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Waste matter: Public art and the (im)materiality of post-colonial memory
Get PDFOver the last century, the idea of progress and industrial capitalism have created a climate emergency through the violent extraction of natural resources. This research focuses on lithium mineral extraction taking place in Portugal and the consequences that these activities have for the environment and local communities. Drawing from Robert Smithson’s notion of ‘ruins-in-reverse’ and ‘abstract geology’, the research takes an interdisciplinary approach by combining geological, archaeological and forensic methods with the act of walking, site writing, object analysis and experimental practice to explore the area where fiction, imagination, and reality blur to reconstruct events through the geological layer and traces left by industrial development in places under extractive colonialism and popular resistance, economic dispute and ecological crisis. The research investigates the relation between waste and spatial justice within the contemporary context of globalisation. Working in sculpture, photography, and public art works, the practice explores the creative and subversive potential of waste to question the intersections between extractive capitalism, colonialism, the Anthropocene, and the climate crisis. Here I suggest that the ways we perceive and relate to waste are informed by the unjust geographies created by colonial legacies that are still present in the city order. The practice also includes the case study ‘Kverndalen in New Light’, in which I concentrate on methods, practices, and possibilities to reinscribe waste with meaning and value in order to propose speculative alternatives for urban regeneration projects in an effort towards material and spatial reconstitution. The practice research draws from a range of theoretical perspectives and scholarly work to enable a conversation between different approaches to waste, unfolding the scope of their research, methodology and knowledge gaps. This travels from Michel de Certeau’s work (1998) on the relationship between objects, memory and forgetting to explore alternative material forms of remembrance that acknowledges the ‘transience’ of power in the process of ruination (Desilvey, 2017), “waste as ‘matter out of place’” (Douglas, 1966), Waste as ‘matter out of time’” (Viney, 2014; Allon, Barcan & Edison-Cogan, 2021; Foucault’s notion of “heterotopias” as ‘spaces of otherness’, Guttormsen’s ‘deep cities’ framework, 2020), “waste value” (Thompson, 2017), and the use of ‘ruin waste’ (Edensor, 2005; DeSilvey, 2017) as an agent for ‘radical change’ (Franklin & Till, 2018); and Hawkins’s ‘waste as thing’ (2018). The research looks at political ecology, decolonial theory, and urban humanities (Bruna’s ‘green extractivism’ (2022); Yusoff’s ‘white geology’ (2018); Vergés ‘racial Capitalocene’ (2019); Cuff’s “immanent speculation practice” (2020); Soja’s “spatial justice” (2010); and Rendell’s ‘critical spatial practice’ (2002). It also looks at contemporary artistic practices, specifically at Robert Smithson’s work on entropy and Susan Schuppli’s notion of ‘material witness’. Ultimately, I argue that waste can be understood as an alternative material form with value that has the potential to inspire social change and enable a more sustainable and inclusive ecological future. The research aims, therefore, to address and redefine the role of the artist in the urban policy-making of cities under transformation and industrial development
Wittgenstein’s war poetry
Get PDFSince being injured while serving in the British military in Iraq I have explored and written poetry as a way of making sense of my combat experiences. In this PhD by practice I situate my own poetic work alongside a thesis which explores Wittgenstein’s own 1919 philosophical work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, as a work of war poetry. I use reflections on my own life experience to direct a comparative literary analysis of work by myself and other poets in order to shed light on how Wittgenstein’s war poetry operates and what it might tell us about the experiences he found impossible to communicate through words. In doing this I situate my thesis as a contribution to Marjorie Perloff’s explorations of Wittgenstein’s poetics. In addition to this textual focus, this thesis also aims to make two further theoretical contributions to the discourse concerning war literature more generally: first, it aims to outline the contours of a radical reimagining of how war literature should be considered and studied, broadening its current position within an orbit of literature which is written descriptively about war or contemporaneously alongside war, as evident, for example, in Kate McLoughlin’s scholarly analyses, to also include other works which demonstrate novel types of combat poetics which, I argue, emerge as psychological responses to combat experience and which lie latent within literary works that have not previously been considered as war literature. Second, by making these contributions, and by doing so as a scholar who has been both an academic and a soldier, I also aim to shed light upon, and to some extent challenge, a proposed division between an older ‘first wave’ (Das, 2006, ‘Introduction’) tradition of scholarship, which exclusively discusses the literature