Ruwanthie de Chickera - Workshop

In a week replete with exercises and practical work, Ruwanthie’s workshop was a welcome intellectual oasis, as well as being an opportunity for the vision and values of the Ariadne network to be revisited through discussion about the purpose and process of making art in fractured and challenged communities. Ruwanthie presented a lecture and discussion session alongside her recent collaborator, Professor David Cotterrell, Research Professor of Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, and an installation artist working across varied media including video, audio, interactive media, artificial intelligence, device control and hybrid technology. 

At the workshop they presented a lecture on the subject of ‘Empathy and Risk’ arguing that an inflated and false sense of risk allows us to continue to perpetuate both militarism and militaristic thinking to resolve conflict, which benefits particular commercial super structures, whilst maintaining an impotent poor in a static victimhood. This led Ruwanthie and David to pose the question about where the artist is most effective in these stagnant situations, with Ruwanthie noting that her reluctance to draw near to power structures had changed over the past few years in Sri Lanka, relaying that she had greater impact in talking with decision-makers and influencers, and acknowledging that the theatre can sometimes function more as a political echo-chamber rather than the place of genuine encounter and transformation that we artists might wish.

You can see more of the lecture and conversation here under the discussion session, with the conversation about advocacy and efficacy continuing between the Ariadne members long after the filming had finished.