Join this round table discussion that will explore forms of exchange and how this can create space for collectivity, empowerment, participation, shared experience, and connection. Participants include Nina Davies, Mira Hirtz, Evar Hussayni and Abbas Zahedi.
Lead Image: Nina Davies, Stepping Into Machine, 2022. Moving image (still).
Nina Davies is an artist who considers the present moment through observing dance in popular culture; how it’s disseminated, circulated, made, and consumed.
Mira Hirtz is a performance artist, art mediator and art theorist who bases her work on somatic practices and explores the value of creativity for human beings and ecologies. Mediating, facilitating, and creating go hand in hand in her work which takes many different forms, from workshops to performances and video pieces, drawing and texts as well as curation in exhibition contexts. She graduated from the MFA Creative Practice 2019 at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and Independent Dance London with a project on »being part of nature, somehow« and has ever since continued her research about the relationship of human and other-than-human entities. 2016 she graduated from the MA art research and media philosophy at University of Art and Design Karlsruhe, Germany where she teaches performative research. She co-edited the online platform »reciprocal turn«, worked as an art mediator at documenta14, explored the museum space as a rehearsal space in the frame of the Critical Zones exhibition at ZKM Karlsruhe 2020/21, and co-curated the program series »How do we care?« at Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe, 2020. She is also involved in exploring how to present non-human beings on stage in the frame of the theatre of the Anthropocene.
Abbas Zahedi studied medicine at University College London, before completing his MA in Contemporary Photography: Practices and Philosophies at Central Saint Martins in 2019. Abbas blends contemporary philosophy, poetics, and social dynamics with performative and new-media modes. With an emphasis on how personal and collective histories interweave, Abbas makes connections whenever possible with people involved in the particular situations upon which he focuses.
Selected exhibitions include: Holding a Heart in Artifice, Nottingham Contemporary (2023); Metatopia 10013, Anonymous Gallery, New York (2022); The London Open 2022, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022); Postwar Modern, Barbican, London (2022); Testament, Goldsmiths CCA, London (2022); Temporary Compositions, Gallery 31 Somerset House, London (2021); Yarmonics 2021, Great Yarmoth, UK (2021); D.E.VALUATION, Mécènes du Sud, Montpellier (2021); 11 & 1, Belmacz, London (2021); Governmental Fires, FUTURA, Prague (2021); In Hindsight…, Bladr, Copenhagen (2020); Ouranophobia SW3, Chelsea Sorting Office, London (2020); How To Make A How From A Why?, Fire Station, South London Gallery, London (2020); Degree Show, Central Saint Martins, London (2019); The Age of New Babylon, Lethaby Gallery, London (2018); Diaspora Pavilion, (ICF), Wolverhampton Art Gallery (2018); appetite, Apiary Studios, London (2018); Diaspora Pavilion, (ICF), Palazzo Pisani a Santa Marina, Venice (2017); rb&hArts, Royal Brompton Hospital, London (2008).
Selected interventions, projects and performances include: Best Before End, Bold Tendencies, London (2023); Sonic Signals, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2023); Frieze Artist Award commission, London, (2022); Sonic Support Group, with Neurofringe (2020 – ongoing); Radio Amnion, Technical University of Munich (2021); Becontree Forever, Create London (2021); Brick Lane Foundation, Whitechapel Gallery (2021); A Case of Med(dling)tation, Performance Exchange at Belmacz (2021); To The Sour Sowers, The Mosaic Rooms, London (2021); The Urgency of The Arts Assembly, Royal College of Art (2021); Soul Refresher, Brent Biennial, London Borough of Culture (2020); Long Table: Lament, South London Gallery (2020); AMRA, Spike Island, Bristol (2019); Rose & STEMM, Guest Projects, London (2019); Outset Grant Ceremony, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2019); The Boulevard, Tate Britain, London (2018); Studio Jum’ah, Tate Exchange, London (2018); #FakeBooze, Diaspora Pavilion, Venice (2017).
Abbas has been the recipient of numerous awards including: the Frieze Artist Award (2022); the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards for Artists (2021); the Serpentine Galleries’ Support Structures for Support Structures (2021); Artangel, Thinking Time (2020); Jerwood Arts Bursary (2019); Aziz Foundation Academic Scholarship (2018); and Khadijah Saye Memorial Fund Scholarship (2017).
Abbas is an associate lecturer at the Royal College of Art (London), as well as teaching at universities across the UK and abroad.