of combatants, and a newer and contemporary ‘second wave’ tradition, which ascribes no privileged insight to literature written by combatants. In this vein, and to illustrate how an experientially informed analysis may offer valuable new perspectives, throughout this thesis I juxtapose my own experiences with the analyses of Santanu Das and Kate McLoughlin. The first chapter begins with an introduction to the themes, methods, and primary material of the thesis. It proceeds to a literature review, which contextualises the thesis within the discourse concerning the study of war literature. There follows a section which situates the thesis within scholarship concerning the Tractatus in relation to both poetry as a literary form and Wittgenstein’s war experience, establishing that the Tractatus is recognised as war poetry but that this poetry remains poorly understood. A methodology for analysing Wittgenstein’s poetics which employs a combination of biographically informed self-reflexive empathy and comparative literary analysis is then proposed, before this first chapter concludes with an introductory textual analysis. The methodology of the thesis is then applied in exploring three aspects of the poetics of the Tractatus. Chapters titled ‘Structure’, ‘Compression’, and ‘Abstraction’ explore different aesthetic responses to the experience of combat, and particularly the combat experience of the active vocational pursuit of imminent death. ‘Structure’ explores how a writer may need to rebuild a stable ideological anchoring architecture into their life and work and suggests that this need poetically expresses the unstructured and destabilising experience of its opposite. In this chapter I explore both my work and the work of the First World War Dada poet Jacques Vaché to shed light on the Tractatus. ‘Compression’ explores the techniques, some mathematical, which poets may employ to compactly represent the immense scales of unprecedented experience which warfare engenders and suggests that this urge to contain the reality of war aesthetically also implies an external and infinite perspective beyond that reality. I focus on the poetry of Tristan Tzara and the Oulipo writers’ group to explore this theme within the Tractatus. ‘Abstraction’, the concluding chapter, explores the unique challenge of descriptively expressing imminent death, and the methods for doing so, and suggests that aesthetic abstraction at the moment of linguistic failure becomes itself the poetic index of the inexpressible. This chapter begins by juxtaposing my reading of Wilfred Owen’s final poem, ‘Spring Offensive’ with that by Das. The thesis concludes with reference to a work of philosophy-poetry of my own, which evidences notions of structure, compression, and abstraction. It provides an opportunity for some closing reflections on what may have changed and what may have remained the same within the experience of combat over the last century, and how considerations of these stases and evolutions may prove useful in helping us to think about how war poetry should be understood as a category. In the light of this I posit that many of the very technologies which have changed the experience of war over time may themselves bear the poetic trace of the combat experiences from which they emerged and may therefore themselves be considered as war poetry
Practical strategies for challenging colonial thinking and practices in the production of publicity campaigns within the spectacle of Mexican Advertising
Get PDFThis practice-based PhD asks How can a decolonised poster campaign generate a conversation about the production of colonial and racist thinking through the spectacle of publicity and create greater diversity in Mexican Advertising? Hybrid practice-academic methods explore how a multimodal campaign can disrupt the colonial and racist thinking underlying Mexican Advertising. The original contribution is through a decolonial process of researching visual communication, combining ‘practice process’ and academic ‘workshop development,’ mixed with theorised accounts. The Empirical research examines 500 years of 2D visual communication, including the construction of race through Pinturas de Castas that visually categorized peoples in colonial Mexico, to present day outdoor billboards for department store El Palacio De Hierro that is analysed using Visual Semiotics, revealing that this campaign consciously erases certain racial groups representing millions of Mexicans. A theory framework maps the history of key concepts such as Post-colonisation and Decolonisation, with a focus on Latin American theorists Mignolo, Figueroa, Cusicanqui and Boaventura. Five Phases structure the practice part of this PhD. Phase One is a Mexican Communications Review. Phase Two is working with local peoples and sets the groundwork for Phase Three, which is a decolonised visual practice in the form of a multimodal weaponised poster campaign. This is then followed by Phase Four which is a content analysis of the media coverage reaction to observe the industries’ and publics response. Phase Five are the outcomes with the researcher working with the Mexican advertising community searching for solutions. The findings reveal that instead of being a top-down process, advertising practices can be questioned from the bottom up, by taking what Audrey Lorde defines as ‘the master’s tools’ and delinking them through collaboration with local peoples and creating a conversation in the media to remove colonial thinking from branded messages and create greater diversity in Mexican Advertising. This research explores new hybrid practice-academic methods to accelerate change, and it is an original form of altering the Mexican public's understanding of what it means to be Mexican, by showing how colonial thinking can be removed from Mexican publicity practices to resist the racist spectacle through a methodological activism approach. This research in and of itself does not resolve the problem of decolonising but is making a small contribution to this area by creating greater diversity in Mexican Advertising through subversive strategies
