Text by CLOT Magazine
Places to Intervene is an art-research exhibition at Lumen Crypt Gallery, St John on Bethnal Green (London) that takes place from 19 to 22 August 2021. Becky Lyon, Katherine Pogson, Claire Shovelton, Phil Barton, and Catherine Herbert invite us to an experimental research exhibition, participatory artworks and inquiries-in-progress. This project originates in a reading group of UAL postgraduates and alumni, exploring ‘other-than-human’ theory.
Taking systems-thinker Donella Meadows’ 1999 article Leverage points: Places to intervene in a system as a critical and curatorial stimulus, each artist responds by researching aspects of a renewed relationship with nature through diverse practices. In the year of COP26, when the implications of human-generated climate emergency are ever clearer, and ‘zoonotic’ diseases point to the friction between humans and others sharing a finite living space, they scope out different ways to recalibrate human understanding, empathy and relationship with the natural world. To become more ‘eco-logical’.
The three events that encompass the exhibition are: on Saturday 21 Aug / 2 – 3.30 pm BST More-Than-Human Dialogues: Gathering, Line-Wandering, Assembling; on Sunday 22 / 11 am – 2 pm BST A Creaturely Morning (Re)Sensitisation, and from 2 – 3.30 pm BST they are presenting A Sensory Tuning Walk.
There will also be talks and walks on tree activism with artist Phil Barton; moth ID mornings with artist-researcher and amateur lepidopterist Katherine Pogson; oral histories collection with Catherine Herbert, and an afternoon tea chat exploring the idea of ‘artist-as-researcher’.
