Event
12 Hour Sit-in Revel
Saturday 25 June 2022
A 12-hour community of open-air conversations, dance, music, performance, readings, screenings, workshops, and food to re-imagine art education and unsettle systems of knowledge.
Re-imagining art education and unsettling systems of knowledge, The Ignorant Art School in the shade of trees in summertime will cultivate alternative futures, determined not by what we know, but by how we learn, unlearn, create and share knowledge together. In the words of the visionary Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, the 12 Hour Sit-in Revel will activate a landscape “where the mind is without fear, the head is held high and where knowledge is free.”
Inhabiting Dundee’s Botanic Garden and timed by Ruth Ewan’s revolutionary decimal clock, the revel will host a convivial convergence for visions and praxes of radical, ethical and accessible pedagogies that question what art education is and who it serves. Addressing knowledge as a collaborative, collective and social experience, the revel will manifest the actual plurality of lived perspectives that constitute our world.
Radical in intent and collaborative by nature, the 12 Hour Sit-in Revel will bring together a coalition of artists, activists, culture workers, educators, musicians, performers, students, thinkers, writers, and various communities in Scotland and from around the world to sing and dance, to observe and reflect, to listen and watch, to converse, question, and so constitute a ‘field of possibility’ (bell hooks).
Celebrating equality of access with a generous solidarity, the 12 Hour Sit-in Revel asserts the potential of transforming knowledge from a capitalist commodity to an emancipatory power available to all.
Contributors
Sam Ainsley (artist and educator)
Saoirse Amira Anis (artist)
Adam Benmakhlouf (artist and DJCAD doctoral candidate)
Rabindranath X Bhose (artist)
Regina Bittner (Head of the Academy and Deputy Director, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation)
Anne-Marie Copestake (artist and educator)
Jemma Desai (writer and researcher) & Barby Asante (artist, curator and educator)
Ruth Ewan (artist)
Gudskul (educational knowledge-sharing platform of Jakarta-based artists collectives ruangrupa, Serrum, and Grafis Huru Hara)
David Harding (artist and educator)
Ashanti Harris (artist) & Mele Broomes (artist)
Frances Lingard (artist)
Peter McCaughey (artist)
Laura McSorley (curator)
Harun Morrison (artist and writer)
Serubiri Moses (curator and writer)
Hardeep Pandhal and Joe Howe (MIDIevil x Spider Knife)
Undine Sellbach (artist and lecturer)
Kapil Seshasayee (musician)
Ross Sinclair (artist and educator)
Ranjana Thapalyal (artist and writer) & Hamshya Rajkumar (artist)
Grant Watson (curator)
Awuor Onyango (artist)
The Otolith Group (artist collective)
Schedule
10.30am
Registration at Dundee Botanic Garden
10.45am — 1pm
SOUND-SEED — Performance by Ranjana Thapalyal with Hamshya Rajkumar
Welcome
As We Are Giving We Are Receiving* — In conversation: Jemma Desai & Barby Asante
Live music — Kapil Seshasayee
Comfort break
A Future Art School — Panel Discussion with Saoirse Amira Anis, Frances Lingard, Laura McSorely and Undine Sellbach
1pm
Lunch — Inda Johnston and GUDSKUL
Amdram** — Participatory Amateur Dramatics Rehearsals led by Adam Benmakhlouf
Film viewing & Sit-in Library
2 — 5.30pm
An Archive: The Rehearsal — Performance by Ashanti Harris with Mele Broomes
Further Notes on Anxiet(ies) — Talk by Serubiri Moses & Awuor Onyango
Live music — Kapil Seshasayee
Bauhaus plants: modern botanizing — Talk by Regina Bittner
Comfort break
Pasar Ilmu (Knowledge Market) — Participatory Workshop facilitated by GUDKSUL
Live music by Kapil Seshasayee
Refreshments
Amdram** — Participatory Amateur Dramatics Rehearsals led by Adam Benmakhlouf
On Singing — Singing with Sam Ainsley, Anne-Marie Copestake, David Harding, Ross Sinclair and Peter McCaughey
5.30 — 6pm
Comfort break
6 — 7pm
Resist Dye — Talk by Grant Watson
Amdram** — Open Rehearsal by Adam Benmakhlouf and participants
MIDIevil x Spider Knife — Rap by Hardeep Pandhal and Joe Howe
7 — 8pm
Dinner, drinks and walk
Film viewing & Sit-in Library
8 — 11pm
O Horizon (2018) — Screening of film by The Otolith Group
Dance to A Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World — DJ set by Harun Morrison from playlist by Ruth Ewan
11pm
Ends
Throughout
We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted to Be (2011) —Decimal Time by Ruth Ewan
Manifesto for a Dream Art School —
Participatory Manifesto by Rabindranath X Bhose
Amdram** — Participatory Amateur Dramatics Rehearsals led by Adam Benmakhlouf (sign-up at registration desk)
Sit-in Revel commentators — social media by Jamie Donald and Alison Scott
*The title of the in-conversation paraphrases Barby Asante in Jemma Desai’s essay ‘M/Othering for Liberation: a Declaration of Independence’ in SEEN Issue 002, 2021.
