Month: November 2020

Earlier this year, during the height of the global pandemic and mandatory isolation, ICF sought to continue contact with and support of its network in myriad ways – one of which was a new strand of activity titled Blue Skies.

Initiated as a conversation series, Blue Skies fostered one-to-one and group conversations led by practitioners working across multiple disciplines on a proposed topic that could take into account the immediate and long-term impact of Covid-19 upon creative practice, personal and/or public life.

If participants also felt it possible, we welcomed speculations and encouraged hearing about identifications of foreseeable changes that they would like to pragmatically cohere – the parameters constituting what those desired changes were or could be, left open for interpretation. In the midst of (and exacerbated by) the Covid-19 lockdown, the world was also confronted with the glaring reality of the inequalities embedded in our societies, which several participants in the conversation series have chosen to address in their analysis of our current moment and possible futures.

Blue Skies commences with 14 conversations from participants based in Africa, Australia, Europe, India, South America, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, to be published in different audio-visual formats supported with closed captioning and downloadable transcripts between July and September 2020. These and future conversations will form a public, collective dialogue around the capacity for this moment to elicit change.

Image: Jillian Mayer, You’ll Be Okay video still (2014). Courtesy of David Castillo Gallery.