RESIDENCY 11:11
Below are some examples of residency projects and public events facilitated by Residency 11:11 between 2018 and 2023 including:
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online residencies with digital public events (eg. Kasra Jalilipour, RAKE collective, Grace Collins and James McColl)
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domestic residencies with physical public events (eg. Sabriaya Shipley, Evelyn Wh-ell, Éamon McGivern, Xiomara Virdó, Youcef Hadjazi)
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screening room programme with artist talks/interviews (eg. Bare Minimum Collective curated by Sticky Fingers Publishing, Cairo Clarke)
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workshops (eg. Davinia-Ann Robinson, Cerrato-Halls, Colm Guo-Lin Peare and Kate Frances Lingard and Rebecca Gill)
Kasra Jalilipour - online resident June 2023
Kasra Jalilipour is an Iranian-born multidisciplinary artist, writer and educator, currently based in the UK. Through humour, provocation and storytelling, their practice uses the body as the subject to discuss race, gender identity and sexuality. They often use methods of speculative fiction to retell historical stories through a queer lens. They work in a variety of mediums including moving image, installation, text, drawing and performance. They have an ongoing body of research which looks for fragments of queerness hidden in Iran’s Qajar era, specifically stories that centre intimacy, eroticism and gender nonconformity.
Kasra spent their time developing their writing project set in 1988 Iran, right after the Iraq Iran war, about two lesbian heretic dogs fighting the police.
During the online residency, their research developed into a collection of found, made and augmented images, informed by and also as a visual reflection of the new short story they were developing. Playing with transformative digital tools like AI Image generators, voice manipulation software and screen-reading and publishing tools, they experimented with image and text in new and exciting ways.
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Image: an excerpt from the short story Daughters of God (In Love) which Kasra wrote during their residency and performed online, and which they plan to continue developing into a multi-volume play.
"I have done a few online residencies but the support, openness and flexibility provided by 11:11 made this a really enjoyable experience.
It was great to be offered the time, space and support to finalise a text based work/performance I have been trying to produce for a long time.
I have really enjoyed our weekly chats. They have been super helpful and I'm sure I'll keep going back to my notes in the long run too.
Also loved chatting to Iarlaith! We ended up having so much in common."
- Kasra Jalilipour
RAKE Collective - online residents March 2022
RAKE is a visual research collective using open source data to investigate a variety of unseen and obscured elements in society, business and politics.
Throughout their online residency in March 2022, the collective researched the physical, sociological and bureaucratic construction of borders in the UK - gathering both governmental research and the personal testimonies of individuals via anonymous submissions. As a culmination of their residency, RAKE hosted an online public event to discuss the impact of and experiences with the UK border. The event took place over a two hour period via the Telegram app and was open to everyone. They created a space to share personal experiences and impressions, ask questions, respond to the research and other audience members, in an open and fluid dialogue not limited by location or borders.
"Our online residency with 11:11 allowed us to develop the initial stages of a project we had been wanting to launch but never knew quite how to start. The research period we spent during our residency was immensely helpful to our current, long term project and we feel we wouldn’t be where we are now without having the month to focus solely on those jumping-off points with ongoing advice and support from 11:11's Giulia & Alex. Their individual expertise was invaluable to the progression of the research, particularly in regards to external participation and first-hand testimony, which we had never worked with before and which gave completely new depths to the experimental work. We plan to exhibit the ongoing project - started during the residency and expanded since - at the start of 2023, and our journey up to this point was without a doubt galvanised by our experience with 11:11 online! We would 100% recommend the residency to other practitioners - the way it is structured with a focus on community makes it totally unique."
- RAKE Collective
Image: a screenshot of part of the audience dialogue during their end of residency public event on the Telegram app
Grace Collins and James McColl - online residents March 2021
During a time of scarcity of opportunities to co-create large-scale participatory art caused by the pandemic, Grace Collins and James McColl turned to each other and began sending each other voice recordings. The topics of conversation ranged from reflections about their time together on alternative MA School of the Damned, complaints about admin tasks and the struggles of art making. An attempt to escape the pressure of overcrowded Zoom meetings (a user-unfriendly environment presented to most people throughout 2020) became an opportunity to become friends.
During their online residency with us at 11:11, this ongoing conversation between the two artists was turned in on itself to assess the tone and effects of creating an intimate yet remote relationship, and became research material for a new body of collaborative work; a comment on participation, facilitation, hosting and friendship, playing with the possibility of ‘unproductive’ relationships between arts workers.
