KIN Symposium, CCA, Saturday 12th February

You are invited by artist Donna Rutherford to take part in a Symposium event connected to the intergenerational arts project KIN.

The event starts at 2pm at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow and includes refreshments before a showing at 6pm of KIN the performance. Tickets £5 (£4) tel 0141 352 4900

“As time speeds up, the future and its inevitable deteriorations get closer. Just as you become slower at everything you do, take longer to do the simplest things, you find yourself hurtling downhill with no brakes.”

With reference to the material gathered and created by Donna we shall be discussing the universally emotive issues raised by KIN alongside the following concerns: 

•Artist approaches in a Health context – the value of such projects

•Ethics and Dynamics of working on sensitive or very personal material

•“Parenting Classes” - healthier attitude broaching inevitable future care

KIN explores the fear, sorrow, anger, guilt and frustration but also the love, trust and laughter to be found as middle-aged children negotiate the changes in their relationship with an ageing parent.

Donna has been developing this two part project, comprising audio installation and performance, over the last year. Performers reveal to camera concerns of their own ageing while dealing with their parents’ increasingly glacial pace of life. Testimonies are linked during a live performance by Rutherford.

Waiting Room Tour - the experiences of middle-aged sons and daughters and their parents, come to life through listening posts in the waiting rooms of health centres and hospitals around Glasgow (also in the CCA foyer).

Substratum at Sound Thought 2011

UWS Lecturer Alison Clifford is showing Substratum, an audio-visual installation created in collaboration with composer Graeme Truslove at Sound Thought 2011 at The Arches, Glasgow on Thursday February 3rd.  


More info is available at: http://www.thearches.co.uk/events/gigs/sound-thought-2011-thursday 


Substratum is the first instalment in a series of collaborations between internationally acclaimed artists Alison Clifford and Graeme Truslove. Combining audio (Truslove) and visuals (Clifford) to explore the space between abstract sound and image, computer algorithms, sampling and digital montage processes are used to create an entirely immersive experience. 

Translating Russian and East European Cultures

UWS is a partner in a new AHRC-funded research network: Translating Russian & East European cultures: Exchange and communication within a multidisciplinary and multicultural Area Studies context.

The research network aims to explore critically the multiple ways in which East European and Russian cultures are translated, constructed and narrated, within the multidisciplinary and multicultural context of Russia and Central and East Europe area studies.

The network will examine how understandings of Russian and East European cultures are communicated and translated across disciplinary, linguistic and academic-end user boundaries. It will consider the potential to facilitate innovative means of knowledge exchange, given the multidisciplinary basis of area studies. It will incorporate training and practices both between disciplines as well as across academic-end user boundaries and cultural divides.

The research group will work together to develop and trial a range of dissemination techniques and practices drawing from expertise within both academic and non-academic contexts. The aim is to encourage the involvement of end user communities (school children, general public, local/national government representatives, non-governmental organisations) at all stages of the initiative.

The research network has been shaped by the multidisciplinary and multilingual research activity of the Centre for Russian, Central and East European Studies (CRCEES), based at Glasgow University, jointly funded by the AHRC, ESRC, HEFCE and SFC. Area Studies, with its mix of disciplines from the Arts and Humanities as well as the Social Sciences and efforts to translate and construct cultures, provides a stimulating context within which to reflect critically on the issues of disciplinary languages, knowledge exchange and creative collaborations.

Dr Katarzyna Kosmala is co-investigator and co-coordinator on the project. Public events are planned for May at GOMA and at CCA. More details will follow.