Background

Established in 2018, the Repair Acts programme was initially established as an international and multidisciplinary network, which brought together people working on topics relating to repair, care and maintenance cultures.

Viewing repair, care and maintenance as the challenge to move away from the rhetorics of the ‘new’ as a means of progression and innovation. The programme focused on questioning the lexicon of the ‘smart’ and globally connected, repair, care and maintenance cultures addresses everyday consumption by revealing the geopolitical struggles, labour systems and consequences of our material lives on the environment and other species.

Looking towards how we attend, nourish and care for the everyday, with a focus on the disconnect and the discarded, what is in ruin and broken as a means through which to reimagine what we define as growth. The programme ran between 2018 and 2019 as a series of workshops, gatherings, conversations and exhibition. The archive of which can be viewed here, with key workshops and events taking place in: Bristol and New Delhi (March 2018) and Penryn (October 2018) and closing day-long symposium and month long exhibition in Bristol (March 2019).

Methodologically our approach is rooted within the arts and crafts, humanities and social sciences, media and science and technology scholarship. With a key focus on with deepening the intersections between artistic, applied and scholarly knowledge on repair, care and maintenance cultures.

Drawing on Laderman Ukeles, “Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!, academic Steve J. Jackson’s broken world thinking (2014) and Haraway‘s (2016) call to stay with the trouble, we also position our work within legislative measures that address planned obsolescence and policies such as the United Nations Global Sustainable Development Goals (2016) and various EU Directives (2008, 2012), which call for more circular and restorative approaches to manufacturing and production. Grounding the work along the following axes that included:

Critical repair : relating to artistic and theoretical practices of repair

Essential repair: where the act of repair is a necessary, daily function of living, also includes policy and legalisation matters

Arts and Craft repair: relating to the fields of heritage and tradition, including practices of care, restoration and preservation

Economic repair: existing and new forms of economy, including changes to manufacturing and industry standards relating to repair, reuse and maintenance cultures.

These four pillars continue to inform the programme.

International Network Meeting 1, Bristol

The first network meeting of Repair Acts took place on 13th March, 2018 in Bristol. Practitioners from a variety of fields come together to discuss and map critical forms of repair. Guest speakers included the artist Linda Brothwell, whose practice draws on the intersections between repair, care and craft within urban settings.

To support our collaborative thinking, workshop participants also brought an object with them, which illustrated a repair or story around repair. In terms of our critical inter-thinking our mapping activities focused on sharing theoretical frames, applied and artistic practices. This one-day workshops, allowed for us to collate thinking around theory-lexion-practice’s of repair. Key elements that emerged from this conversation focused on the relationships between repair and care, breakdown of local relations and motivations for maintenance. We closed the day, with a visit to the see the work of the artist Kathy Hinde at We the Curious and followed by a public discussion hosted by Urban Hosts at which Ravi Agarwal, Ben Gaulon and Dr. Lara Houston spoke about their work.

Workshop participants: Co-founder and Director of Toxic Links, New Delhi, Ravi Agarwal Ben Gaulon, Caitlin DeSilvey, Carmela Pietrangelo, Chloe Meineck, Christoph Woiwode, Elena Blanco, Jess Young, Kate Rich, Kathy Hinde, Lara Houston, Linda Brothwell, Penny Evans/KWMC, Sophie Zajicek, Steve Bond, Teresa Dillon and Zoe Bank Gross

Agenda
11.00 : Registration, tea and feral coffee provided and introduced by Kate Rich
11.15 : Welcome, Teresa Dillon and Caitlin DeSilvey
11.30 : Repair Practices, Linda Brothwell
12.00 : Points of View/Repair Objects
12.30 : Mapping Activity 1: What does repair mean to you?
13.30 : Lunch
14.00 : Mapping Activity 2: Theoretical frameworks
14.30: Mapping Activity 3: Applied and artistic practice
15.30 : Discussion led by Teresa Dillon and Caitlin DeSilvey
16.00 : Summary
16.15 : Gather and walk to We the Curious
16.30 : Tipping Point, presentation by Kathy Hinde at We the Curious

Established and led by artist and Professor of City Futures Teresa Dillon (Principle Investigator) from the School of Art and Design and Digital Cultures Research Centre/DCRC at the University of the West of England, and Associate Professor of Cultural Geography Caitlin DeSilvey (Co-Investigator) from the Environment and Sustainability Institute at the University of Exeter. The programme was initially funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK under the Network grant scheme.