Curator Researcher Writer
Curator Researcher Writer
Dr Francesca Laura Cavallo
recent Publications
Who and What Connects the Dots? Emma Kunz’s Method as Infographics and the Politics of Probability
Article peer-reviewed, Taylor&Francis, 2023
What if we were to re-frame Emma Kunz's oracular drawings made with a pendulum as infographics? Drawing on media theory, posthumanism and chance procedures in Art, this article investigates the limits and agency of data visualisations for probabilistic reasoning and 'evidence-based' decision making. In Parallax Journal’s special edition on Probability and Agency edited by Prof Natasha Lushetich and Iain Campbell. Read OPEN ACCESS
Rehearsing Disaster: pre-enactment between reality and fiction
Book Chapter, Transcript 2019
The context for this chapter is the diversity of ways in which possible events are envisioned, re-constructed, and anticipated through performance or role play. These actions, which I call “pre-enactments”, blur reality with fiction to present future events as already happening. In Performance zwischen denZeiten Reenactments und Preenactments in Kunst und Wissenschaft, edited by Adam Czirak, Sophie Nikoleit, Friederike Oberkrome, Verena Straub, Robert Walter-Jochum and Michael Wetzels. Berlin: Transcript, 2019. Img © Simon Faithfull, EZY1899: Re-enactment for a Future Scenario (2012). Read PDF
Avoiding the Apocalypse: The How-to Guide as a Method
Book Chapter, Routledge 2022
Do How-to Guides work in real situations? This essay unpacks the logics and aesthetics of survival manuals from the Cold War to the Climate Apocalypse. In The Environmental Apocalypse: Interdisciplinary reflections on the Climate Crisis, edited by Jakub Kowalewsky . Image: The Intelligent Woman Guide to Athomic Radiation by Margot Bennet, Book Cover detail
curatorial
Strengthening Threads with Gustavo Caboco
The British Museum and Holmleigh Primary School, July 2023
Taking Wapichana traditional weaving objects at the Museum as its starting point, the collaboration project focuses on stitching and embroidery as an art form and a way to recover and strengthen our roots. It involves a public lecture at the British Museum, a school assembly with Caboco, a workshop at the Musem, and drop-in sessions at the school to create the pages of an embroidered book.
Part of Brazil Footprint 2023
Guardians and Forests with Daiara Tukano and Marilene Ribeiro
University of Manchester
27 Apr 2023
Exploring ideas of guardianship and stewardship of borders within forests, this workshop focuses on risk, art, and the agency of local knowledge in defence of rainforests. We discuss Indigenous art practices that work across these three realms in the Amazon with Artist and Activist Daiara Tukano (via Zoom); consider the political agency of photography with Brazilian artist and ecologist Marilene Ribeiro; and we directly explore tools and strategies for guarding our safe spaces, wherever they might be. Organised by CLACS, the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and is part of the Brazil Footprint 00 2023 public programme.
Brazil Footprint 2022
Science and Industry Museum
6 July 2022
Artists and guests born in Amazonia occupy spaces at the museum with video projections and show-and-tell displays. Contributors include AMITIKATXI Collective, Amazônia Mapping, and Rafael Bqueer. 287 visits in one night only. Part of the Amazonia Late public programme for Sebastiao Salgado's exhibition.
Link: https://www.brazilfootprint00.com/#_32022
Brazil Footprint 0.0
Barbican Centre
12— 19 July 2021 Online
A week-long online festival that explores Brazil's perspective on the global mobilisation against climate inequalities, in the context of the UN’s upcoming COP26 conference. Responding to the Barbican exhibition Claudia Andujar: The Yanomami Struggle, the programme brings together artists, curators and academics to discuss how art addresses questions that go beyond technocratic approaches to climate change: symbiosis, interdependence and the resilience of Indigenous knowledge.
Imagining the Apocalypse
Conference, Courtauld Institute, London, Oct 2019
The Apocalypse is Immanent (paper presentation). Drawing from an extensive review of survival manuals book covers and illustrations, this paper illuminates the links between apocalyptic representations and precautionary instructions in preparation for real or imagined worst-case scenarios. Link
Is Extinction Imminent?
