15792 research outputs found
Sort by
Eight poor copies (electric speech)
Get PDFThis article emerges from a series of phone calls with the visual artist Beth Emily Richards in anticipation of her exhibition Poor Copy at The Northern Charter in Newcastle and Jerwood Arts London in 2018. A gossipy piece, it draws lines of connection between telephones, telepathic cats, urban legends and ‘King of Pop’ Michael Jackson’s apparent visitation to Devon in 2003. This visit which, as lore goes, is also contested forms the basis for Richards’ subsequent show and sustained engagement with contemporary mythmaking. Calling up lovers of the telephone Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous and Avital Ronell, celebrity impersonators and television illusionists, this article writes in and through the mystics of ‘electric speech’. The outmoded phone call is engaged as both a ‘conduit for thought’ and a poor copy – the line is cut or stalked, or a story is interrupted or interfered with – revealing a forensic fascination with the sinister and the unknown
The Hegemonic Gaze and East-Central Europe - Challenging the Totalitarian Paradigm
Get PDFThe chapter introduces the notion of the "hegemonic gaze" in relation to the representation of East-Central Europe, demonstrating how the artist becomes interpellated as a regional subject, becoming simultaneously included and othered. It begins by examining the complexities involved in defining the region and the power dynamics involved in naming and being named. The author argues that different terms produce specific subject positions, reinforcing certain narratives about the region and foregrounding the end of communism and the failure of the socialist project.
Through the lens of Stuart Hall's theory of encoding and decoding, the chapter explores how exhibitions and artworks depicting socialist monuments and architecture often become simplified and reinterpreted within the global art discourse. The author shows how the ‘‘hegemonic gaze’’ reinforces existing narratives and imposes meanings. Despite artists' efforts to engage with the complexities of the past, their work is often interpellated within predetermined frameworks that limit its interpretation
Making More Mischief: Folk Costume in Britain
No full textMaking More Mischief: Folk Costume in Britain is the highly anticipated sequel to Compton Verney’s 2023 exhibition, Making Mischief: Folk Costume in Britain, which was the first of its kind to explore the pivotal role of costume in folk customs thriving across Britain today and the rich tapestry of people bringing them to life.
Now, in collaboration with the Museum of British Folklore, and as part of the same project supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, LCF's Making More Mischief builds on this narrative by zooming in with a London lens to further explore class, sexuality, ethnicity and identity to challenge preconceived ideas that seasonal folk cultures and customs need to be fixed, nostalgic or predominantly rural.
Traditions such as London’s carnivals, Doggett’s Coat and Badge Race, Swan Upping and Somali May Day traditions come together in Making More Mischief unified through the shared values of folk dress rooted in identity, non-conformity and subversiveness. Full outfits will be displayed across LCF’s three floors of public showcasing areas alongside many voices of the wearers and/or makers as written or oral testimonies. These communicate the deeply personal individual and community expressions of lives lived and desires, which permeate all folk culture.
Making More Mischief is generously supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and led by curators Simon Costin and Mellany Robinson of the Museum of British Folklore and London College of Fashion's Amy de la Haye. Featuring commissions by NUMBI Arts and PXSSY PALACE, in close collaboration with Dr. Leila Nassereldein and Mirren Kessling, LCF's cultural producers
In the Present Tense: Diary of the Days to Come
Get PDFLong essay as part of 'Ways of Travelling' residency (in honor of critic, writer and storyteller John Berger), 2020-2024, AM Qattan Foundation, Ramallah. Published in Brick Magazine (Brick 113).
BRICK Magazine is released bi-annually in a 244 page print edition that documents the current landscape of hip-hop and its ever-expanding cultural reach.
BRICK is an international literary journal, based out of Toronto, which prizes the personal voice and celebrates life, art, and the written word
Developing Inclusive Collections
No full textI spoke about the commissioned painting that I made for CSM Study and Museum Collection (UAL) with Curator Judy Willcocks. Our discussion was on developing inclusive museums for staff at the Museum of London.
Judy Willcocks (Curator at UAL Museum and Study Collection) and Raksha Patel spoke about the curatorial and commissioning process and Raksha's commissioned painting Tulsi the Goddess of Kings Cross
Designing for flexible vehicle interiors through discrete architectural methods: Reframing the role of the designer in an automated and computational age
Get PDFThis Practice as Research (PaR) PhD investigates how automated design and construction methods developed within architectural academia can be adapted to the context of automotive interiors to address flexibility and utilisation challenges associated with Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Electric (CASE) mobility. The aim of the project was to formulate a novel prototype design practice capable of enabling more adaptable, reconfigurable vehicle interiors - interiors better suited to the dynamic demands of shared and service-based mobility models.
The research engages deeply with the critical limitations of current automotive design practice, arguing that its entanglement with legacy production models undermines its ability to address pressing sustainability, flexibility, and utilisation challenges associated with CASE. The research introduces ‘Discrete Automobility’, a design methodology that translates discrete construction logics - typically used to enable mass customisation, localised production, and component reusability in architecture - into the automotive domain. Through physical prototyping and computational workflows, it demonstrates how these logics can support new forms of vehicle interior design that respond to evolving user needs, while reducing material waste and increasing utilisation rates.
