This investigation delves into the ecologies and communities residing along rivers, exploring what art practice can offer them and identifying both positive and negative practices associated with a place-based art commissioning approach. Phase One will be a Research and Development process with Govan Graving Docks as a case study.

See past activities here

Upcoming Event Schedule:

💧 Artist Conversation event with Eleni Wittbrodt, “River as Directive”:

🗓️ Thursday 19 June, 14:00 – 15:30
📍 Reid Lecture Theatre, GSA
🎟️ Tickets are free — register here!

• Introduction by Młyńczak: Riverside Topographies – Site & Method
• Wittbrodt: River as Directive – Artistic Methodology 
• Narrated Work-In-Progress Screening and Conversation: Excerpts from Wittbrodt’s upcoming moving image work (Premiering 5 July at Elder Park Library & 11th July at 173 Trongate)
• Screening of Aurelia Steiner (Melbourne) (dir. Marguerite Duras, 35 min)

💧 “First Light/High Tide” Riverside Topographies I, Govan Launch:

🗓️ Saturday 5th July, 10:30 – 16:00
📍 Elder Park Library
🎟️ Register here (workshop)

• The premiere of First Light / High Tide, a new moving image commission by Eleni Wittbrodt
• The launch of our new publication: A Reader for the Govan Graving Docks
• A family-friendly model-making workshop with Gonca Yalçin

💧 “First Light/High Tide” Riverside Topographies I, City Centre Re-Launch:

🗓️ Friday 11 July
📍 173 Trongate
🕥 18:00 – 21:00

• Screening of First Light / High Tide, a new moving image commission by Eleni Wittbrodt
• Opening of Wittbrodt’s Window Exhibition (on view until 5 August at our shopfront window at 173 Trongate)
• Publication on sale

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More about the project:

Since transitioning away from a fixed gallery space, our guiding ambition has been for the art we produce to be responsive to the environment in which we live.

This ethos traces back to the 1970s, echoing the principles that led to the establishment of the “Environmental Art” Department at Glasgow School of Art. Their students, many of whom become seminal figures of the contemporary Glasgow art scene, were encouraged to venture into the world, seeking permissions to create and install their work in public spaces.

We believe that removing art from institutional contexts and bringing it onto the streets necessitates the type of art that is an activity and a community-led process, cultivating conditions conducive to communication and collaboration. This is underpinned by our research into creating a place-based curatorial toolkit that prioritises: participation, shared stewardship, multiplicity, political activism, reflexivity, and affect (Caswell, 2014; 2019; Archives and Activism zine, 2023). Complementing this ethos is our commitment to environmental sustainability. Climate change adaptation and climate justice serves as the primary guiding principle for the development of riverside projects, particularly given that these areas often coincide with flood plains and have well documented but less known hydrocolonial histories.

Our plan

Phase 1: 2024, case study at Govan Graving Docks

• Initial Research: Studying local DIY knowledge, self-publishing, community organising, and social histories.
• Artist Exploration: Eleni Wittbrodt to conduct photographic and video survey of Govan Graving Docks and Clyde River, focusing on domestic and urban architectures.
  
  ‘We propose setting up a camera club dedicated to the young people of Govan, with a focus on waterfront access. Our motivation is twofold: to create an opportunity to come together and learn from or with each other among the many communities in this neighbourhood and to co-produce a body of photographs of Govan, with the potential for local publication.’
  
  
• Community Workshops: Process-informed
• Environmental research: consultations with ecologists, ornithologists and biologists.
• International Partners: partnership with Turning the Tide project and participation in their international summits where the learning can be shared and exchanged at an international forum of riverside cities.

Possible Outcomes

• Project Archive: 16NSt to create and maintain a database serving as a research journal, documenting texts, images, and listing other artistic projects in the Govan Graving Docks area.
• Publication or Take-home-art bundles: Collaboration with Wittbrodt to create a publication co-produced by Govan Camera Club members under 16NSt Press
• Creation of an ethical place-based curatorial toolkit for community-led public-space art commissioning.

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Potential Phase 2: 2025

• “Meeting Point”: Developing a plan for ethical, collapsable and sustainable temporary structure to support future community cultural provisions and hold the records of past endeavours – a modular, climate conscious “meeting point”
• Consultations: Consulting architectural and historical records, maritime labour heritage, and wetlands ecology.

Curated by Aga Paulina Młyńczak with Kelly Rappleye

The publication was edited by Nell Cardozo.

Michelle Caswell, Toward a survivor-centered approach to records documenting human rights abuse: lessons from community archives (2014)

Michelle Caswell, ‘Affective Bonds: what community archives can teach mainstream institutions’ in Jeannette Bastian and Andrew Flinn, Community Archives, Community Spaces: Heritage, Memory and Identity, Facet (2019)

Image credit: Eleni Wittbrodt