Free Association Our best machines are made of sunshine

“Our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves, a section of a spectrum, and these machines are eminently portable, mobile. People are nowhere near so fluid, being both material and opaque.” (Donna Haraway, A Manifesto for Cyborgs, 1985)

Sharing objects, texts and images, this month’s gathering will consider crystals and liquids, pollution and bodies, machine vision and algorithmic capitalism.

Against a myth of media as clean, immaterial and disembodied, artists Catherine M Weir, Leanne Bell Gonczarow and Rowan Lear share some recent work and thinking around the materials, industries and toxicities connected to contemporary photographic culture.

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Rowan, Leanne and Catherine are members of the artist collective Planetary Processing, which emerged from an artist-led peer forum hosted by The Photographers' Gallery, London and supported by Artquest.

Catherine M Weir is a visual artist and researcher, based in Glasgow. Her works, which span photography and digital code, have been shown at galleries nationally; and last year she contributed an essay based on her research to the book PaintingDigitalPhotography. She holds a PhD from Glasgow School of Art, where she is also Visiting Lecturer.

Leanne Bell Gonczarow is an artist based in Edinburgh. Her practice examines the various languages used to describe light – visual/photographic, scientific/technical and literary/poetic. She presents photographs in a variety of contexts: online, in books and as sculptural installations. She is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at Edinburgh College of Art.

Rowan Lear is an artist and writer, based in Glasgow. Her materials are old and new media, found images and objects, and language itself. She has organised and participated in exhibitions, screenings, reading groups and symposia across the UK and further afield. Current projects involve fermentation, pollution and sensation, including a collective exhibition at Lewisham Arthouse and a future residency programme on Scotland’s west coast.

Free Association is a connected, critical and supportive space for artists, makers and educators from a diversity of fields and artforms. We want to actively contribute to publically available, open access and commons based models of learning, living and working together. We run a monthly community meeting and use existing public resources to share, make and discuss. We also run events and workshops led by the interests of those who attend.