**
Amdram
Participatory Amateur Dramatics Rehearsals
Throughout the 12 Hour Sit-in Revel, Adam Benmakhlouf will lead short experimental rehearsals of script fragments they have developed especially for the event. These texts dramatise some of the themes of The Ignorant Art School Sit-In #2 exhibition, namely the collaboration and clashing that comes from trying to educate unconventionally and unlearn habits of hierarchy. Small groups will act out short scenes, as Adam encourages the rewrites that happen in rehearsals when participants revise and reimagine their lines to fit their voice and experiences. To finish off, the last rehearsal will be an informal script-in-hand performance of the texts that emerge after a day of amdram co-editing.
With thanks
Associate Occupier of Sit-in #2 To Be Potential — Jade Montserrat
Refreshments
During the event refreshments will be provided as well as a lunch and evening meal. Food will be vegan/vegetarian. Alcoholic and non-alcoholic refreshments provided.
* Please inform us on any allergies by emailing exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk
Access
A small access fund is available to support travel and access costs for attending the event. The funds are distributed on a first come first served basis. Please be aware we may need to close the fund early if demand is high, so please get in touch prior to the 25 June.
Fund for Travel
To access funds for travel please email exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk and let us know where you are travelling from within Scotland. We will book trains in advance for attendees and ticket collection references will be sent to you by email.
Please be in touch if you have other access needs including BSL interpretation, costs for Childcare, Carers & Support Workers and other needs.
This fund has been made possible by support from the Scottish Contemporary Art Network (SCAN).
Interpretation
Large print versions of the event information will be available, please ask our Guides. If you require alternative formats for material please email in advance.
Venue Info
The event is held at University of Dundee Botanic Garden.
The event will take under the cover of a marquee outdoors.
Please dress for outdoor weather.
During the event there attendees will be asked to travel short distances between locations within the Botanic Garden.
There are wheel friendly paths within the Botanic Garden.
There are wheelchair accessible toilets near the entrance.
There are baby changing facilities at the Visitor Centre
Guide Dogs and Assistance Dogs wearing their working harnesses are welcome.
Address
University of Dundee
Botanic Garden & Grounds
Riverside Drive
DUNDEE
DD2 1QH
Public Transport
Buses
Any buses from Dundee passing Harris Academy also stop near the Botanic Garden, which includes some buses to Ninewells Hospital.
Trains
Please note there is a National Rail Strike proposed for 25 June, please plan alternative travel accordingly.
For all enquires please email: exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk
Image credit
Ashanti Harris with Mele Broomes, An Archive: The Rehearsal, 2022 (Performance)
The Otolith Group, O Horizon, 2018 (film still). Courtesy and copyright the artists.
Funding support
The Ignorant Art School Sit-in Revel is programmed by Cooper Gallery, DJCAD and held in partnership with University of Dundee Botanic Garden.
It is supported by funding from the National Lottery through Creative Scotland, the British Council, the Goethe-Institut Glasgow and the Scottish Contemporary Art Network (SCAN).