A public day-long conversation event was held over WhatsApp at the end of their residency discussing their research over the residency period, using the platform that brought them together originally and acted as their collaborative sketchbook.
Image: an excerpt from a publication Grace and James have created using their research from their online residency
"During lockdown I was finding it really hard to find support for my own art practice, 11:11 provides an opportunity in my field that I couldn’t get access to in online workshops or artist collectives. Being able to do the residency remotely meant that I felt less isolated while out of work and have been gifted back confidence in my work; to collaborate with more experienced artists, apply for bigger opportunities and experiment in how I engage audiences. Giulia and Alex helped me reflect on my practice, challenged me in a way that I couldn’t have done alone and linked me up with artists I’d dreamt of working with - I hope I can return the favour and pass my knowledge onto other artists too."
- Grace Collins
"Residency 11:11 has been an invaluable experience to me as an artist, it's given me the support I needed and the space I needed to undertake deep and meaningful learning and research. So often does a residency program fail to provide a genuine opportunity for artists to undertake R&D without the need to produce 'work' or have something for that program to 'show', for me, the conversations had and deep learning far outweighed the need to produce something. I also felt that I was giving as much to the programmers as I was taking, it felt very harmonious and unlike other residency experiences I have had. Often artists are asked to value something, 'what did the residency do for you?' or 'how has this opportunity helped you in your development?' What stands out to me most after finishing Grace and I's March residency, is that we have taken a big step forward in our collaborative partnership which was made possible by the residency. I'd also say that the feeling that we now have a bond with Giulia and Alex both as artists and as friends is as important to me as any artist developoment a residency could give me."
- James McColl
Sabriaya Shipley - domestic resident February 2023
Image: Sabriaya during their end of residency public performance at Glass House London
Sabriaya Shipley is a Philadelphia-based poet, educator, and community ethnographer determined to study, receive, and cultivate nontraditional performance/art spaces centred around the expressive freedom of Black, Brown & Indigenous stories.
In the culmination of their one month stay with us in February, Sabriaya presented her performance, "In Sankofa: Outside of Community," featuring poetry in performance, digital media, and ethnographic mapping of the intersections of the Black diaspora found during their time exploring cultural sites of Black London history. Residency 11:11 offered Sabriaya space and time to take their work in a new direction and with new audiences, for the first time bringing together poetry, improvisation, performance, moving image & animation.
"This residency included a lot of firsts for me: first time in London, first ever residency and first time sharing my work internationally. The residency helped me reflect on the role that community plays in my work and what it means to be part of a community away from “home”. The residency offered me time to reflect on Black histories in London and gain inspiration from queer BIPOC spaces.
I returned to Baltimore and Philadelphia inspired and more confident in the work that I do and the importance it has for my community. I am very grateful for the things learnt and new friends made along the way. Thanks Alex and Giulia."
- Sabriaya Shipley
Evelyn Wh-ell - domestic resident November 2022
Evelyn Wh-ell is an artist, writer and researcher, currently completing a PhD in butch and transmasc aesthetics. Through publishing, performance-lectures, and workshops, they develop aesthetic strategies to rethink the production of gendered subjectivity as genre trope, parodying forms from life-writing, detective fiction, sci-fi and horror for humorous ends. Wh-ell’s first monograph, Memoirs of a Child Plot Hole: How to Escape Yourself Without Even Trying was published in 2022 by Sticky Fingers Publishing.
As part of the end of residency public evEvelyn presented their work-in-progress, a textual and visual experiment in narrative transformations and entrapments. Narrative form became a vehicle for subjection, guiding mis-guided attempts at meaning-making and personal revelations, where deceptive appearances deflected attention away from the missing point. This work extended from Evelyn’s interest in the relation between gender transition and narrative, the conditions and constraints of genre, and an overcommitment to the bit.
