Creative Practice/Research @ UWS

GI Festival and Curriculum for Excellence @ Tramway, 28th April

2012-02-24T17:33:00.000-08:00

Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and Curriculum for Excellence: the significance of contemporary art practice in meeting the experiences and outcomes of Curriculum for Excellence

Conference and bus tour
Tramway, 25 Albert Drive, Glasgow, G41 2PE
(bus tour departs Tramway)

£45 Visit the NSEAD website for full details and bookings (ADVANCE BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL)
10.30 - 4pm

In partnership with the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD) and UWS Artist Teacher Programme, this event is designed for primary and secondary teachers of art and design. Presentations during the event will focus upon the experiences and outcomes of Curriculum for Excellence and will include presentations from HMIe/Education Scotland on Creativity in the art and design curriculum, the staff and young artists of Room 13 from two Fort William primary schools will look at contemporary art and how it helps raise contemporary issues in the classroom. Others in the field of arts education in Scotland and beyond including Paul Dash, (Goldsmiths, University of London), Graham Jeffery, Diarmuid McAuliffe and Katarzyna Kosmala from UWS. The GI-commissioned artist Graham Fagan will also contribute to the event.

The event concludes with a guided tour of selected GI Festival projects led by GI's Creative Learning co-ordinator Lesley Hepburn.

www.nsead.org/cpd/conferences.aspx

My Glasgow Granny from Donegal

2012-02-17T05:39:00.000-08:00

Is there a woman from your past who made the journey to Scotland from Ireland?

Why not come along to one of three sessions at the library on Thursday 15th March 2012 to share stories about the tales of your female relatives who came over to Glasgow from Ireland.

These sessions are an opportunity to meet Rachael Flynn, the artist-researcher running this project in a relaxed spaces with tea, coffee and chatter.

Rachael is working as part of the Scottish Centre for Island Studies. Her current research is a response to the narrative of her grandmother who left Donegal in the 1930’s to find work in Glasgow. The work she makes is a response to the written letters between her grandmother and the family she left behind, the fables, anecdotes and memories weaved by family members, and the social histories of the various women who made similar journeys.

My Glasgow Granny from Donegal project will give the public an opportunity to recognize and pay honor to such women who faced vast challenges and obstacles in order to shape their own futures.

There will be 3 sessions on Thursday 15th March:

3pm to 4pm, or 4.15pm to 5.15pm, or 5.30pm to 6.30pm

Spaces are limited but we would love to accommodate everyone so please register your interest so we can plan for this. If you are interested in coming along and taking part please contact us on 0141 248 9969 or fill out a booking form here. You are also most welcome to forward any thoughts or questions to Rachael directly, her email address is Rachael.flynn@uws.ac.uk.

Rachael is also launching a project in which women will be able to add the names of these ancestors to an artist’s book which will start to build up a collection that seeks to move beyond formal data to create a human and embodied document. By adding the names of their Irish mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers, aunts, cousins… the women who visit the book in the library will have the chance to effectively ‘light a candle’ in memory of these relatives.

In creating this work she is hoping to raise awareness of such women, but also to open up the opportunity for people to share the stories that are part of their personal histories. By acknowledging these accounts there is the opportunity to become empowered by the perseverance, strength and spirit of our female ancestors.

All of the activities and experiences of this process will culminate and build towards a developed exhibition of this material which reflects the subject matter of the women who originally made such a brave journey. Hopefully weaved through this will be the ‘journeys’ made by the women involved in this project as we share stories and pass these books between each other.

Rachael Flynn is an artist and PhD Research student currently working as part of the Scottish Centre for Island Studies, University of the West of Scotland. Rachael completed her Undergraduate degree from the School of Fine Art, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, and went on to study and be awarded her MA at Goldsmiths, University of London.

During her time studying Rachael received various opportunities through awards from The Scottish Sculpture Workshops (Residency award 2006), The Angus Memorial Sculpture Prize, The Hunting Art Prize Competition (Young Artist of the Year runner up, Royal College of Art 2004), Carnegie Undergraduate traveling Scholarship (Australia 2004), and Outstanding Film Achievement Award by Honorable Goldsmiths Society, Creation II (London).

Within the creative industries Rachael has worked with independent film-makers, artists, research groups and production companies. These include Paul Watson (Bafta Lifetime Achievement winner), Juniper Television (productions – The Indian Miracle? [Channel 4] & Battle for the Holy Land, Love Thy Neighbor [Channel 4]), Generator Projects (artist-run space), Wendy Ramshaw OBE, Professor David Watkins (RCA), and BBC London (Watchdog, BBC Politics Show)

Remaking Society

2011-12-14T10:26:00.000-08:00

Graham Jeffery, Reader in Music and Performance has been awarded a grant from the AHRC, as part of the Connected Communities 'pilot demonstrator' follow-on funding scheme, jointly with Dr Tom Wakeford of the University of Edinburgh and Dr Kerrie Schaefer of the University of Exeter. A brief summary of the project is below, and a project blog will be set up in due course. Partners for this project include Mission Models Money, Cadispa Trust, NHSGGC, Theatre Modo, Bradford Community Broadcasting, Swingbridge Media, Love Milton, www.poverty.ac.uk, and Professor Jon Hawkes from the Community Cultural Development Network, Victoria, Australia.

Remaking Society

Realising the potential of cultural activities in contexts of deprivation

Remaking Society will exemplify the central themes of the Connected Communities Programme via three inter-dependent routes:

i) Working with local partners in demonstrating and assessing participatory cultural
activities in four contrasting contexts of deprivation – Bradford, Glasgow,
Fraserburgh and Newcastle.
ii) Using these four pilots to generate new forms of evidence about the lived
experience of poverty and exclusion.
iii) Creating opportunities for marginalised and less visible sections of society to
communicate with wider audiences, including policy-makers.

Cultural dimensions of regeneration – making, creating, performing and celebrating – are often neglected. Yet these aspects can be vital to the sense of shared wellbeing, belonging and aspiration for community members. Hawkes calls the integration of a cultural perspective into the planning of change the "fourth pillar" of sustainability, alongside economic, social and environmental dimensions. He suggests that cultural projects provide "avenues for the expression of community values..[that can]...directly affect the directions society takes" (Hawkes 2001).

Recent Government-commissioned research has added to a growing body of evidence suggesting that participatory arts and media processes can act as portals to wider processes of social development, by offering for example access to further learning, training or social networks (Scottish Government 2006). Activities which promote imaginative engagement through creative practice can offer additional opportunities to conceive and enact alternatives. Members of a community experience processes allowing them to imagine different possible futures. Collaborative participatory arts have been shown to make a significant contribution to both the confidence of individuals, their trust of others participating the process and in overall quality of life and wellbeing. Remaking Society is to collaborate with four experienced partner organisations that work intensively, through participatory arts and media practices, with communities in four neighbourhoods - Bradford, West Yorkshire (community radio), Milton, North Glasgow (visual arts), Benwell, Newcastle (film) and Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire (theatre). With much of the population in each area currently experiencing high levels of economic and social deprivation, we will explore the socio-cultural dimensions of 'living with/in poverty'.

The practice of community cultural development (CCD) in North American cities, such as that led in Chicago by John Kretzman and John McKnight from Northwestern University, exemplifies the model demonstrated in Remaking Society. Traditionally the communities that were identified as deprived had been provided with services and programmes designed and delivered by outside experts. The effect of this now discredited cultural deficit model was to position people as passive recipients dependent on service providers (including university researchers) to address their deficiencies and their needs. Yet the model still persists in most deprived areas of the UK. By contrast, our asset-based approach recognises such communities as resourceful and gifted (Goldbard 2006). We draw upon and harness the capacities and creativities of local people to address issues and solve problems. Outside assistance and resources from government agencies, institutions and other organisations are still going to be required to address issues of deprivation. But, in our model, the agenda of such interventions is to be set more by the community of people most directly affected.

