Yvonne Billimore is an artist-curator, currently working as associate programme curator at Frame Contemporary Art Finland. Previously she worked at Scottish Sculpture Workshop in rural Aberdeenshire, where she developed and produced a programme of residencies, projects, workshops and public events. Her work facilitates situations for collective learning, exchange and experiences with particular attention given to feminist and ecological practices. She is currently exploring Feminist[i] Collective[ii] Research[iii] Practices[iv], with research performed through a range of approaches including archival research, workshops, reading groups,
correspondence, writing and an open call for responses: fcrp.cargo.site/
[i] Feminist – To be explicit about the inclusion of feminist in Feminist Collective Research Practices, it is used as a term to establish a set of guiding principles: to embrace feminist approaches of researching that favour collective, embodied and experiential knowledge, and to counter research practices that privilege individualism; it is a reminder to embody feminist practices of resistance and solidarity in all that I-you-we do; to recognise the intersections and interconnections of struggles and so work against all forms of discrimination, inequality and oppression (including but not limited to colonial, capitalist and patriarchal oppressions). The feminist in FCRP aligns with intersectional feminist politics and considers feminism to be an ideology of resistance (via Angela Davis) to tackle
sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia and political and economic exploitation – both human and more-than-human.
[ii] Collective – This is not a proposal to combine practices nor to form a collective, but to consider ways for practices to exist in plurality (via Boaventura de Sousa Santos), as ecologies of practices (via Isabelle Stengers): to intersect, inform, respond, relate, expand – AND to practise deep referencing when we learn with/ through/ alongside each other. It is suggested that an important principle of FCRP is to recognise and acknowledge that I-you-we-they do not research or practice alone in the
first place, but always with, through or alongside some(body). FCRP seeks to give this attention and attentiveness.
[iii] Research – Research here is not bound to the realm of academia. If we can understand artistic research to encompass multiple forms of learning, experimenting and ways of knowing, we could then also apply this thinking to ‘research’ as a general term and practice. In FCRP research is simply a
process of inquiry explored through any non-exploitative means you determine appropriate.
[iv] Practices – As with the previous note on research, practices is used as an umbrella term to hold a multitude of actions, methods, exercises, processes, ways of doing… It also extends a welcoming hand to the inclusion of various disciplines and the crossings of these. Within the act of
practicing/practising, there is the possibility to place value on repeating, revisiting, returning – returning over and over again, returning as a “multiplicity of processes” (Karen Barad, 2014).
ViCCA PRODUCTION 