163 research outputs found
Archiving Oil: Neville Gabie
No full textArchiving Oil is a collaborative project which was borne out of Neville Gabie’s residency within the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol. Developed by Neville Gabie and Social Geographer Merle Patchett, the ongoing project seeks to create an archive of our relationship with and dependence on an oil based economy. In the first instance people within the University and the wider community were invited to contribute an object, text, sound, image of their own personal experience of living within an oil economy. These contributions were exhibited alongside four films by Neville Gabie in the basement stores and rock archive of the Earth Sciences department. This catalogue publication with texts by several academics and an introduction by Neville Gabie and Merle Patchett and a contribution by Claudia Hildebrandt, archivist, was printed to accompany the three night event
Reframing the Canadian Oil Sands
No full textReframing the Canadian Oil Sands” is a collaborative exchange between photographer Andriko Lozowy and cultural geographer Merle Patchett that engages photography and photographic theory to evoke a more critical and politically meaningful visual engagement with the world’s largest capital oil project. Since the appearance of Edward Burtynsky’s aerial and abstracted photographic-mappings of the region, capturing the scale of the Oil Sands from ‘on high’ has become the dominant visual imaginary. As a result, the dominant visual culture of Fort McMurray oil production is one of nullification or an erasure of representation. For the past five years Lozowy has been engaged in a photographic project—entitled Where is Fort McMurray?—which aims to explore and work with this sense of erasure by attempting to capture the shifting (and shifted) landscapes of the Alberta Oil Sands from the roadside. For this special issue of Imaginationson “Sighting Oil”, Patchett and Lozowy have curated a set of Lozowy’s photographs to present an alternative, on-the-ground, view of Oil Sands production sites. Through both Lozowy’s images and Patchett’s framing curatorial essay, they explore the disruptive potential of the image and the capacity of photography to both neutralize and energize political engagement with the Canadian Oil Sands
Reframing the Canadian Oil Sands
No full textReframing the Canadian Oil Sands” is a collaborative exchange between photographer Andriko Lozowy and cultural geographer Merle Patchett that engages photography and photographic theory to evoke a more critical and politically meaningful visual engagement with the world’s largest capital oil project. Since the appearance of Edward Burtynsky’s aerial and abstracted photographic-mappings of the region, capturing the scale of the Oil Sands from ‘on high’ has become the dominant visual imaginary. As a result, the dominant visual culture of Fort McMurray oil production is one of nullification or an erasure of representation. For the past five years Lozowy has been engaged in a photographic project—entitled Where is Fort McMurray?—which aims to explore and work with this sense of erasure by attempting to capture the shifting (and shifted) landscapes of the Alberta Oil Sands from the roadside. For this special issue of Imaginationson “Sighting Oil”, Patchett and Lozowy have curated a set of Lozowy’s photographs to present an alternative, on-the-ground, view of Oil Sands production sites. Through both Lozowy’s images and Patchett’s framing curatorial essay, they explore the disruptive potential of the image and the capacity of photography to both neutralize and energize political engagement with the Canadian Oil Sands
Archiving Oil
No full textOf all substances what is more ubiquitous than oil. Fossil fuels, oil in particular, have entirely shaped our evolution since the industrial age. It touches every aspect of our lives, landscapes, economies and politics. It impacts in some way on every area of research within the Cabot Institute. And yet it is almost unseen, or hidden away from curious eyes.In an attempt to make oil’s presence more visible contemporary artist Neville and cultural Geographer Merle Patchett installed a series of art works in the Geology Collection basement stores which archived the ways in which oil permeates and sediments itself within our research and wider worlds. This installation included the premiere of a series of short films Neville created in response to the experimental scientific work of Cabot Institute researchers
Perdita Phillips:Sounding and Thinking Like an Ecosystem
No full textPerdita Phillips is a Western Australian artist working across the media of walking, sound, installation, photography and digital media. Through her multi-disciplinary multi-media art practice she explores the mutual relationships between people and the nonhuman world. Over the past ten years she has worked on art projects drawn from, and co-produced with, termites, minerals, bowerbirds, rabbits, cane toads, salmon gum trees and thrombolites, amongst others. With a background in environmental science Phillips’ work is often complementary to, though not constrained by, scientific understanding. Indeed her work often focuses on matter(s) that exceed scientific understanding or which might not be considered logically sensible in order to recover a sense of astonishment or wonder often stripped from scientific interpretation. In dialogue with Merle Patchet
The taxidermist's apprentice:Stitching together the past and present of a craft practice
No full textHow do you witness the development and reproduction of a craft practice? This essay explores this provocation in relation to the craft practice of taxidermy and, in so doing, aims to stitch together non-representational and historical geographic concerns within the discipline. Mobilising and developing on an Ingoldian perspective on the process of skill, the author places herself in the position of apprentice to a practising taxidermist in recognition that the position of learner is a highly instructive context in which to enquire into how present-day practice relates to a representational culture charting the development of the craft in historical ‘how-to-do’ manuals. When juxtaposing contemporary ethnographies of taxidermy practice with descriptions of practice in historical ‘how-to-do’ manuals, the author shows how past and present practice resonates rather than replicates. Overall, this article aims to introduce and develop theoretical and methodological pathways for studying and storying (historical) geographies of craft and skilled practices
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