Online Programme
Developed in response to the acute challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic, Collective’s online programme features new commissions by artists Karen Cunningham and Laura Yuile, and curator Alexandra Laudo.
Karen Cunningham has been Collective’s Artist in Residence throughout 2020, considering the structures on Calton Hill, Edinburgh, and their relationships to colonialism, technology and travel. Unable to visit our site due to the lockdown within Scotland, Karen utilised postcards—a form of minor photography and folk archive—as a primary source material. This residency resulted in a series of postcards, Another Just Past, and Mean Time, a short film to be launched online on 22 October. Invoking the work of theorist Ariella Aïsha Azoulay and driven by a visceral soundscape, Mean Time creates a space within which to rethink world-making devices and concepts including photography, history, and observation.
How to Observe a Nocturnal Sky is a research project by curator Alexandra Laudo. Since 2017, Alexandra has collated a body of research on the history of observation in Edinburgh in connection to works of contemporary art. This audio-visual presentation is a re-worked version of a live presentation which considers; astronomical phenomena, the concept of darkness, the sky, the night, and the history of astronomy connected to Collective’s home in the former City Observatory.
Collective invited London-based artist Laura Yuile to produce new work reflecting on her experience of lockdown. The resulting film work, Gated Community, examines how our homes became multi-functional spaces for work, care, self-improvement (or not), staying connected and imagining how our society might change. Filmed entirely from her flat, the work has a DIY aesthetic and uses TV Sitcom tropes to depict the life of its central characters.
In the coming months, Collective will continue to work with artists to explore our changing circumstances, question what a City Observatory can be and experiment with new forms of online presentation.
Karen Cunningham is an artist based in Glasgow. She is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD titled, World-Making and Un-Doing at Edinburgh College of Art. Her work has been presented throughout the UK and internationally including group shows, events and screenings at, Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, China; Whitechapel Gallery, London; the Palace of Culture & Science, Warsaw, Poland, and Nightingale Cinema, Chicago and Goldsmiths College, College, London.
Alexandra Laudo is an independent curator and founder of the platform Heroinas de la Cultura. Alexandra participated in the research program CuratorLab, Stockholm, 2016. Her latest projects include: Repenjar-se en un raig de sol oblic, Art Nou, online, 2020; an adapted version of How to Observe and Nocturnal Sky, Centre d’Art Fabra & Coats, Barcelona, 2019; La possibilitat d’una illa, Espai13, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, 2017-2018; A certain darkness, with artworks from the collections of MACBA and La Caixa Fundació Bancària, CaixaForum, Barcelona, 2018-19; and An Intellectual History of the Clock, developed at CuratorLab and presented in several festivals and art centres around Europe.
Laura Yuile is an artist from Glasgow and currently based in London. She has exhibited internationally at venues including; Science Gallery (London); TACO! (London); nGbK (Berlin); Belvedere 21 (Vienna); Apexart (New York); Blackwood Gallery (Toronto); t-space (Milan); Recent Activity (Birmingham) and Generator (Dundee). She has undertaken residencies with; The Art House (Wakefield); ZK/U (Berlin); Temporary Art Platform (Beirut); and IOAM (Beijing).
