In 2020, OSCA commissioned SA writer Ben Brooker, to undertake a series of interviews with the SA artists Emma Beech, Rosina Possingham, Kaspar Schmidt Mumm and Paul Gazzola, about how lockdowns, isolation, and physical distancing have affected their lives and work. And how they are thinking about community engagement at a time of collective separation and trauma.
This essay is the first in a new strategy for OSCA focused on engaging local writers interested in writing about participatory and socially engaged art practices taking place in the public domain.
Writer: Ben Brooker is a writer, editor, critic, essayist, bookseller, and playwright. His work has been featured by Overland, Australian Book Review, RealTime, The Lifted Brow, Daily Review, Verity La, Witness, ArtsHub, and others. Ben was an inaugural Sydney Review of Books Emerging Critics Fellow and a writer-in-residence at The Mill.