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I Bit the Skin of a Glass Lagoon
No full text‘We ebb and flow across time and space – body, to body, to body, to body’. (Astrida Neimanis)
Starting with the question, what legacies do we carry within us related to place, especially concerning landscapes only partially known? This interdisciplinary research project explores the body as a receptacle for intergenerational memory.
Neither Korn nor Shneps-Shneppe grew up in the Baltics, but both of have familial ties to the region. Working with water – as material, metaphor, collaborator - and inspired by research into how bodies store experiences, alongside Astrida Neimanis’ concept of Hydrofeminism, a watery archaeology was developed that thinks through water as a receptacle and carrier of memory. The idea of fixed roots is questioned, offering instead liquid roots – histories that flow across time, bodies and borders.
The project unfolds as an embodied cartography, a way of sensing and tracing those liquid roots. Travelling to sites tied to their familial histories, the artists immersed themselves in ancestral waters and gathered samples from each location. Collected waters were used to soup analogue film and inform glass-blown sculptures* that echo aquatic microorganisms** and the body’s internal memory systems – guts, tissues, neural networks. Here, water acts as archive and agent, holding, distorting, and translating the past in a language as fluid as memory itself.
*Made in collaboration with glass-blowers from Glass Remis, Lithuania and Aleksandrs Logvins at Livani Glass and Craft Centre, Latvia
**With many thanks to Hydrobiologists Ilga Kokorite and Lelde Ozolina for their guidance, support and access to microscopes.
The work was exhibited alongside Latvian artist Laimdota Malle. With the rhythm of ebb and flow, I Bit the Skin of a Glass Lagoon, pulls us into a space of sensory collision between each body of work. The title itself suggests a tactile encounter with fragility – delicate, sensual, and uncanny. Working with materials that evoke skin and glass – vulnerable, soft, translucent, or gleaming – the lagoon becomes a metaphor for a world both seductive and breakable, ephemeral and intimate. I Bit the Skin of a Glass Lagoon is an invitation to sense with and through fragile materialities. It speaks of those experiences we may not recognise or remember, but which live on in our skin and in the waters that shaped us. What we bite may bruise. What we touch may ripple. What we unconsciously carry may finally speak.
Composer and experimental musician Sarma Gabrena created an ethereal soundscape for the exhibition, inspired by the exhibitions themes, concepts, materials and their associations.
Performance: Fluidarities unfolded as a live response to I Bit the Skin of a Glass Lagoon during Riga’s ‘White Nights’ event. Dancers and musicians traced the installations undercurrents through movement and sound, weaving a multisensory field of fluidarity and relationality. The performance gradually liquefied into a musical improvisation, immersed in the live projections of artist Laimdota Malle.
Musicians: Kristiana Karklina, Sarma Gabrena. Dancers: Arina Bubovicha, Beate Leva Rose, Alina Mihailovala
Storing (Re)Storing Sculpture
Full text linkIT’S A QUESTION OF STORAGE.
From an economic, social and environmental standpoint storing sculpture is a huge undertaking and once removed from its site-specific location it lacks the context that is so fundamental to its meaning.
My Gustav Holst sculpture was commissioned to mark the centenary of the composer Gustav Holst and his celebrated suite The Planets. Situated on the plinth outside Morley College for three years the challenge was to find a way of storing the sculpture once the three years were up.
The Storing Sculpture (SS) research question was born out of a pressing need to solve this problem. I began by asking ‘Can I reimagine the sculpture in other forms and find alternative ways of ‘storing’ my sculpture?’
