I’ll be hosting this residency at the Corniolo Art Platform this summer.
Practicing Decompression
20 — 26 August
Corniolo Art Platform
Borgo San lorenzo (Florence, IT)
Invited by Radical Intention, Visiting artist Steve Lambert will be hosting the 2018 Decompression Gathering Summer and he takes decompression seriously. The field of Artistic Activism is rife with overcommitment and hard work is undervalued. There is a high risk of bitterness and burn out, for those who don’t quit entirely. To fight this tendency, the 2018 summer camp will structure fallow time (the irony of structuring fallow time isn’t lost on us), create boundaries to free participants from continual internet connection, and encourage leisure, wandering, and exploration — metaphorical and otherwise. During the week the group will have the chance to discuss projects and life in a relaxed atmosphere, create new relationships that might evolve, and explore the territory of the Mugello Valley.
Participants are encouraged to gather for daily meals and will have time to share their past research. From there, they will have the opportunity to gather at their leisure, and share what they learn together at the evening meals on the days that follow. The group will investigate folk culture in the area surrounding Corniolo art platform through thematic field trips to enchanted Castles, Giotto’s residence or walking tours through the woods in search of the spring of the Arno River. These educational experiences function as different tool, contribute to the overall conversation around decompression, while disrupting the schedule of fallow time.
The 2018 DCAMP embraces the idea of decompression as form of investigation in to ways of working. In 1993 croatian artist Mladen Stilinovic wrote a manifesto of laziness, stating ‘Laziness is the absence of movement and thought, just dumb time — total amnesia. It is also indifference, staring at nothing, non-activity, impotence. It is sheer stupidity, a time of pain, futile concentration. Those virtues of laziness are important factors in art. Knowing about laziness is not enough, it must be practiced and perfected.’ (1993) With Irony, sarcasm, intelligence, stupidity and seriousness, the group of DCAMP 2018 will ask themselves how practice and perfect decompression.
