In November 2020 we were proud to collaborate with CIRCA, the new and independently curated digital art platform created by artist Josef O'Connor, launching its second month of programming with the interdisciplinary California-based artist Cauleen Smith. The inaugural c. 20:20 exhibition transforms the giant 4K screen of Piccadilly Lights into a digital canvas each month by pausing the adverts on screen for two minutes each day at 20:20 - 20:22 GMT.
More info and watch CIRCA's evolving live programme with a different artist every month (currently Tony Cokes) here: circa.art
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Cauleen Smith's works compile her Instagram series COVID MANIFESTO which the artist initiated a couple of weeks after the United States went into lockdown. For c. 20:20 Smith rewrote and revealed each point of the Manifesto throughout the duration of November, as a sort of 'living' still life where the artist's desk became the tableau. COVID MANIFESTO consists of 23 pronouncements punctuated by 7 intermissions selected from Smith’s existing works. Over the month, the personal and poetic, the eventful and now historical, featured as Smith responded to Covid-19 and its multiple aftermaths.
This online platform now serves as a space for filling in the voids, turning the volume up and dynamic storytelling. Here you can dive into the creative process and research archives that have produced the work, revealing a further radical narrative fully enunciated.
During November 2020 The CIRCA website was transformed into an extraordinary archive of past projects from the artist's trajectory, references from her ongoing research and allusions to her revolutionary imaginary, constituting a virtual mid-career survey. We welcome both local audiences standing in Piccadilly and global participant tuned in online to engage with both the scattered snippets of COVID MANIFESTO and the long form.
By accessing web content persistently, you can generate conditions of possibility. The collaborative project is a call for a proposal of virtual proximity and distance, in which a series of new social relations to content and the meaning of place are entirely reshaped. It is a timely narrative providing insight into an individual’s intimate experience as shared through social media— a form of storytelling that holds a mirror up to society, one daily pronouncement at a time.
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CIRCA's November 2020 daily calendar was curated in collaboration by CIRCA's Tony Tremlett and The Showroom Curator Katherine Finerty – HERE
Explore COVID MANIFESTO: Week 3 (16 – 22 November 2020) below!