The Organe de Concrétisation de Recherches

The Organe de Concrétisation de Recherches (OCR) is a collaborative project between Kapwani Kiwanga, Sam Basu (both artists), Caroline Hancock (curator) and Alice Peinado (anthropologist), based in France, that proposes the potential of a univocal object for artistic and scientific research. The ground for establishing this shared space is defined though a matrix of documentary, ethnographic and archival methods within the formal flexibility of arts practices.

Appearance, Disappearance and Ouroboros, comes from a discursive and exploratory collaboration that tests the persistence and boundary of the artwork in relation to other enquiries into the nature and state of the world.This current work comprises of short case studies and narrative texts: "Two Heroes in Time" (concerning the May Queen and the Green Man), "From E to S" (extract from a lecture by William Burroughs), "More Sparkling Than Crystal: Ithell Colquhoun", "Pan Subjectilism", "The Appearing Church of Rio Caribe, Venezuela", and "Zombie Suicide".
OCR’s text is the result of a hybridized process of accumulating different material from a mix of sources. They are assemblages of research, found objects, theoretical writing or narratives, and artworks. The aim of the group is to look at research, and other mental processes as objects themselves and to submit them to the field of artistic speculation as much as the artworks included are proposed as valid contributions to scientific method and research.

The group meet in a monthly informal salon where topics circulate and interests and experiences are shared, but this process generally gravitates towards topics that have a certain urgency or fascination for the group’s various backgrounds. The current research looks into the place that artistic and anthropological method can have in the project of thinking community beyond the next phase of capital with a particular focus on re-examining magic and its expressions. This current research will look at how research on magical practices and terms has tended to externalise these practises onto historical, 'primitive' or marginal groups. It examines the potential that a re-figured and expanded understanding of magical systems has in opening up debate on ecology, economy and Resistance in the contemporary context.