Talk to the Land. The practice of Commoning and Real Montage in the work of the Partisan Social Club

Description

Artist Talk and Collective Nouns II: Reflections on Commoning Film Launch:

Talk to the Land: The practice of Commoning and Real Montage in the work of the Partisan Social Club.

Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan (Partisan Social Club) are in conversation with art historian Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes (University of Amsterdam) to reflect upon their recent exhibition, entitled Talk to the Land at Sirius.

Talk to the Land explored three aspects of commoning: landlordism; how to practice a culture-led recommoning of cities; and utopian settlements in South-West Ireland. Partisan Social Club examines alternative modes of community building arising from cooperative proposals and experiments advanced by the eighteenth-century Irish, Cork-based philosopher William Thompson.

Partisan Social Club’s work does not represent a history of the commons, or a historical model of community building in the pre-capitalistic period. Rather, they activate ideas surrounding horizontal structures, mutual exchange, resource sharing, and collectivity. This forms the basis of their notion of “re-commoning,” which asks how can we reimagine social relationships whilst in midst of privatization and austerity?
To address this, they assemble members through projects related to histories, theories, and activities of commoning. Their language-based works—often produced through participatory processes—take the form of posters, pamphlets, scarves, banners, videos, and architectural structures, and are presented in exhibitions and as printed matter.
In this talk they discuss their methods of rewriting, renomination and rehearsal that is central to their practice. They call this arrangement ‘Real Montage’.

The event will include the launch and screening of the film, Collective Nouns II Reflections on Commoning (3mins). The film was produced in conjunction with SIRIUS and includes several contributions from friends, colleagues, and people Partisan Social Club met during their time at Sirius.

Talk to the Land is Partisan Social Club’s first solo show in Ireland. Partisan Social Club developed it through multiple residencies at SIRIUS across 2022, following dialogue initiated in 2020. Talk to the Land is curated by Miguel Amado, director of SIRIUS, and produced by SIRIUS.

The residency secondment was made possible due to the Spatial Practices in Art and ArChitecture for Empathetic EXchange (SPACEX) project. SPACEX is an ongoing project funded by the European Union’s HORIZON 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) project number 872561 (https://www.spacex-rise.org/).

Period	22 Mar 2023
Degree of Recognition	International