Solvente | Immersive workshop

01.09.2019 - 30.09.2019

SOLVENTE proposes a month-long immersion in the painting universe with studio practice, individual follow-up meetings and group activities. It’s designed for painters interested in deepening their personal research and their practice.

SOLVENT includes:

– Studio space at Despina between 1 – 30 September, Mondays to Fridays, from 10am to 7pm. Tables and chairs will be provided, as well as space facilities (wifi, library, shared kitchen with a large sink, bathrooms with shower). Each participant must bring their own painting materials.

– Two weekly follow-up meetings with artist Pablo Ferretti (individually scheduled between 10:00 and 19:00).

– Collective meetings on Wednesdays, 15:00 (September 4, 11, 18 and 25).

– Final show at Despina (September 27th).

Enrolment: R$ 480 in cash or 2 x R$ 250 on credit card.

How to apply: Send an email to courses@despina.org with the title “Solvente 2019” + full name + contact phone + minibio.

Period: 1 – 30 September

pablo_ferretti_site_cursosPablo Ferretti is graduated in Painting from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil (2001), with a Masters Degree in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London, England (2006-08). He also colaborates with Despina Residency Programme.

Workshop – Sound/Body/Space (with artist Henry McPherson)

SUBSCRIPTIONS CLOSED!

Despina resident artist, Henry McPherson, seeks local artists who are interested in working with sound to participate in a free sound workshop. Henry is a Scotland-based artist and musician who works with collages of found sounds, music and improvisation, space, and the body. He is currently on a residency with Despina through the Open Bodies Residency (Residência Corpos Abertos), and he is exploring the idea of mapping the city of Rio through recorded sounds. During the residency, Henry is documenting sounds in locations of importance to the queer/LGBTQ(+) community, building a series of sound-walks, and investigating how our bodies relate to the sounds around us.

Henry is seeking between 1 and 5 local artists who have an interest in working with sound, the body, and engaging with new and different ways of listening, to take part in a small group-workshop on Thursday 20th September. The workshop will feature a short group discussion, followed by exercises in listening to the body, the room, and surroundings in Despina (R. do Senado, 271) and in nearby Campo de Santana (Praça da República). At the end of the session there will be a short discussion and feedback. Participants are advised to wear comfortable clothing, and are welcome to bring musical instruments if they choose. The workshop will take place between 12pm and 4pm, and will be conducted in English with Portuguese translation.

This workshop is free of charge and places are limited! 

How to apply

Send us an email to cursos@despina.org with the subject “Sound/Body/Space” + name + contact phone number.

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About the artist

Henry McPherson is an inter-media artist based in Glasgow, Scotland. His practice in composition, improvisation and performance is embedded in mixed-media score-production, devised performance, present-time composition, cross and inter-disciplinary practice, through which he explores personal and collective identities, musical and otherwise performative traditions. Henry’s work centres around the body-mind, score-object as mediator, the subject of invocation, impulse-led generation, queer and sustainable art practices, and meanings of ownership in collectively-generated improvisation. He is a founding member of Glasgow’s mixed-arts collective EAST (Experimental Artists Social Theatre), KUI piano duo, and the chamber trio Savage Parade. In recent years, Henry has collaborated with groups and individuals such as the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scotland, Martyn Brabbins, RedNote ensemble, The Glasgow New Music Expedition, Garth Knox, Zilan Liao and Germany’s Ensemble Modern. He is a graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland composition dept., and is an award holder of the Dinah Wolfe Memorial Prize for Composition (2014); Scottish Opera’s Opera Sparks Competition (2016); the Patron’s Prize for Composition (2017); the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Composition Club Prize (2017); the Harriet Cohen Memorial Music Award (2018); and was a nominee for the inaugural Scottish Awards for New Music (2017). He has been awarded residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativiy (CA, Alberta, The Creative Gesture: Collective Composition Lab for Music and Dance), Despina (Open Bodies Residency, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, with the Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh) and Skammdegi Residency and Festival (IS, Olafsfjördur).

 

About Open Bodies Residency (Residência Corpos Abertos)

Open Bodies Residency (Residência Corpos Abertos) is a programme designed jointly by Despina and The Fruitmarket Gallery, with support from the British Council and Creative Scotland. It seeks Brazilian and Scottish-based artists who make performance and whose work is interested in gender and/or sexuality. The programme is in two parts. The residency will take place at Despina in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in September 2018. The selected artists will participate in a range of cross-cultural activities such as public talks, sharing of work events, studio visits and exhibition tours. Part two of the programme sees the Scottish artists participate in the Open Out programme at The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh in February 2019 (dates tbc between 11–24 Feb). The artists will propose workshops and lead a programme event. The four selected artists who will be attending this year’s programme at Despina are: Miro Spinelli (Brazil), Vinícius Pinto Rosa (Brazil), Henry McPherson (Scotland) and Stephanie Black-Daniels (Scotland). They will take over Despina’s residency studios to develop their projects and participate in a series of events and activities, including public talks and workshops.

