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Ten Texts on Sculpture 10: Maintenance
No full textThe tenth of a series of reading group podcasts on sculpture. In this episode Matt and Andrea read three texts about maintenance and art. We look at ‘What It's Like to Live With Art That Doesn't Love You Back’, a 2017 magazine article by M.H Miller, Ben Lerner’s 2016 piece for the New Yorker about the Whitney museum’s conservation team, ‘The Custodians’, and Helena Reckitt’s, article about feminist art and maintenance ‘Forgotten Relations: Feminist Artists and Relational Aesthetics’ from 2013
Radical exposure: religion, masculinity, and politics in the William Bengo’ Collyer scandal
Get PDFThis article considers a hitherto neglected sexual scandal involving the Congregational minister William Bengo’ Collyer and two young men at a public swimming baths in Camberwell (then in Surrey) in the spring of 1823. It explores the relationships between Congregationalism, and Evangelical Dissent more generally, and the cultures of contemporary masculinity and political radicalism. In so doing, it reveals how radical political figures, notably Thomas Wakley, constructed a masculine identity as upright, honest, and rigidly heteronormative, and shows how this was counterposed to the imagined masculinity of their opponents, who were often figured as effeminised, secretive, and sexually non-normative. Central to this process of rhetorical opposition was an emphasis on openness and public accountability, and this article demonstrates how the scandal that enveloped Collyer in the summer and early autumn of 1823 was framed by concerns over what should be secret, hidden, or exposed and what implications this had for contested notions of the public good
Illustration as an announcement of a world
Get PDFIllustration is often casually assumed to be a representational practice, where ‘something out there’ is represented, i.e. shown again, in visual form. The prefix ‘re-’ in ‘representation’ suggests that something exists prior to its pictorial rendering. With reference to a project I worked on as an illustrator with a group of older feminists who had come together to record their memories of their involvement in the Women’s Liberation Movement, I use this article to propose an alternative possibility for illustration. Rather than considering illustration as representational, I submit that illustration in the process of its creation can produce the reality it refers to. It can therefore be understood as a form of performative knowledge production. In this piece, I draw on my project with the feminist group and interweave this with Jean-Luc Nancy’s work on community, Rosalind Krauss’s reflections on indexicality and Jacques Derrida’s article on the nature of declarations
Data, Excrement, Information, Humors: Infrastructural Flows In and Outside of the Body
No full textThis paper extends an infrastructural study of bodies, sewer pipes, and fiber optic cables. I attend to the varied temporal rhythms of flows of data, excrement, information, and humors, and what complex textures might be read through their imbrication. Beginning in the sewer, I overlap flows of fecal data and digital information to gesture towards an embodied metaphysical conception of data as a vibrant, relational, social substance. I then add a historic layer to these flows by tracing information as a humor based on early modern humoral theories. This study addresses the development from pre- and early modern conceptions of information as the informing of a substance to its modern use as contextless data or knowledge. By overlapping digital, material, and corporeal flows, I reorient the flow of information within a framework that is materially and environmentally embedded, one that might allow us to consider how to reconstitute information in relation to our bodies
Not if it touches my skin! uncovering stigmas towards the consumption of previously worn clothes and potential implications for the transition to a circular fashion system
Get PDFIn an era marked by unprecedented ecological challenges, conventional human-centric approaches to fashion production and consumption are under scrutiny, given the drastic impact of the industry on planetary boundaries. Clothing reuse, and particularly, second-hand clothing and accessories consumption, is presented as a viable short-term alternative and scenario for ecological impact reduction. The study employs a qualitative research design and utilises qualitative semi-structured interviews to explore perspectives regarding second-hand clothing and accessories consumption and reflexive thematic analysis is used to identify patterns, themes and meanings within the collected data. ‘Skin closeness’ emerges as a barrier in the transition towards alternative ways of acquiring and wearing fashion
Ripple Rift
No full textRipple Rift explores the continuous conversation between an organism and the volatile landscape it inhabits. Inspired by the shape-shifting Icelandic landscape, the piece follows the encounters of an intelligent amoeba, the slime mould Physarum polycephalum, as it navigates its world through a process of chemical sensing, constantly assessing changing conditions and responding to events. The films reveal the highly attuned and endlessly adaptive behaviour of a curious nomadic explorer and invites us to consider our own interspecies relations and environmental sensitivities.
