The Programme
With For About: When words fail was a one-day event (October 2024) concerned with themes including: collaboration, communication, language, silence, rupture, crisis, heartbreak, radical friendship, safe space, solidarity.
As different crises impact our lives, the ways we communicate have become increasingly challenging. We invited artists, practitioners and arts, community and youth workers who value empathy, listening, and expression to join us for this day of workshops, discussions and performances led by practitioners of socially engaged arts, youth work, feminist organising, and climate justice including: Susanne Bosch, Áine Crowley, Taey Iohe, Sophie Mak-Schram, Danni Mc Kenna, Kate O’Shea, Ailbhe Smyth and Chrissie Tiller.
Each year at With For About (WFA), we hope to create a space for shared enquiry. This year, we invited Uma Breakdown and Radha Patel to be ‘in residence’ during the development and delivery of, and for reflection on the gathering. We hope that undertaking experiments with collaborators will bring and test different ways of ‘researching in public’.
Access our suggested reading / listening list from the conference via Padlet.
Polarised Contexts: Beyond the Arts
with Ailbhe Smyth and Chrissie Tiller
Feminist scholar, Ailbhe Smyth, and Creative Practitioner, Chrissie Tiller, discussed the challenges and potentials of creating spaces for dialogue in increasingly polarised contexts. Ailbhe Smyth was the founding head of Women's and Gender Studies at University College Dublin and is a long-time feminist, LGBTQI+ and socialist activist. Chrissie has advised for art and social change across EU countries, councils, and initiated programmes across Europe, Palestine, Turkey, Uganda and Japan.
For With For About, Ailbhe and Chrissie came together to share stories of confrontation, tension and how to ‘stay with the trouble’.
Gravity Express and SEA Heartbreak
With Kate O’Shea
Kate introduced her socially engaged practice and how she arrived at the concept of Socially Engaged Art Heartbreak (SEA Heartbreak). She also explored some of the themes of Gravity Express including ‘ruptures’ and ‘failure’. Focusing on the ruptures, transitions and re-formulations over the course of Kate’s sustained commitment to art and activism, Gravity Express captures some fragments from her work with mentor Dr Ciaran Smyth.
In-Conversation: Practices of wayfinding and landing
with Taey Iohe, Danni Mc Kenna and Susanne Bosch
A participatory, in-conversation session with Taey Iohe and Danni Mc Kenna, led by artist Susanne Bosch. This session focused on exchanges of experience - not on skills or methodological transaction - exploring relationships, power and professional positionalities.
Reader in Residence: Radha Patel
We invited Radha Patel as to take on the role of Reader in Residence. During the day, Radha guided participants through a creative activity to generate contributions to add to Etsolstera; a growing, speculative language exploring life without racism. The images below were created by attendees, October 2024.
Radha Patel performed a new reading of her text Notes from Aarti’s Diary, about a group of people of colour who explore life without racism on another planet, after ‘an electrical surge traps them inside a spaceship and sends them flying throughout the cosmos’. Here, English is not enough to articulate the depth of their experiences, so they invent the language ‘Etsolstera’ to breathe life into their new found freedom.
The first version of this text was written for g39’s UNITe programme in 2019. A second, updated version was shared for With For About.
Listener in Residence: Uma Breakdown
We invited Uma Breakdown to join us as Listener in Residence. Read their reflections on the day and the programme.