Image credit
Photo:  Nicolas Cotienne
(Image feat. Henry McPherson, right; Maria Donohue, centre)
METRIC, Glasgow 2018
Courtesy of the artist

 

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Workshop – Performing women in the city (with artist Stephanie Black-Daniels)

SUBSCRIPTIONS CLOSED!

Despina resident artist, Stephanie Black-Daniels, seeks up to three female-identifying artists to performatively collaborate with, in and around the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Stephanie is an artist from Scotland who works with performance. She is currently on a residency with Despina through the Open Bodies Residency (Residência Corpos Abertos). While on this residency she is exploring the relationship of the body and gender politics in response to the city. She wishes to explore the complexity of the city and its socio-political context by working directly with the women of the city for “Performing women in the city” (‘Performando mulheres da cidade’).

Stephanie would like to link up with other female-identifying Rio-based artists. She is particularly interested in those who wish to explore place, identity, sexuality and its complexities with the city through day-long performative activities. This may include activities, such as: gesture, text, costume, video and photography.

Stephanie will work with participating artists on a one-to-one basis through a series of day-long workshops. Activities will be determined by Stephanie in advance and shaped collaboratively with the artists during the workshop.

Both Stephanie and the participating artists will work together to document the day, exchanging ideas and outcomes. Please note that outcomes from the day may be shared by Stephanie at a later date in Brazil and or/Scotland.

Stephanie is seeking artists who would like to respond to one of the following three strands:

  1. Rituals and wildness – Using physicality to map and navigate the city and break away from ‘normalised’ interaction and gender roles
  2. Identity and surface – Using object and clothing to mark and trace the body in relation to the city and its history
  3. Rhythm and sexuality – Using the voice, sounds and text to build and strengthen a dialogue with the city responding to current socio-cultural ‘norms’

Key information for participating artists

Workshops will be scheduled between Friday 14th September and Friday 21st September. Artists must indicate which date they would be available to carry out the workshop. Workshops will run from 11 am to 6 pm.

This workshop is free of charge and places are limited! Only 3 artists will be selected.

Workshop schedule and fee

The day will begin with a discussion of the day’s activities at Despina. This will be followed by a site-specific performative exploration and performance moments. It will conclude with documentation, discussion and feedback. We are able to pay 100 Brazilian Reais for participating in the workshop and performance exchange. Participants will also be provided with lunch. This project is able to include children under your care, or pay for one day’s childcare. If you require this support, please identify this in your application.

How to apply

Using the email subject: ‘Performando mulheres da cidade’, write to cursos@despina.org with the following information by 5 pm on Wednesday 12th September:

  • your name, email address, website and social media
  • whether you speak English, Brazilian portuguese, or both
  • what dates you would be able to attend a workshop between 14th – 21st September
  • name two locations in the city that you would like to carry out a workshop exploration
  • state which of the three strands you would like to respond to
  • a short paragraph about your interest in the project and discussing your practice

About the artist

Stephanie is a Scottish artist making performance within the field of visual art. She has been working nationally and internationally since 2010 and is a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art. Her work is primarily concerned with gender and sexuality, looking closely at current socio-cultural and political issues. Stephanie’s practice situates between the sculptural and choreographic. She combines performance with a range of media and forms to explore the body as a tool of measurement, questioning notions around ‘self’ and ‘the other’, and creating temporal experiences for audiences through her live, recorded, drawing, image and sound-based scores.

About Open Bodies Residency / Residência Corpos Abertos

Open Bodies Residency (Residência Corpos Abertos) is a programme designed jointly by Despina and The Fruitmarket Gallery, with support from the British Council and Creative Scotland. It seeks Brazilian and Scottish-based artists who make performance and whose work is interested in gender and/or sexuality. The programme is in two parts. The residency will take place at Despina in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in September 2018. The selected artists will participate in a range of cross-cultural activities such as public talks, sharing of work events, studio visits and exhibition tours. Part two of the programme sees the Scottish artists participate in the Open Out programme at The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh in February 2019 (dates tbc between 11–24 Feb). The artists will propose workshops and lead a programme event. The four selected artists who will be attending this year’s programme at Despina are: Miro Spinelli (Brazil), Vinícius Pinto Rosa (Brazil), Henry McPherson (Scotland) and Stephanie Black-Daniels (Scotland). They will take over Despina’s residency studios to develop their projects and participate in a series of events and activities, including public talks and workshops.

