Shifting Tactics was a series of workshops for emerging artists programmed by Collective and LUX Scotland in direct response to the last two years of lockdowns with cancelled exhibitions, closed workshops, and the absence of spaces in between.
For artists and led by artists who are trying to develop their practices in a landscape of the pandemic, these workshops aimed to create a shared space of care and support. Participants were encouraged to question and explore conditions that impact the practices of early-career artists in particular and consider what skills artists need to navigate and challenge the practical, theoretical, organisational and economic concerns that they face.
Drawing on artists’ experiences, the workshops encouraged participants to challenge their thinking around ideas of success, question existing art sector structures and opportunities, challenge their own systems, imagine what alternatives could exist and devise strategies to enact them.
Previous Workshops:
Giving up Hope and Gaining Freedom | Workshop led by artist Danny Pagarani
Thursday 24 March 2022, 5—8pm | Free, book in advance
In-person event held at Collective, Edinburgh in the Hillside Gallery
Danny Pagarani is an artist and musician based in Glasgow, his practice is informed by a study of philosophy and psychoanalysis. With conversation as the primary medium this workshop will be a space for disagreement as we discuss what giving up hope and gaining freedom might mean.
The initial focus will be on the moment of committing ourselves to art… What were we looking for? Do we still believe? Who did we want to become? What promise did it hold, and does it still? What is a good artist? Who or what do we work for?
Using discussion and visual mapping, the group will look for the connections and contradictions in these questions.
Workshop attendees will be invited to contribute to facilitated conversations, with some optional public writing or drawing.
Warrior/Worrier | Workshop led by artist Hannan Jones
Tuesday 5 April 2022, 5—8pm | Free, book in advance
In-person event held at Collective, Edinburgh in the Hillside Gallery
Booking via Eventbrite
Hannan Jones is an artist who explores language, rhythm, and origin in response to cultural and social migration – investigating sound, installation, film, and performance. Hannan offers Warrior/Worrier, a provocation that looks at how artists can simultaneously embody a 'Worrier' and a 'Warrior' through the use of sound, language, and alternative ways of communicating.
The use of audio equipment and recording techniques will allow us to both generate and connect to visual materials that embody the ideas of warrior and worrier. In addition, we will discuss our own experiences of written materials that we receive from open calls, opportunities, and rejection letters. We will think about our own concepts of warriors and worriers within our practice, asking questions such as: how can we be empowered? What is it that we find difficult? What motivates us to rebel?
Worrier/ Warrior will use samplers and synthesizers to recompose and soundtrack our responses as an act of authorship, culminating in a sonic composition that will be recomposed and broadcast into existence from the top of Calton Hill. This broadcast will be available on Tuesday 17 April 2022, at 7pm, via this link.
Improvisation and Filmmaking | Seminar with Cauleen Smith
Tuesday 26 April 2022, 2—5pm | Free, book in advance
In-person event held at Collective, Edinburgh in the Hillside Gallery
Booking via Eventbrite
As part of their exhibition H-E-L-L-O, currently on show at Collective’s City Dome, seminal American film maker Cauleen Smith will lead an in-person screening and discussion around the creative potential of improvisation in film making.
The discussion will centre on Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One (1968), the landmark experimental film by director William Greaves. The film playfully toes the line between fiction and reality, art and artifice; beginning in New York’s Central Park with an argument between a couple, a documentary crew films the crew who are filming the movie, whilst Greaves adopts the role of clueless artist. Cauleen will introduce, present and reflect on clips from the film as well as examples of improvising in her own filmmaking, opening up questions around how improvisation can be produced and worked through and what this produces as an experience for the viewer.
The seminar is open to artists working with the moving image based in Scotland.
Spaces on this seminar are limited and booking in advance is essential.
Cauleen Smith is an American filmmaker and multimedia artist living in Los Angeles. Their work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the imagination. For over three decades she has employed radical thinking to envision a better world through film, video, sculpture, textiles, installations and drawings. Bringing together themes of historic erasure, presence and loss, Smith believes in the redemptive and transformative power of art, music and text.
Her films, objects, and installations have been featured in group exhibitions including the Whitney Biennial (2017), Prospect 4, New Orleans (2017), Studio Museum Harlem; the Contemporary Art Museum Houston; the New Museum, New York; and BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. She has had solo exhibitions at MASS MoCA; the Art Institute of Chicago; Institute for Contemporary Art Pennsylvania; the Museum of Contemporary, Chicago and upcoming at Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston and a two-person exhibition with Theaster Gates at the San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art.