Gavin Stamp and the tradition of the activist-scholar in architectural history
Get PDFThis article positions the architectural historian Gavin Stamp (1948–2017) as an exemplar of one of architectural history’s underexplored traditions: the activist-scholar. It argues that Stamp’s wide-ranging career was a cumulative campaign against what he saw as architectural ignorance and philistinism, resulting in “uglification”. Consequently, the hallmark of his work was an emphasis on widening an appreciation of architecture, on bridging professional and public spheres and on strengthening the culture of critique. Contextualising Stamp’s contribution involves reuniting his scholarly work in print with his wider activities, evidence for which can be found in an informal and less accessible sphere of reminiscences, journalism, personal communication and ephemera. The article therefore makes recourse to oral history and to Stamp’s archive, gifted to the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art following his death. It examines Stamp’s inventive forms of advocacy, the networks within which he operated, how he mediated his causes across diverse platforms—and to what end. The article shows that, although as a student at Cambridge Stamp subscribed to an anti-modernist disposition as part of a right-leaning coterie, over his career his early certitudes were slowly shaken down and some of his more inveterate hostilities gradually softened
The sun is a flame that haunts the night
No full textTai Shani’s practice encompasses performance, film, photography, and sculptural installations. Taking inspiration from punk rock, cult cinema, Greek mythology, feminist theory, and science fiction, Shani creates dark, fantastical worlds, brimming with utopian potential. These powerful works often pair emotional monologues with striking, colorful installations, creating vivid and thought-provoking images in the viewer’s mind—both unsettling and beautiful. Shani was awarded the 2019 Turner Prize alongside Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, and Oscar Murillo. For the High Line, Shani presents The Sun Is a Flame That Haunts The Night, a series of three candlesticks, a recurring motif in her work. Each almost cartoon-like candlestick is rendered here in urethane resin with a glass flame that glows at night. For Shani, whose work often explores themes of spirituality, mortality, and mythology, the candle holds many meanings. It can represent a vigil or memorial, while also symbolizing hope and healing. Candlesticks such as those depicted in The Sun Is a Flame That Haunts The Night also have links to manifestation, the occult, and witchcraft, all of which have become often closely associated with fourth-wave feminism—subjects that permeate the artist’s practice. Though melting candles often represent the passage of time, The Sun Is a Flame That Haunts The Night stays forever lit, paused on the High Line—a respite where one loses sense of time and space
Fiona Curran / Lightness
Get PDFFor the exhibition, Fiona Curran | Lightness, the artist has drawn inspiration from the history of Jesus College Cambridge as the site of a Benedictine nunnery to create an eight-metre long wall painting created specifically for the West Court Gallery. Through this painting, and the other exhibited artworks, Curran reflects on the observance of canonical hours (traditional times of prayer) as a framework for the body’s close relationship to diurnal and seasonal rhythms. Curran also responds to the ways that screen-based technologies are impacting our sensory engagement with place, through the flattening of space, the compression of time, and the manipulation of perception and attention. The exhibition Fiona Curran | Lightness brings together elements of the artist’s daily experience as abstract arrangements of colour and material. The aim is to resist, or counteract, the screen’s subdual of sunlight and intrusion into spaces of daydream and absent contemplation. The exhibition seeks to create a space that allows for different ways of being present beyond the relentless demands of the information economy and the endless distractions of the screen. Here, ‘lightness’ refers not only to a notion of luminosity but also to an internal sense of connection and wider sense of belonging
Study on the effects of cellulosic fiber reinforcements on tensile and flexural properties of fiber-reinforced mortar
