A founding member of CONJUNCTION – a globally dispersed collective of 25 mid-career and established curators, artists, designers, educators, and public arts practitioners who first met in January 2020 while attending the year-long professional development course Curating and Commissioning Contemporary Public Art at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
The ‘naming ceremony’ of our collective coincided with the rare interplanetary event of 21 December 2020 known as the great conjunction when the two planets Jupiter and Saturn appeared closest together in the sky and visible to the naked eye.
The nine founding members of CONJUNCTION are Marilyn Lennon, Iliyana Nedkova, Julie Griffiths, Samantha Hookway, Juliette Harvey, Max Rippon, Sebastian Freytag, Sara Brolund de Carvalho and Kerstin Bergendal.
"We are more than a collective of disparate voices but rather a group who have learned, developed, and gradually converged our interests while maintaining individual practices. Collectively, we have hosted lectures, case studies and discussions on sustainability, ecology, decolonization, hospitality, accommodation, and cultural and eco-literacy. Physically located across various countries, including Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Lebannon, Estonia, Italy, Brazil and the United States, we have only ever met in a digital online space. As a globally dispersed collective of artists and curators, CONJUNCTION explores concepts of publicness and digitality through commissioning, curating and enquiring socially-engaged public art, as well as the use of digital spaces. Our goal is to continue our collective learning and join our curatorial and artistic practices in a physical space, COVID-19 restrictions permitting. We are aiming to construct a digital VR twin hub of a guesthouse where we can protype our programme of hostings and events reaching a global audience beyond borders and timezones."
CONJUNCTION, 21 December 2020
