Artist Talk by Mira Calix

Music and sound, which she considers a sculptural material, are at the centre of her practice. Her work explores the manipulation of the material into visible, physical forms through multi-disciplinary installations, sculpture, video and performance works. Calix’s practice is deliberately disjunctive, allowing research, site, and subject to influence a fluid choice of materials and mediums.

Calix has been commissioned by and exhibited and performed works in many leading cultural institutions, festivals and ensembles internationally, most recently the Hayward Gallery, Serpentine Galleries, the 1st Coventry Biennial, The Royal Shakespeare Company, UK in China 2015 cultural exchange program, Carriageworks, MONA, Performa, the Barbican, Art Basel, Lincoln Center, Manchester International Festival and the London Olympics among others.

During her artistic research residency in January/February 2020 at ΟnassisAiR Mira Calix will continue the research on the We Portal. It is an exploration, a re-appropriation of the existing conventions of online platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as an art space. By commissioning art that works exclusively within the confines of these templates, Mira subverts the notion that they exist only as virtual spaces and treats each platform as an exhibition space in its own right. This residency will facilitate the development of a project that is not only unique in its format, but progressive in the way that it surveys and re-works the aforementioned constructs of existing social networks. Calix will elaborate on a premise that started out as an instinctive and informal exploration of art’s place in the non-physical landscape.

She is seeking the time and space to develop the project and the opportunity, infrastructure and research period it requires to become an ongoing and recognised collaborative artwork. A new kind of performative practice that sits within and subverts the frameworks designed by the current social media platforms. She hopes to achieve this by bringing We Portal to Αthens, collaborating with and exploring the work of the vibrant artistic community, and engaging in a period of practical and academic research.

Calix has taken a ‘6 degrees of separation’ approach when programming and inviting artists to work with her on We Portal, reaching out to members of her own network to select performers. During the residency, she will expand this mode of selection by enlisting other experts in relevant fields from the local artistic community to influence her choices. This will give the project the space and regularity it needs to grow, using an organic yet composed methodology that is analogous to the social networks it depends on.