Image: Evelyn during their end of residency public presentation at Kingsgate Project Space
"For me, the residency was an invaluable time for me to reconsider my practice and the direction I want to take it in the future, both in terms of experimenting with expanding from text/writing and in terms of possible future opportunities e.g. fellowships/residencies/further study. I found the opportunity to discuss my practice informally really helped me develop and articulate my current interests and my future desires. The 'curator/artist chats' with Rosa and Iarlaith were also really helpful in providing new perspectives on my practice and ideas of how I can experiment/expand within my practice (e.g. collaborative work, filmmaking), as well as practical advice on future applications to places like DAI and Arts Council DYCP. The exhibition visit and conversation afterwards at the mid-point of the residency came at the perfect time for me, and helped me consider the context in which I view my practice and where I would like to place myself and my work in the future, as well as think about what kind of work I am excited to make - I think this shaped the kind of work I produced for the final presentation.letters, that works well on almost every site."
- Evelyn Wh-ell
Éamon McGivern - domestic resident August 2022
Éamon McGivern is a figurative painter based in San Francisco, US. In 2015 while living in London, they noticed that people were continuously talking about gender in incoherent ways. Seven years later in August 2022, they returned to London for a domestic residency with us at 11:11 with a new name and sex marker on their ID, to research why and how the English language is so bad at articulating gender. They interviewed people about their relationship to language and gathered stories from London’s archives, like Bishopsgate Institute and INIVA.
During their end of residency public event, Éamon briefly discussed their relationship to the English language which is often used as a tool of hegemonic culture to limit and structure the way art and identities are consumed. They then delivered a reading of the Astrology chart of Residency 11:11 alongside founders Alex Bell & Giulia Shah, showing how Astrology, a system built around vast archetypes, can be used as a tool to subvert the rigid categories of the English language and push past the linguistic boundaries and false binaries it creates.
Image: Éamon sharing the Astrology reading with the audience as part of their residency event at Kingsgate Project Space
"I went to the last 11:11 event in April at Glass House, I saw it advertised on Instagram and I feel so at home at that space, and it looked interesting so I thought I'd go along... I loved it so much, so I thought I'd come along to this one too even though it's at a different space. I didn't have any idea what was going to happen, but I was blown away. Éamon's talk was really fascinating for me and made me reflect a lot on my own experiences dealing with language and my own gender expression. The relationship of language to Astrology was something i'd never even considered before, and Éamon was sweet enough to show me how to read my own chart at the end too.
- Rain Howard (artist)
Xiomara is a multidisciplinary artist and performer, originally trained in classical ballet and contemporary dance. She uses performance, sculpture, video, installations and sound to interrogate what is seen as a ‘body’ and what isn’t, how bodies are experienced, and how different embodied experiences inform our perception of reality.
During her residency, Xiomara ruminated on the tension between the queer desire to be someone, to be with someone, and to destroy them/be destroyed by them. Examining this trope through pop culture, movement and queer theory, she presented her research as a lecture and work-in-progress performance at queer space The Commons at Glass House, during her end of residency presentation.
""I did the domestic residency at 11:11 in April '22. The experience was incredibly enriching and I'm very grateful to have had the opportunity. Being connected to the artistic landscape with the aid of Alex & Giulia was very beneficial, as it not only offered new perspectives but also brought my own practice into sharper focus. The different parts of the residency (regular talks with Alex & Giulia, a meeting with a curator, gallery tour, being connected to different local artists, and the end-presentation) all added something very valuable without feeling crammed. As it was my first residency, I didn't know exactly how to approach it and I was guided well along the way. The residency being queer led was super imporanta as it made it possible to have critical reflection on queerness in my work with Alex & Giulia, rather than having to explain it and staying at surface level"
Image: Xiomara and members of the audience discussing her work-in-progress performance that had just occurred at queer space The Commons in Glass House.
"I found out about Xiomara Virdo's performance and presentation through Glass House. As a queer person and someone who works in TV with an interest in popular culture, it was fascinating to find queer tropes in the examples shared of mainstream and at first glance "heteronormative" cinema and pop songs. I especially enjoyed the Q&A after. The audience ended up sharing personal experiences in finding their queer identity through pop culture growing up. The space felt very welcoming and unpretentious."
- Louis Whyte-Smith (television channel programmer)
Youcef in an Algerian artist, previously based in Manchester and now in London. Youcef's work explores socio-political notions through photography, video and performance.
During his stay, Youcef engaged in research exploring the visibility and under-representations of the North African and Arab diaspora working in the arts in London and beyond. Though his main focus laid within North African and Arab (under)representations his research stretched to BAME and Queer art practitioners and their experiences as a whole. During his residency period he collected information and perceptions of various art practitioners to shape a discussion for his final event, where he led an open panel-discussion with guest speaker British-Caribbean Digital Sculptor Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark, with whom he discussed notions around The Black Body & Feminism.