Art World Folk Horror | Workshop led by Timothea Armour
Tuesday 10 May 2022, 5—8pm | Free, book in advance
In-person event held at Collective, Edinburgh in the Hillside Gallery
Booking via Eventbrite
One of the most common folk horror plot devices is an outsider encountering an insular community, whose idiosyncratic and impenetrable customs seem to be rooted in a time long past...
In this workshop, participants will work alone or in small groups to develop storylines, characters and scenes for folk horror films set in the art world. Amongst other things, this could involve arcane traditions, cult leaders, strange objects in possession of magical properties, ideas of centre and periphery, why writing a funding application is a bit like a séance. Drawing on auto-fiction, haunting and the ways that folk horror has historically expressed the anxieties of the culture it was produced in, plot building and storytelling will be used as form of criticism and of catharsis.
You don't need to have a writing practice or any in-depth knowledge of folk horror films to take part.
Timothea Armour is an artist and writer whose ideal film would be an amalgamation of The Wickerman, Ghost World and A Knight's Tale. Her previous work includes East Lothian Gothic, a six-part radio play about a group of artists trying to make a folk horror TV series set in East Lothian.
Trigger warnings: clips of folk horror films may be shown.
Spaces are limited; please email at [email protected] to be added to a waiting list.
A Radical Call to Play | Workshop led by artist Max Alexander
Tuesday 31 May 2022, 5—8pm | Free, book in advance
In-person event held at Collective, Edinburgh in the Hillside Gallery
Booking via Eventbrite
Max Alexander is an artist, creative facilitator and playworker who works under the name Play Radical. Max works to create and co-create spaces for play, exploration and connection. This work focuses on neurodivergent joy and ways of relating.
This is a workshop for artists to explore play and its role in life and practice. We will explore what play space may look like as adults with different sensory, emotional and relational needs. Max will also investigate how we can navigate our desire and need for play and creativity when it’s coupled with our needs as creative practitioners. There may also be a fort.
Spaces are limited; please email at [email protected] to be added to a waiting list.
Twelve Months: The Opportunities Dice Game | Workshop led by artist Gordon Douglas
Tuesday 7 June 2022, 5—8pm | Free, book in advance
In-person event held at Collective, Edinburgh in the Hillside Gallery
Booking via Eventbrite
This event has been rescheduled from the previous date of 31 March.
Gordon Douglas is a performance artist in Glasgow. He uses play as a way to question organisational hierarchies and established structures. He will lead a workshop on (un)luckiness, seasonable fortune, meritocracy, and destiny.
The workshop will centre on a play-through of Twelve Months: The Opportunities Dice Game, a roleplaying game set during a parallel 2022. The game intends to provoke questions around the fine print of opportunities, ethics of collaboration, and maintaining critical space against the odds.
Set over twelve rounds, players navigate a shared landscape of art open calls, promises of residencies, commissions, prizes and masterclasses. As fictional characters develop with their successes and hardships, the game unfolds as a rehearsal of how we might re-think opportunity and community. Are our practices shaped by the Ts and Cs of the opportunities presented to us? And can we distinguish good opportunities from the duds?
Twelve Months will open a fun environment to reflect on the pressures of visibility and growth that we face when performing as artists. How might we might make space for ourselves on the treadmill; how can we start to imagine different kinds of artistic success?
Gordon Douglas is a performer from Edinburgh. He stages games, unannounced events, and lore in an attempt to deal with his belief in (and scepticism of) collaboration. Previously this has seen him take on roles that: celebrate birthdays amidst austerity (Black Box Take Stock, Travelling Gallery, 2018), hold it together then break down in offices (An Opposites Programme, CCA Glasgow, 2018-19), and nominate non-humans to positions on Boards (That’s Governance!, SSW, 2021). He is currently cardbearer for Good on Paper (2021-22).
Access
A small access fund is available for participants.
Fund for Childcare, Carers & Support Workers
Support towards the cost of childcare, carers or support workers is available on a first come first served basis for those who need it to be able to attend any of these events. This is a limited fund that we will try to spread across different sessions. We will pay you £15 per 1 hour session.
The money will be paid directly into your bank account or alternative arrangements can be made if required. We are unable to book childcare, carers or support workers on your behalf. Please make your own arrangements.
To access this fund please email [email protected] and let us know how much you would like to be paid and we will send you an expenses form.
We may need to close the fund early, so please get in touch ASAP to ensure access.
Fund for Travel
Support towards travel to the workshop for applicants based in Scotland who needs it is available at a first come first serve basis.
To access this fund please email [email protected] and let us know where you are traveling to and from, and a quote for how much this would cost. We will send you an expenses form.
We may need to close the fund early, so please get in touch ASAP to ensure access.
Additional Access Support
If you require any additional access support not listed above, please contact us as soon as possible at [email protected] and we will work with you to support you in whatever ways we can.