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Lavish phantoms of the house of dust
No full textLavish Phantoms of the House of Dust is an immersive installation by Tai Shani. This new body of work spans sculpture, paintings, drawings, and animation that weave together gothic histories, fetish objects, and phantasmic forms. The result is a visual environment filled with spectral echoes and haunted traces that tunnel through the striations of time and its echoes. A brilliant string of blown-glass breasts, each milky green and lit from within by a glowing bulb, is more than a mere chandelier. It also serves as a sample of the surfaces, symbols, and psychosocial resonances that make up “Lavish Phantoms from the House of Dust.” The breast—by nature soft, sensuous, and (in both senses) giving—floats free from any body. It’s also been multiplied (a bit startlingly) and had its flesh replaced and mimicked by the most brittle, fragile material, propelling the assembled contraption to a point of fantastical delicacy. Which is to say that this chandelier gestures, coyly, in two directions at once: on the one hand at the bosom‘s fleshly, sumptuous aspect, and on the other, at the abstract fantasy of the feminine as shatter-prone ornament, literally dangled in mid-air. “Lavish phantoms” indeed. This exhibition lies flush with the boundary between overflow and atrophy, brimming and evanescence. That’s the mood, the tone, the affective texture of the gathered pieces. The carpets festooned with Victorian spirit photography imagery, the oddly lapidary repetition of skulls, peeking out and assembling themselves from the shredded psychedelic symmetries and shapes that constitute this exhibition’s visual dialect: like the aforementioned light fixture, the show proceeds by a series of transmogrifications and atmospheric effects that are at the same time taut visual riddles. Take the giant pair of suede gloves: what massive hands could make use of this luxe accessory? House of Dust—not a mere dusty house, but a kind of lordly palace or aristocratic manse whose heraldic symbol and historical inheritance might be pulverized detritus, heaps of feathery, tenacious nothingness. That is, accumulation’s pesky underside, its mischievous, wistful twin. The video installed here shows the translucent flesh of a woman’s back, beneath we see her muscle, organs and skeleton —her face is reflected, in fact perfectly framed, in the hand mirror she’s holding—with her corset almost completely undone. “The world to me was a secret,” a voice pronounces, “the world to you was open, a part of the secret and me all entropic, perishing disclosure.” The elegant cosmology that animates this exhibition might be said to follow from the operative tension in this sentence: between “entropy” and “disclosure,” between blur and blurt, at once crumbling and constructing, wavering and asserting. These are the powers—the age-old privileges—of ghosts. In an era reeling from hypercapitalist ruin and shattered (which is to say insurgent, recomposing) sociality, we all haunt the House of Dust
Preferable, contextual and sustainable… climate futures for Ecological Citizen(s)
Get PDFThe responsibility for sustainable futures extends beyond individual disciplines, necessitating the adoption of diverse approaches across various fields. Water pollution is at epidemic levels, valuable materials go to landfill, ocean detritus grows, many people are disconnected from green space, and biodiversity is plummeting. We need new modes of climate futures, championing citizen agency. Societies require cross-collaborative, inclusive approaches to navigate climate future challenges. We seek to foresee ‘climate futures’ that signpost challenges, unpicking(appropriate) opportunities, benefits, and pitfalls. Through an Ecological Citizenship lens, the authors traverse situations, through preferable futures. It is an entry point for transition design, creating climate tangibility surrounding our everyday lives. The article unpicks and communicates ‘preferable futures’, conceptualising how Ecological Citizenship could be deployed. We report on workshops which yielded insights from different organisational perspectives. Insights were illustrated for public audiences. Narratives navigate ecologically engaged forms of citizenship
Lumia - the art of lighting the void in time: Prototyping new instruments as a historical discourse
Get PDFThis practice-based doctoral research discusses the genealogy of Lumia, a historical art form using light as primary material, and analyses historical and contemporary Lumia practices including my own experimental practice. Three original concepts — void axis, technological voyeurism, and ‘un-site- specificity’ (a new term: conditions of a subversive space) — illuminate the historical and contemporary meanings and practice of Lumia. Lumia shared particular influences: late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century chromaticism (conceived by western art music composers and abstract film-makers); and the notion of lighting as an exploratory artistic tool, which gained momentum with the advent of electrical lighting technology in the nineteenth century. Thomas Wilfred (1889-1968), argued that Lumia was the eighth art form, following painting, poetry, sculpture, architecture, music, dance, and drama. Over half a century, Wilfred staged his Lumia performances in music halls, theatres, and museums, and was a pioneer in the dissemination of Lumia art in non-live settings, including home entertainment equipment, automated kinetic art, indoor and outdoor projection installations. Wilfred viewed Lumia as a distinct