Connective Practices: Εμψύχωση or “What might a radical childcare look like?” The 4th Ixodos Artist Residency, between Cyprus and Brasil, @Campo Redondo, Itamonte MG, 2024
Chrystalleni Loizidou researches and supports cooperative structures that focus on culture- and nature-based learning and care. She works as university lecturer, early years caregiver in the Steiner and Forest School movements, and is part of the free (freedom-respecting) software movement. As part of the 4th Ixodos Artist Residency, a collaboration between the Ponto de Cultura VAV (Brasil) and the Eimaste Cooperative (Cyprus) funded by the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus, Chrystalleni and her 6 year old child are based in Campo Redondo (Itamonte Minas Gerais) for July and August 2024, learning from local art and community education initiatives. Her research here follows the question: “What does radical childcare look like?” and learns from traditional, cooperative community-connection and facilitation practices related to the Greek concept of εμψύχωση [soul-sharing]. eimaste.net / allonan.com
Chrystalleni is invited to contribute to the curatorial, artistic and educational program of Ponto de Cultura VAV, and to support, document and creatively respond to the work of local cooperatives. Loizidou is supported in deepening her work in “εμψύχωση” (facilitation), learning from local practices of organisation and celebration. The residency aims to create skill and knowledge exchange around the underlying progressive as well as traditional and indigenous, social, ritual-artistic, economic or other “connective practices”, that create and hold communities together. In terms of its methodology, the work applies a gentle approach and vocabulary in response to contemporary eco-feminist theory and practice. It employs an occupational therapeutic method for collective art-making for all ages, and the passing down of traditional crafts. Finally it takes a radical pedagogical perspective for holding space for community.
The program is intended to include:
(1) a presentation of Loizidou’s work and the Ixodos platform and at University of Federal Fluminense as part of their Arts program
(2) The εμψύχωσης / facilitation of a mixed ages Connective Practice workshop leading into
(3) an exhibition.
(4) The production of a publication with documentation and translations in Greek, English and Portuguese.
Previous Ixodos Artistic Exchanges:
2023 – Ixodos 3: Kύπρος, Αγλαντζιά: Liberating the Imaginary
2020 – Online residency / publication on MESA online arts journal: “Keep the Children in the Room” On the Biopolitics of Single Mothering in the Time of Covid”
2019 – Ixodos 2: Βραζιλία, Rio de Janeiro: Aphrodite Mana mou @A Casa Lar+Tropical Burn & “On the knowledge we receive through our vaginas” @TerraUNA
2018 – Ixodos 1: Kύπρος
What is Ixodos
EN Ixodos is an international platform for transversal-translocal art exchanges, facilitating and accompanying residencies, projects, exhibitions, the sharing of knowledge, and the building of our common soul and greater selves. These art exchanges are not just between artists and art institutions but also between social, political and ecological projects and movements around the world, starting from Cyprus and Brazil. Ixodos was ritually initiated by Carolina Cortes, Chrystalleni Loizidou, Evanthia Tselika, and Livia Moura in Greece and Cyprus, initially in connection with Hippocrates’Garden, in the island of Cos, in June-August 2018. It generated its second residency programme at A Casa Lar, Rio de Janeiro, in June-August 2019.
Images of inspiration from the work of M. Kkashiallos
Affiliations
Ministério da Cultura,
República de Chipre