Get PDFResponsible disposal and recycling of textile waste has become one of the most pressing subjects, which is continuing to increase with the growing population and correspondingly expanding demand for clothing. The utilization of cellulosic fibrous waste, which is currently dominating the textile market in terms of production and consumption, is one of the most significant issues to be addressed. Recycling cellulosic fibres as reinforcement materials in mortars is a technique that has long been used and studied. This study aims to sequentially prepare reinforced mortar specimens incorporating different forms of spinning waste, for example, fresh cotton fibres, spinning fly, comber noil, viscose waste, and tencel fly, by initially treating them with 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10% caustic soda. A set of experiments was then sequentially performed to assess the mechanical performance of the resulting mortar samples. It was finally concluded that viscose fibers exhibited superior properties as compared to the rest of the samples. Overall, findings from the study suggest that waste cellulose fibers have a good prospect of being utilized in the reinforcement of cement mortar
The Palestinian seafront of the future: Joséphine Baker in Haifa
Get PDFThis essay focuses on one night — 3 October 1943 — when the Arab and Jewish elite of Haifa, a Mediterranean port town then under the British Mandate, were gathered in the Bat Galim Casino, along with British officers and international businesspeople, to hear the legendary Joséphine Baker1 in a performance benefitting General Charles de Gaulle’s Free French fighting force. That night, eighty years before the attacks of 7 October and their genocidal aftermath, now seems just a heartbeat before the Nakba. Many of the people watching Joséphine Baker would later be expelled from the city they loved, possibly by others sitting next to them in that same casino. Many Palestinians driven out of Haifa found refuge in Gaza, Lebanon, and the region. Where are their descendants now
Human bone marrow derived stem cell differentiation on 3D printed bioactive glass scaffolds
Get PDFBioactive glass particles have previously been found to stimulate new bone growth in vivo and have a long clinical track record. The effect of bioactive glasses on human bone marrow derived stromal cells (hBMSCs) has not been clearly ascertained previously. Recently, 3D printed scaffolds of the ICIE16 glass composition (49.46 mol% SiO2, 36.6 mol% CaO, 6.6 mol% Na2O, 6.6 mol% K2O, 1.07 mol% P2O5) were found to produce high quality bone ingrowth in vivo in a rabbit model. This composition was chosen because it can be sintered into scaffolds without crystallisation. Here, we cultured hBMSCs on the 3D printed ICIE16 scaffolds to determine whether the scaffolds can support cell growth and osteogenic differentiation in vitro, with and without the presence of osteogenic supplements. This was compared to a control of culture media containing dissolution products of the bioactive glass scaffold. Our hypothesis was that the cells cultured on the scaffolds would undergo more osteogenic differentiation than cells cultured in media containing only the dissolution ions of the scaffolds, even without osteogenic supplements. hBMSCs cultured on ICIE16 scaffolds significantly increased expression of osteogenic differentiation and matrix formation markers, including Runx 2, Col1a1, Osteopontin, Osteocalcin and Alkaline Phosphatase, in comparison to monolayer cultures in basal conditions with bioactive glass dissolution products, at all time points up to 6 weeks. Six weeks was chosen as it is the time scale for bone fracture healing. The presence of osteogenic supplements appeared to have synergetic effects with 3D scaffolds, especially during early stages of osteogenic differentiation (week 2 and 4). By week 6, there was no significant difference in the expression of osteogenic markers by hBMSCs cultured on ICE16 scaffolds with and without osteogenic supplements. These findings support our hypothesis and highlight that the 3D structure and the dissolution of ICIE16 bioactive glass ionic products both independently influence osteogenic differentiation of hBMSCs
Making peace with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in art education
Get PDFViews regarding the access, position and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI pedagogies in transformative art education are changeable and controversial, particularly regarding influence, opportunity and ethics. This dialogic paper grapples with these concerns to ‘make peace’ with AI and its pedagogic development in art education. It draws on collective intelligence and collective imagination gained from scholarly material, the machine and art educator reflective experiences and voices to position ‘peaceful dialogic making’ as a pedagogic approach to transform future art education opportunities. Making can encourage sensitive engagement with ecologies, complexities and possibilities in art education, and as demonstrated in this paper, AI can be engaged critically and with peace to enrich making. Enacting ‘peaceful dialogic making’ in, with, through and about AI in art education can forge identity and value connection, such as with the National Society for Education Art and Design manifesto values, that favour inclusive, equitable and lifelong art education experiences. Making peace with AI, through dialogues, roaming with it and engaging with its complexities builds responsible AI literacy that can help AI be integrated into art education aligned to contemporary and future life