Last Tuesday morning Viva Dean and Aisling Phelan got the keys to their new home: Base, off Talbot Street in central Dublin, will for the next 10 weeks be an art space focused on the creative use of technology.
It’s partly the result of the Incubation Space Award, a Dublin City Council initiative providing workspace in this ground-floor unit. Phelan was “in Germany, 3D-scanning in a greenhouse” last November when she got a voice message from Dean asking if she wanted to be part of an application for the scheme.
”When the idea of a studio like this came up, the first thing that came to my mind was that it would be a public space. And the first person who came to my mind – who I was, like, ‘Who would I want to do that with?’ – was you,” Dean tells Phelan as we sit in a corner of the space where cushions are covered by a throw.
As it happens, this currently empty room holds significance for both artists.
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“We’ve both had big moments in this space,” says Dean, who first encountered it when they were establishing Synthesize_Her_, a workshop series on music technology, with Kate Butler, the highly regarded Irish DJ, writer and organiser. Dublin Modular, the arts collective, was using the space, and offered it to Dean for a Synthesize_Her_ event.
For Phelan, it was here that one of her music videos was shown at an early edition of FanVid, the DIY film event. “It was the first time I had experienced other people viewing my work in that kind of way,” she says. “Having a physical space to share other people’s work with Fanvid was really cool.”
To fund equipment, Base established a membership scheme, where for €30 – €3 a week across the 10 weeks – members can attend all events (and host their own). Weekly events will include Monday coffee mornings, a Tuesday lunchtime library with books on art and technology from Dean and Phelan’s personal collections, and Deep Listening sessions on Wednesday evenings.
Between stints in Germany, Phelan was running events with Dublin Art and Technology Association, or Data, so part of the idea was to bring it together with Synthesize_Her_. “The pitch was very much inspired by the Science Gallery,” Dean says of the much-missed space at Trinity College Dublin. “Both Data and Synthesize_Her_ share the mission of bringing people together in a physical way for things that you traditionally connect with virtually, and a lot around education, and sharing processes.”
At Base, Data will run a five-week peer-learning programme titled Memory Loss, on remembering and forgetting in an age of digital abundance. “I love that it’s not centred around alcohol,” Phelan says of the space. “That’s a huge thing. You don’t have to spend money to be here. We’ve been completely clear with what we’re spending the money on,” she says of the membership scheme: “A PA, a mixer, a projector and lights.” By Tuesday last week they had raised half of their €5,000 goal.
Ten events have already been scheduled, including a run-through of a card game developed by CloudCore, the UK-based label and Discord community, and a machine-knitting workshop. “The ethos bringing all the events together is that, predominantly, we wanted to focus on creative use of technology and creative-tech education,” Dean says. “And also events that are run by women or Flinta people, with that in mind.” (Flinta is an increasingly common German abbreviation meaning women, lesbians, intersex, nonbinary, trans and agender people.) Base has a feminist ethos, Dean says, something they want “baked in” to the space, “so that it’s not ‘Maybe we’ll put a few women on the line-up’ as an afterthought, but on a deep level”.
Dean and Phelan are also taking a cue from Emma Warren’s Document Your Culture manual, by cataloguing and tracking how the space came into being, how it’s run and what happens within it. Warren “talks about how imperative it is in times of great strain – especially when everything is being squeezed and it feels quite bleak for grassroots organising or existing in a nourishing way in the city where you want to exist – whatever glimmers of organising, wherever you get that breathing space, document how that happens,” Dean says.
This information will be published as part of a zine-making workshop that will be held in the space during Design & Crafts Council Ireland’s Design Week in November.
Base demonstrates the huge potential if more artists could gain access to the many empty ground-floor commercial units in the middle of Dublin. City-centre DIY spaces and artist initiatives could be happening at scale, easing the strain caused by the lack of affordable workspace for artists, as well as enhancing street life, building creative communities and offering emerging and experimental artists a chance to gather, practise and exchange ideas.
“At its core, Base is a place to try things out, make mistakes and try again,” Phelan says. “That’s what we’re doing as well. We’re trying things out. I’m sure we’ll make mistakes, but we’ll try again. Whether we get to try again in this version or another ...” Dean finishes her sentence, “we literally will not stop.”
