LODGERS #11 Drop City
M HKA and AIR Antwerpen have invited Drop City to be the eleventh guest in the LODGERS programme, occupying the 6th floor of the museum for the duration of the residency.
Drop City is a collaborative gallery model, working regularly between the cities of Düsseldorf, Germany and Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Drop City approaches its structure as a flexible, reflective model – functioning in parallel to the infinite organisational structures present in the cultural landscape. By continuously developing a form that capitalises on the varied experiences of its founders: an independent curator and three artists, Drop City explores the gaps and potential plasticity between several versions of gallery structure and exhibition model with activities often gathering around the three prevalent organisational forms of artist-run collective, curatorial initiative and commercial gallery
In Antwerp, the four individuals who make up Drop City (Paul Becker, Nadia Hebson, Sam Watson, Eleanor Wright) will pursue four separate and interconnecting public programmes as well as presentations by associated collaborators and contributors.
The Kink in the Arc: A Novel Paul Becker will be compiling and performing a collective novel set within a sanatorium. This novelistic setting is the fictional framework within which multiple descriptions of numerous artworks across most disciplines, supplied by artists and writers from across the EU will be sited. There will be presentations, readings & performances by some of the contributors.
Alpha Adieu: Alongside an evolving exhibition which explores the work of the painter Christina Ramberg and her creative circle, Nadia Hebson will programme a series of readings, conversations and talks exploring the recuperation of women artists, the work of Carla Lonzi, subjective biography, creative female friendship and the communicative possibilities of dress. Contributors will also work to define an appropriate Fine Art education for women.
The Studio For Arousing Tools is a temporary platform devised by Sam Watson for reflections spanning commentary and inquiry of current spatial realities, cultural practice and production processes. The invited contributors in the programme use both new and mastered tools and techniques in the fields of making and collecting information in order to challenge views and uncover ways of communicating humanity’s place in the world and the understanding of the body in relation to our increasingly built and technological environment.
A Gradual Stiffening: Eleanor Wright’s installation is conceived as a space for things to come and of things that have been, both potential and actual. Focusing on architecture, as a societal construct and its role in the materialising of culture, A Gradual Stiffening consists of the second iteration of the mutable and ongoing work An Athens City Reader and surrounding collaborative elements drawn out though conversations with friends and colleagues across different fields.