Image credit
Stephanie Black-Daniels
“Image 36”, Shrouded series, 2018
Cortesy of the artist

 

 

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Workshop – Queer Retrofuturism

Thursday, 21.06.2018

SUBSCRIPTIONS CLOSED!

Art and Activism in Latin America – year III (2018)

Led by: Felipe Rivas San Martín

This workshop is proposed as a journey through time, as a collective forum of discussion and affective-political activation around the temporality of sexual dissent and gender activism. During the workshop, the main debates on sexual dissent and queer theory will be discussed alongside memories of queerness that cross the personal biography (micro) and the social context (macro), as well as the sexual past of resistance in Latin-American – more visible today thanks to the boom of art archives. This workshop serves as a reflection on activism as a human activity that inhabits the urgency of the present, and that is also affected by the past and by a possible future. Some of the topics that are going to be discussed: do sexual and gender dissent have a future? Or: Is the future heterosexual? Will the future be queer, a queer utopia or a political-sexual dystopia? From this context, the workshop proposes a retrofuturist methodology based on the review of past archives and current events. The workshop invites all participants to produce materials (text and images) in order to project domination, fights, conquests and resistances of sexual dissidents in the future.

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Info
What: Workshop – “Queer Retrofuturim” (Free)
Led by: Felipe Rivas San Martín
Where: Despina (Rua do Senado, 271 – Centro)
When: Thursday, 21 june
Time: 6:30 pm – 10 pm

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Pictures Gallery (horizontal scrolling)
by Frederico Pellachin

This workshop was part of the third edition of Despina’s  Art and Activism in Latin America project, with the support from the Prince Claus Fund. For more information, click here.

Workshop – “Nuestra venganza es ser felices”

7 meetings between May and June

SUBSCRIPTIONS CLOSED!

Art and Activism in Latin America – year III

Led by: Danitza Luna

“Nuestra venganza es ser felices” (Our vengeance is to be happy) is a graphic feminist workshop for all women – of all forms and colour, occupations and professions, of all imaginable and unimaginable origins, creative and angry, silent and noisy. Women in state of irreversible and irrepressible rebellion. “Nuestra venganza es ser felices” is an in grafiti by the Bolivian feminist movement “Mujeres Creando” – which also acts as synthesis of a method, a fight and resistance strategy. During the workshop, the participants worked only with pencil and paper in a process that was more political than artistic, in which the graphic results were compiled in a zine format publication, launched in the opening of the exhibition “Dissent and Destruction”.

Schedule of meetings

Saturday- 19 May (3 – 6 pm)

Tuesday – 22 May (6 – 9 pm)

Thursday – 24 May (3 – 6 pm)

Saturday – 26 May (3 – 6 pm)

Tuesday – 29 May (6 – 9 pm)

Tuesday – 5 June (6 – 9 pm)

Thursday – 7 June (3 – 6 pm)

Important! The meetings are not continuous. You can join as many as you want.

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Info

What: Workshop – “Nuestra venganza es ser felices” (Free)
Led by: Danitza Luna
Where: Despina (Rua do Senado, 271 – Centro)
When: 7 meetings – schedule above

Credit of the image
Mujeres Creando

Pictures Gallery (horizontal scrolling)
by Frederico Pellachin

This workshop was part of the third edition of Despina’s Art and Activism in Latin America project, with the support from the Prince Claus Fund. For more information, click here.

Workshop – About an insurgent feeling

From 28.05 to 25.06.2018

SUBSCRIPTIONS CLOSED!

Art and Activism in Latin America, year III (2018)

Led by: Ana Lira

This study group of collective articulation served to mobilize discussions as well as discursive and symbolic material productions regarding collective and insurgent actions which we are experiencing in Brazil at the moment. Are there connections beyond a feeling of insurgence? These encounters included a series of activities – studies, discussions, experimentations and an open studio for the production of mechanisms of collective activation and artistic actions.

Info

What: Workshop – “About an insurgent feeling” (Free)
Led by:
Ana Lira
Where: Despina (Rua do Senado, 271 – Centro)
When: Every Monday between 28 May e 25 June
Time: from 6 to 9 pm

Pictures Gallery (horizontal scrolling)
by Frederico Pellachin

This workshop was part of the third edition of Despina’s  Art and Activism in Latin America project, with the support from the Prince Claus Fund. For more information, click here.

