Online Presentation: Renèe Helèna Browne, Rebuilding Urania

 An image that the artist has made specifically for this research project, with a turquoise background and the words ‘Rebuilding Urania’ appearing in a white font in capital letters. The word ‘Urania’ is the largest and most prominent. In the background appears a cropped image of the hands of Urania, the muse of astrology. Her hands are pointing to a celestial globe with a staff. Urania was believed to foretell the future by the arrangement of the stars.
Renèe Helèna Browne, Rebuilding Urania (2021–ongoing), courtesy the artist

For the next online event in the ONE ARTIST | ONE WORK series, Renèe Helèna Browne will discuss their long-term multi-platform project Rebuilding Urania (2021 – ongoing). The first iteration, Rebuilding Urania: Pilot (2021), is available to listen to for the month of November on the LUX Scotland website HERE. The audio work is accompanied by a transcript. Accompanying the online presentation is a discussion event on Thursday 25 November, 6pm. Booking free here.

Rebuilding Urania begins with Browne’s research into Urania, a historic printed journal that focused on gender and was privately distributed and published in London from 1916 – 1940. Featuring re-printed articles from newspapers around the world, editorial commentary, poetry and prose, it provided readers with an alternative scientific and cultural basis of expression on androgyny and love.

Rebuilding Urania is an oral archiving project of Urania, and takes the form of multiple episodes with public presentations across radio, gallery and online contexts. The development of the project has involved Browne connecting with invited people to respond to articles from the original journal and in doing so starting to build a community and friendships around ideas in the work.

This episode was produced with Mason Leaver-Yap, Sharlene Bamboat and Hannah Fitz, with Malin Lewis’ Are We appearing courtesy OVER /​AT E.P.: FOLKS’ SONGS.

Different stages of Browne’s research and the development of this work have been supported by a number of organisations: Rebuilding Urania: Pilot (2021) was co-commissioned by Dublin Digital Radio’s Alternating Currents Festival (2021) and Book Works UK for the Happy Hypocrite radio show on Resonance FM, Sep 2021. Rebuilding Urania: Episode One will premiere at TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Galway in November 2021 curated by Eoin Dara. Rebuilding Urania (2021-ongoing) was commissioned by the Project Art Centre, Dublin.

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