Care in the Ruins (roundtable)
From: 12th November 2024 12:00 am
To: 12th November 2024 12:00 am
LU Arts
Hashtag
About
This roundtable discussion will focus on strategies for practising care amidst the ruins: how can we engage in acts of solidarity, of rest, and of vital healthcare, when societal infrastructures fail?
This event is part of Cassie Thornton’s Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) fellowship at Loughborough University.
In addition to artist Cassie Thornton, two guest speakers will be taking part: Dr Valeria Graziano, researcher and one of the conveners of Pirate Care, a research project and network which stands for a common care infrastructure; and writer Evie Muir, whose work advocates for rest, healing and resistance as abolitionist praxis.
Loughborough academics Dr Jade French (English and the Health Humanities), Dr Victoria Browne (International Relations, Politics and History), and Dr Catherine Coveney (Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy) will introduce how their work aligns with the question of care in the ruins, from research in the Health Humanities, ageing studies and intergenerational care, to the politics of reproduction, to the sociology of sleep and chronic illness. Cassie’s visit is also supported by Dr Rachael Grew (International Relations, Politics and History), whose research looks at the concept of the ‘monstrous’ in relation to genders, bodies and identities. The discussion will be moderated by Radar Curator Dr Lucy Lopez.
This is a hybrid event; you can choose to attend in person or online via Zoom during booking.
This event is part of Radar’s programme for 2024-26, Rehearsals (for a world we could live in). The programme explores artistic practices of ‘world-building’ and ‘rehearsal’, which enact or perform more just and liveable worlds. It will commission a series of artists whose work imagines new worlds or ways of living, from more equitable healthcare systems, to climate solidarity networks, to embodied forms of justice.
View the Radar programme page for Rehearsals (for a world we could live in)
Guest speaker biographies
Valeria Graziano (she/her) is a cultural theorist, educator and organizer based in Rijeka, Croatia. Her research is rooted in collective practice and centers on strategies of work refusal, the commoning of social reproduction, and the politics of pleasure. Valeria’s work has been published in a range of journals and books, including MIT Press; Artforum; Theory & Event; ephemera and Cultural Studies. Currently, she is lead researcher of “Figure It Out. The Art of Living Through System Failures” (CREA-CULT-2022-COOP-1) and coordinator of the working group “Analysis, Theory & Politics of Care” (COST Action CA21102). Her book Pirate Care: Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity, co-authored with Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak, is forthcoming from Pluto Press in 2025.
Evie Muir (she/they) is a nature writer, author of Radical Rest: Notes on Burnout, Healing and Hopeful Futures, and founder of Peaks of Colour, a Peak District based nature-for-healing community group by and for people of colour. Their work sits on the intersections of gendered, racial and land justice, and seeks to nurture survivors’ joy, rest, hope and imagination as Black Feminist and abolitionist praxis.
Cassie Thornton (any pronoun) is an artist, writer and organizer who makes a “safe space” for the unknown, for disobedience, and for unanticipated collectivity. In her recent work she explores the struggle of reorganizing and using privilege in the apocalypse. She uses social practices including institutional critique, insurgent architecture, and “healing modalities” like hypnosis and yoga to find soft spots in the hard surfaces of capitalist life. Cassie has invented a grassroots alternative credit reporting service for the survivors of gentrification, has hypnotized hedge fund managers, has finger-painted with the grime found inside banks, has donated cursed paintings to profiteering bankers, and has taught feminist economics to yogis (and vice versa). She is currently a co-organizer of a bar that is an undercover clinic in Berlin. Her 2020 book, The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future, is available from Pluto Press.
Accessibility
International House has step-free access into the building. If you have any access requirements or anything you would like the organisers to be aware of when running the event, please let them know via the booking form or email LUArts@lboro.ac.uk in advance of booking and they will do their best to accommodate them.