Using performance, visual art and digital media, the Remaking Society research collaboration will this demonstrate ways in which communities conventionally regarded as excluded can negotiate either their own inclusion in - or their continued exclusion from - society. In this project, the concept of community is not restricted to communitarian accounts of 'a group of people in a given place', or as a site of consensus and constructed oneness based on social categories such as race, class, gender or location. Ours is a dynamic model in which community formation is seen as a continual re-negotiation of co-existence and interdependence, not confined by place, as illustrated by the thirty years of pioneering work by Southall Black Sisters (Gupta 2003).

Questions about how communities conduct these negotiations become particularly important now, at a time of economic crisis, when resources are scarce and stress levels among vulnerable individuals are high. The study will make critical connections between our understanding of community performance and participatory process across academic fields - including conflict resolution, cultural geography, public health, social psychology and sociology. It will allow a re-examination of inter-disciplinary concepts of community through arts and media practices.

Belonging to a community is critical to a sense of wellbeing for individuals and families, particularly significant for those who live on the breadline. The second element of Remaking Society is the generation of narrative evidence of the cultural dimensions of poverty and social exclusion. It will add a unique inter-disciplinary arts and humanities perspective to the ESRC's national study, Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK (PSE).

Alessandra Campoli: Edges

2011-11-28T05:18:00.000-08:00

Mon 5 Dec 2011 - Mon 30 Jan 2012

Mon-Sat: 12 noon - late (Opening night: Mon 5th Dec from 6-8pm) Free // Please join us for the opening night on Monday 5th December from 6-8pm //

Edges is a visual reflection on boundaries and limits, on visible and invisible lines that soundlessly change our subconscious perception of the space around us.

Part of a wider artistic project devoted to the notion of “edges” in different European and Asian urban contexts, this exhibition is the result of a series of physical and visual explorations of Glasgow’s cityscape, combining analogue and digital photography performance, photomontage and GPS Art.

About Alessandra Campoli

Born in Rome, Alessandra is a visual artist, performer and researcher. She has had her work displayed in collective and solo exhibitions in Europe and Asia including Fahreneith 451, Rome; White Space Gallery, Bangkok and Area Privata Gallery, Perugia.

She is currently completing a practice-based PhD in Media Arts at the University of the West of Scotland (School of Creative and Cultural Industries).

Sensory Worlds

2011-11-24T06:16:00.000-08:00

Samantha Clark, Lecturer in Digital Art, will present a paper at the Sensory Worlds Conference organised by the Institute for the Advanced Study of the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh on 7th December entitled "Nothing Really Matters: Sartre, Negation and Nature." Full details of the programme and associated public lectures by Iain Borden and David Abrams can be found here.

"Sensory Worlds ...[considers].. 'worlds' in a particularly ecological light in order to ask: what contribution can a sensorially-engaged Humanities make to environmental thinking and action? The conference will examine the multi-sensory and will reflect upon the historical, contemporary and possible future relations between the senses (from balance to taste to the haptic and beyond). It will be an interdisciplinary, interrogative and exploratory meeting that will make space for sensorially-engaged scholarship and practice, and will facilitate discursive and constructive meetings between a variety of scholars working on themes related to embodiment, ecology and value. Contributions are invited from those working within the humanities, arts and social sciences. We are interested in contributions that will themselves embody alternatives to the presuppositions common to Western twentieth century engagement with the world such as anthropocentrism, mind-body dualism, and isolated subjectivity".

Markko Maetamm: art in a changing society

2011-11-24T05:50:00.000-08:00

Dr Katarzyna Kosmala will introduce the artist and lead a Q & A session:

Estonian society has undergone very rapid political and economic changes

since the beginning of the 1990s. How does Estonian art reflect these

transformations?

