Radical Spiritual Collective: Curatorial Practice as Collective Knowledge Production and Spiritual Activism
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Westminster
Department Name: Westminster Sch of Arts
Abstract
This practice-led Radical Spiritual Collective (RSC) research project is situated in and aims to
expand curatorial practice as collective knowledge production, and explore and activate a concept
and practice of spiritual activism. Comprising diasporic feminist practices in the UK, the RSC seeks to
configure and embody a critical and collaborative process of study, knowledge creation and exchange
of ancestral belief systems and their artistic feminist recuperation, while developing and enacting
public interventions that precipitate a co-liberatory reimagining of public space. The RSC will unfold
as a process of collective study and exchange workshops online and in person to engage with
Liverpool in the North West region in the UK. The RSC will co-develop a set of performative spiritual
interventions in Liverpool - one of the oldest Chinese settlements in the UK/Europe and a convergent
site of historically significant and ongoing narratives of industrialisation and globalisation, maritime
histories of trade and exchange, migration and displacement, trauma linked to dislocation and
oppression of marginalised communities, as well as embedded older myths and legends that map
the region as always having been diasporic, liminal and pre/extra-nation (Burman 2006; Mignolo
2018) In particular building on the individual members' existing research and work in the region, RSC
will engage with Liverpool as an migratory port(al), and the nearby nature reserve, Collier's Moss,
that suffered extensive ecological damage by the waste of the Bold Colliery and Power Station, that is
slowly being regenerated by introducing 'foreign plants'. RSC will activate public interventions that
would be documented as moving image, photography, audio recordings, drawing and mapping, that
accumulate towards an open online archive of artistic and activist spiritual practice, and builds
towards a public programme at FACT Liverpool of seminars, workshops and performances.
expand curatorial practice as collective knowledge production, and explore and activate a concept
and practice of spiritual activism. Comprising diasporic feminist practices in the UK, the RSC seeks to
configure and embody a critical and collaborative process of study, knowledge creation and exchange
of ancestral belief systems and their artistic feminist recuperation, while developing and enacting
public interventions that precipitate a co-liberatory reimagining of public space. The RSC will unfold
as a process of collective study and exchange workshops online and in person to engage with
Liverpool in the North West region in the UK. The RSC will co-develop a set of performative spiritual
interventions in Liverpool - one of the oldest Chinese settlements in the UK/Europe and a convergent
site of historically significant and ongoing narratives of industrialisation and globalisation, maritime
histories of trade and exchange, migration and displacement, trauma linked to dislocation and
oppression of marginalised communities, as well as embedded older myths and legends that map
the region as always having been diasporic, liminal and pre/extra-nation (Burman 2006; Mignolo
2018) In particular building on the individual members' existing research and work in the region, RSC
will engage with Liverpool as an migratory port(al), and the nearby nature reserve, Collier's Moss,
that suffered extensive ecological damage by the waste of the Bold Colliery and Power Station, that is
slowly being regenerated by introducing 'foreign plants'. RSC will activate public interventions that
would be documented as moving image, photography, audio recordings, drawing and mapping, that
accumulate towards an open online archive of artistic and activist spiritual practice, and builds
towards a public programme at FACT Liverpool of seminars, workshops and performances.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Annie Kwan (Student) |