Sarah Pierce | The Setting Down

About

“We venture to put our words and deeds into the world in recognition that someone else will take them up – misuse and reuse them, changing what I have done into something more.”

Since Sarah’s essay The Simple Operator was written in 2014, it has become a touchstone for the Satellites Programme participants as a way to articulate the process of bringing artworks into public spaces. In this talk, which is open to all, Sarah Pierce will discuss the moment of exhibition in relation to her concept of ‘the setting down’ as less an endpoint, but more where a thing is let go.

Touching on the work of Hannah Arendt, who wrote eloquently about public activities that orient towards a future: Sarah invokes ‘the setting down’ as a type of action, in which this unpredictable quality of the exhibition is also its community.

Tickets to Sarah's talk are free, but booking via Eventbrite is essential.

Sarah Pierce is an artist based in Dublin. Since 2003 she has used the term The Metropolitan Complex to describe her project, characterised by forms of gathering, both historical examples and those she initiates. Pierce works with installation, performance, archives, talks and papers, often opening these up to the personal and the incidental in ways that challenge received histories and accepted forms of making. Her interests include radical pedagogies, student work, learning communities, rebellions, and historical figures such as El Lissitzky, August Rodin, and Eva Hesse.

Satellites Programme is Collective’s development programme for emergent artists and producers based in Scotland. Satellites aims to support practitioners at a pivotal, emergent point in their careers through a critical programme of retreats, workshops, studio visits and group discussions, public exhibitions, events and publishing. Artists are selected from an open submission by a new panel each year. The 2020 participants are Alison Scott, Kirsty Hendry, Sulaïman Majali, Holly McLean and Becky Šik. The deadline for applications to the next Satellites programme is April 6th 2020. Please see our website or speak to a member of staff for further details.

Text quote: Pierce, Sarah “The Simple Operator” in Martinon, Jean-Paul. The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating. Bloomsbury Press 2014.