Marko Mäetamm is one of the most fascinating and internationally renowned

young Estonian artists who works with a wide range of media – including

photography, sculpture, animation, painting and text. Mäetamm portrays the

family as a little society, relaying through dark humour the petty moments of

daily life and exploring the way our society manipulates family dynamics

through the macrocosms of economy, consumerism, and “quality-of-life”

standards. Inspired by his own private life and the recurring feeling that he

could fail to preserve the balance of his existence, Mäetamm’s work explores

the grey area where ambiguous feelings of being in control and being

controlled merge.

Tuesday 22nd November, 6pm, University of Edinburgh

Lecture Room 1, Minto House, 20 Chambers St, Edinburgh

Place, home, and place-making

2011-11-02T14:43:00.001-07:00

Understandings of place, home and place-making: Part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science

Dr Katarzyna Kosmala was a part of co-ordinating group for a collaborative research event in association with the ESRC Festival of Social Science and the AHRC network Translating Cultures at the University of Glasgow 31st October 2011.

The event was organised in collaboration with Street Level Photoworks and the Scottish Storytelling Centre and focused on exploring understandings of place/home amongst school children from Glasgow with a specific focus on those originally from and with family in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Students produced posters and photographic collages representing their ideas of 'place' and 'home'.

Cultural Hijack: Rethinking Intervention

2011-11-02T14:42:00.000-07:00

Ben Parry, UWS doctoral researcher has edited this book, shortly to be published by Liverpool University Press.

Cultural Hijack is about the tactical practitioner in the urban everyday, it chronicles diverse disciplines and imparts knowledge about the procedures, tools and tactics which make-up the interventionist’s toolkit. It positions the artist as narrator, and in the telling expounds the thinking as well the process, to reveal how the city, from Liverpool to Glasgow, Paris to New York, becomes the playground, stage and instrument for unsanctioned artworks, informal creative practices, activist interventions, political actions and situations. The interventionist becomes a catalyst for a ‘user-generated’ city, whose insertions, interventions and disruptions in everyday life are reinventing the way in which art is encountered and experienced, empowering people to act and think differently about the world around them. Here, the everyday becomes the opportunity, the apparatus and location, material and purpose. Ordinary life becomes the new space of urgency, as the terms of reference expand, by which artists are making art politically.

This insight into the work and the life of the artist - which is rarely articulated in writing about art - aims to illuminate our understanding of the creative process; how artists are developing new tools in the arsenal of critical resistance, both emancipating and expanding the spaces of art / cultural production. Cultural Hijack draws on series of essays, personal testimonies and original interviews, from Tatsuro Bashi, BGL, Gelitin, Michael Rakowitz, Krzysztof Wodiczko and others.

246mm x 168mm, 288pp, Paperback
Publishing 30 November 2011

The Wonders of the Visible World

2011-10-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

Samantha Clark, UWS Lecturer in Digital Art, 2005 work "Levitation" in this major exhibition at the Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland

The Wonders of the Visible World

Preview: Wednesday 26 October 6:00 - 8:00pm Exhibition dates: 27 October 2011 - 4 February 2012

Ulla von Brandenburg, Mark Wallinger, Yves Klein, Camillo Paravicini, Michael Crowe, Katja Mayer & Peter Chadwick, Chris Cornish, Samantha Clark, Georgina Mascolo, Susanne Ludwig, Victoria Jenkins, Natasha Caruana, Hannes Ribarits, Anton Corbijn, Tom Pope, Peter Watkins and Tereza Zelenkova, Michelle Hannah, Martin Kellett, Sophie Helas-Kwo, Jason Dee "Let us be witness to the unrepresentable". Jean-Francois Lyotard, 'The Postmodern Condition' "Vision is the art of seeing the invisible." Jonathan Swift

'The Wonders of the Visible World' brings together 21 international artists who use photography and video to explore the relationship between the visible and the invisible worlds. The artists explore the ongoing potency of myth and illusion in the visual arts - finding that the world we imagine we know is far less secure than we might first believe. As all of the artists use lens-based media, they all capture physical phenomena that defy belief, or defy description. Here, the camera lens is a tool that allows us to see precisely what is not usually visible to the naked eye, and to have faith in the unimaginable. Many of the artists explore what might be described as imaginative archetypes. We become witnesses to the end of the world; to hair-raising experiments in new branches of the physical sciences; to our souls made into symbols; and to feats of levitation, self-combustion, magnetism and transubstantiation. We are asked what the limits of our beliefs are, and what the limits of our capacity to suspend disbelief are.

