Swap Space

Preparing in March, and taking place during the month of April, Swap Space is a research pilot project that explores new forms of collaborative artistic research, in which otherness, difference, and distance between the participants are brought into a cohesive form through spatial constructions. Emerging from our interest group on collaborative artistic practice, the group of Swap Space is formed by Nayarí Castillo (VE/AT), Shane Finan (IE), Franziska Hederer (AT), Jackie Karuti (KE), David Pirrò (IT/AT), and Hanns Holger Rutz (DE/AT). We will be working together across individual studios, dialoguing and connecting through online and face-to-face exchange, as well as an embedded site-specific retreat.

The possibility of researching together without necessarily unifying intentions and languages or making them compatible leads to a situation in which the participants share a spatial context and temporal horizon, that is, they are in contact without any causal or hierarchical dependencies arising from it. Focus is given to the possibility of preserving one’s own temporal structures and rhythms. The title emphasises both the method of switching between different working spaces, negotiating spaces of thought and imagination, and the computer-technical term that defines a reserved place to which materials can be temporarily outsourced in order to attend to other things or perspectives and eventually return to them. As spaces of exchange, others can also pick up elements from these residual repositories. Spaces are always socially conditioned and allow for changes of perspective - to swap space.