Film and edit by Heather Barnett
Sound by Matt Donovan
The video installation can be single, double or triple screen/projection, depending on configuration of space
Upcycling leather waste: The effect of leather type and aspect ratio on the performance of thermoplastic polyurethane composites
Get PDFLeather is among the most traded commodities globally, despite being one of the most ancient engineered natural materials and a by-product of the meat industry. This reflects its high perceived commercial value as well as its unique physical properties such as tear and wear resistance, thermal stability, and breathability. However, transforming animal hide into leather is a complex process that involves several carcinogenic chemicals which heavily impact the environment. Moreover, the low yield of final leather products, combined with the lack of viable end-of-life options, has drawn significant attention from the research community. Herein, we systematically explore the potential for upcycling leather waste by incorporating it into thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). TPU composites with various contents of leather waste (5 to 30 wt%), sourced from different tanning methods and with different particle size distributions, were prepared by melt compounding and studied for their morphological, thermal, and mechanical properties as well as tear and abrasion resistance. It was demonstrated that enhanced mechanical properties (Young's modulus 305 MPa) and abrasion resistance are significantly influenced by the average particle size of the leather waste, with the highest aspect ratio (61) of wet blue leather providing the best performance
Doctor Doom: Marvel’s Transmedia Supervillain
Get PDFWhen Doctor Doom first appeared he was simply the latest villain created to battle The Fantastic Four, sandwiched between the return of the Sub-Mariner and the debut of Kuurgo from Planet X. However, he quickly became a favourite not just with fans but also with his creators, gaining a sympathetic origin story, complex motivations, and an importance in Marvel's transmedia universe that would see him appearing in movies, cartoon series, video games and toy ranges, as well as maintaining a constant presence in comics for over fifty years. Despite this popularity, however, Doom would rarely headline a series of his own.
This chapter will examine Doctor Doom's history, in comics and across other media, and show how his status as a well-defined character and recurring guest in a growing range of titles led to him becoming an early instance of what would come to be known as a transmedia character. Different theories of transmedia will be illustrated using examples from this history, leading to an in-depth analysis of Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars (Shooter et al, 1984-85) and Secret Wars (Hickman et al, 2015-2016) which will seek to show that Doctor Doom is not just a character that exists within transmedia storyworlds, but also a commentary upon them
Amnesiac Beach Fire
No full textI was invited to read at the inaugural minor [i]ncident event in Paris, hosted by online literary journal minorlits.
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I was invited to read a short story at Verbal Discharge 73, a readings and spoken word event run by Insurgent Press, on Friday June 6th at Queen's Larder pub in Holborn, WC1
A real American wife, a Japanese object: Critical Puppetry and the construction of the Orient in Anthony Minghella’s Madam Butterfly
No full textIn Anthony Minghella and English National Opera’s (ENO) celebrated production of Madam Butterfly , three men manipulate the small, fragile bodies of Cio-Cio-San (also known as Madam Butterfly) and her child, Sorrow. Both characters are Japanese or part-Japanese, and both are portrayed, at least in part, by puppets, with white American characters all portrayed by human beings. These puppets were built and originally manipulated by the British company Blind Summit, who drew on the traditional Japanese form of ningyō jōruri (commonly and hereafter referred to as bunraku ). In this chapter, I argue that the use of bunraku-inspired puppetry, while lending Minghella’s production a notional sense of cultural authenticity, may also function to reinforce and reify the exoticizing and imperialist gaze present in the original source material. Conversely, I assert that even as the use of puppetry functions to further perpetuate Orientalist constructions of East-Asia, it simultaneously destabilizes and makes visible these constructions in fruitful and interesting ways