Samantha Clark's video animation 'Levitation' presents a visionary, apocalyptic scenario, recalling the end of days from the Book of Revelations: "Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him."

Shorelines Exhibition, Maclaurin Gallery, Ayr

2011-10-10T03:46:00.000-07:00

Shorelines 13th November - 23rd December, Maclaurin Gallery, Ayr Alison F. Bell and Cathy Treadaway
This exhibition of paintings, prints, photographs and textiles by artists, Alison F. Bell and Dr Cathy Treadaway, is an ongoing collaborative research project, which investigates creative practice. The exhibits are a response to five coastal locations in England, Scotland, Wales and Australia, and result from two research field studies and three artist residencies. The locations at St Just, Cornwall, Lavernock, South Wales, Bora, near Helmsdale, in Scotland, and Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, are linked by a common heritage in mining natural resources of coal, tin and precious metals. The artists created both collaborative works and personal pieces of work from their shared experiences of these specific places. Alison Bell is a doctoral researcher in the School of Creative and Cultural Industries at UWS and Cathy Treadaway is Reader in Creative Practice at University of Wales Insitute, Cardiff. The Shorelines project is supported by Cardiff School of Art and Design, University of Wales Institute Cardiff, University of Newcastle New South Wales, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Bryons Veor Trust, and Timespan, Helmsdale, Scotland.

Shorelines
13th November - 23rd December, Maclaurin Gallery, Ayr
Alison F. Bell and Cathy Treadaway

This exhibition of paintings, prints, photographs and textiles by artists, Alison F. Bell and Dr Cathy Treadaway, is an ongoing collaborative research project, which investigates creative practice. The exhibits are a response to five coastal locations in England, Scotland, Wales and Australia, and result from two research field studies and three artist residencies. The locations at St Just, Cornwall, Lavernock, South Wales, Bora, near Helmsdale, in Scotland, and Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, are linked by a common heritage in mining natural resources of coal, tin and precious metals. The artists created both collaborative works and personal pieces of work from their shared experiences of these specific places. Alison Bell is a doctoral researcher in the School of Creative and Cultural Industries at UWS and Cathy Treadaway is Reader in Creative Practice at University of Wales Insitute, Cardiff.

The Shorelines project is supported by Cardiff School of Art and Design, University of Wales Institute Cardiff, University of Newcastle New South Wales, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Bryons Veor Trust, and Timespan, Helmsdale, Scotland.

Shorelines: Place, Creativity and Wellbeing

2011-10-10T03:28:00.000-07:00

Organisers: University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, and South Ayrshire Council Museums and Galleries, with the University of the West of Scotland.

Shorelines: place, creativity and wellbeing, Tuesday 15th November 2011.

This one day international academic symposium, to be held at the Maclaurin Galleries, Ayr, Scotland, is part of a wider SHORELINES Exhibition and Residency programme which will run in the Maclaurin Galleries, Ayr in November and December 2011.

Keynote Speakers: Dr. Ian McGilchrist BM, MA, FRCPsych author of The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale University Press, 2009)

Chris Drury, Land Artist

The Symposium will explore interconnections between creative spaces or locations and physical and emotional wellbeing. It will seek to bring together a multidisciplinary audience of researchers, academics and arts practitioners to present cutting edge research in their fields, fostering discussion and further understanding about the significance of place in the creative process and its potential to enhance the quality of human experience.