art form and a source of inspiration for these other lighting practices. Current academic research on Lumia focuses on three aspects: Thomas Wilfred’s career; the intermedia appearance of Lumia (between traditional art forms); and the interpretation of Thomas Wilfred's aesthetic style. However, art historical discourses mostly dispute that Lumia is an independent form of art, which I — as a contemporary Lumia artist — examine through the lens of Technologically Extended Aestheticism (TEA) to make a critical case for the art’s independent status. This thesis argues that traditional art historical approaches, complemented by practice-based research, show Lumia to be fundamentally distinct: to have a particular role to play in understanding the aesthetic reality of lighting. The main research question asks: what is the medium-specificity of Lumia and how does it inform contemporary lighting art and re-present Lumia within the history of art? This research hypothesises that Wilfred’s prototype Lumia performance instruments, Clavilux, may be used to connect the idea of Lumia with the materiality of light as its medium - Clavilux is not a mere instrumental artefact but generates a comprehensive art historical discourse, aiding the search for the medium-specificity of lighting. This contrasts against investigating Lumia as an abstract and symbolic concept (such as Theosophical associations and Bergsonian interpretations of duration) and Clavilux as a media archaeological artefact. Such approaches are inadequate, negating contemporary Lumia artists’ continuation of the art form. To appreciate Lumia’s historic and current significance, it is imperative to evidence Lumia’s contemporary position through practical observations, experimentations and demonstrations. The knowledge of the medium-specificity of Lumia is applied to establish aesthetic methods of material, technological and intermedia interventions in creating new Lumia works. The new Lumia artworks created as part of this research are performative; they follow medium-specificity to evoke new ways of perceiving objects through lighting. This thesis initiates a contemporary dialogue with a historical art practice through the prototyping Clavilux, demonstrates prototyping as an alternative research method, and will encourage lighting art practitioners, art historians, and artist-technologists to discuss and promote Lumia’s historic legacy and contemporary manifestations
Above us the waves
No full text"you wont never fynd no beginning its long gone and far pas." ‘If we look through the aperture which we have opened up onto the absolute, what we see there is a rather menacing power, something insensible, and capable of destroying both things and worlds, of bringing forth monstrous absurdities, of realizing every dream, but also every nightmare, of engendering random and frenetic transformations, or conversely, of producing a universe that remains motionless down to its ultimate recesses, like a cloud bearing the fiercest storms, then the eeriest bright spells, if only for an interval of disquieting calm.” “To push anything back into the past is equivalent to reducing it to its simplest elements. Traced as far as possible in the direction of their origins, the last fibres of the human aggregate are lost to view and are merged in our eyes with the very stuff of the universe.” The Spectral Transmissions Research Unit is a collaboration between Ben Branagan Luke Pendrell dedicated to the theoretical and practical construction, dissemination, transmission, observation and analysis of spectral emanations. Comprising a diverse spectrum of entities of various degrees of stability and tangibility. In as much as linear time can be applied, members of the STRU could, have, and or will include(d): Ludd Püca, JohnFrum, Kay Jackson, T-J.Cut, Dr. Ray Power, Proff. Jock Moxter, EKA-Francium, Dr. Tinkerpaw, Kaspar Brøcken, and The Coincidence Sprite
Haunted karaoke (in the paravilion)
No full textFabrica’s July Making Space has been awarded to artist collective Antivoid Alliance (Caleb Madden, Grant Cieciura, Luke Pendrell, Yumino Seki & Tiago De Sousa). The group is currently exploring how collaborative art making can produce work that challenges established roles of artist and audience. This residency will develop the group’s ongoing investigation of the social value of art. Since 2018, the collective has been exploring the intersection between radical politics and performative artmaking. Resisting group hierarchy or formal affiliation, they operate as a shifting configuration of collaborators. Working across moving image, dance, installation, sound and more, the group are driven by the desire to question how and why societies can remain in thrall to political forces that perpetuate inequality. During the residency Antivoid Alliance intend to build a temporary pavilion within the walls of Fabrica. This space-within-a-space will act as a kind of parallel site, or ‘parasite’. Creatively inspired by the culture, aesthetics, and technical lay-out of the Karaoke room — its special ability to focus moments of consumer desire and fantastic irony — this parasitic pavilion (or paravilion) is intended to facilitate impromptu modes of togetherness and improvised audience performances; public actions which emerge through and beyond the culture of Karaoke to become something else, something more. Over the four days of their residency Antivoid Alliance will be: Working with discarded, low-end and ubiquitous industrial materials to build a temporary and shonky Karaoke Pavilion within the space at Fabrica. Working with sound composition and improvisation using a quadraphonic sound system and other hacked electronic devices Exploring concepts of alienation, consumer desire, and ironic resonance through choreography and dance — in collaboration with Butoh dance specialist Yumino Seki. Working on a new participatory performance-installation: experimenting with a modified Karaoke machine and its use by group members, guests and members of the public. Ultimately, this installation, moving image work, and quad sound composition will be set in constellation with the cultural rituals of the Karaoke room
