Storing any old paper waste? You could play your part...
Notts art project OTOKA are launching a brand new exhibition and exciting workshop as part of their takeover of Broadway Gallery, and are calling on you lot to chuck over your old paper waste.
Run by talented local creative Candice Jacobs, OTOKA aims to “act as a fluidly transitioning temporary autonomous support structure; an attempt to break out from the established modes of expectation applied to artistic practice which often tend to favour the white male over a working artist-mother.”
Diving into this important theme, Jacobs’ solo exhibition and Episode 3 of OTOKA’s series, All that is fluid melts into air, will take residence in Broadway from Friday 10 to Sunday 26 March, and will include an interrogation of Marshall Berman’s book All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, as well as text and poetry on the self-destructive nature of modernisation.
At the centre of this exhibition will be a paper mache crystalline sculpture made of recycled tax returns and recycled paper with strong connections to the economy - with new mothers and people who identify as mothers joining Jacobs to put the unique piece together. To make this happen, OTOKA need you to send over some paper, so if you're doing a bit of pre-spring cleaning, or are clearing your files and accounts at the end of the tax year, now's your chance to make the most of your old rubbish!
When I came back to Nottingham from London last year because of COVID, I also became a mother and started to see the city that I used to live in with fresh eyes
During two workshops - on Thursday 16 and Tuesday 21 February - the group of mothers will work alongside Khaya Job, founder of the zine Femme Fatale Gals, and Jacobs to explore the experience of “m-otherhood” and its connection to wellness, the cost of living, climate and the concept of “liquid modernity”. This will include setting affirmations to let go of anxieties by placing them directly into the sculpture so that it can carry the burden of shared realities and swallow stresses for a minute.
Conversations will be re-written and transformed into a poetic form of text that will sit as the script to a collection of VR films that will be integrated into the sculpture. The final exhibition will launch on Thursday 9 March, with the Gallery opening to the public the following day, as visitors get the chance to clamber through the crystalline structure into glistening pools of screens that move around to track and trace the bodies and words that flow through dying exotic waters.
I saw this as an opportunity. I could respond through OTOKA
Ahead of the exhibition’s launch, Jacobs said: “When I came back to Nottingham from London last year because of COVID, I also became a mother and started to see the city that I used to live in with fresh eyes. The city centre was empty, so much of what used to exist was no longer there.
“But, as sad as this was, because of what I had done in the city before, I saw this as an opportunity - what if I could take on these empty spaces and move from one to another, island hopping, where, instead of worrying about losing space (which happened with One Thoresby Street), I could respond to each space differently and broadcast directly into people's homes through OTOKA.”
Previous Episodes of OTOKA include Episode 1: Privacy Techtonics, where, over a four-week period towards the end of last year, the project hosted four solo presentations built around the broad theme of the intrinsic and unequal relations between data, technology and people, to provoke questions about our digital lives and futures, how sustainable or desirable they are, and what alternative worlds we might want or need to create.
The exhibitions brought art works from 2018 Turner Prize nominated artists Forensic Architecture, Tara Kelton from India, Ben Grosser from America and Yuri Pattison together in the city. There were also additional online artists' works that included the Nottingham-based Joey Holder, the Lumen Art Prize winner and quantum physics specialist Libby Heaney, and the artist and author of New Dark Age, James Bridle. OTOKA's groundbreaking website also includes podcast interviews and a PDF catalogue that will be released soon and will feature essays by leading academics in the field of digital privacy.
You can get involved in Episode 3: All that is fluid melts into air by donating your paper waste to Broadway Gallery, by emailing info@otoka.org, booking online through Broadway’s website or following @otokapresents on Instagram.
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