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From “Lure” to “Cure”. From Critical Spectatorship to a Relational Space of Reverie
Get PDFIn this essay, I proffer a critical therapeutics in which the image is both beneficent and toxic at the same time, not because of its ontology, but because images are social, and the social is always a site of contestation between and/or within individuals and groups. Images enable their audiences to engage with ideas that would otherwise be disavowed or felt as too overwhelming. I engage with one moving image case study, Jeamin Cha’s Sound Garden (2019), a 29-minute experimental documentary artists’ film that addresses such overwhelming themes as the psychological stress of immaterial labor and the ethos of overproduction in globalized capitalist economies. In my analysis of the critical therapeutics of this film, I adapt relational psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin’s concept of “thirdness,” which is an analytic modality that attempts to bypass the either/or of complementary subject positions. Rather than the latter, whereby one subject may feel overwhelmed by another’s demands, or feels helpless in relation to another’s power over them, including the power to do harm, Benjamin’s model of “thirdness” conceives of the analytic encounter as an expanded space of reverie that flows between bodies which, while being in an asymmetrical relationship with one another, are mutually vulnerable and co-creative.
As a preamble to my analysis, I explicate a historical case study in which a photographic installation by the British-American artist Mary Kelly is discussed by Parveen Adams’ in “The Art of Analysis: Mary Kelly's Interim and the Discourse of the Analyst” (1991) in terms of how an artwork can act like a psychoanalytic site – the artist/artwork duo being like an analyst, while the spectator is like an analysand. I argue that analysis without an analyst can be enacted in the intermediate space between viewer and image
Subversive Performance in the Age of Human Capital
No full textContemporary art relies on an expansionist, modernist ideal and still progresses through a critique of earlier forms of democratisation. But beneath this democratic drive, lurks a creeping crisis. Under neoliberalism, criticality has become a zone of value production. A self-deprecating irony, exposing and re-enacting this position of impotence, is one of the few gestures left in the arsenal of critical art. Against this irony, this book pits overidentification. This term has been taken to mean a kind of parodic mimicry of institutional power. Using a broad tapestry of sources, from political philosophers to art theorists, from post-Marxist critiques of labour to ethnographic studies, it proposes an interpretation of overidentification that does not collapse into ironic posturing. The authors differentiate this from bad faith flirting with taboo aesthetics by focusing on practices grounded in a genuine identification with power that ushers the kind of excess implied by overidentification. It is these forms of overidentification that destabilise the metastasis of liberal-democracy. Staging forms of critique not so readily absorbed into the structure of the present, these subversive performances herald a future beyond the democratic paradox
Urban Atlas Helsinki
No full textThe exhibition at Helsinki University Main Library presents works inspired by streetscapes in Helsinki, painted at the University of Helsinki during Cardwell’s Kone Foundation Fellowship in the Arts at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in 2022–23.
From exhibtion website:
This series of artworks document and respond to found ‘compositions’ from the streets of Helsinki. Multiple authors use fly-posters, stickers and graffiti to create these ad hoc tableaux. Spaces in the city become informal message boards, where various agendas are promoted, and discourses negotiated. Often, these take place on the housings for electrical junction boxes, municipal signs or building hoardings.
Such examples, often organised within small, regularly shaped areas, relate visually to the canvas painting formats that delineate compositions, and balance the dynamic, even chaotic, styles at play within formal edges.
An initial ‘posting’ (either a small graffito, a sticker or fly-poster) begins the use of a particular site which others then add to. The nature of the postings can be diverse, from the political or religious to the profane or absurd. Thus, these sites are examples of discourses created by multiple authors across various platforms within the urban space.
Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1927-1929) was an unfinished series of interconnected image maps that attempted to show how symbols and images from antiquity re-emerge in later contexts.
In a related way, the public space of the street proclaims through the haphazard juxtaposition of diverse images and texts the complex and shifting narratives of contemporary life. In both spheres, the role of the larger artwork as a vessel to collect and contain a multitude of individual images is paramount.
This series of paintings and prints invite deeper consideration of these apparent ephemera and connections with the enduring themes and motifs of art history
Author-Heroines and Autobiographical Acts at exhibitions of Sixties Fashion
No full text‘Author-Heroines and Autobiographical Acts at exhibitions of Sixties Fashion’, reflects upon her recent research into narratives of the ‘1960s Model Girl’ and in particular biographical narratives which have been instrumental in the curation and dissemination of fashion exhibits Biba and Beyond (Brighton Museum 2012) and Mary Quant (V&A 2019-2020).
