"C. Maintenance is a drag; it takes all the fucking time (lit.)"
(- Mierle Laderman Ukeles, M A N I F E S T O FOR MAINTENANCE ART 1969!)
The first in a series of symposium-like gatherings organised by writer and artist Cally Spooner as part of her Stanley Picker Fellowship at Kingston University, studying the visibility of management and neuropolitics.
This event consists of talks and discussions, starting from considerations of maintenance and the maternal. It asks what durations, pragmatics, and cooperative arrangements might upset contemporary, patriarchal states of chrono-normativity; where time is strictly streamlined and controlled.
Lisa Baraitser, reader in Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck speaks on the work of artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Writer and lecturer Marina Vishmidt maps assorted scales of management – from the micro to the planetary. Kate Coyne, dancer, producer and Assistant Director of Michael Clarke Company shares her experience on how to validate performers’ labour inside and outside a rehearsal room, and the methods necessary to keep artists’ work and a company of dancers alive.
This is the first in a series of gatherings that form part of Cally Spooner’s Stanley Picker Fellowship, realised with support from the PSY and Playground Festivals. The symposium is hosted, on this occasion, by Whitechapel Gallery, marking the half way point in Spooner’s time as Writer in Residence at the Gallery.
Subsequent symposiums will take place at STUK, Leuven, 28th April; Serpentine Galleries, 20th May; with more to be confirmed.