With Margareta Kern, I spent the three months of this research residency as the following text describes:
In response to an invitation by Spacex and Guest Curator Claire Louise Staunton, the artists Margareta Kern and Jonathan Hoskins will be visiting the new town of Cranbrook throughout spring 2016.
Kern and Hoskins are interested in critically exploring the new town of Cranbrook as a physical and psychological proposal for a new community, in an historical moment when the role of the state in shaping urban development and providing social housing is being dramatically restructured. The residency is an opportunity to explore the ways in which infrastructure and governance impact upon everyday life, from the collection of rubbish to the laying of the broadband cables, from the design of children’s play areas to organising of public transport, and from cul-de-sacs to the open fields around a town.
The artists will be working towards a proposal for a radio play, exploring a range of experimental narrative structures that allow different voices and ways of understanding space to come to the fore. Their interest in the potential of radio and sound for this residency is a response to the relative absence of physical infrastructure in a town that is still being built, and with a host institution that no longer has a permanent public gallery space.
The project culminated in our half-day contribution to the symposium Living Together on 28th June 2016, following a morning of academic and film presentations, including Ben Campkin and Pia Ronicke.
The small publication we produced for the event, folded into four and distributed in advance of our afternoon contribution to the event, can be downloaded here. At the time of writing, Margareta and I are discussing further ways to use and develop the material generated at the event.
