DIY: 2019 – Channing Tatum: Ghosting

A (dis)embodied haunting of institutional space: uncertainty, bad feeling, and the histories we’d rather forget.

Deadline for applications: 2pm, Thursday 20 June
This DIY is supported by Artsadmin

Project summary

THE RULES

• The ghosts can cross boundaries, moving freely between studios, offices, private and public spaces.
• The ghosts can interact with the physical plane (they pick things up, slam doors, turn things on and off).
• The ghosts can’t speak.
• The ghosts can’t be seen.

‘Ghosting’ invites artists to adopt crude ghost costumes to ‘haunt’ an arts institution. Together, we will ask:

• How do we negotiate the awkwardness, frustrations, non/communication and power dynamics of these spaces?
• What can ghosts tell us about embodiment, materiality, time, action, powerlessness, ancestors, justice, freedom, pleasure, spite, vulnerability, transformation, movement, distance, togetherness?
• Can we make tangible the bad feeling; the absent and excluded; the gendered, racial, class and colonial violence; the unaddressed or unfinished histories?
• WHAT DO GHOSTS DO ALL DAY????

How to apply

We seek to form a group that is diverse in relation to age, gender, race, disciplinary and intellectual background, experience, humour and curiosities. We invite the diligent, the lazy, the critical, the angry, the reluctant, the suspicious, the powerless, the confused, the depressed, the gleeful, the guilty. You don’t have to be an artist, and you don’t have to have a good reason to take part.

We have some money put aside to support those travelling within the UK who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend.

Channing Tatum would like to make explicit our commitments towards this DIY project being (a) a space that is inclusive for trans artists, artists of colour, and artists from other marginalised communities and (b) an opportunity to examine how structural failures impact individuals working inside, outside and across institutional contexts. In the lead up to this DIY, we will be engaging those directly involved in recent incidents (including at Artsadmin) in order to be able to best foster a space in which vulnerable people can be protected, and to see how this project can best address this specific institutional context and a process of accountability and critical transformation. Please get in touch with us or Finn Love at LADA if you have any questions or concerns.

Dates, times and location

Dates: 6 – 7 October 2019
Location: London, Artsadmin 

The artists

Channing Tatum is the collaboration of Rohanne Udall (b. 1990) and Paul Hughes (b. 1991). Trained in fine art, philosophy, and dance, they undertake artistic, performance and curatorial projects. Their work is produced within and presented across stages, galleries, studios, universities and digital spaces. They are currently preoccupied with: emotion, gesture, hosting, idiocy, in/sincerity, institutions, logics, materiality, peers, undercutting and smirking. www.channingtatum.info

For questions about this DIY, please contact the artists.