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Instrumental Narratives: Narrative Studies and the Storytelling Boom
The conference positions narrative scholars in the midst of the storytelling boom. Everyone is urged to share their story today, from consumers to multinational corporations, from private citizens to nation states. Storytelling consultants are thriving in today’s storytelling economy, but where are narrative scholars? Do the professional analyzers and theorizers of narrative have a say in the current storytelling boom? How to engage in a societal dialogue and debate as a narrative scholar
Exploring 3D design technology for Indian small fashion firms on new product development process: Technology Acceptance Model perspectives
No full textThe value of reducing lead time and waste affects the new product development process of big fashion brands adopting 3D CAD (3-Dimensional Computer-Aided Design) programs, including CLO3D, Browzwear, and Optitex. There is a lack of studies and practices of 3D CAD tools in small Indian enterprises. The purpose of this research is to interpret current 3D CAD tool behaviours in the Indian market and to address innovation adoption barriers by comprehending the advantages of innovating New Product Development (NPD) processes. A mono-method qualitative approach was employed. The study applied the semi-structured interviews based on the critical literature, including the Technology Acceptance Model and Innovation Diffusion Theory. The 3D CAD tool has been evolving following the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite increased interest in 3D CAD tools, small Indian fashion enterprises lack execution. The discovered obstacles to innovation are expensive, and there is a need for more skilled workers and resistance. Design quality, reduced lead time, and long-term competitive advantages were the pull factors for innovating NPD processes. This paper adds to existing scholarship, particularly in small Indian fashion businesses. The interpretation of cultural contexts sheds light on the unique challenges of the Indian market, particularly the requirements of traditional manufacturing processes. This research suggests the practical guidance of applying 3D CAD tools for small Indian companies
Coding the Printed Page: Interactive workshop
No full textA talk and workshop communicating new approaches to variable digital print through the use of creative code and its potential impact on publishing. The workshop used analogue activities to understand how creative coding works in order to generate variable outcomes
Dexterity in design education
No full textSeries 1: Sound practice and podcasts
Episode 1: Dexterity in design education
This episode is part of series one, featuring podcasts about sound practice and podcasts.
Camberwell alumni Ananya Agarwalla has a conversation about all things related to design and education with Colin Priest, a senior lecturer on the MA Interior Spatial Design course
Battery-Life-Stories
No full textSummary: Includes object-oriented poems, chemistry equations, drawings, folded poster bookmark, object inventory and a walking guide, to be read in multiple directions, connecting material, time and place
Africa Fashion Week London 2011-2020: Exploring African Cultural Identities and the Transnational Practices of Nigerian Fashion
Get PDFThis exploratory work investigates the construction and representation of African cultural identities through the dress and design practices of Nigerian fashion designers at African Fashion Week London (AFWL) 2011-2020.
AFWL was established in 2011 by Olori Aderonke Ademiluyi Ogunwusi, a Yoruba, Nigerian-British entrepreneur. AFWL’s emergence counteracts the mainstream media stereotypes and narratives of African fashion cultures and misunderstandings of African cultural identities. This fashion event, which annually attracts Black African fashion designers, models, and creative workers to showcase the diversity of African fashion cultures, provides insights into how fashion serves as a means of challenging stereotypes and asserting cultural identity and aesthetic value in the global creative and cultural marketplace.
The study explores AFWL as one of the major sites for the cultural production and circulation of alternative mediated small narratives and knowledge of African fashions. It also argues that transnational and diasporic African fashion media has offered new opportunities for Nigerian fashion practitioners to challenge and shape industry practices by mediating representations, meanings, and cultural values rooted in African cultural heritage. The study examines how Nigerian diaspora fashion designers are promoting and facilitating cultural exchange, capacity building and the preservation of Nigerian fashion identities in a global context.
My research takes an interpretive, inductive approach of semi-structured informal interviews and incorporates analysis of archival materials/documents and participant observations at the fashion event setting. This thesis aims to contribute to the body of knowledge on transnational fashion practices, networks, and media and sets out how Nigerian diaspora fashion practitioners construct and assert contemporary African cultural identities
shoddy / schäbig
Get PDFIn the English language shoddy is commonly used as a term for an inferior product or something badly made of poor quality. However, its origins are in the 1830s textile manufacturing trade where it was a type of affordable cloth produced by pressing reclaimed wool, an early form of what we now might recognise as recycling. The exhibition shoddy / schäbig reconsiders the term by exhibiting the work of artists who reclaim ‘poor’ and discarded materials in order to produce new art works from existing materials.
The exhibition will present a new work by Elliot Bottle using the detritus found on Berlin streets. Also produced specifically for the exhibition Mercedes Marszewski presents a new work for the gallery window referencing early zine productions. New works by Sophia Domagala using thread and found images are exhibited alongside a triptych by Florence Carr. Carr’s works are wall-based assemblages, constructed from parquet flooring and sourced Jacquard ribbon. Two new written works by David Cochrane are presented in the exhibition and act as both art works and contextual frames for the exhibition