We are delighted to announce that work has begun on two very significant projects which take CIRCA’s archive of texts and projects into new dimensions: Laurence Counihan: an archaeology of the future and Brian Curtin: Travelling South, In Theory. The results will be appearing on this site over the next two years.
Following an open call in summer 2022, two projects were chosen:
Laurence Counihan: an archaeology of the future
“With the unrelenting pace of technological acceleration continuing its lurch forward to encircle every aspect of contemporary reality, the question of mapping the future becomes one of increasing uncertainty, seared equally with hopes of utopian delirium and overwhelming anxiety. The question as to what kind of future we will inhabit and how we may hope to build it (or resist its construction) appears now as that which is irredeemably bootstrapped to developments in digital computation and network technologies.This shift towards what is sometimes referred to as information societies aligns with CIRCA’s original print-run from 1981 to 2010 — a period wherein it could be said that global society transitioned through various rungs of digitality, leading us to our present scenario of inhabiting a post-digital world. Accordingly, within the pages of the CIRCA archive there is present an, initially minute, but ever-expanding knot that charts the infiltration of digital and new media technologies within the Irish and global artworld. In response to this an archaeology of the future is an editorial project which seeks to directly reflect upon themes, concepts, half-threads, speculations, ruminations, and ideas on the ever-changing relationship between art, technology, and society that emerged throughout the history of CIRCA. Taking form as a series of commissioned essays and artworks the intention is to look back in order to help plot the navigational trajectory of our digital futures.”
Brian Curtin: Travelling South, In Theory
“Travelling South, In Theory is a project that commissions cultural workers based in Asia to engage the Circa archive with critical questions of South-South relationships. Over the run of the project, they will carry out innovative, comparative work to be published on Circa’s website. One confirmed project is with Carlos Quijon Jr. who plans to study both the geopolitics and geopoetics of South-South relationships, highlighting connections between Southeast Asia’s and Ireland’s artists away from the conventional methods of art historical scholarship. This will result in a series of essays. Another is by Thái Hà, who aims to produce a one-off response that explores the limits of language for writing about art, with an interest in mutation, speculation, and play as political gestures for artists of the Global South. Carlos is an art historian, critic, and curator based in the Philippines and Hà is a curator and translator based in Vietnam.
More projects will be commissioned.
Travelling South, In Theory was initiated by Brian Curtin, an Irish-born art critic based in Thailand.”
More on Travelling South, In Theory here.