Academic papers and visual presentations have been invited to address the themes of the symposium, which are as follows:

Place: Stimulating natural locations, creative spaces, geographical inspiration

Creativity: creative process in the visual arts, music, literature, poetry and drama with focus on stimulation, inspiration, innovation and cognition related to physical spaces and location

Wellbeing: physical and mental health and connections with creative process and physical location, spaces or places.

For all registered participants in the symposium, here will be an evening reception on the Ayr campus, followed by a public lecture by Gideon Kossoff on Transition Design, on the evening on 14th November.

To download the full programme and to register, please follow this link.

Art, Resistance and Alternatives: a screening and discussion with Oliver Ressler and Katarzyna Kosmala

2011-10-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

CCA Glasgow, 7.30 – 10.00pm, October 21st 2011

www.ressler.at

Oliver Ressler is an Austrian-born artist who produces projects in public space and films addressing forms of resistance and social alternatives. He has had solo exhibitions at Berkeley Art Museum, Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Centre, Istanbul; Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Egypt and The Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery, Istanbul. His films have been screened around the world.

Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt – What Comes Next?

Oliver Ressler

19mins, 2010

Recorded in Armenia in Yerevan’s largest bazaar, the film follows the market traders’ struggle to survive the crisis of a post-Socialist reality that has closed many local factories and dissolved social safety nets.

Comuna under Construction

Dario Azzelini and Oliver Ressler

94 mins, 2010

In consejos comunales, the people of Venezuela collectively decide about the community’s concerns. These councils, built from the grassroots, aim to create a form of self-government, parallel to the institutional framework.

The screening will be followed by a conversation and Q & A exploring the role of politically engaged art in protest and human rights issues, led by Katarzyna Kosmala

Dr Katarzyna Kosmala is Reader in Visual Culture and Organisation at the University of the West of Scotland, a visiting research fellow at GEXcel, Insitute of Thematic Gender Studies, Linkoping University & Orebro University, Sweden, and a curator and freelance art writer.

Presented as part of Document 9: International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival

MEd Artist Teacher @ GoMA, 1st October

2011-09-22T02:28:00.000-07:00

EDUCATION AS CULTURAL IMPROVISATION:
LESSONS FROM ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION
Anne Pirrie PhD is Reader in Education at the University of the West of
Scotland. She has wide-ranging and divergent research interests. Her
recent work has been on the epistemological bases of social research.

James Benedict Brown is a postgraduate researcher in architecture at
the School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering (SPACE) at
Queen's University Belfast. His doctoral research concerns live projects
in architectural education.

ARTIST DRIVEN INITIATIVES FOR ART EDUCATION:
WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM STREET ART
G. James Daichendt, EdD serves as Professor and Exhibitions Director at
Azusa Pacific University in southern California and is an adjunct
Professor for Boston University’s graduate online program in art education. Jim is
author of the books: Artist-Teacher: A Philosophy for Creating and
Teaching (2010) and Artist Scholar: Reflections on Writing and Research
(2011)

For more information on the event and the UWS Artist Teacher Master

of Education Programme contact diarmuid.mcauliffe@uws.ac.uk

The Deptford Machine

2011-09-20T04:04:00.000-07:00

Doctoral researcher Ben Parry, working with Utrophia, presents The Deptford Machine: a mechanical and sonic sculpture inspired by, made from and found in Deptford. Opening night: 23rd Sept, at Utrophia.

Whose Story is it Anyway?

2011-09-20T03:53:00.000-07:00

Jo Ronan, theatre-maker, performance lecturer and PhD student, together with members of the newly created BloodWater Theatre, would like to invite you to a performance of Whose Story Is It Anyway, a developing project that challenges assumptions of ways of making theatre.

The two performances at the Tron, Glasgow on the 15^th of October at 2.30pm and 8pm respectively are free but ticketed.

Please refer to http://www.jamie-walker.com/BloodWaterTheatre and/or http://www.tron.co.uk/event/whos_story_is_it_anyway/ for more information about the project and ticket reservations.

As there are only two performances, tickets are limited so please let the Tron box office know if you have made a reservation but are unable to attend.