"Since my time with Giulia and Alex at 11:11 I've moved to London, gained many opportunities and been growing my practice. The network and connections made through my time with 11:11 were a major stepping stone in my development."
- Youcef Hadjazi
Image: the open panel-discussion Youcef organised with Rayvenn Shaleigha D'Clark and Giulia Shah at HOXTON 253 art project space
Bare Minimum Collective - 11:11 Screening Room July 2023, guest curated by Sticky Fingers Publishing
Bare Minimum Collective is 6-person queer interdisciplinary arts collective. "We hate working, hustling, neoliberal self-improvement, wage labour and surplus value, private property, how work eats into our time, our love, our ability to make things in earnest. We are a group of friends who needed a formal structure to give ourselves the permission to make things. We are lazy, queer and many of us are disabled. Members include Diamond Abdulrahim, Vera Chapiro, Christie Costello, Lola Olufemi, Christine Pungong and Leo Woods."
Sticky Fingers Publishing is an intra-dependant press based in London. They are feminist, queer, and disabled led, producing work at the intersection of design, academia, art, visual culture and performance.
We broadcast ‘Scenes from a Marriage’ in our Screening Room for one-month; a moving-image conversation/essay that tackles labour politics, different methodologies of care and how supporting each other is a defiant act of resistance. The conversation held between Bare Minimum's Lola and Christie and guest curators Sticky Fingers' Sophie and Kaiya is still accessible in our archive.
Image: a still from Bare Minimum Collective's film Scenes from a Marriage showing the Collective's members in discussion in different spaces of their home.
"Such an insightful and inspiring watch and listen. As an artworker there is so much to think about in relation to care and work not solely in the arts but life in general. I am really happy to know the conversation with Sticky Fingers will remain accessible on the 11:11 website. I will definitely be going back to this."
-Rob Smith (Artist & Curator/Founder of ArtHouses)
Cairo Clarke - 11:11 Screening Room July 2022
Cairo Clarke is a curator and writer whose work is informed by slowness. It centres forms of knowledge production and dissemination that slip between the cracks, are formed on unstable ground and take on multiple temporalities; supporting strands of theorising taking place in autonomous spaces and holding space for the mess.
In July 2022, we hosted ‘in the absence of ruins’ in our Screening Room; a moving-image and oral essay by Cairo that unfolds as a series of seven notes, in which “official sources” are asterisked with personal reflections and memories. Cairo’s work proposes a generative methodology, queering archival practices to “develop different relationships to a past we are currently making and a future forged by us.”
"It was very useful to have the opportunity to revisit this video essay through the recorded conversation I had with Alex and Giulia for the 11:11 Screening Room.The conversation was very engaging which allowed me to think through the work in a new way and give me confidence in exploring different sides of my practice."
- Cairo Clarke
Image: a still from Cairo's film in the absence of ruins showing the various theoretical elements, personal ephemera and archival research present within the film.
Davinia-Ann Robinson - walk and workshop series October 2022
Davinia-Ann is a visual artist and researcher who examines how tactility, presencing and fugitivity work to form an undoing of colonial and imperial frameworks of extraction, with which nature and Black, Brown and Indigenous bodies are articulated.
Grounding is a series of two walk and workshop days in Epping Forest in October 2022, exploring intimate relationships to land for people of colour. The location is a current site of research for artist Davinia-Ann Robinson. On day one, as we collectively walk through the ancient woodland, we will engage with how our bodies feel navigating the terrain and examine our use of language through tactile approaches to engaging with the ground. On day two, we invite participants to share readings or any other offerings which speak of their experiences engaging with the ground.
Image: photograph from one of Davinia-Ann's regular site visits to Epping Forest, where the workshop will be held, holding a ball of clay dug from the ground
Online workshops & events
Residency 11:11 has helped facilitate artist and researchers online workshops and events, selected through open calls and hosted by a diverse group of practitioners. Previously supported practitioners have included collective Cerrato-Halls and their Universal Species Referendum workshop imagining what Universal Species Suffrage would look like if all species had not only the right to vote, but also the self determinism. THIS CONVERSATION IS A SERVER was an informal discussion hosted by Colm Guo-Lin Peare, Kate Frances Lingard and Rebecca Gill focussed on possible exits from centralised online platforms, governance models enabled by peer-to-peer networks, and blockchain technology.