 

Workshop – Active cartography of networks of care and creation

21, 28/04 and 5/05

SUBSCRIPTIONS CLOSED!

Art ana Activism in Latin America – year III (2018)

Led by: Cristina Ribas

This process-workshop reflected on the relationship between networks of care and networks of creation from a feminist perspective and from attention to reproductive work . The active cartography emerges from our relations, experiences and strategies of care and creation, sharing and researching ways of expression from the body and improvisation.

Cristina Ribas is a woman and mother. Works as an artist, researcher and curator. Lived for some years abroad studying for her pHd doctorate at Goldsmiths College University of London – where she wrote about schizo-analytical cartography in Brazil and four groups or theatrical tools. She holds an MA from the Art Institute at UERJ, Rio de Janeiro (2008). In 2015, she started practicing Teatro do Oprimido (Theatre of the opressed) through self-organized groups in intersection with mental health and feminist groups. Since 2008, she has led various projects, organized residencies for artists and worked in several interdisciplinary projects. Ribas seeks to provoke articulations between artistic practices, production of knowledge and archive, and more recently, she has been involved in feminist studies from a feminist perspective of social reproduction. She pursues to act in a transversal manner from the merge of the art field with other practices and institutions. Between 2005 and 2009, Ribas developed the research “Emergency Archive”, – which in 2011 was incorporated into the online open platform Desarquivo.org. She is part of the artists and researchers network, “Conceptualismos del Sur”. In 2014, she conceived and developed – alongside other researchers – “ Vocabulário político para processos estéticos” (Political vocabulary for aesthetic processes). Since 2015, she has been developing the “Protocol to intersect vocabularies”, a workshop proposal for practicing voice, body, improvisation and collective composition.

Pictures Gallery (horizontal scrolling)
by Frederico Pellachin, Lucas Sargentelli and Cristina Ribas

This workshop was part of the third edition of Despina’s  Art and Activism in Latin America project, with the support from the Prince Claus Fund. For more information, click here.

Self-defense workshop

Saturday, 01.07.2017

Art and Activism in Latin America- year II (2017)

INFO
Self-defense workshop
When: Saturday, 1st July
Time: 11 am – 12:30 pm
Local: Despina
Free admission

Worskhop with artist Romeo Gongora

In partnership with Despina, Canadian contemporary art center Diagonale, based in Montreal, has given a full grant to Romeo Gongora to participate in our Residency Programme in Rio de Janeiro.

During the month of November, the artist will develop his research on identity and clothing. One of his first actions will be the coordination of a workshop, whose purpose is to create a collection of clothes for an utopian society.

This admission for this workshop is free and it will be held at Despina (Rua Luis de Camões, 2 – downtown) on Wednesdays and Fridays, on 9, 11, 16 and 18 November, from 3 to 6 pm.

If you are interested in attending, send us an email to cursos@despina.org stating in the subject field “Workshop Romeo Gongora” and on the body of the email state your full name, contact number and a short bio. Applicants from all fields and backgrounds are welcome. Places are limited to 7 participants.

Awaken Dream. New Models of Identity

What would identity look like in a utopian world? A team of participants from Rio de Janeiro will be engaged with the artist to create a clothing collection for a utopian society. Some of the themes those workshops may research are: What is the meaning of ‘identity’ in a new utopian society? How will its new citizens dress? What kind of dress and behaviour code will they have? My participatory approach with the group of people will be based on Augusto Boal’s techniques of ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’, the notion of critical consciousness (as theorized by Paulo Freire), and Orlando Fals Borda’s techniques of participatory action research.

Info

Workshop “Awaken Dream. New Models of Identity
with artist Romeo Gongora
When: 9, 11, 16 and 18 November, Wednesdays and Fridays
Time: 3 – 6 pm
Where: Despina
Rua Luis de Camões, 2 – Sobrado – Centro

About the artist

Romeo Gongora is a Canadian-Guatemalan visual artist. His participatory art works employs radical pedagogy to promote socio-political and human awareness. He has collaborated, amongst others, with the Rencontres de Bamako (Mali), CCA – Lagos (Nigeria), Centre of Art Torun (Poland), Festival Belluard (Switzerland), HISK (Belgium), The Office (Berlin) and Open School East (London). In 2007, he took up a two-year residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Amsterdam). In 2009, Romeo represented Canada as an artist in residence at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin) and at the Acme Studios (London) in 2016.

For more information
www.romeogongora.com

Credit of the image

Commun Commune, workshop, Rethinking motherhood through creation by Camila Vasquez, 2015, Lac Brome (CA), coproduction with 3e Imperial, centre d’art actuel


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