ASSESSING RISK: A LAUNCH OF SORTS

Off the back of the publication of Kunstlicht 41.4: Assessing Risk: Strategies for Health, Safety and Welfare Within Arts practice, guest editors Eloise Sweetman and Isabelle Sully bring an audiojournal to the airwaves—a play on the audiobook given that, in this case, the form is a peer-review journal and the audio translations of the original content are journalistic and journal-esque in nature. This audiojournal has been made in collaboration with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee. Listen to it here or scroll down to find it embedded. It was launched on May 3 to the the testing sound of the Dutch national nation-wide alarm.

When Sweetman and Sully published the open call for the issue in August of 2020, the aim was to propose different definitions of ‘safe’ and ‘risk’ to work with. For example, within the field of art, how might we come to a mutual and workable understanding of these two terms across so many different agendas and personal experiences and needs? Yet since October 2020, when the first contributions were submitted, a lot has changed. And even before that, back when they first set to work on the topic, neither the editors nor the contributors could have foreseen how timely the topic of safety would become in our lives.

As such, by taking into account the developments of recent events—both locally and internationally—this podcast reflects on what has happened since the issue went to print, translating different forms of contributions to their aural counterpart and inviting you to listen along to what has since been written between the lines. Given that a very real threat to our safety—that of Covid-19—prevented a more traditional launch event, what is presented here could be heard as a launch of sorts. Alongside reflections from the co-editors, the episode includes contributions from artist Anna Daučíková, artist and technician Mark Friedlander, researcher and educator Tom Clark, curator and philosopher Srajana Kaikini and artist Lee Kit.

Image: A pair of medical grip socks (photo taken by Isabelle Sully)

Artist / Organisation: Kunstlicht
Location of the show: Rotterdam, Birmingham, Melbourne, Prague, the west coast of India and Hong Kong
Host: Collette Rayner
Producer: Monty Mouw, Radna Rumping, Joshua Sweetman
Length: 40 min
Language: English

03-05-2021 at 12:00