On August 5th we invited Blackhorse Activators to explore and respond to the exhibition, -1, Plus One Tanja Widmann, Johannes Porsch, Produced By. The workshop, CTRL+C, CTRL V, is the second in a two part series, explored the ‘script’ as raw material to be rewritten, remixed, and transformed.
Led by Trainee Producers, Varvara Uhlik and Sam Stewart, the session began with a tour of the exhibition, presenting the show as a mystery to be uncovered, one that invited investigation, curiosity and dialogue rather than providing or relying on preexisting definitions.
The group took part in an introductory writing exercise, based around subjective experience and personal interpretation of the exhibition, which was then broken down into keywords, patterns, and structures that caught the eye. Deconstructed insignia, used as a point of departure by the artists for a multiple of works in the exhibition, inspired both the concept of the workshop and the group’s collaborative workpiece and the workshop’s concept. Using digital printers, and scanners, along with analogue processes, these fragments were reworked into new visual layouts and drawings, with no prescribed rules for their transformation.
Prompts drawn from the group’s independent exploration of the gallery, such as 'How does the space make you feel?' or 'What does this remind you of?'– guided the process. In the final stage, participants placed their reconfigured texts and artworks onto a large visual manuscript in the exhibition space, creating a collaborative composition that formed a visible dialogue between their responses and the original works.
Blackhorse Activators are a group of 15–25 year olds from Walthamstow with a passion for applying creativity to build community, who meet monthly at Blackhorse Road Workshop and cultural venues in London. They are a graduate cohort from the Blackhorse Responders programme.
Varvara Uhlik and Sam Stewart are Cell’s Trainee Producers, an initiative supported by Art Fund’s Student Art Pass. The seven-month structured programme offers two full-time students a paid work placement to work closely with Cell’s critically focused team to actively engage in all aspects of gallery operations, from supporting the delivery of exhibitions and events to enhancing audience engagement.
‘-1, plus One’ is the first UK solo exhibition by Vienna‑based artist Tanja Widmann in collaboration with Johannes Porsch. Widmann’s work uses scripts, readymade objects and everyday technologies as “source code” to create coded feedback loops, while Porsch’s displays operate as performative sets that reveal their own conditions of visibility. Their collaboration invites visitors to consider how processes of cutting, supplementing and repeating shape meaning and subjectivity.