If alternative forms of documentation could give the sculpture new meaning could alternative ways of storing the sculpture achieve the same thing
Management as a design practice: a multi-case study on designing value co-creation mechanisms
Full text linkManagement and organisation researchers argue that the development of management as a design science could address the long-standing debate regarding the relevance of management research to practice. Advocates of this view emphasise the necessity of prescription-driven research within the field. Drawing inspiration from design and design thinking research, this paper argues that most management and organisation design challenges are wicked problems, necessitating the involvement of multiple stakeholders in the problem-solving process, while recognising the limitations of prescriptive knowledge. To solve these problems, it is essential for managers to adopt the role of pragmatic designers or problem-solvers. Consequently, this paper proposes that management should be examined as a design practice to bridge the gap between research and practice. Through a multi-case study of the managerial task of designing value co-creation mechanisms, this paper explores three dimensions of managers’ design activities: managers as designers, managing as designing and organisation design. The objectives are to explore the roles of managers in designing value co-creation mechanisms and to develop a framework that supports relevant design practices. The findings highlight the importance of studying management as a design practice, thereby extending current discussions on the development of management as a design science and the application of design thinking within management practice
U.S. Route 1 (After Berenice Abbott)
No full textTwo photographers, Fox and Knorr set out in 2016 on a journey of friendship, adventure and collaboration stopping at motels, drugstores, cafes and Airbnb’s. Stopping, walking, getting out to meet people and explore a fractured US society in the age of Trump. Over 150 colour photographs made between 2016 and 2025 focus on
small towns on this extended road trip from Key West in Florida to Fort Kent in Maine. In 1954, photographer Berenice Abbott journeyed along the length of U.S. Route 1. From Florida motels to Maine potato farmers, Abbott memorialised communities up and down the East Coast. During this trip, she shot more than
two hundred and fifty 8x10-inch photographs, and around one thousand smaller images using her Rolleiflex camera, representing her largest portfolio of photographs devoted to a single subject. In 2014 after the publication of David Campany’s book, The Open Road: Photography & the American Road Trip, Anna Fox and Karen Knorr decided that they would make a collaborative road trip together based on Berenice Abbott’s Route One. Following in the tracks of Berenice Abbott and her colleague/assistant Damon Gadd (also accompanied by Sara Gadd), Karen Knorr and Anna Fox set out in 2016 to start a record of contemporary life along U.S. Route 1. during the age of Trump. They started in Key West in 2016 and aimed North for Maine, not knowing how long this trip might take. Along
the way Fox and Knorr searched for a sense of what is happening today and how that differs from what Abbott and Gadd found. Using their iPhones, digital SLRs and a Phase One medium format camera, they photographed small towns, people, drugstores, cafes, diners, hotels, motels, farms, factories, street signs and advertisements. Abbott focused on the road and its signs, local industry, how goods moved both north and south, the rapid growth of the use
of the motor car and the development of tourism. Fox and Knorr wanted to re-call the importance of Abbott’s work, looking at the significance of U.S.1 and how life has developed around it, since it is now a far quieter roadway. From 2016 – 2024, Fox and Knorr traversed the U.S. Route, considering current environmental debate and societal discontent created by the increasing disenchantment of working Americans with their governance and elites. Covid
stopped all travel between 2020 and 2022, but Fox and Knorr continued to take photographs off social media networks
during the Jan 6 storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters. In 2024 they made two last trips to Maine and Florida,
concluding this chapter of their work. Despite being one of the most advanced economies, USA is still surprisingly conservative. The second amendment to the United Sates Constitution protects the right of people to keep and bear arms. Girls as young as 14 are allowed to marry (with parental consent) in 27 states. On June 24, 2022, America’s top court overturned the 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling which had given women abortion rights up until 24 weeks and opened the door for states to ban abortion outright. The criminal justice system in the United States has a very large imbalance in the composition of races incarcerated,
specifically between blacks and whites. Black males are not only the victims of violence and discrimination but have an
incarceration rate twenty-five times higher than that of the total population. Black Lives Matter, a decentralised social
movement was formed in 2013 by three women, and global support culminated in the founding of Black Lives Matter Global network advocating for the eradication of systematic racism and prevention of police violence. Prior to this, in 2006, the #MeToo movement was started by Tarana Burke, a women’s advocate, to support survivors of sexual violence, especially young women of colour. It gained widespread attention in 2017 after news reports surfaced about
Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct.
