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Sunday 17 February
10.30–4pm
Structures That Cooperate
Cubitt x Aya Haidar x Leah Millar and Hands On Film x Grand Union x BALTIC 39 x Cinenova x Artists’ Union England
Structures That Cooperate takes its name from the 2018/19 programme that took place at Cubitt, London. It is a programme of projects that talk to Cubitt’s context as an artist-run co-operative. It called into question default approaches to programming a gallery space, and looked instead to collective formats, imaginaries and realities. For the Ways of Learning exhibition at BALTIC 39, closed and public events shared work, process and research in collaboration with Aya Haidar, Leah Millar, Hands on Film, BALTIC 39 Staff, Cinenova, Kirsty Clarke and the Artists’ Union England
10.30–12pm
A public meeting was held between Cubitt, BALTIC 39 staff and the Artists’ Union England, building on conversations Cubitt is developing with W.A.G.E. to determine payment standards for artists and other workers as part of the 2018/19 programme. This meeting invited AEU and to share and organise together, to think through resource distribution in arts organisations, particularly looking at how unions, artist-led and cooperative models can develop new approaches and support artists and cultural workers working in collective political struggle.
1–4pm
A communal lunch, talk, workshop and film screening centered the kitchen as a site to develop community, share knowledge and build commons.
The afternoon began with a lunch, cooked by Grand Union’s Kirsty Clarke, served and eaten with a screening of Often During the Day, a film by Joanna Davies (1979) from the Cinenova Feminist Film Distribution collection. Often During the Day is an early Four Corners feminist film exploring the domestic sphere. The film uses detailed close-ups of a shared kitchen to examine culturally prescribed domestic roles. Scenes are cut with quotes from Ann Oakley’s 1974 book The Sociology of Housework.
After lunch artist Aya Haidar introduced her art practice, specifically work addressing the inherent personal politics of food and recipes shared – relating to home and diaspora, memory and imagination. The audience was invited to join with a recipe in mind, a recipe learnt, remembered, shared. These recipes were recorded through text and film working with Leah Millar’s Hands on Film Lab to produce a collectively made recipe book and filmed record to remain with the Ways of Learning project for the duration of its time at BALTIC 39.
