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Opinion: The Live Aid musical will continue a legacy of white saviorism
No full textThe legacy of the original Live Aid was not entirely positive for Ethiopia, or indeed the continent of Africa, and reigniting with a stage musical seems not just tone deaf but positively belligerent
Heat, Humidity, Rain & Mud: The Materialities of Working and Wearing on the Devil's Railroad
No full textThis paper takes as its starting point a photographic archive that was deliberately destroyed by fire in 1980, an action that was not uncommon during the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964 – 1985) and one which has contributed to, as contemporary artist Rosângela Rennó articulates, ‘a certain ‘historical amnesia’’ within Brazil (Rennó 2022). The analysis is concerned with bringing into focus the precarious remains of that archive, which contains New York photographer Dana Bertran Merrill’s (1877-?) photographs documenting the unknown global workforce who constructed the 366 kilometer (224 mile) Madeira-Mamoré railroad, built deep in the Brazilian Amazon between 1907 and 1912. Nicknamed the ‘Devil’s Railroad’, due to the vast numbers of workers who died from a catalogue of disaster and disease, the railroad was an American-Brazilian venture intended to expedite the global exportation of rubber and other tropical commodities from landlocked Bolivia. The workers were exposed to all the elements, while responsible for the hard manual labour of culling the jungle, laying the tracks, building bridges and maintaining the right of way. Given the considerable dearth of everyday and working dress preserved in museum collections in the U.S. and Brazil, this paper uses poetry, diary extracts and memoirs to breathe life into the visual and thus make up for the absences left by the deliberate destruction of the archive and the histories that are left untold. Personal accounts of life in frontier societies such as the Madeira-Mamoré railroad and Panama Canal facilitate our understanding of the embodied and experiential memories of wearing, working and caring for clothes when exposed to extreme heat, humidity, rain and mud, but also highlight how salient aspects of dress were for social distinction and identity construction in the remote geographical location
Preconscious Landscape
No full textI exhibited three paintings and gave an artists talk in this group exhibition Preconscious Landscape at Exposed Arts Projects, Kensington, London. The exhibition was curated by Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek and Phoebe Bradley-Whitetion
Preconscious Landscape presents selected works from seventeen contemporary artists which grapple with an unresolvable psychoanalytic question: what does it mean for the conscious mind to try to understand its own preconsciousness?
In The Unconscious (1915) and The Ego and the Id (1923), Sigmund Freud examines the workings of the mind to identify three fundamental structures: the conscious, preconscious and unconscious. He describes these structures as layered, portraying the mind as topographic. The conscious is the surface-level structure which holds the ideas, memories, desires and anxieties that can be recognised and responded to by the individual. Successfully censored and repressed psychic contents reside in the deepest structure, the unconscious. In a state of repression, the individual cannot actively identify or inspect this content.
The preconscious occupies the space between these two structures. It is a liminal space which stores memories, drives and fears in a state of suspension. As Freud explains, the preconscious “is not yet conscious, but it is certainly capable of entering consciousness”.[1] This psychic structure holds potential. There may be glimmers of its contents, perhaps a sensation of something being ‘on the tip of one’s tongue’, but they must be coaxed out with prompts and provocations in order to resurface.
Preconscious Landscape responds to Freud’s analysis, exploring the imagery, observations and questions that arise when examining the preconscious mind. Each artwork has been selected for its ability to prompt the viewer to consider the liminal, ambiguous and latent. Ceramics embody the fragility of the mind and its memories, while soft sculptures illustrate their mutability. Paintings construct intricate layers and complex spaces which echo the ‘in-between-ness’ of the preconscious and investigate the connections between the self, memory and place. Photographic works capture the enigmatic and the uncanny, transforming the ordinary into the sublime whilst evoking the uneasy experience of recalling a half-forgotten dream.
