Здравствуйте, меня зовут Джеймс. Я живу в городе корк:, в Ирландии. Я работаю вИрландии и Глазго. Я получил степень магистра в Лондоне и затем я учился надокторскую степень по изобразительному искусству в Глазго, но я бросил в январе. Я начал уч​е​бу по русскому язык в июне, это уже очень интересный процесс, не только изза языка, но из за культуры, истории, политики. Если честно, я ничего не знаю осовременной жизни в России. Однажды когда ситуация с короновирусом улучшится, я хочу поехать в Россию, поэтому я попытаюсь использовать немного русского в своемблоге.

Hello everyone, my name is James McCann I am a video artist, performance artist and sculptor, in more recent years I have also become a researcher and educator. I am very excited to be included in the virtual SPAR program, I have looking through various posts with interest and it is very heartening to see such a diversity of work enduring in different parts of the globe.

I have an idea of how I would like to operate on this residency but I realize this is first and foremost being a space for dialogue, so I will try my best to remain engaged and also welcome suggestions and feed back.

The briefest of biographies for myself would be that I am primarily an artist and that I have been researching ‘Allegory’ and in particular Walter Benjamin for a number of years. In January of this year I made the decision to discontinue my PhD studies at The Glasgow School of Art. It was an upsetting decision made for a number of reasons, which was immediately followed by the pandemic!

I began to learn Russian in June as I needed a break from research topics and it felt like a positive step towards what might be achievable if the situation is stabilized. I see this residency as a good way for me to share new projects and ideas, as well as use some of my basic Russian, and start to think again about my contextual research and it’s contemporary applications.

My very accepting and patient Russian language teacher thinks this is all an elaborate ploy to avoid learning the Russian case system! And although she may have a point, I am still hoping to make the best of my time while on residency.

I will try to focus on new work in production although I may refer to older projects for context. I am currently working on a new film with an acting group called Gaitkrash in Cork City and hope to share tests with you all soon. For my own benefit, I will also try to include some Russian language in every post, I think it will be fairly obvious if I have had the support of my language instructor or not. Here is a link to a previous theatrical project I work on with Gaitkrash, which was a version of ‘Play’ by Samuel Beckett: