Lean by PACTO Collective // Art Licks Weekend 2019

‘Lean’, an open call and a workshop, exploring interdependence as a means of survival, nurture, tactic, friendship, independence, confidence, utilising the density of collectives and artist-run spaces that exist or existed in London.

The open call would ask collectives/artist-run spaces to submit lists or maps of their own ‘interdependent networks’ in order to accumulate in a larger map and see how they overlap. This would launch our collective’s new body of research, mapping out networks of interdependence seen in London-based artist collectives/ spaces since 1988 (The birth of the YBA’s).

PACTO will host a workshop at Common House in Bethnal Green followed by an informal meetup in a local pub, a chance for artist groups to come together and discuss their relationships and networks. The workshop will be a mapping workshop specifically aimed at exploring interdependence in the form of diagrams and illustrations, understanding how to visualise such an extensive amount of data. We will invite the participants to present their maps or lists of their networks of artist groups and spaces in London, to then find connections between each map, as well as discussing these links and how they work.

The following informal conversation at the pub will aim to break down what consequences these networks have and allow us to test an idea of a bi-monthly pub night also titled “Lean”. This will exist as an “artists daycare centre” for people in the creative sector to come together informally to talk about work, projects and collaborations and to find/offer support.

PACTO is a trans-national alliance of artists, researchers and writers, gathered to explore collective work as an alternative to individualized practice. We are actively anti-hierarchical, intersectional and decentralised. Rather than being led by structure, we seek to explore what forms working together and how that translates into practice-led processes.

PACTO is an actively growing intersectional, anti-hierarchical and decentralized group. PACTO came together through a MilesKm research project initiated in August 2017, and became a collective in July 2018. Currently, PACTO members live and work in Athens, Amsterdam, Birmingham, Leiden, London, Milan, New York and Porto. Our projects and working practice includes workshops, publications, exhibitions, residencies and participatory discussions in organisations such as A-Dash (Athens) Raven Row (London), CAS (Croydon) and Macao (Milan).