This collection of artworks begins to dissect humanity’s pursuit to know and understand itself. How can we make sense of a fundamentally comprehendible part of ourselves? Why are we so drawn to exploring, if not solving, the unknowable
A Tool for Generating Controllable Variations of Musical Themes using Variational Autoencoders with Latent Space Regularisation
Get PDFA common musical composition practice is to develop musical pieces using variations of musical themes. In this study, we present an interactive tool which can generate variations of musical themes in real-time using a variational autoencoder model. Our tool is controllable using semantically meaningful musical attributes via latent space regularisation technique to increase the explainability of the model. The tool is integrated into an industry standard digital audio workstation - Ableton Live - using the Max4Live device framework and can run locally on an average personal CPU rather than requiring a costly GPU cluster. In this way we demonstrate how cutting-edge AI research can be integrated into the exiting workflows of professional and practising musicians for use in the real-world beyond the research lab
‘The Best of Moralists’: Hogarth, Bentham and the Anti-Aesthetic
No full textThis was a paper delivered at the one-day interdisciplinary conference which analyses the impact of artist and social critic William Hogarth.
It focused looking at Hogarth through the lens of Jeremy Bentham's philosophy. Bentham once wrote of William Hogarth ‘That admirable artist was one of the best of moralists.’ I argued that Bentham’s praise for Hogarth’s moral insight, which was made with reference to the prints Beer Street and Gin Lane, nonetheless exposed contradictions in the position that Hogarth adopted in his treatise The Analysis of Beauty. In this treatise, Hogarth attempted a rational, impartial analysis of the truth of beauty, to assist the ordinary observer and defeat the artificial rules of art promoted by connoisseurs of art. In advocating an aesthetics of ‘plain truth’, Hogarth argues that the body of a living woman is more beautiful than a statue of Venus and that the form of a woman’s body surpasses that of a man. In Jeremy Bentham’s terms, however, a definition of beauty based on reproductive sexuality was not tenable, because sexuality was an inclination without a fixed object, a ‘sixth sense’ that ignored the distinction between the beautiful and the ugly. In Beer Street and Gin Lane, on the other hand, we see Hogarth approach truth in a different way, by outlining the social harms that result from a predilection for gin, and the social benefits that derive from substituting this predilection for the consumption of beer. The moral distinction between Gin Lane and Beer Street is not guided by a difference between the ugly and the beautiful, but rather by the difference between the pleasure of a predilection and the social mischief it may cause. In Bentham’s view, to be ‘the best of moralists’ Hogarth had to define the social power of art through an analysis of the ethics of urban life that does not rely on normative judgments of beauty
Fashion MSMEs confronting Climate Change, COVID-19 and Brexit: Key Drivers for Supply Chain Relocation
Get PDFPurpose
This discussion paper presents findings from a research study which analysed the impact of Climate Change, Covid-19 and Brexit on the drivers and factors underlying fashion Micro/Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) supply chain relocation strategies.
Methodology
The study was based on a mixed methods sequential explanatory research design whereby the quantitative research was followed by the qualitative research. The data collection involved a questionnaire targeting fashion MSMEs in the UK and a focus group with stakeholders.
Findings
A comprehensive list of factors underlying 16 drivers that could potentially impact the relocation of fashion MSMEs due to Climate Change, Brexit, and Covid-19 was produced. Next, our survey recorded a total of 37 usable responses from UK fashion MSMEs and the ensuing findings were complemented with qualitative insights from 5 stakeholders representing fashion MSMEs. In the report, we identify several factors and drivers underlying relocation strategies differentiated by Climate Change, Brexit, and Covid-19. Finally, through the quantitative and qualitative research, we hone in on 4 focal points for policy intervention: costs, environmental and social sustainability, logistics, and risk management.
