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sensing suspension

 

Over two days in September 2019 we activated a series of ‘suspensions’ in urban parks and rail terminals, in the passenger cars of a commuter train, a community garden, a university gymnasium, an anechoic chamber, a Victorian apartment building, and a Gamelan orchestra. These live art events were conceptualised and organised in response to a series of 15 propositions for ‘minor movements’ composed by philosopher and artist Erin Manning, and released through the SenseLab’s international network in early 2019 . Manning’s propositions invited practices of attuning to minor movements in the barely perceptible transitions of change taking place, while also calling for a radical undoing of binary distinctions between art and life. A global series of events was seeded in the matrix of these propositions during the summer of 2019, with events sprouting spontaneously in Montreal, Sao Paolo, Zurich, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Berlin, Copenhagen, Helsinki, and Castlemaine. Our contribution to this international seeding of events was an open proposition to collectively explore ‘suspensions’ in public places and transport networks between the cities of London and Manchester.

Our events were open to anyone, and the invitations to participate were extended informally through online platforms, social media, and radio as part of a collaboration with London-based community radio station Resonance FM. An ad hoc collective of artists, curators, musicians, educators, researchers, students, radio broadcasters, and local community members began to assemble. Through the radio station and other channels, the suspension events were ‘pre-accelerated’ by circulating a selection of texts by Erin Manning, Brian Massumi, Tina Campt, Andrew Goodman, and A.N. Whitehead. Concepts drawn from this collection of readings became ‘piloting’ ideas for each of the suspension events, with specific concepts operating as spring boards for the improvised unfolding of events in public spaces over a two-day period: 

Suspension 1: Sept 5th, 9:43 – 10:36, public park near Euston station (Invisibility)
Suspension 2: Sept. 5th, 10:46 – 11:28, Euston station terminal (Complicity)
Suspension 3: Sept. 5th, 11:40 – 13:46, train from London to Manchester (Passage)
Suspension 4: Sept. 5th, 15:39 – 16:37, Hulme community gardens (Cultivation)
Suspension 5: Sept. 5th, 17:05 – 18:03, Gymnasium, Brooks building MMU (Metabolism) 
Suspension 6: Sept. 5th, 19:03 – 20:19, 36-38 Whitworth Street/Mayfield depot (Capture)
Suspension 7: Sept. 6th, 9:30 - 10:30, Anechoic chamber, University of Salford (Volume)
Suspension 8: Sept. 6th, 11:30-16:00, Manifold Lab, Manchester Metropolitan University



collaborators

David Rousell (Creative Agency, RMIT; Manifold Lab, MMU)
Catharine Cary (Royal College of Art)
Agata Kik (Irruptive Chora, London)



 

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