"I really enjoyed being part of this discussion - it was so informative and open. I am really interested in these subjects, like the politics of the internet and emerging digital technologies, but normally I find spaces that have conversations around these topics very inaccessible. The glossary terms you sent out to the workshop participants beforehand was really helpful and comforting, I already felt included in the conversation before we had even begun!
I felt like the workshop was well-planned, thoughtfully led and considerate all the participants involved. I had never heard of Jitsi before, but you made it so easy to use this alternative video-call software, and the shared digital notes software was a really exciting and inspiring way of being part of a group discussion over the internet. So different from the usual zoom workshop set-up - this workshop has really encouraged me to continue researching this subject and think more creatively about how I can use the Internet to connect with other people in a more meaningful way."
- Ruth Callaghan (digital content producer)
Image: during THIS CONVERSATION IS A SERVER online video-call discussion
"I found out about this event through residency 11:11's instagram page. I was really impressed how the workshop progressed from a very simple and playful form—imagining yourself as a different species and voting as such—to discussing the reality at hand when thinking about environmentalism. The interactiveness and playfulness of the workshop was really effective and has helped me think about the importance of accessibility, positivity and play when discussing politically loaded subject."
- Maria Lima (art teacher at Sixth Form college)
Image: screenshot of the latter half of the Universal Species Referendum, where Jaione Cerrato and Jon Halls held an open discussion 'analysing' the results of the voting part of the workshop.
Testimonials
"The 11:11 residency was fundamental in developing my body of work To Scroll, is to Remember, it offered an infrastructure with consistent support. The opportunity to have the residency online supported working remotely and the digital discourse in my practice. I was connected with curator Mels Evers through the residency programme and found this to be a very helpful method to discuss my work online and potentially create future opportunities."
- Suzannah Pettigrew (11:11 Online Resident in July 2022)
"Residency 11:11 holds a unique position in London's cultural landscape; kickstarting new dialogues between visiting artists from outside of London and practitioners embedded in the local scene. I am a proud collaborator of the residency and have enjoyed connecting visiting artists with my own network as well as undertaking studio visits with the residents. The public events such as film screenings, readings and performances were particularly valuable for me as curator: they offered space for real (or virtual) conversations with the wider network of the residency. In this way, the events don’t only function as platform for the visiting artists but also as a point of departure for future cross-collaborations. I believe 11:11 functions as a facilitator of critical artistic dialogue which is particularly valuable in the current cultural climate."
- Mels Evers (Assistant Curator Displays - Tate Britain)
"In 2019, as part of Narration Group, an arts collective for Women and non-binary People of Colour, I invited Giulia to speak about Residency 11:11. The in-conversation formed part of a public facing programme and publication, exploring Collaborative Practices at South London Gallery. Having watched the development of Residency 11:11, I was drawn to the open approach to sharing information and resources through providing a platform for artists to use that the residency provides. Along with this I am inspired by the national and global approach to supporting artists who usually are unable to access London’s art environment that Residency 11:11 supports, through their in-person and online residencies.
Giulia’s commitment to collective learning provides a nourishing and investigative environment for artists taking part in the residency as well as members of the public. I deeply recommend Residency 11:11 for the National Lottery Project Grant, to aid in the future development and reach if the programme in supporting artists and engaging members of the public."
- Davinia-Ann Robinson (Founding Member of Narration Group, Artist, Educator)
"I've been to a number of Residency 11:11 events over the past few years - what's remarkable for me is that while the artists, the work and the subject matter have all been different, the quality of thought involved is always exceptional. I don't think there's a single exhibition, talk or workshop where I haven't come away having learnt something - and the different ways of engaging, be that online or in person, make each one memorable. I think another value for me is that after the past few years, it does feel like you're part of a community - even though I'm not an active designer, it's empowering to be able to support less visible artists doing genuinely thought-provoking work, and to build relationships with other regular attendees."
- Francesca Corrieri ( Environmental Campaigner)
"Residency 11:11 is a valuable and exciting platform for artists to develop ideas in a process-led manner. It provides focus and a new, invigorating setting to break with normal routines and spark imaginations, either by being welcomed into the host’s domestic space or more recently occupying the virtual realm."
- Dan Russell (Artist Development Programmer, The NewBridge Project)