Essay by Ben Brooker
In 2020, OSCA commissioned local writer Ben Brooker, to undertake a series of interviews with the SA artists Emma Beech, Rosina Possingham, Kaspar Schmidt Mumm and OSCA AD 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.
Ben Brooker is an Adelaide-based 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. In 2016-17 Ben was an inaugural Sydney Review of Books Emerging Critics Fellow and in 2018-19 was writer-in-residence at The Mill.