Gilbert Fellowship Lecture: how to enter a place?

Artist Daniel Peltz is a 2022 Gilbert Fellow in the Humanities at SSSHARC (The Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre).

For this lecture, Peltz will introduce some of the strategies he has developed over the past 20 years of doing works that emanate from engagements with specific communities and socio-cultural situations.

The works intertwine multiple planes of existence from the ecological to the social, to the financial, to the spiritual. There will be a particular focus on his epic, long-term engagement (going on 15 years) with the rural, glass-factory town of Rejmyre, Sweden.

About Daniel Peltz

Daniel Peltz is an artist and Professor of Time and Space Arts with a specialisation in Site and Situation Specific Practices at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki. He is also the co-founder of the long-term, place-based research project, Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies.

Through public projects, performances and media installations, Peltz’ artworks explore complex social systems, attempting to provoke ruptures in the socio/cultural fabric through which new ways of being may emerge and be considered. He uses a range of intervention, ethnographic and performance strategies to accomplish these goals. His projects often take the form of existing social behaviours, systems or protocols to directly engage non-art audiences in the language of critical art practice.

Peltz' international practice has led to the production of works in numerous countries including in Australia. From 2013-15, he produced the work When we dig, things come up, for the Spaced 2 biennial of social practice in the iron ore mining town of Tom, Price WA.

This event is supported by the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre and Sydney Environment Institute at The University of Sydney.