Cecilia Wee/Rational Rec

Cecilia Wee

‘Cecilia Wee is a London-based artist writer, broadcaster and curator who produces art projects that challenge existing models of audience engagement, particularly in the fields of experimental sound, performance and visual art practices, in the UK and internationally.

Cecilia is a regular arts documentary programme maker for Resonance FM, co-founder of interdisciplinary art project Rational Rec, a Producer at Sound and Music and a Visiting Lecturer in Visual Communication, Royal College of Art. Cecilia is completing her DPhil on the documentation of live art at the University of Sussex.

Cecilia’s research interests include narratives of technological ‘progress’, the theory and practice of dialogue, cultural understandings of militarised combat, civil society in the Global South and post-Kantian aesthetics.’ (Website 2012)

 

Grunts for the Arts (collaboration with a multitude of artists – led by Tim Jeeves, Cecilia Wee & Charlie Fox) 2009-

Basecampment – collaboration with NWN, Space Station 65, counterproductions produced by CLAD  – not with the NRLA – artists Richard Layzell, Marcia Farquhar, Ernst Fischer, Helen Spackman, Rachael House, Jo David & Mark McGowan (2009)

Shards of Utopia, Late at Tate (2010)

If not, then what? Chelsea programme, Chelsea College of Art (2011)

Rational Rec commissions collaborative, interdisciplinary art projects, inviting artists from different artistic mediums to work together to produce new work. Rational Rec is a London-based organisation, but we work with artists from anywhere in the world.

Rational Rec’s unique contribution to the contemporary London art scene has been an insistence on interdisciplinarity. Through a programme of invited commissions Rational Rec began by encouraging artists to collaborate in ways they have not previously considered; composers working with dancers and writers, filmmakers working with poets and cellists, musicians working with live artists and printmakers.  Our focus on pairing artists by the concerns they explore in their practice instead of medium has led to some surprising collaborations and works, and we are keen to continue and emphasise this unique methodology of Rational Rec.

The last few years have seen a significant proportion of international artistic practice concerned less with the presentation of objects and more with social relationships mediated by artists, process-driven practices where the traditional ‘object in the gallery’ model of artistic display has been problematised. As an organisation with a strong history in creating one-off events, Rational Rec is ideally placed to research these emerging practices, working with artists from any medium or field who share an interest in developing work in these ways.  Past examples of our work in this field include Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre’s Company (November 2007, Southbank Centre), evaluation by marketing consultant Felicity Mukherjee (developed by live artist Lucy Panesar during season three) and the Henningham Family Press book project Inter Inter Inter (March 2008). (Rational Rec website, 2011)