Public programme, Aphra Theater Kent University, Canterbury. Nov 2019
The programme features the screening of Himali Singh Soin’s short film we are opposite like that (Frieze Artist award 2019), and a panel discussion with Lucia Pietroiusti, Curator of General Ecology at the Serpentine Galleries; Simon Beard, Senior Research Associate Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge and a representative from Extinction Rebellion. Chair and programmer Francesca Cavallo. Link
The Ethics of Risk (mis)communication
Mancept Workshop in Political Thought, Manchester Univ. Sept 2020
How do images communicate ideas of safety and danger? What kind of visual strategies are adopted to redistribute risk perceptions and emotions? This visually focussed presentation offers a taxonomy of the methods that have in the past been used to radically transform people’s habits and decisions when it comes to public health and risk. Link
RISK EXHIBITION - TURNER CONTEMPORARY
operating manual
Public Programme
Cabinet, New York
5 December 2015
Please join us for a program that explores how we conceive “solutions” and “preparedness” for living in worst-case scenarios. Include: “How-To” Exercises, by Maya Oppenheimer and Afield Studio (Kai Wood Mah & Patrick Lynn Rivers) Survival Hoardings: An Illustrated Tour, with Francesca Laura Cavallo; An Audio Guide to Getting Out, by Emily Candela and Choreographies of Survival, with the School of Apocalypse
Conference
CAA Annual Conference. New York. Feb 2017
Operating Manual for Living in the Worst-Case Scenario
Chairs: Francesca Cavallo, Maya Oppenheimer and Emily Candela
The survival manual embodies a society haunted by potential worst-case scenarios, in which scenario design is becoming a prominent feature of the “safety industry”; from FEMA’s “family disaster plan” to online resources made by so-called “prepping” enthusiasts. The panel focuses on how scenario design and behaviour regulation are negotiated in the format of the survival manual, considered in an expanded sense, which also includes the deployment/design of instructions and expertise in speculative contexts. Further reading +
Rehearsing disasters
There She Lies Motionless
MANIFESTA 11
Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich
with Hamish MacPherson
An exercise in compassion, vulnerability and power, sitting somewhere between, workshop, performance and the every day practice of giving and receiving care. Loosely based on the work and life of Caroline Thomas, a woman who has simulated illnesses for over 30 years as a part of her volunteering commitment to the Casualties Union.
Round table: Pre-enactment between reality and fiction Fig-2 22/50 ICA
From fire drills and mock-disaster-response exercises, to the risk assessment processes accompanying so many events, structures and even ‘high-risk’ people, a pre-enactment is the anticipation of future disasters through performance, a coping mechanism of society increasingly concerned with the predictable future. The panel will explore the cogency of reality and fiction in risk management strategies. Chaired and introduced by Francesca Cavallo (curator), with Helene Kazan (artist) and Caroline Thomas (Casualties Union). Part of Luna Talks: Uncertainty Scenarios, a project by artist Marjolijn Dijkman for Fig-2 Further info +
Rehearsing the Disaster
Royal College of Art, London
Probing the contemporary manifestations and possibilities of pre-enactment, independent curator Francesca Laura Cavallo presents a talk illustrated with screening of films by Rosa Barba, Lucy Beech, Simon Faithfull and Superflex. Hosted by METALAB (Emily Candela and Maya Hoppenheimer), as a part of the public programme of the Disruption exhibition.
P/RE/ENACT CONFERENCE ICI BERLIN
The interdisciplinary conference aims at examining Pre-, Re-, as well as En-actments that are not just based on artistic practices, but include social, medial, political, and activist phenomena. To what extent can artistic (P)reenactments influence – especially in terms of anticipation – political relationships and vice versa? To what extent is the theory of (P)reenactment capable of redefining the relationship between art and politics? Which role do cultural-historic preconditions play in particular courses of action and habits of perception? More info+
ABSTRACT
The paper proposes an hypothesis of ‘pre-enactment’ as a performative practise for both exercising and exorcising risk. It defines pre-enactment as a risk management and prevention strategy where a potential or perceived danger is rehearsed and a suitable response developed. A kind of simulation, I suggest pre-enactment provokes experiences and creates ‘memories’ of events yet to happen in order to guide the behaviour of the population. The event yet to take place is thus staged. In this sense it operates at the border between reality and fiction. Through presenting various examples of pre-enactment in disaster preparedness and artworks I ask whether pre-enactment acts as an emotional vaccine in an increasingly risk-aware society: injecting small amounts of fear to generate immunity antibodies, as it were.
Cosmicmegabrain
Is this a Warning?
Shoreditch Studios, London
Art, music, performance for one night only. Showcasing revolutionary new theories and methods, T.R.I.A.L. proposes a participatory strategy for the provision of increased risk reduction public awareness activities. A cosmicmegabrain project in collaboration with Hoxton Loft Society. Works by Lucy Beech, Luciano Foglia, Ben Fowler, Patrick Goddard, Fantich & Young, Emer O’Brien, Solina Hi-Fi and Jim Woodall .
Does Dark Matter?
Shoreditch Studios, London
Leading figures at T.R.I.A.L. have announced that they are now only 1% uncertain that they have discovered something which very possibly could be the elusive science particle, first theorised as a possibility by leading hypotheticians. A cosmicmegabrain project in collaboration with NTS radio. Works by Bálint Bolygó, Emily Candela, Ronin Cho, Davide D’Elia, Roberto Ekholm, Goodbye Leopold, Andy Holden, Janina Lange, Romvelope, Aura Satz and Semiconductor.
Festival, MANPOWER
Rua Poco dos Negros, Lisbon
An iconic Lisbon street is filled with art, music and performance for the second edition of the festival taking over its shop windows, empty spaces and cultural venues. Over 30 international artists selected from a public call by cosmicmegabrain in collaboration with Hayward Gallery Curator Gillian Fox and independent Lisbon based art critic Susana Pomba.
Cosmicmegabrain ( 2007 - 2012)
London, Lisbon, Rome, Beirut
Founded in late 2007 by Jesse O Wade, Francisca Aires and Francesca Cavallo, Cosmicmegabrain have curated and produced a number of collaborative art projects in the UK and abroad. Initially formed after an invitation to organise creative projects at Cordy House, a disused warehouse in Shoreditch, East London, CMB has worked with Artists, Designers, Musicians, Dancers and Scientists to produce one-night-only curated events with a strong emphasis on public participation. See separate website
Exhibition: Letizia Battaglia,
Cinemateca Uruguaya, Montevideo
The exhibition Sicilia en Blanco y Negro brings to the Uruguayan audience 40 images of events, facts and protagonists of the history of the Mafia and of its legacy in its bloodiest years, which Letizia Battaglia (Eugene Smith Prize 1986) took over the course of her career as a photojournalist: documents of invaluable importance reflecting a Sicilian society constantly divided between life and death, always struggling to achieve an elusive peace. Curated by Francesca Cavallo and Lucas Caravia with the support of the Italian Institute of Culture in Montevideo. Part of the 25th International Film Festival.
Exhibition: Chiba Abnormal
Andersen Museum, Rome
Three monumental toy-like creatures inhabit the former house of the sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen (1872 – 1940), in homage to the artist’s unrealised dream to conceive the ultimate idealised beauty. New works by Chiba curated by Francesca Cavallo and commissioned by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities in partnership with Universita’ la Sapienza, Rome. Master MACMAC’s Oltreconfine curatorial award 2006.
POst show discussion - 13 of february 2018
Recent publications
Review
Trevor Paglen: From "Apple" to "Anomaly". The Curve, Barbican Centre, London.
Trevor Paglen’s new commission at the Barbican Curve Gallery in London draws attention to our categorizing impulses, as humans and as machines, for it appropriates machine learning data sets, their tags, and their ways of seeing and making sense of the world.
Published in June 2019
Review
Kiss My Genders. Hayward Gallery, London.
The 1990s have been an important era for LGBTI+ art when questions of visibility began to emerge to compensate for the widespread censorship of queer bodies in the public realm. Understandably, “Kiss My Genders” pays homage to this prolific period with statement works.
Published January 2016
Review
Joachim Koester: In the Face of Overwhelming Forces. Camden Art Centre, London
A meticulous, flawless orchestration of each element that constitutes the film experience from its conception to its presentation to the public.
Published March 2017
Book Review
Corinne Silva: Garden State
Ffotogallery and The Mosaic Rooms, London
Since 1967, Israel has pursued a policy of building settlements on the West Bank and around the Green Line, in what the united nation call the Israeli Occupied Territories. As a part of the endless dispute with Palestinians over this contested land, an increasing
number of new communities have emerged, promoted by the government for Israeli
people to inhabit the Palestinian land...
Review
Sharon Hayes: In My Little Corner of the World, Anyone Would Love You
Studio Voltaire, LondonIn her talk at London Studio Voltaire, Sharon Hayes reads from an anonymous 1974 newsletter by the Pennsylvania activist group Radical Queens. As the sound of her video
installation has been temporarily turned down, her voice reverberates in the room bouncing between her mouth and the plywood panel at her left, where characters on screens are also reading something we can’t hear.
Review
Enrico David at the Hepworth Wakefield
There is a substantial difference between the two ambiences that compose Enrico David’s exhibition at the Hepworth Gallery. As I move from one room to the next, small figures on plinths and papers migrate into the space I share with them, almost liberated from their state of latency to become bodies, space markers, creatures half submerged in their own dimension.
Published January 2016
Review: Hengameh Golestan: Witness 1979 at the Showroom
Honest and immediate, Golestan’s photographs are intrinsically and ethically entrenched in the story they portray: they reconnect to a joyous Iran where people exercise their freedom of expression proudly and harbour hope for a future democracy. An Iran that had no intention of giving up those rights, but that for some still uncanny, complicated reason was just about to be turned into one of the most conservative countries in the world.
Further Reading +
Published Dec 2015
Report: 25 Weeks of fig -2
Embracing the Unpredictable
As fig-2 reaches its halfway point, writer Francesca Cavallo reflects on the first 25 weeks of the project, exploring how its strength lies in its unpredictability.
In the overwhelming panorama of intellectually stimulating events in London and the inescapable FOMOthat keeps us hooked, I am captured by the steady paced, weekly re-embodiment of the ICA Studio. I keep going back to fig-2, every Monday if I can, to find one more iteration of Fatos Ustek’s take on the London art scene.
Review: Willem de Rooij, Arnolfini, Bristol. Camera Austria. Issue 129
Filtered by expert editors, the images that we see everyday in the international newspapers are mediated immortalisations of our collective experience of the world: they form a repertoir of human gestures, expressions and emotions. Hisorically and politically connoted, they also vibrate with an aura of timelessness in the sence that they reiterate ad infinitum similar sequences of acts, dramas, and representations.
Published on March 2015
Review: Last Seen Entering the Biltmore, South London Gallery
In 15th and 16th century Europe (with the proliferation of the Mannerist style, and after with the Baroque) real life must have seemed to be very much like a parade. It was the triumph of the façade: trompe l’oeil, ephemeral stages, arches of triumph, were not just functional to theatres and parades, but had permeated into the domestic spaces of houses and palazzos in the form of grandiose doors or fireplaces and canopied furniture.
Published on 21 July 2014
Report: Amy Franceschini workshop for Situations, Liverpool Biennial
A bakery may not be the quietest place for a workshop, but it has that factory-like feeling that stimulates conversation and productivity. Plus it sets the perfect scene for a discussion on public art: at Homebaked in Liverpool, the act of breadmaking becomes a metaphor for resilience and the importance of art in everybody’s life. Participants from across the UK came together to discuss strategies of public art and learn from the experience of two art projects that have used bread making as a response to urban development.
Further Reading +
Published on 31 July 2014
Rehearsing the Disaster, Critical Contemporary Culture, III Crisis
Risk Assessment booklet developed from an intervention for Disruption, an exhibition at the RCA in Jan 2013. In collaboration with METALAB I invited a group of writers to use specially-designed risk assessment forms to ‘risk assess’ various pieces in the exhibition, where each booklet was installed alongside its respective work.Conceived as a para-artistic artwork to hijack and disrupt an event, the booklet documents a creative writing experiment which inhabits the imaginative fictions that orbit our consideration and anticipation of risk. ( Nov 2013) Further Reading +
Review: Aura Satz at Paradise Row, London.
The echoes of remote technological inventions, encrypted messages and a sense of arcane ventriloquism form the grammar of Aura Satz’s work. In some of her films, out-dated machines sound like haunted creations, whose material elements have lost their function and are left as bare mechanisms, portals for unknown messages.
Published on 9 November 2013
Article: Re-reading the Classics
Cura. Issue 08
It hardly made the news in Italy, but in London, where I live, news have reported of a Roman statue which has undergone cosmetic surgery. I couldn't help but reading it with a mixture of anger and sinister amusement. References to the work of Oliver Larich, Alfredo Jaar among others. Text in Italian with English translation.
Review: Sarah Sze, Victoria Miro, London.
Sara Sze’s micro universes have captured us with maximal installations like ‘Triple Point’, seen at the American Pavilion in Venice in 2013. My impression then was that something like a lo-fi extra-terrestrial, with an intricate scaffolding of wires, tools, clamps and ladders had blown in with the wind and crashed on the neo-Palladian pavilion.
Perhaps the effect of an accident, the fake stones on the roof almost caricatured the precarious balance holding the structure together.
Published on 9 March 2015
Review: Debora Delmar Corp, Modern Art Oxford
The symbiosis between art and corporations has a long, multifaceted history, from Warhol’s Coca Cola cans to mass-produced Hirst multiples, this cross-fertilization has always been controversial but not necessarily subversive. Noteworthy are Richard Prince’s re-photographs of the Marlboro’s campaign in the ’80s and ‘90s - his images cut out the cigarettes logos turning the melancholic cowboys into ironic caricatures of the American dream.
