Liverpool Biennial Hosts The Residents
Nina Edge, Nothing is Private, 2006. Image courtesy of the artist.
For one week, from Monday 29 September – Friday 3 October, an invited group of artists, curators, designers, and writers will gather to consider the framework for Liverpool Biennial in 2016 and 2018. Through workshops, visits and public presentations, this project will continue and intensify a strand of Liverpool Biennial’s programme, which has engaged increasingly with the interrelationships between education, art and the urban environment.
The starting point will be housing in Toxteth. Partially derelict since the 1980s when changes in industrialisation combined with government policy saw a steep decline in the city's population, the neighbourhood has also been the site of conflict and activism where questions have been raised about local government housing policy. This complex, loaded situation will act as the prompt for a week of research and development.
The week will feature a number of public programme events, including newly commissioned performance works by Isabel Lewis and Adam Chodzko. Lewis’s “Hosted Occasions” are concerned with the space of social encounter. This event will take place in the Palm House, a botanical greenhouse in Sefton Park. Adam Chodzko has been researching the redevelopment of Liverpool Docklands to devise a fictional scenario, which will be performed at Toxteth Reservoir.
The Residents group includes Sally Tallant, Dominic Willsdon, Joseph Grima, Sofía Olascoaga, Adam Chodzko, Nina Edge, Maria Hlavajova, Andrea Phillips, Francesco Manacorda, Rosalind Nashashibi, Lucía Sanromán, Irene Hofmann and as well as other local artists, activists, designers and developers.
An issue of Liverpool Biennial’s online journal Stages will present the research from the project with contributions by the participants.
Artist Commissions
An Occasion Hosted by Isabel Lewis
Tuesday 30 September, from 7pm
Sefton Park Palm House
Free, booking required
Considered a celebratory and sensory gathering of things, people, plants, music, dance and smells, the ‘occasion’ - a term coined by Isabel Lewis - is a social meeting place that situates itself somewhere between a bar, a lecture and a salon. The evening will offer a space for relaxation and well-being where all of the senses are engaged, with Lewis’ dramaturgy including speaking, DJing, dancing, and scents by Norwegian chemist and researcher Sissel Tolaas. Visitors will be welcomed with a drink and a small offering of something light to eat provided by Toxteth-based creative collective Squash Nutrition.
An Occasion Hosted by Isabel Lewis is a Frieze Project co-commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, ICA and Frieze.Isabel Lewis will be hosting a series of occasions as part of Frieze Projects in London from 14-17 October 2014.
Adam Chodzko: Thinking City
Thursday 2 October, 6.30PM
Toxteth Reservoir
Free, booking required
From the cavernous vaults of Toxteth Reservoir, Adam Chodzko presents a performance: a talk, set in the future, that draws together ideas about Liverpool Dock developments, global shipping, the reality of domestic space, a modified wardrobe and the sole of a Nike trainer. Chodzko brings assumptions about infrastructural expansion into collision with the mind's ability to imagine how consumerist processes affect our living environments.
Part of Thinking City, a programme of artist-led events that take place in private and public spaces across Liverpool. Thinking City is a collaboration between Liverpool Biennial, Tate Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University.
