A Sick Logic - Research and Development

A Sick Logic has been split into 3 parts.

1. Research and Development
2. Platform Residency at Site Gallery, Sheffield
3. A Project Publication

1. Research and Development

The project has received Arts Council England funding for parts 1 & 3. The Research and Development phase consists of a series of site visits and training courses across a range of activities to aid and develop learning into the core subject area - re-learning basic living principles and how to engage or in some cases re-engage with the land.

R&D programme

• Visit to Lizard Exit Plan - Paul Chaney,  Kestle Barton, Mannaccan, Cornwall

The Kestle Barton Rural Centre for Contemporary Arts 2016 season will begin with the next development in the ongoing ‘speculative research’ of the Lizard Exit Plan by artist Paul Chaney. First shown in 2014, here Chaney imagined a catastrophic event cutting off Cornwall’s Lizard Peninsula from the global economy. Conferring with local landowners, farmers, and other experts, the artist compiled a strategic plan for survival in this apocalyptic scenario.

This new body of work by Chaney will focus specifically on the role of Kestle Barton within his post-apocalyptic narrative and continue to uncover questions of the utility of art and sustainability; especially food production including sources of machinery needed for cultivating crops.

The exhibition will feature five new limited edition cyanotype blueprints of detailed plans pertaining to the ‘Kestle Barton Sector’ and seven new limited edition screenprints that illustrate scenarios from Chaney’s Lizard Exit Plan document which has been elaborated on further for this new body of work. Earlier limited edition Lizard Exit Plan material from the 2014 show will also be on hand in the gallery during this exhibition, so the complete project can be viewed.

• Follow up Critical Camping session attached to Chaney's exhibition.

During summer 2016 Paul Chaney will lead Critical Camps: a season of workshops and talks by invited artists, thinkers and scientists, at Kestle Barton Rural Centre for the Contemporary Arts, located on the Lizard Peninsular in Cornwall.

Critical Camps will explore topics raised by Chaney’s ongoing research project Lizard Exit Plan – a speculative scenario in which an unspecified hypothetical apocalyptic event cuts off Cornwall’s Lizard peninsula from the global economy. The camps will be hosted in the Encampment Supreme pavilion – a 775 sq.ft architectural fusion of post-consumer waste products and locally found natural elements, constructed by the artist and volunteers during public workshops in 2015.

AND once more with feeling  - June 4th/5th

We are atomised and increasingly isolated beings, making contact only through technology and media. One effect of imagining a post-apocalyptic world is to make us realise us how unpractised we are at direct cooperation, unassisted by complex social, legal, and technological systems.

What tools and methods can be used to revitalise co-operative thinking? This Critical Camp asks whether the growth of individualism is correlated with political disempowerment, and sets up a laboratory for investigating potentials for, and obstacles to, cooperation.

Speakers:
Fernanda Eugenio – Anthropologist and founder/director of AND Lab Research, Lisbon, Portugal.
Magda Tyżlik-Carver – Independent researcher and curator investigating relational arrangements of humans and nonhumans and their biopolitical creations through curating in/as commons, future thinking, affective data and data fictions.

Workshop:
AND Lab – collaborative object relations experiment with Fernanda Eugenio.

• Wild Food Walk delivered by Ffyona Campbell

To introduce you to the plants of each season, I take you on a slow walk through a south Devon village. I teach you the edible next to the poisonous look-a-likes. We taste, touch, smell and observe each edible plant carefully and then you have a look for them and I check them. You take home a portion of wild food to eat in a salad, pesto or soup. And you take home a colour illustrated booklet of all that we find so that you don't have to take notes.

•  Big Tree Country: Introduction to Tree Identification delivered by Jerry Dicker (Field Studies Council)

Course outline:
Identification of trees involves not only recognising shape, texture and smell of leaves but also twigs, bark and tree shape. The course is mostly out of doors, walking through the countryside, woodlands and tree collections in the area and noticing what is there. You will learn not only to recognise trees but also to remember their names, like being introduced to new friends. In the evenings there will be slide talks and practical work to consolidate skills and knowledge.

• Agroforestry - Forest Gardening delivered by Martin Crawford (Agroforestry Research Trust)

Teaching sessions with leading expert and author Martin Crawford will be interspersed with frequent visits into our world famous forest garden (started 1994) and a visit to our new site with two young forest gardens. Practical information on tree crops, shrub crops, perennials and ground covers will be complemented with visits to our forest garden to look at our successes and failures, as well as to taste unusual leaf and fruit crops.

learning:-

First principles – natural forests – definition – growth layers
Why Forest Gardening – benefits
Succession
Design principles – questions – initial stages – collecting info
Combining everything
Design of clearings
Design of edges – edge features – light (PAR) – types of edge – types of plants
Design of hedges
Design of paths
Design of ground covers – functions – types
Preparation – converting grass to ground cover
Planting
Mulches – mulch types
Seasonal maintenance
Growing your own plants
Species for clearings
Species for edges
Species for hedges
Tree crops
Shrub crops
Climbers
Perennials
Perennial leaf crops
Species for ground covers – paths – clearings – polycultures
Annuals & biennials
Root & bulb crops
Fungi – below ground – above ground
Plants for difficult sites

• Woodmaster Bushcraft Course delivered by Richard Prideaux (Original Outdoors)

The Woodmaster Wilderness Skills and Bushcraft course covers the essentials of bushcraft and taking it to a higher level, including skills for planning trips and living outdoors and in woodland/forest areas for extended periods.

learning:-

Firelighting from basics to advanced techniques
Building short term and long term shelters from natural materials
Living in tents and bivvy bags and under tarps in all conditions
Use of hammocks and ‘sleep systems’
Equipment choice and care
Rucksacks and carry systems
Expedition skills and planning
Cooking over an open fire
Hot Smoking and preservation techniques
Finding safe drinking water and managing resources
Choosing and using a bushcraft knife, axe and saws safely (including sharpening)
Use of cutting tools
Campcraft and camp organisation
Camp hygiene and sanitation
Identification of useful plants
Building traps, snares and hunting options
Making tools, camp furniture and other items from natural materials
Practical carving
Basic tracking
Making cordage from natural materials
Knots and useful cordage techniques
Basic first aid
Emergency procedures
How to plan a short overnight trip

•  Historic skills & traditional crafts, from prehistory to the 20th century delivered by Sally Pointer & Gareth Riseborough

An exploration of neolithic skills -
fibre, leather and antler/bone technology
material technology
making cordage in a variety of materials such as hemp, sinew and flax
loomless weaving and braiding,
netting and looping techniques,
make needles in bone and/or antler using flint tools,
methods of cutting and sewing leather.