On November 5, 2024, Donald Trump won the US presidential election for the second time. Barely two weeks later, on
November 17, an image began circulating on social media that signalled the start of what will be an unprecedented period in the United States: Trump and his right-hand man Elon Musk with Robert Kennedy aboard Trump Force One enjoying a meal of McDonald’s hamburgers
Devaluation and disrupted goals: Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic on UK musicians
No full textThis thesis seeks to investigate the many impacts wrought by 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns on Britain’s professionally trained freelance musicians. 2020 was a year in which British society questioned both value and values at every level; as our lives were turned upside down by biological, societal, economic and cultural forces. Like many professions, musicians form a network that encompasses 1/ individuals, 2/ groups, and much is contextualised by 3/ the media. I use the event of COVID-19 as a form of natural experiment to understand the multifaceted nature of value at these three different levels. On the understanding that value can be thought of in terms of economic, ethical, social imaginary or as an intrinsic property of a thing, I will undertake a review of value in all its variety and as related to musicians, considering that political decisions both
leading up to, and in the wake of, COVID-19- have adversely affected the lives, careers,
finances, and mental wellbeing of almost all freelance musicians in the UK. I ask how
Goal Disruption Theory (Siegel., 2004, 2011, 2013, Siegel et al. 2014) can be applied
to discover what these events, and the psychological responses of individuals to such
events, have done to the various aspects of value we find in music, and to musicians
themselves?
To comprehend how different members of society may understand value
according to own values and hence apportion perceived viability to both music and
musicians, this research refers to findings resulting from my own qualitative research
methods, to analyse the financial, psychological, artistic and cultural impacts of the
COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns on professional musicians in the UK. I include
interviews, a questionnaire and essays; photographs, social media text extractions and
both qualitative and quantitative literature review to understand changes to the
individual musicians and wider group.
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A constructivist grounded theory framework uses a model deriving from Goal
Disruption Theory to analyse and define a radically altered musical landscape in the
UK. I explore whether this model can be used to analyse behavioural and desired end-
state outcomes of musicians living through the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
This research finds that financial stability affects every aspect of being a musician,
that value is strongly linked to appreciation, and that the meaning of value has changed
going forward in our digital/AI era. Consequently, musicians are enduring heightened
levels of purposive challenge or even harm in pursuit of their careers. I investigate
what it means when a radically new context throws not only identity into question; but
professional, artistic and financial survival
Freedom as Fetish
No full textRecent Marxist political theory has foregrounded freedom as normative commitment. This paper re-stages the break between slavery and capitalism through which slavery's natural bondage is supposedly superseded by the compulsions of market dependency. Capitalist social practices depend upon our freedom whilst inculcating a system in which domination and freedom are interdependent. But this interdependence leads to a double-bind: if freedom is reducible to social practices, we acquiesce to unfreedom; if not, we appeal to an ahistorical essence. I consider whether the double-bind can be diffused by exploring freedom's fetish character as a real phenomenon enacted in practice because we are implicated in the commodity as both free and passive object to be exchanged. But I suggest that slavery is not then excisable but remains as fetish character internal to the freedom of the worker as presupposition: freedom for the worker is guaranteed by the practical enaction of slavery's impossible negation
Impossible freedoms: slavery and (in)capacity in Kant’s Enlightenment
No full textThe figure of slavery is of central importance to Enlightenment accounts of individual and collective freedom. The slave appears in these accounts as negative infraction of liberty, with freedom defined as self-mastery against the mastery of another’s whim. This paper suggests a speculative reconstruction of the Kantian trajectory of thought shaping freedom’s relation to slavery by drawing on Afro-pessimism’s engagement with the aporias generated through the racial slave. For Kant, freedom becomes measurable along a continuum of capacity to escape our enslavement both to external despotism and internal savagery through reason and self-mastery. Metaphorizing slavery collapses racial slavery into a generalized condition through which we are driven toward emancipation. I suggest that the capacity for reason and self-mastery is not only made quantifiable through the metaphorization of slavery as freedom’s negation, but the conceptual coherence of freedom requires slaveness-as-incapacity as impossibility for the subject even in enslavement to their nature
Multi-dimensional scale for green internal marketing in Italian higher education
Full text linkPurpose:
This study aims to develop a measurement instrument for green internal marketing (GIM) in a knowledge-intensive industry (Higher Education).
Design/methodology/approach:
This study consists of four phases, using a mixed-methods design. Study 1 used a systematic literature review, interviews and focus group discussions (n = 30) to identify five categories and 29 initial items. Study 2 used exploratory factor analysis for scale purification and refinement. The study confirmed a 20-item and five-dimensional scale. The final data collection (n = 576) was conducted for Study 3 using the quantitative approach and establishing the scale’s predictive validity. Study 4 checked the impact of GIM on knowledge worker performance using Smart-PLS 4.
Findings:
This study found that GIM has five dimensions, which work as a catalyst in the knowledge-intensive sector. The study also found a significant impact of GIM on knowledge worker performance.
Originality/value:
The study’s innovative approach involves the development of a multidimensional scale and an examination of its effect on the identification of variables by GIM, specifically on the academic performance of knowledge workers in higher education. The study provides valuable recommendations for professionals and academics on achieving knowledge worker performance within higher education institutions effectively
pp.18-21, NGV Magazine, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, no.54, September-October 2025.
No full textThe NGV has acquired a 1956-57 work by British artist Marlow Moss, Composition yellow, blue, black, red and white (fig.1) – a rare and increasingly sought-after oeuvre – it is the first Moss work to enter a public collection in Australia.
Identifying works by Moss, with slightly differing perfunctory titles and varying measurements (in inches in London and New York, and centimetres in Europe) is not without difficulty, but there are two aspects that make this particular work stand out: its elongated vertical format; and its use of all three primary colours in addition to black and white. In the context of the stringent grammar of Neoplasticism such features hold significance. The tall narrow canvas is discussed amongst scholars as having originated with Moss before being adopted by Mondrian and Jean Gorin, alongside other contributions to the language, such as doubled, coloured and truncated lines. Some perceive a ‘tragic’ character in the verticality, corresponding to Moss’s feelings about the wartime political situation, expressed in letters. It is also, in the gendered lexicon of Mondrian, masculine – as opposed to supine femininity. This codification, intended or not by Moss, takes on special resonance when invoked alongside the series of photographic portraits of Moss taken by Faan, aka Stephen Storm, and indeed Moss’s masculine dress and appearance in everyday life as documented by photographs and contemporary accounts
IN-Between
Full text linkA Fast Forward exhibition in collaboration with Wozownia Art Gallery
11.10.2025 – 9.11.2025
Opening: 11.10.2025, 7pm
Wozownia Art Gallery, ul. Rabiańska 20, Toruń, Poland
Borders, migration and identity are constantly in our news, yet what do those stories ever tell us about real life aside from what is urgent and immediate. News and media are plagued by drama and false sincerity. These four contemporary artists have worked to bring new narratives to the burgeoning stories of migration. Two of them, Maria Kapajeva and Masha Pryven have worked collaboratively with groups of refugees and migrants. Then Elizabeth Ransom reflects on her own family experience of migration looking acutely at the very day they moved from one country to another. While the fourth artist, Ania Ready, materialises displacement and postwar migration through soil, collected from places central to a Polish Holocaust survivor.
All the artists use alternative photographic methods and/or hands-on analogue techniques to act as a cipher for the complexity of the stories they are relating, all four have been affected themselves by changing borders and migration. The layering of information in their practical methods is so different to that of photojournalism, less instant, more contemplative, perhaps in some ways more approachable. Certainly, the beauty in these images draws us in and in a slow, thoughtful manner unfolds their stories to us.
Artists: Maria Kapajeva (Estonia/UK), Masha Pryven (Ukraine/Germany), Elizabeth Ransom (USA/UK), Ania Ready (Poland/UK)
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