Critical Practice is a cluster of artists, researchers and academics hosted by Chelsea College of Art and Design, a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. They have a longstanding interest in art, public goods, spaces, services and knowledge, and a track record of producing original, participatory events.

Chelsea College of Art and Design has a large contemporary courtyard at its heart: the beautiful Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground. Critical Practice have collaborated with Polish curator Kuba Szreder to develop a programme of events that will explore the diverse, contested and vital conceptions of being in public.

In a bespoke, temporary structure designed by award-winning Polish architects Ola Wasilkowska and Michał Piasecki – assembled in public – Critical Practice aim to produce a landmark event in an amazing location with a host of international contributors.

Parade challenged the lazy, institutionalised model of knowledge transfer – in which amplified ‘experts’ speak at a passive audience. Thei modes of assembly, their forms of address and the knowledge they shared were intimately bound.

Cocoons was an artist commission by the Critical Practice Parade – to experience the obstacles and pleasures of the public realm from the position of helpless larvae by climbing into one of human-sized cocoons.

http://www.criticalpracticechelsea.org