Published on 24 April 2015
Review: Venice Biennale 2013 / oO
Pavilions of Cyprus and Lithuania
Just outside the Arsenale in Venice is the Palasport ‘Giobatta Gianquinto’, a modernist 1970s piece of concrete architecture built to host any sort of sports activity. It is the 31st of May and the air is full of euphoria, just as it is before a sports competition. The smell as well, I can recognise: it reminds me of the gymnasiums where I, like many other Italians of my generation, have practiced athletics, volleyball or basketball, the openness of the space and the high ceiling contained only by concrete walls and surmounted by circular neon lights.
Review: Rosa Barba, Turner Contemporary, Margate
Just as contemporary art commissions are being welcomed into traditional spaces, so too are the old masters finding homes in the midst of the contemporary art world, as seen at last year’s Frieze Masters. This approach begins to reconcile the apparent divorce between historical and contemporary art, opening up both to new reflections.
In Conversation with Haris Epaminonda, Cura. Issue 06
Haris Epaminoda's exhibtion Volume VI at TATE Modern (Level 2 Gallery) invites a reconfiguration of what we usually associate with museums: history, preservation, individual and collective memory. Text in English and Italian.
On Art and Crisis.
Cura.Issue 03
In times of crisis like the one just narrowly escaped (so it would seem) it easy to start blaming the art market, social injustice and art being only for the rich. It may make more sense to concentrate on the market, stretch its self referential matter and turn it into critical consciousness. Text in Italian with English translation with reference to the work of Superflex, Stephanie Syjuco.
In Conversation with Sissi,
Cura. Issue 01
Interview with Sissi in regards to her participation in the Italian Pavilion of the Venice Biennial, 2009. Text in Italian with English translation by Orsola Mileti.
Naturalia
Cura.Issue 02
In conversation with Kate McGwire as a part of the Young Curators Have theirs say section. Text in Italian with English translation by cura.
Mark McGowen
Cura.Issue 00
Overview of McGowan's work in regard to his collaboration with cosmicmegabrain in Beirut. Text in Italian.
WORKSHOPS
Francesca Cavallo - Rehearsing Disaster: an exploration of pre-enactments
As part of AltMFA's a-n supported programme on The Future, we are excited to welcome researcher and curator Francesca Laura Cavallo who will lead a workshop at Mayday Rooms.
Francesca will present glimpses from Rehearsing Disaster: her long-term exploration of pre-enactments. Focusing on risk assessments, warning messages and survival manuals we will examine these techniques and explore how to exploit their possibilities through critical and creative exercises.
Panel: Cultural Capital
MiAL- UAL Student Union
The term cultural capital refers to non-financial social assets that promote social mobility beyond economic means.In this talk, we will be discussing the cultural capital of emerging art and design and its own value within London outside of the economy. With Lydia Cowpertwait, Simon Hinde and
Saturday 30th April 2016
Risk Assessment:
a para Artistic Work
Metalab / RCA
The workshop experiments with the proximity between risk assessment and fiction writing by inviting participants to “risk assess“ selected works of an exhibition by filling in purposely designed risk assessment forms.
Final Day of Risk
Herne Bay High School/ Turner Contemporary
Boy’s Dance Company from Herne Bay High School showcase a new dance piece, inspired by the work and history of Margate’s RNLI Lifeboat station and crew situated next to the gallery. The students have worked in collaboration with the RNLI and Associate Curator of Risk Francesca Cavallo.
Life is Spiky
Creative Space at Arlington
[ s p a c e ]
Taking the cactus as an existential inspiration Life is Spiky invites residents of an homeless hostel to produce vases and containers for little cactai to be sold in a small social justice campaign at Christmas.
Oct to Dec 2014
Curatorial workshop
Made in Arts London
UAL Student Union
Advising students and graduates in the curatorial process of the Made in Arts London Exhibition "Process and Exile"
Develop your own work
Creative Space at Arlinghton [ s p a c e ]
A series of workshops for clients of mental health organisations designed to stimulate creativity via the understanding of art ( include guided tours to exhibitions in London)
Jan to Mar 2015
Performing the Every Day
13A Hostel \ RADA
A series of workshops with final performance and Q+A at RADA devising ensemble work around the themes of Memory, Food and Abjection with the residents of CUC Hostel in Soho. A project coordinated by myself and lead by Jessie Vickerage for her thesis dissertation at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Active Citizenship
British Council/People Can
In partnership with the British Council, delivering and facilitating Active Citizens, a programme that supports people taking action as citizens.
