The Falmouth Convention opens. The keynote for the Convention will be delivered by the distinguished American writer Lucy R. Lippard.

Imagine Being Here Now: Towards a Multicentered Exhibition Process

6.30pm, Thursday 20 May

Chapel Lecture Theatre, Tremough campus, University College Falmouth

Lucy R. Lippard is the author of more than twenty books (including an experimental novel) on contemporary art and culture.

7-12pm, Thursday 20 May

Falmouth Convention bar open at the Falmouth Townhouse, Grove Place.

10-5pm, Friday field trips. Each field trip will offer a different itinerary and narrative. There will be a total of six trips.

The landscape around St Just will be the setting for a field trip hosted by Assembly, an artist residency space in St Just.

Lucy Gunning and Tacita Dean are venturing back to Falmouth, where they were both art students some 25 years ago (Lucy Gunning 1984-85, Tacita Dean 1987-88).

Described in the eighteenth century as the ‘richest square mile in the old world’, the Gwennap Mining District will be the setting for a field trip led by the Falmouth-based arts organisation Urbanomic, ‘a journey into an historical process that assembled the powers of geology, mechanics, hydraulics, mineralogy and metallurgy, salvation and combustion, steam and capital into a mighty, infernal machine that traumatised the Cornish landscape and kick-started the industrial revolution.’

Taking the St Ives artists’ colony as a starting point, this journey will create a series of dialogues across time with the places, spaces,  stories and mythologies associated with artists in the far west of Cornwall.

Steven Rowell devised this field trip with Daro Montag, to explore the many telecommunications sites on the Lizard peninsula. The tour started at the Marconi Museum in Poldhu and with a visit to the monument that commemorates the Marconi Company’s first trans-oceanic wireless communication between Cornwall and Newfoundland in Canada. Other points visited on the trip included the Lloyds Signal Station and Marconi Wireless Station on Lizard Point and the Goonhilly Satellite Station on Goonhilly Downs. The group stopped for lunch in Britain’s most southerly café, above the old Lizard lifeboat station at Polpeor cove.

Jeremy Millar first became fascinated by the story of Tristan and Iseult in 1998 while writing about a film by Tacita Dean that made explicit reference to Tristan’s ‘voyage de guérison’, or healing journey.

Evening, Friday 21 May

Private view of Lily van der Stokker exhibition and supper hosted by Tate St Ives.

7-12pm, Friday 21 May

Falmouth Convention bar open at The Falmouth Townhouse, Grove Place.

Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews Kader Attia

10.30pm – 12 midnight, Friday 21st May

The Poly, Church Street, Falmouth

Since 1993 the celebrated curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has conducted literally hundreds of interviews – with artists, filmmakers, historians, musicians, philosophers and writers.  

10am – 5.30pm, Saturday 22 May

Lecture Theatre, Woodlane Campus, University College Falmouth

How can the local – rooted in a sense of place and history – relate to the innovative and the international? How do artists and curators of contemporary art respond to non-urban contexts?

Urbanomic
6.30 – 9pm, Saturday 22 May
The Old Lemonade Factory, Windsor Quarry, Falmouth

Urbanomic will be welcoming delegates to investigate research materials from the Hydroplutonic Kernow field trip, along with other Urbanomic projects and publications.

7-12pm, Saturday 22 May

Falmouth Convention bar open at The Falmouth Townhouse, Grove Place.

Annexinema

8.30pm – 11.30pm, Saturday 22 May

The Poly, Church Street, Falmouth

Annexinema is an autonomous, not-for-profit partnership, focusing on the screening and performance of visionary and experimental work in sound and the moving image.

10am – 1pm, Sunday 23 May

Lecture Theatre, Woodlane Campus, University College Falmouth

Field trip reports and observations, discussion and summing up.