In formation III

About

The Institute of Contemporary Arts presents In formation III, the third iteration of a discursive platform emphasising collective production and learning, and forms of sociality. This expansive series of presentations, workshops, performances and participatory events is collaboratively organised by the ICA curatorial team and staff members.

In formation reimagines the spaces of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, considering how they are utilised and activated by public discourse, and questioning notions of the ‘civic’ institution. Where the In formation programmes in August 2017 and January 2018 took the interrogation of institutional forms and socio-political structures as a basis for discussion and production, In formation III is galvanised by considerations of humanity and the psyche. The programme spans critical questions around the science of the mind and its fixing of notions of humanity, experiences of individual and collective care, and explorations beyond the ‘rational’ mind.

This platform considers how agency and psychic life overlap and connect, moving from the address of highly formalised systems towards considering how their logics might be internalised, resisted and entrenched by the individual and collective psyche. Exploratory discussion, sound, performance, images and oral history provide channels to map how lived experience and intersubjective consciousness impact and inform societal hierarchies and priorities.

In formation III foregrounds emergent fields of research that offer points of entry into appositional modes of thought and learning, co-creation and intergenerational work. Scrutinising capitalism through psychoanalysis, approaching historical visibility through the space of disability poetics, and interrogating the ways race and gender are policed through sound, the programme sheds light on how artists, activists and their interlocutors draw on energies that sustain counter-normative ways of organising social life.

Friday 17 August, 1:30pm 

Prelude event: Workshop with Alok Vaid-Menon

Wednesday 22 August, 6pm 

Screening of Ulrike Ottinger’s Madame X: An Absolute Ruler

Wednesday 22 – Saturday 25 August 

Performance installation by Khairani Barokka, Annah: Nomenclature  

Thursday 23 August, 7pm 

Performance + Q&A with Khairani Barokka

Saturday 25 August, 5pm 

Talk by Denise Ferreira da Silva

Saturday 25 August, 7pm 

Screening of Clément Cogitore’s Braguino + Discussion

Sunday 26 August, 2pm 

Study group led by Denise Ferreira da Silva

Wednesday 29 August, 6:30pm

Performance-Lectures by Angela Chan, Suzanne Dhaliwal, Farah Ahmed, Robbie Judkins + João Florêncio

Wednesday 29 August, 7:00pm 

Screening of William Greaves’ Symbiopsychotaxiplasm 

Thursday 30 August, 6:30pm 

Poetry Reading + Live Exchange with Kongra Star: Rojava Women’s Revolution

Saturday 1 September, 2pm

Screening + Readings by crip theory research group

Sunday 2 September, 1pm 

Participatory roundtable: What’s Love Got to Do with It?

Tuesday 4 September, 6:30pm

Talk by David Ruebain + Yates Norton: Disability and Interdependence

Wednesday 5 September, 6:45pm 

Screening of Claude Faraldo’s Themroc 

Friday 7 September

4:30pm Workshop with Boris Mitić

6:30pm Screening of In Praise of Nothing + Q&A with director Boris Mitić

Saturday 8 September, 2pm 

Scratch #1 with sorryyoufeeluncomfortable

Sunday 9 September, 7pm 

UK premiere screening of National Narrative (Roman National) + Conversation with director Grégoire Breil

Tuesday 11 – Sunday 16 September

Installation by Mitchell Akiyama, Blood, a Ballast

Wednesday 12 September, 6:45pm 

Screening of Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames

Thursday 13 September, 2pm 

GUAP Social Work: Photography hacks Workshop with Diana Agunbiade-Kolawole + Social Creative Network

Thursday 13 September, 6:30pm

Talk by Alfie Bown: The Psychoanalysis of Cyborgs

Friday 14 September, 7pm 

Talk by Mitchell Akiyama 

Saturday 15 September, 2pm 

Scratch #2 with Tristam Adams + ICA Curator Carey Robinson 

Saturday 15 September, 5pm 

Vinyl DJ Workshop with Nzinga Soundz 

Saturday 15 September, 8pm 

Live Performance by Ya-Ya Bones

Saturday 15 September, 8:30pm 

Live Performance by Mina Rose

Saturday 15 September, 9pm 

DJ Set by Pxssy Palace

Sunday 16 September, 2pm 

Screening, Discussion and Reading with Oleksiy Radynski