped access and disabled toilet.
Second floor is accessible via lift and for wheelchair access via a stairclimber. The event will take place on the second floor.
Please email in advance if you require lift or stairclimber access so we can arrange support.
Large print versions of the exhibition information handout are available, please ask our Guides.
If you require live captions for the discussion please email to request.
All enquiries please contact: exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk
Image credit
The Otolith Group, Hydra Decapita, 2010 (video still)
Courtesy the artist.
Funding support
The Ignorant Art School at Cooper Gallery, DJCAD is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland.
Cooper Gallery
exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk