• recent Publications

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    Who and What Connects the Dots? Emma Kunz’s Method as Infographics and the Politics of Probability

    Article peer-reviewed, Taylor&Francis, 2023

    What if we were to re-frame Emma Kunz's oracular drawings made with a pendulum as infographics? Drawing on media theory, posthumanism and chance procedures in Art, this article investigates the limits and agency of data visualisations for probabilistic reasoning and 'evidence-based' decision making. In Parallax Journal’s special edition on Probability and Agency edited by Prof Natasha Lushetich and Iain Campbell. Read OPEN ACCESS

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    Rehearsing Disaster: pre-enactment between reality and fiction  

    Book Chapter, Transcript 2019

    The context for this chapter is the diversity of ways in which possible events are envisioned, re-constructed, and anticipated through performance or role play. These actions, which I call “pre-enactments”, blur reality with fiction to present future events as already happening. In Performance zwischen denZeiten Reenactments und Preenactments in Kunst und Wissenschaft, edited by Adam Czirak, Sophie Nikoleit, Friederike Oberkrome, Verena Straub, Robert Walter-Jochum and Michael Wetzels. Berlin: Transcript, 2019. Img © Simon Faithfull, EZY1899: Re-enactment for a Future Scenario (2012). Read PDF

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    Avoiding the Apocalypse: The How-to Guide as a Method

    Book Chapter, Routledge 2022

    Do How-to Guides work in real situations? This essay unpacks the logics and aesthetics of survival manuals from the Cold War to the Climate Apocalypse. In The Environmental Apocalypse: Interdisciplinary reflections on the Climate Crisis, edited by Jakub Kowalewsky . Image: The Intelligent Woman Guide to Athomic Radiation by Margot Bennet, Book Cover detail

    Futher info Link

    Read PDF

  • curatorial

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    Strengthening Threads with Gustavo Caboco  

    The British Museum and Holmleigh Primary School, July 2023

    Taking Wapichana traditional weaving objects at the Museum as its starting point, the collaboration project focuses on stitching and embroidery as an art form and a way to recover and strengthen our roots. It involves a public lecture at the British Museum, a school assembly with Caboco, a workshop at the Musem, and drop-in sessions at the school to create the pages of an embroidered book.

    Part of Brazil Footprint 2023

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    Guardians and Forests with Daiara Tukano and Marilene Ribeiro

    University of Manchester

    27 Apr 2023

    Exploring ideas of guardianship and stewardship of borders within forests, this workshop focuses on risk, art, and the agency of local knowledge in defence of rainforests. We discuss Indigenous art practices that work across these three realms in the Amazon with Artist and Activist Daiara Tukano (via Zoom); consider the political agency of photography with Brazilian artist and ecologist Marilene Ribeiro; and we directly explore tools and strategies for guarding our safe spaces, wherever they might be. Organised by CLACS, the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and is part of the Brazil Footprint 00 2023 public programme.

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    Brazil Footprint 2022

    Science and Industry Museum

    6 July 2022

    Artists and guests born in Amazonia occupy spaces at the museum with video projections and show-and-tell displays. Contributors include AMITIKATXI Collective, Amazônia Mapping, and Rafael Bqueer. 287 visits in one night only. Part of the Amazonia Late public programme for Sebastiao Salgado's exhibition.
    Link: https://www.brazilfootprint00.com/#_3

    2022

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    Brazil Footprint 0.0

    Barbican Centre  

    12— 19 July 2021 Online

     

    A week-long online festival that explores Brazil's perspective on the global mobilisation against climate inequalities, in the context of the UN’s upcoming COP26 conference. Responding to the Barbican exhibition Claudia Andujar: The Yanomami Struggle, the programme brings together artists, curators and academics to discuss how art addresses questions that go beyond technocratic approaches to climate change: symbiosis, interdependence and the resilience of Indigenous knowledge.

     

    PROGRAMME and PRESS

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    Imagining the Apocalypse

    Conference, Courtauld Institute, London, Oct 2019

    The Apocalypse is Immanent (paper presentation). Drawing from an extensive review of survival manuals book covers and illustrations, this paper illuminates the links between apocalyptic representations and precautionary instructions in preparation for real or imagined worst-case scenarios. Link

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    Is Extinction Imminent?

    Public programme, Aphra Theater Kent University, Canterbury. Nov 2019 

    The programme features the screening of Himali Singh Soin’s short film we are opposite like that (Frieze Artist award 2019), and a panel discussion with Lucia Pietroiusti, Curator of General Ecology at the Serpentine Galleries; Simon Beard, Senior Research Associate Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge and a representative from Extinction Rebellion. Chair and programmer Francesca Cavallo. Link

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    The Ethics of Risk (mis)communication

    Mancept Workshop in Political Thought, Manchester Univ. Sept 2020

    How do images communicate ideas of safety and danger? What kind of visual strategies are adopted to redistribute risk perceptions and emotions? This visually focussed presentation offers a taxonomy of the methods that have in the past been used to radically transform people’s habits and decisions when it comes to public health and risk. Link

  • Exhibition

    Turner Contemporary, Margate

    10 October 2015 - 17 January 2016

    Featuring more than 70 works from the mid-20th century to the present day, the exhibition brings together artworks and artistic practices that engage directly with risk. From chance procedures to political risk; from dangerous experiences to the culture of risk, the exhibition features works by major international artists including Marina Abramović, Francis Alÿs, Chim↑Pom, Chris Burden, Sophie Calle, Jeremy Deller, Marcel Duchamp, Harun Farocki, Yoko Ono, Gerhard Richter and Ai Weiwei among others. Curated by Turner Contemporary in association with Francesca Cavallo

    further reading + gallery +

    Symposium

    Turner Contemporary, Margate

    5 December 2015

    What can art reveal about the strategies we adopt towards risk and its constant assessment and management in the wider contemporary world?

    Organised in collaboration with the Department of History and Philosophy of Art, Kent University. Chaired and introduced by Francesca Cavallo ( Risk associate curator) and Martin Hammer (Kent University). Speakers include: Michael Guggenheim (Goldsmiths),

    Margaret Iversen, (University of Essex), Matthew Kieran (University of Leeds), Peter Kennard (artist), Ele Carpenter (Goldsmiths), Claire Fontaine, (artist collective) & Hillel Schwartz (poet and cultural historian).

    Download full schedule + further info +

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    Public Programme

    Cabinet, New York

    5 December 2015

    Please join us for a program that explores how we conceive “solutions” and “preparedness” for living in worst-case scenarios. Include: “How-To” Exercises, by Maya Oppenheimer and Afield Studio (Kai Wood Mah & Patrick Lynn Rivers) Survival Hoardings: An Illustrated Tour, with Francesca Laura Cavallo; An Audio Guide to Getting Out, by Emily Candela and Choreographies of Survival, with the School of Apocalypse

    further reading +

     

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    Conference

    CAA Annual Conference. New York. Feb 2017

    Operating Manual for Living in the Worst-Case Scenario

    Chairs: Francesca Cavallo, Maya Oppenheimer and Emily Candela

    The survival manual embodies a society haunted by potential worst-case scenarios, in which scenario design is becoming a prominent feature of the “safety industry”; from FEMA’s “family disaster plan” to online resources made by so-called “prepping” enthusiasts. The panel focuses on how scenario design and behaviour regulation are negotiated in the format of the survival manual, considered in an expanded sense, which also includes the deployment/design of instructions and expertise in speculative contexts. Further reading +

     

  • Rehearsing disasters

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    There She Lies Motionless

    MANIFESTA 11

    Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich

    with Hamish MacPherson

    An exercise in compassion, vulnerability and power, sitting somewhere between, workshop, performance and the every day practice of giving and receiving care. Loosely based on the work and life of Caroline Thomas, a woman who has simulated illnesses for over 30 years as a part of her volunteering commitment to the Casualties Union.

    further reading +

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    Round table: Pre-enactment between reality and fiction  Fig-2 22/50 ICA

    From fire drills and mock-disaster-response exercises, to the risk assessment processes accompanying so many events, structures and even ‘high-risk’ people, a pre-enactment is the anticipation of future disasters through performance, a coping mechanism of society increasingly concerned with the predictable future. The panel will explore the cogency of reality and fiction in risk management strategies. Chaired and introduced by Francesca Cavallo  (curator), with Helene Kazan (artist) and Caroline Thomas (Casualties Union). Part of Luna Talks: Uncertainty Scenarios, a project by artist Marjolijn Dijkman for Fig-2 Further info +

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    Rehearsing the Disaster

    Royal College of Art, London

     

    Probing the contemporary manifestations and possibilities of pre-enactment, independent curator Francesca Laura Cavallo presents a talk illustrated with screening of films by Rosa Barba, Lucy Beech, Simon Faithfull and Superflex. Hosted by METALAB (Emily Candela and Maya Hoppenheimer), as a part of the public programme of the Disruption exhibition.

    Further reading +

  • Sensing it Coming:

    Regarding the Aesthetics of Risk

    Today the ubiquitous guidance, warnings and protocols of risk management construct possible futures as risks to be managed. How is this need to manage risk transforming the contemporary visual language? Are its rhetorics of danger, reassurance, or rationality effectively convincing us that we are prepared? Can art reconcile us with these issues and be a safe space for constructing resilience? In my PhD dissertation, I focus on the rhetorics of risk from the perspective of art and visual culture, examining warnings, instructions, drills and data visualisations across risk and art.

    The entire thesis is available free access here

    .

    Here me talking about it (00:23:07) in this conversation at Radar with Ksenia Chmutina, Senior Lecturer in Sustainable and Resilient Urbanism at Loughborough University and David Bell. Part of the Risk-Related programme.

     

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    P/RE/ENACT CONFERENCE ICI BERLIN

    The interdisciplinary conference aims at examining Pre-, Re-, as well as En-actments that are not just based on artistic practices, but include social, medial, political, and activist phenomena. To what extent can artistic (P)reenactments influence – especially in terms of anticipation – political relationships and vice versa? To what extent is the theory of (P)reenactment capable of redefining the relationship between art and politics? Which role do cultural-historic preconditions play in particular courses of action and habits of perception? More info+

     

     

    ABSTRACT

     

    The paper proposes an hypothesis of ‘pre-enactment’ as a performative practise for both exercising and exorcising risk. It defines pre-enactment as a risk management and prevention strategy where a potential or perceived danger is rehearsed and a suitable response developed. A kind of simulation, I suggest pre-enactment provokes experiences and creates ‘memories’ of events yet to happen in order to guide the behaviour of the population. The event yet to take place is thus staged. In this sense it operates at the border between reality and fiction. Through presenting various examples of pre-enactment in disaster preparedness and artworks I ask whether pre-enactment acts as an emotional vaccine in an increasingly risk-aware society: injecting small amounts of fear to generate immunity antibodies, as it were.

  • Cosmicmegabrain

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    Is this a Warning?

    Shoreditch Studios, London

    Art, music, performance for one night only. Showcasing revolutionary new theories and methods, T.R.I.A.L. proposes a participatory strategy for the provision of increased risk reduction public awareness activities. A cosmicmegabrain project in collaboration with Hoxton Loft Society. Works by Lucy Beech, Luciano Foglia, Ben Fowler, Patrick Goddard, Fantich & Young, Emer O’Brien, Solina Hi-Fi and Jim Woodall .

    Further reading +, watch video+

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    Does Dark Matter?

    Shoreditch Studios, London

    Leading figures at T.R.I.A.L. have announced that they are now only 1% uncertain that they have discovered something which very possibly could be the elusive science particle, first theorised as a possibility by leading hypotheticians. A cosmicmegabrain project in collaboration with NTS radio. Works by Bálint Bolygó, Emily Candela, Ronin Cho, Davide D’Elia, Roberto Ekholm, Goodbye Leopold, Andy Holden, Janina Lange, Romvelope, Aura Satz and Semiconductor.

    Further reading + Pamphlet +

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    Festival, MANPOWER

    Rua Poco dos Negros, Lisbon

    An iconic Lisbon street is filled with art, music and performance for the second edition of the festival taking over its shop windows, empty spaces and cultural venues. Over 30 international artists selected from a public call by cosmicmegabrain in collaboration with Hayward Gallery Curator Gillian Fox and independent Lisbon based art critic Susana Pomba.

    Further reading +

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    Cosmicmegabrain ( 2007 - 2012)

    London, Lisbon, Rome, Beirut

    Founded in late 2007 by Jesse O Wade, Francisca Aires and Francesca Cavallo, Cosmicmegabrain have curated and produced a number of collaborative art projects in the UK and abroad. Initially formed after an invitation to organise creative projects at Cordy House, a disused warehouse in Shoreditch, East London, CMB has worked with Artists, Designers, Musicians, Dancers and Scientists to produce one-night-only curated events with a strong emphasis on public participation. See separate website

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    Exhibition: Letizia Battaglia,

    Cinemateca Uruguaya, Montevideo

    The exhibition Sicilia en Blanco y Negro brings to the Uruguayan audience 40 images of events, facts and protagonists of the history of the Mafia and of its legacy in its bloodiest years, which Letizia Battaglia (Eugene Smith Prize 1986) took over the course of her career as a photojournalist: documents of invaluable importance reflecting a Sicilian society constantly divided between life and death, always struggling to achieve an elusive peace. Curated by Francesca Cavallo and Lucas Caravia with the support of the Italian Institute of Culture in Montevideo. Part of the 25th International Film Festival.

    Further reading +

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    Exhibition: Chiba Abnormal

    Andersen Museum, Rome

    Three monumental toy-like creatures inhabit the former house of the sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen (1872 – 1940), in homage to the artist’s unrealised dream to conceive the ultimate idealised beauty. New works by Chiba curated by Francesca Cavallo and commissioned by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities in partnership with Universita’ la Sapienza, Rome. Master MACMAC’s Oltreconfine curatorial award 2006.

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    POst show discussion - 13 of february 2018

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    Review

    Trevor Paglen: From "Apple" to "Anomaly". The Curve, Barbican Centre, London.

    Trevor Paglen’s new commission at the Barbican Curve Gallery in London draws attention to our categorizing impulses, as humans and as machines, for it appropriates machine learning data sets, their tags, and their ways of seeing and making sense of the world.

    View article +

    Published in June 2019

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    Review

    Kiss My Genders. Hayward Gallery, London.

    The 1990s have been an important era for LGBTI+ art when questions of visibility began to emerge to compensate for the widespread censorship of queer bodies in the public realm. Understandably, “Kiss My Genders” pays homage to this prolific period with statement works.

    Further reading +

    Published January 2016

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    Review

    Joachim Koester: In the Face of Overwhelming Forces. Camden Art Centre, London

    A meticulous, flawless orchestration of each element that constitutes the film experience from its conception to its presentation to the public.

    Further Reading +

    Published March 2017

  •  

     

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    Book Review

    Corinne Silva: Garden State

    Ffotogallery and The Mosaic Rooms, London

    Since 1967, Israel has pursued a policy of building settlements on the West Bank and around the Green Line, in what the united nation call the Israeli Occupied Territories. As a part of the endless dispute with Palestinians over this contested land, an increasing

    number of new communities have emerged, promoted by the government for Israeli

    people to inhabit the Palestinian land...

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    Review

    Sharon Hayes: In My Little Corner of the World, Anyone Would Love You
    Studio Voltaire, London

    In her talk at London Studio Voltaire, Sharon Hayes reads from an anonymous 1974 newsletter by the Pennsylvania activist group Radical Queens. As the sound of her video

    installation has been temporarily turned down, her voice reverberates in the room bouncing between her mouth and the plywood panel at her left, where characters on screens are also reading something we can’t hear.

    View full article as pdf +

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    Review

    Enrico David at the Hepworth Wakefield

    There is a substantial difference between the two ambiences that compose Enrico David’s exhibition at the Hepworth Gallery. As I move from one room to the next, small figures on plinths and papers migrate into the space I share with them, almost liberated from their state of latency to become bodies, space markers, creatures half submerged in their own dimension.

    Further reading +

    Published January 2016

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    Review: Hengameh Golestan: Witness 1979 at the Showroom

    Honest and immediate, Golestan’s photographs are intrinsically and ethically entrenched in the story they portray: they reconnect to a joyous Iran where people exercise their freedom of expression proudly and harbour hope for a future democracy. An Iran that had no intention of giving up those rights, but that for some still uncanny, complicated reason was just about to be turned into one of the most conservative countries in the world.

    Further Reading +

    Published Dec 2015

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    Report: 25 Weeks of fig -2

    Embracing the Unpredictable

    As fig-2 reaches its halfway point, writer Francesca Cavallo reflects on the first 25 weeks of the project, exploring how its strength lies in its unpredictability.

     In the overwhelming panorama of intellectually stimulating events in London and the inescapable FOMOthat keeps us hooked, I am captured by the steady paced, weekly re-embodiment of the ICA Studio. I keep going back to fig-2, every Monday if I can, to find one more iteration of Fatos Ustek’s take on the London art scene.

    Further reading +

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    Review: Willem de Rooij, Arnolfini, Bristol. Camera Austria. Issue 129

    Filtered by expert editors, the images that we see everyday in the international newspapers are mediated immortalisations of our collective experience of the world: they form a repertoir of human gestures, expressions and emotions. Hisorically and politically connoted, they also vibrate with an aura of timelessness in the sence that they reiterate ad infinitum similar sequences of acts, dramas, and representations. 

     View full article as a pdf +

    Published on March 2015

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    Review: Last Seen Entering the Biltmore, South London Gallery

    In 15th and 16th century Europe (with the proliferation of the Mannerist style, and after with the Baroque) real life must have seemed to be very much like a parade. It was the triumph of the façade: trompe l’oeil, ephemeral stages, arches of triumph, were not just functional to theatres and parades, but had permeated into the domestic spaces of houses and palazzos in the form of grandiose doors or fireplaces and canopied furniture.

    Further reading +

    Published on 21 July 2014

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    Report: Amy Franceschini workshop for Situations, Liverpool Biennial

    A bakery may not be the quietest place for a workshop, but it has that factory-like feeling that stimulates conversation and productivity. Plus it sets the perfect scene for a discussion on public art: at Homebaked in Liverpool, the act of breadmaking becomes a metaphor for resilience and the importance of art in everybody’s life. Participants from across the UK came together to discuss strategies of public art and learn from the experience of two art projects that have used bread making as a response to urban development. 

    Further Reading +
    Published on 31 July 2014   

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    Rehearsing the Disaster, Critical Contemporary Culture, III Crisis

    Risk Assessment booklet developed from an intervention for Disruption, an exhibition at the RCA in Jan 2013. In collaboration with METALAB I invited a group of writers to use specially-designed risk assessment forms to ‘risk assess’ various pieces in the exhibition, where each booklet was installed alongside its respective work.Conceived as a para-artistic artwork to hijack and disrupt an event, the booklet documents a creative writing experiment which inhabits the imaginative fictions that orbit our consideration and anticipation of risk. ( Nov 2013) Further Reading + 

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    Review: Aura Satz at Paradise Row, London.

    The echoes of remote technological inventions, encrypted messages and a sense of arcane ventriloquism form the grammar of Aura Satz’s work. In some of her films, out-dated machines sound like haunted creations, whose material elements have lost their function and are left as bare mechanisms, portals for unknown messages. 

    Further Reading +

    Published on 9 November 2013

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    Article: Re-reading the Classics

    Cura. Issue 08

    It hardly made the news in Italy, but in London, where I live, news have reported of a  Roman statue which has undergone cosmetic surgery. I couldn't help but reading it with a mixture of anger and sinister amusement. References to the work of Oliver Larich, Alfredo Jaar among others. Text in Italian with English translation.  

    View full article as pdf + 

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    Review: Sarah Sze, Victoria Miro, London. 

    Sara Sze’s micro universes have captured us with maximal installations like ‘Triple Point’, seen at the American Pavilion in Venice in 2013. My impression then was that something like a lo-fi extra-terrestrial, with an intricate scaffolding of wires, tools, clamps and ladders had blown in with the wind and crashed on the neo-Palladian pavilion.

    Perhaps the effect of an accident, the fake stones on the roof almost caricatured the precarious balance holding the structure together.

    Further reading + 

    Published on 9 March 2015

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    Review: Debora Delmar Corp, Modern Art Oxford

    The symbiosis between art and corporations has a long, multifaceted history, from Warhol’s Coca Cola cans to mass-produced Hirst multiples, this cross-fertilization has always been controversial but not necessarily subversive. Noteworthy are Richard Prince’s re-photographs of the Marlboro’s campaign in the ’80s and ‘90s - his images cut out the cigarettes logos turning the melancholic cowboys into ironic caricatures of the American dream. 

    Further reading + 

    Published on 24 April 2015

     

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    Review: Venice Biennale 2013 / oO

    Pavilions of Cyprus and Lithuania

    Just outside the Arsenale in Venice is the Palasport ‘Giobatta Gianquinto’, a modernist 1970s piece of concrete architecture built to host any sort of sports activity. It is the 31st of May and the air is full of euphoria, just as it is before a sports competition. The smell as well, I can recognise: it reminds me of the gymnasiums where I, like many other Italians of my generation, have practiced athletics, volleyball or basketball, the openness of the space and the high ceiling contained only by concrete walls and surmounted by circular neon lights.

    Further reading +

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    Review: Rosa Barba, Turner Contemporary, Margate

    Just as contemporary art commissions are being welcomed into traditional spaces, so too are the old masters finding homes in the midst of the contemporary art world, as seen at last year’s Frieze Masters. This approach begins to reconcile the apparent divorce between historical and contemporary art, opening up both to new reflections. 

    further reading +

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    In Conversation with Haris Epaminonda, Cura. Issue 06

    Haris Epaminoda's exhibtion Volume VI at TATE Modern (Level 2 Gallery) invites a reconfiguration of what we usually associate with museums: history, preservation, individual and collective memory. Text in English and Italian.

    View full article as pdf + 

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    On Art and Crisis.

    Cura.Issue 03

    In times of crisis like the one just narrowly escaped (so it would seem) it easy to start blaming the art market, social injustice and art being only for the rich. It may make more sense to concentrate on the market, stretch its self referential matter and turn it into critical consciousness. Text in Italian with English translation with reference to the work of Superflex, Stephanie Syjuco.

    View full article as pdf +

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    In Conversation with Sissi,

    Cura. Issue 01

    Interview with Sissi in regards to her participation in the Italian Pavilion of the Venice Biennial, 2009. Text in Italian with English translation by Orsola Mileti. 

    View full article as pdf +

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    Naturalia

    Cura.Issue 02

    In conversation with Kate McGwire as a part of the Young Curators Have theirs say section. Text in Italian with English translation by cura. 

    View full article as pdf +

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    Mark McGowen

    Cura.Issue 00

    Overview of McGowan's work in regard to his collaboration with cosmicmegabrain in Beirut. Text in Italian.

    View full article as pdf +

  • TEACHING

    Postmodernism and the Visual Arts

    KENT UNIVERSITY

    HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ART

    Spring Term - January to April 2018

    Module Convenor: Grant Pooke

    Seminar Leader: Francesca Cavallo

    The Sublime, the Disgusting and the Laughable

    KENT UNIVERSITY

    HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ART

    Spring Term - January to April 2018

    Module Convenor: Michael Newall

    Seminar Leader: Francesca Cavallo

    Introduction to Contemporary Art

    KENT UNIVERSITY

    HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ART

    Spring Term - January to April 2018

    Module Convenor: Michael Newall

    Seminar Leader: Francesca Cavallo, Natalia Naish

    MA Curating Tutor

    KENT UNIVERSITY

    HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ART

    Spet  - July  2019

    Module Convenor: Michael Newall

    Seminar Leader: Francesca Cavallo, Natalia Naish

    Research Methods

    LONDON COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATION

    A Risk themed seminars series aimed at for the Masters in Media Design Students at LCC. It includes working around theoretical notions and interpretations of risk, from risk communication, to risk assessment, as much as experimenting with various research tools and exercises borrowed from the contemporary risk imaginary .

  • WORKSHOPS

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    Francesca Cavallo - Rehearsing Disaster: an exploration of pre-enactments

    As part of AltMFA's a-n supported programme on The Future, we are excited to welcome researcher and curator Francesca Laura Cavallo who will lead a workshop at Mayday Rooms.

    Francesca will present glimpses from Rehearsing Disaster: her long-term exploration of pre-enactments. Focusing on risk assessments, warning messages and survival manuals we will examine these techniques and explore how to exploit their possibilities through critical and creative exercises.

    Panel: Cultural Capital

    MiAL- UAL Student Union

    The term cultural capital refers to non-financial social assets that promote social mobility beyond economic means.In this talk, we will be discussing the cultural capital of emerging art and design and its own value within London outside of the economy. With Lydia Cowpertwait, Simon Hinde and

    Francesca Laura Cavallo

     Saturday 30th April 2016

    Risk Assessment:

    a para Artistic Work

    Metalab / RCA

     

    The workshop experiments with the proximity  between risk assessment and fiction writing by inviting participants to “risk assess“ selected works of an exhibition by filling in purposely designed risk assessment forms. 

    Further info + 

     

     

    Final Day of Risk

    Herne Bay High School/ Turner Contemporary

     

    Boy’s Dance Company from Herne Bay High School showcase a new dance piece, inspired by the work and history of Margate’s RNLI Lifeboat station and crew situated next to the gallery. The students have worked in collaboration with the RNLI and Associate Curator of Risk Francesca Cavallo.

    Life is Spiky

    Creative Space at Arlington

    [ s p a c e ]

     

    Taking the cactus as an existential inspiration Life is Spiky invites residents of an homeless hostel to produce vases and containers for little cactai to be sold in a small social justice campaign at Christmas.

    Oct to Dec 2014

     

     

    Curatorial workshop

    Made in Arts London

    UAL Student Union

     

    Advising students and graduates in the curatorial process of the Made in Arts London Exhibition "Process and Exile"

    Further info +

    Develop your own work

    Creative Space at Arlinghton  [ s p a c e ]

     

    A series of workshops for clients of mental health organisations designed to stimulate creativity via the understanding of art ( include guided tours to exhibitions in London)

    Jan to Mar 2015

    Performing the Every Day

    13A Hostel \ RADA

     

    A series of workshops with final performance and Q+A at RADA devising ensemble work around the themes of Memory, Food and Abjection with the residents of CUC Hostel in Soho. A project coordinated by myself and lead by Jessie Vickerage for her thesis dissertation at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

     

    Active Citizenship

    British Council/People Can

     

    In partnership with the British Council, delivering and facilitating Active Citizens, a programme that supports people taking action as citizens.

  • ABOUT

     

     

    Francesca Laura Cavallo is an art historian and interdisciplinary researcher who curates, lectures and publishes about the relationship between risk and art. Francesca is currently researching Sirens and Warnings as a part of the AHRC project Preemptive Listening at the Royal College of Art, where she also contributes to various programmes in Contemporary Art Practice, Curating Contemporary Art and the Urgency of the Arts. Francesca is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies at the University of Kent and the founder of Brazil Footprint 00, a programming platform and research network for ecologically minded, de-colonial and intersectional art practices across Brazil and the UK. She has curated exhibitions, festivals and public programmes at the Science and Industry Museum, the Barbican Centre, Turner Contemporary, Manifesta 11, Cabinet (NY), the ICA, 98 weeks in Beirut, and Andersen Museum in Rome. She writes art criticism for various publications and, more regularly, for Camera Austria International.

     

    Biography

     

    Following my first degree in Preservation of Cultural Heritage, I lived for a year in Mexico for an international program funded by the European Commission. I worked at the Museo Zoque Regional, in the rural area near Tuxtla Gutierrez (Chiapas), researching and displaying the ethnographic collection dedicated to the Zoques, an Indigenous group living in Chiapas, México. I worked in Europe at MACRO, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, the Serralves Museum in Porto, Portugal, and Cuba's Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennial. In 2007, in London, I co-founded the art collective Cosmicmegabrain. Between 2007 and 2012, the collective produced several projects, including shows in Beirut (98weeks Research Project), Lisbon (Manpower Festival), Rome (MACRO Testaccio) and London (Shoreditch Studios). Other curatorial projects in this period included the exhibition Abnormal at the Andersen Museum in Rome, the Art festival CF2 in Puglia (Italy)and Sicily in Black and White, Letizia Battaglia's first solo exhibition in Uruguay. At this time, I also lead workshops for [ s p a c e ], the University of the Arts London, and the Royal College of Art and my socially engaged practice has included coordinating the programmes Building Local Activism with the Young Foundation and Active Citizens with the British Council.

     

    In 2015-16, I curated the exhibition Risk at Turner Contemporary, which over 81,000 people visited. The exhibition came about through a partnership with the ERC-funded project Organising Disaster at Goldsmiths College, which supported and informed my work with Turner Contemporary for the curation of the exhibition (10 October 2015 -17 January 2016). Featuring more than 70 artworks and museum artefacts, the show explored our risk and disaster management cultures through the lens of artistic risk-taking. Artists included Marina Abramović, Francis Alÿs, Chim↑Pom, Chris Burden, Sophie Calle, Jeremy Deller, Marcel Duchamp, Harun Farocki, Yoko Ono, Gerhard Richter and Ai Weiwei. My further research on risk has since informed my contribution to high-profile festivals and programmes in the UK and internationally, including Manifesta 11, the ICA and Cabinet.
    I completed my PhD 'Sensing it Coming: the Aesthetics of Risk' in 2020 at the University of Kent, followed by a GCRF (Global Challenges Research Framework) funded Postdoc. The project, Acting Before the Emergency, Artists and Climate-related Disasters in Brazil, aimed to test out the possibilities offered by the channels of artistic production in Brazil to be safe spaces for cultivating resilience to natural disasters. It led to Brazil Footprint oo, a continuing annual public programme and research network active until 2023. At Kent, I taught in various History and Philosophy of Art programs.

     

     

  • worked with/ FOR

    Barber Osgerby

    Camera Austria International

    Cura Magazine

    fig -2 (Outset)

    Goldsmith's College

    Kent University

    London College Of Communication

    Manifesta 11

    Royal College of Art

    [ s p a c e ]

    Situations

    This is Tomorrow

    Turner Contemporary

    University of the Arts London