The Barn has recorded a discussion with artist duo MARIE ANTOINETTE and Head of Programme Simone Stewart about the Riffing the Archive: Building a Relation project and the Barn staff and audience responses to it.
WATCH our recorded interview in full below, to delve deeper into ideas and themes of the work.
MARIE ANTOINETTE is an artist duo by Mariana and António. They were interested in working with us as they are developing a project not unlike the Barn on Alentejo, addressing issues of desertification on what was Portugal's fertile agricultural region (CLARA Center for Rural Future). They wanted to learn about the Barn and its development but not in a conventional, fact finding way. Rather they have developed a series of one to one creative conversations with individuals including members of the Team, Board and some volunteers, slowly creating an exchange of information, feelings and aspirations, building understanding as the conversations unfold.
As you will gather through the interview, Riffing the Archive: Building a Relation is one of the six projects that have resulted from a learning space, Becoming Earthly (2020), convened by Simone Stewart. Becoming Earthly set out to explore the implications of new thinking in ecology with artists, particularly performance artists, seeking to develop their practice through understanding how human beings create life in relation to other human beings and other life forms.The programme drew from the project and exhibition Critical Zones 2020, an exhibition and discussion forum across contemporary art and the sciences that set out to develop awareness of the thin skin of Planet Earth on which all life is dependent. Critical Zones 2020 was developed by Bruno Latour, the anthropologist and philosopher, and Peter Weibel, Director of ZKM, Karlsruhe, a renowned centre for art and new media.
These themes and ideas are very much part of Riffing the Archive: Building a Relation. This Barn project has been extraordinarily playful and also challenging in a number of ways. We invite you to imagine that the work of art does not exist in this case in any single piece but in the process of exchange. Feel free to air your view and thoughts with the work. MARIE ANTOINETTE will embrace this as a way of moving forward.