Flowers,feathers and fashion: hair, nature and design innovation in late Qing China
Get PDFThis chapter is published new edited volume on innovation and material culture in nineteenth century China. It is part of the research activities that accompanied the British Museum’s major exhibition exploring the cultural achievements of late Qing China (China’s Hidden Century 18 May-8 October 2023). My chapter focuses on fashion and hair as an important location of Chinese modernity and technical innovation. It examines what hair pins and hair decorations can tell us about the ideas of innovation when they fall into the realms of fashion, nature and the body. Fashion is an inescapable dynamic of cultural change and cultural identity, and a crucial driver of style and innovation. Fashion’s associations women’s bodies, commerce, surface effect and ephemerality, however, have led to an awkward positioning within narratives of design reform. This chapter focusses on the materials involved with late nineteenth century women’s hair decorations in China, using neglected examples in European museums alongside Chinese paintings and photographs of fashionable women of the late Qing. The hairpins are highly colourful and designed to shake and swing at the slightest motion of the head. The chapter explores the body politics of being a woman to deepen our understanding of the experience of wearing these elaborate and lively objects in the context of Confucian values that stressed modesty and stillness. Analysis of museum archives further shows how and why late Qing women’s hair ornaments were collected in international exhibitions and museums as exemplars of Chinese craft and manufacturing. I argue that these reflect a European interest in Chinese hairpin materials and making processes that reveals their relevance to wider nineteenth century debates about technical innovation in manufacturing and the decorative arts
Traces of touch: Object animacy and miniature Qur’ans during the First World War
Get PDFHistories of the Indian Army in the early twentieth century give a great deal of attention to the arrangements made by British officials to accommodate differences in spiritual worldviews and their corresponding practices. However, the plural and disruptive materialities of these accommodations require more sustained examination. This article considers the use of sacred texts, specifically the miniaturized Qur’ans gifted to Indian Army soldiers in the First World War. Building on scholarship that discusses the divinely endowed agencies of these objects, this article uses traces of tactile engagement observed through object-led research to argue that their auspicious and protective powers might be understood as activated by and serving the soldiers’ bodies
Shifting aesthetics: Communicating the values of cremation from the mid 1920s to mid 1960s
Get PDFA field of colourful crocuses featured on the cover of a 1965 leaflet issued by The Cremation of Society to promote the values of cremation. This low-growing plant and its fragrant flowers - which throughout human history symbolised rebirth, youthfulness and joy - was adopted as a new visual metaphor to communicate cremation. The leaflet was titled “Why Cremation'' and although its text was substantially the same the Cremation Society adopted since the mid thirties, the use of abstract images such as a colourful field of crocuses was a complete departure, in terms of aesthetic choices. This bold move was not only to do with the need to introduce stylistic changes in order to attract new adopters of cremation, but was also the culmination of a long journey of experimentations and testing - in terms of graphic design and communication strategies - that Company embarked on since 1922
Não se trata de transição, mas de expansão energética
Get PDFIn recent debates about lithium extraction, people's resistance is often explained as opposition to the need to decarbonise our economy. But while it's true that demand for mineral resources is increasing exponentially around the world, it's also true that oil extraction has not stopped rising. Instead of the much-talked-about transition from fossil fuels to electromobility, in which one would replace the other with a view to decarbonising the planet, what is happening is something that social movements have been saying for a long time: this is not a transition, but an expansion of the energy market
Cities of the night
No full textCities of the Night is an exhibition and event curated by Rut Blees Luxemburg. The exhibition surfaces Rut Blees Luxemburg's long-standing research project Urban Night Practice, an artistic investigation into this metamorphic potential that emerges in cities during the night. The artists in this exhibition — Rut Blees Luxemburg, Chooc Ly Tan, and Alisa Oleva — all have practices that are receptive to the possibility of a transformation that is paradoxically rendered most clearly in darkness. As such, the artworks in this show are composed by night but given here as proposals for new ways to navigate and envisage the urban landscape by day