Derry~Londonderry Weekender
UKNA artists and Array Collective in Derry~Londonderry. Photo by UKNA.
UK NEW ARTISTS: WEEKENDER #5
Location: Derry~Londonderry, Northern Ireland
Dates: 20–23 May 2022
Venue: Centre for Contemporary Art, Derry~Londonderry
The Weekender residency was organised in partnership between Centre for Contemporary Art and UK New Artists. This was the fifth iteration of the weekender programme with previous events having taken place in Blackpool ( 2017 & 2021) St Ives (2018) and Skegness (2019).
This Weekender explored how languages bring people together and keep people apart.
Language is often seen as primary to identity: communities form around shared understandings of the world. Languages have histories and carry memories - one might think here of untranslatable words, oral histories or the sensorial and phonetic specificities of a mother tongue, but also of the politics of language learning - when, where and with what force languages were made dominant, preserved or forgotten. Beyond spoken languages, there’s also other forms of language that bring communities together: specific forms of assembling, gestures, rituals, and embodied communication. Languages exist in time, but also constantly morph and change as political realities and societal settings shift.
Turner Prize winners Array Collective were present during the Weekender to help us think through these themes, particularly in relation to practices of activism, community-building and politics in the context of Derry~Londonderry. The Weekender was curated by Sophie Mak-Schram.
