EDINBURGH.- Almost two months have now passed since Collective, like other Scottish arts institutions, closed its doors temporarily. In the weeks following lockdown, the team have been looking at Collective’s archive, history and site from a fresh perspective and have revisited a range of works which have something to say about the current times: made ‘before’ but which speak to ‘now’.

The programme includes newly commissioned projects which seek to address what comes next and how we can reimagine the visual arts world for the future. These include a call out for a radical manifesto of what arts in Scotland should be like for disabled artists, new films, a sound event and postcard edition.

Harry Josephine Giles is a writer and performer from Orkney who lives in Leith. Collective is working with Harry Josephine to create a radical new manifesto, by and for disabled artists working in Scotland. Not Going Back to Normal will bring together contributions of art and ideas which show what the arts in Scotland could and should be like for disabled artists in the post-pandemic era. The deadline for the call out is June 30 2020.

Alexandra Laudo is an independent curator based in Barcelona. Her performance lecture How to Observe a Nocturnal Sky sold out at Collective in 2019. Building on her research into the history of astronomy and time-keeping at the City Observatory on Calton Hill, Collective are delighted to present a new digital iteration of How to Observe a Nocturnal Sky to be launched on Collective’s website on Wednesday 20 May.

Satellites Programme 2019 participants Helen McCrorie, Emmie McLuskey, Kimberley O'Neill, and Katie Shannon recently reflected on their extended period of working together by making a new poster edition exploring themes of collective social structures and collaboration. Instead of the originally planned live launch event, the group will launch a new online sound event with contributions from each participant. This will take place on 5 June.

Laura Yuile is an artist from Glasgow, currently based in London. Responding to the recent explosion in enacting much of our lives through screens within our domestic spaces, Laura will produce a film which draws on TV Sitcom tropes to depict the life of its central characters (Laura, Laura and Laura) in our current reality of self-isolation. This will be premiered later in the summer, with a date to be announced soon.

Karen Cunningham has been Collective’s Artist in Residence since January this year and has been researching Collective’s site and its locale in relation to processes of de-modernisation which seek to ‘un-do’ the apparently permanent structures of Imperialism. A new online film and postcard edition drawing on Karen’s research will be released in late June.