This research questions the role of the designer as we enter a new epoch defined by automation and mass computation. Drawing on Mario Carpo’s Second Digital Turn, the thesis argues that creativity in the computational age shifts from the direct manipulation of form to the indirect authorship of systems, rules, and workflows.
The ‘Education Brick’ prototype serves as a working demonstration of how vehicle interiors can be designed using modular, rule-based construction, allowing layouts to be reconfigured according to context, user group, or time of day. The proposed methodology leverages automated design-to-construction workflows and robotically fabricated modular components to produce interiors that are not fixed, but reconfigurable in response to varied user needs. In this model, the designer becomes a systems architect - crafting rule sets, spatial grammars, and manufacturing frameworks rather than singular forms. The ‘Education Brick’ prototype and ‘Discrete Automobility’ concept has been presented to OEM design teams and their responses, along with critical reflection on the research process, form part of the evaluation and point to future pathways for development.
By situating itself within both design theory and technical practice, this research contributes a new methodology for flexible vehicle interiors and a critical perspective on the future of design authorship. The thesis makes an epistemological contribution by articulating a mode of automotive design that is indirect, and concludes that far from being undermined by automation, designers are uniquely placed to shape the systems and platforms through which design operates; becoming relevant by embracing a more indirect, systemic, and adaptive mode of practice. This thesis argues that indirectness is not a diminishment of creativity, but a reconceptualisation of it, aligned with broader cultural shifts in computation, automation, and shared authorship. By building, testing, and communicating ‘Discrete Automobility’ the research embodies its knowledge claim and invites a critical rethinking of design practice in the automotive field and beyond
The Recent, Eglė Budvytytė, Helen Cammock, Dorothy Cross, Regina de Miguel, Mikala Dwyer, Nicholas Mangan, Angelica Mesiti, Otobong Nkanga, Katie Paterson, Micol Roubini and Simon Starling, curated by Tessa Giblin, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 28 October 2023–17 February 2024
Get PDFThe Recent is a review essay of the titular group exhibition of works by Eglė Budvytytė, Helen Cammock, Dorothy Cross, Regina de Miguel, Mikala Dwyer, Nicholas Mangan, Angelica Mesiti, Otobong Nkanga, Katie Paterson, Micol Roubini and Simon Starling. It was curated by Tessa Giblin at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh on 28 October 2023–17 February 2024 and centred on Edinburgh University's collection of geologist Charles Lyell's work.
In my essay, I put the exhibition into a dialogue with Kathryn Yussof's ideas of racialised histories of geology in her book A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, 2018
Reasonable Adjustments: Movements of Care
Get PDFThis article explores the relationship between performance and care within socially engaged dance. It offers a practice-led exploration of the movement of care with specific reference to a screendance (dance and film) called Reasonable Adjustments (2020), which was made with people living with chronic pain. The retrospective analysis of this artwork, made by the author, focuses on the quality of responsivity, which is a term used to describe a sensitivity to affective states, a heightened capacity to respond and the fluctuating exchange between stimulus and action. Here, responsivity is explored as a participatory dance method that is potentially valuable within both social and medical care contexts and in refining understandings of what Thompson (2022) calls the aesthetics of care. Responsivity is also observed as an integral part of practice-based research, where care operates as a method for generating knowledge
Let’s Get Phygital: a project investigating the creative process of crafting AR adornments
Get PDFOne of the technologies that can be seen as an important innovation in this era is Computer-Aided Design (CAD) (Brown, 2009), which has revolutionised the creative capabilities available to designers and engineers worldwide. In recent years, we have also experienced the rise of related technologies, such as Augmented Reality (AR). These developments have allowed us to view images of the real world and images of computer-generated worlds in the same field of view (Berry et al., 2006). Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another tool evidently on the rise with the development of Open AI systems. Despite the proliferation of numerous software and hardware developments in recent years, one notices a distinct lack of questioning in regard to what influence these digital tools have on the creative process of the designers. The focus of this paper is the study of such digital tool integration specifically in the field of jewellery design. When studying a field so heavily associated with traditional handcraft values, implementing new tools is always faced with challenges
Trans-gender things: Objects and the materiality of trans-femininity in Ming-Qing China
Get PDFThis article demonstrates that objects, more specifically the trans usage of objects that disrupted and rearticulated the normative alignment of objects, sexed bodies and gender embodiments, served a formative role in helping male-assigned individuals to cross gender boundaries and achieve trans-femininity in Ming-Qing China. The examined objects include the foot-binding cloth for the feminine bodily image of bound feet, the embroidery needle for ‘womanly work’ and concealing underwear for feminine, penetrated sexual acts. This object-oriented heuristic offers a new culturally specific approach to trans history beyond identarian frameworks and foregrounds the material multiplicity of trans formations and embodiments in Ming-Qing China