Policy Implications
A key driver underlying relocation strategies for fashion MSMEs in the UK is cost. Given the importance of MSMEs for the UK economy and local communities, the government could curb relocations by helping MSMEs with the costs of doing business via subsidies, fiscal policy reforms, lenient trade policies, and improvements in efficiency and productivity of government services (e.g., border controls), which would also help overcome factors associated with logistics as a driver underlying relocation strategies. In terms of tackling environmental and social sustainability, facilitating the development of stakeholder networks capable of performing sustainability practices within SMEs and stricter regulation along with rewards in the form of subsidies for compliance would help curb relocations. Finally, in terms of curbing concerns around risk management as a driver underlying relocation strategies, the government could focus on policy interventions that would minimise the risks of doing business in the UK and make provisions for dedicated programmes tailored to improve fashion MSMEs risk management capabilities. It should be noted that for these policy initiatives to be effective, the industry should also proactively engage in complementary activities that would reinforce government interventions
An Ethics of Light: The Affective Turn of Contemporary Practices
Get PDFThis thesis proposes an understanding of light in terms of ethics through an analysis of light-based practices. The practice of light designates a technology-based art developed in the 1990s, resulting from a debate on the dematerialization of the artistic object and post-media practices. This research proposes an understanding of practices of light and questions whether these practices reflect a new sensibility which emerges from experience as opposed to metaphysical systems of representation. An ethics of light questions the ways through which practices of light renegotiate the relation between the subject of light and light as a sensuous material that imbues one’s living experience. The work of artists Mary Kelly, Ann Veronica Janssens, and Magdalena Fernandez, among others, is emblematic of a repositioning of light at the basis of a discourse that imposes an investigation of the relation between experience and ethics. Through an analysis of these artists’ practices of light, this thesis investigates how light acts as an affect and challenges the system of artistic configuration to open up to an experiential dimension of light. In particular, this research examines an embodied experience of light, focusing on the sensorium of these practices. This study draws on affect theories and feminist ethics, specifically on the ethical thinking about light by Luce Irigaray and Karen Barad, to examine the agency of light in relation to practices and experience. In so doing, this thesis argues that an ethics of light provides a useful system of analysis to rethink light in the contemporary artistic context and contributes to a feminist critical understanding of artistic practices of light
Crafting Futures: Craft Research and Education Development Projects in the South Caucasus 2019 - 2022
Get PDFProgramme Report for British Council Funded Project
Arcadia for all? Rethinking Landscape Painting Now
No full textThe exhibition was curated by Dr Judith Tucker, Senior Lecturer at the School of Design, University of Leeds and Geraint Evans, Pathway Leader MA Painting at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London.
When you think about landscape, what comes to mind? Is it a natural green space, overflowing with wildlife? Is it urban – bustling with people, shops, and modern buildings? Do you feel like you belong there? Is it built to last, or is it slowly disappearing?
The exhibition borrowed its title from anarchist historian Colin Ward’s book ‘Arcadia for All: Legacy of a Makeshift Landscape’, in which he explores the lost ways in which working people accessed green spaces in the 20th Century. Raising important questions about who has access to nature, the show challenges a nostalgic, idyllic and elitist idea of landscape. The added question mark in the exhibition title is an invitation for you to ponder whether Arcadia – the perfect landscape – can still be found in our surroundings today.
Contemporary landscape painting brings with it vitality and variety, and is by no means limited in its themes and representations of people. As well as delving into ideas surrounding access to nature and the environmental crisis, the exhibition also tackles issues around equity, colonial legacies, and racism. Uncovering hidden histories throughout the landscape, it remembers and draws attention to what and who are not usually made visible, challenging us to look differently and carefully at the world around us.
List of participating artists:
David Ainley, Hurvin Anderson, Iain Biggs, Louise Bristow, Hannah Brown, Simon Callery, Lara Cobden, Kimathi Donkor, Sam Douglas, Natalie Dowse, Geraint Evans, Mark Fairnington, Andrew Grassie, Dan Hays, Lubaina Himid, Barbara Howey, Matthew Krishanu, Paula MacArthur, Elizabeth Magill, Cara Nahaul, Christopher Orr, Rebecca Partridge, Julian Perry, Narbi Price, Carol Rhodes, Greg Rook, George Shaw, Benet Spencer, Clare Thatcher, Judith Tucker, Phoebe Unwin, Joanna Whittle
Six Ravens
No full textResearch, development, design & applications for the corporate identity system for Six Ravens consultancy