Be the first to catch the nascent stage of this pioneering work!

Vault Lounge: Art, Money and Value

2011-09-02T00:39:00.000-07:00

artists talking about making a living

6.30pm to 8.30pm 9^th September, The Briggait, 141 Bridgegate, Glasgow

As part of the Vault Art Glasgow event, we are pleased to present an open panel discussion offering diverse perspectives on those tricky questions about how artists negotiate between audiences/publics, patrons/funders, markets and communities. In what different ways do contemporary artists ‘realise value’ from their work and get the resources that they need to keep working? What is at stake when we talk about buying and selling artworks? How do different people in Glasgow’s contemporary art world see their relationship with the wider cultural economy?

Chaired/introduced by Graham Jeffery (University of the West of Scotland)

With contributions from:

Peter McCaughey (Glasgow School of Art) on public art/private art

Simon Cronshaw: http://www.culturelabel.com/ on new markets, new media

Amanda Dobbratz (IRONBBRATZ) on art and entrepreneurship

Katarzyna Kosmala, UWS on not-for-profit art & artistic life in ‘emerging markets’

Michelle Daniels - Market Gallery (www.marketgallery.org.uk) on what the ‘gallery’ can do in the 21^st Century

Knowing Ways

2011-08-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

Knowing Ways: Critical Learning in Arts Practice, North Edinburgh Arts Centre, 8 -10th September 2011

An international conference organised in collaboration with: Amnesty International, North Edinburgh Arts, The University of Glamorgan & The George Ewart Evans Storytelling Centre, The Institute of International Health & Development, The University of Glasgow Business School, The Learning for Democracy network, Intellect publishers and Creative Scotland.

In the face of increasing and ever-changing social, political and economic pressures and crises in diverse societies, practitioners in the visual and performing arts have produced a growing range of approaches through which ordinary citizens use the arts to explore and express their situations, challenging the structures and people who limit their development. This conference brings together a wide range of practitioners from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa to share experiences and ideas.

Katarzyna Kosmala has contributed to the jubilee Special Edition of the international Journal of Arts & Communities in partnership with Amnesty International.

The conference Knowing Ways will launch a Special Edition of the International Journal of Arts & Communities devoted to Arts & Human Rights, in partnership with Amnesty International to celebrate its 50^th Anniversary.

Making Routes

2011-08-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

The Arches and the University of the West of Scotland present

Making Routes

Friday 23rd September 2011

2.30pm - 5.30pm

The Arches, Glasgow

Join David Overend, Kieran Hurley, Nic Green, Adrian Howells, Phil Smith (Wrights & Sites) and Ellie Harrison (Pointed Arrow) for an afternoon of talks, presentations and discussions about the relationship between performance and journeys. Making Routes is a network of artists and researchers and this launch event opens up the project to new contributors and possibilities.

We’re at the beginning, we don’t know quite where we’ll end up, and we want you to help determine what direction we go in...

This is a free event. Please contact david.overend@uws.ac.uk to reserve a place.

Public Preparation

2011-07-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

Rael Artel in conversation with Katarzyna Kosmala on Public Preparation at Tranzitdisplay Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic, July 11th

The debate introduces an international curatorial project: Public Preparation and explores the exhibition strategy behind "Let's Talk About Nationalism! Between Ideology and Identity" (Spring 2010 Kumu Art Museum, Estonia). The aim of Public Preparation is to question contemporary nationalism, to acknowledge the problematic nature of the currently prevalent national discourse, and to create a counterweight in the public sphere. The presentation will be illustrated with images and fragments of the videos displayed.

Rael Artel is an Estonian-based independent curator. In 2004–2008, she ran and moderated experimental project space Rael Artel Gallery: Non-Profit Project Space. In 2007, she initiated Public Preparation, a platform for knowledge-production and network-based communication, focused on issues of nationalism and contemporary art in Europe in the format of international meetings.
http://www.tranzitdisplay.cz/en/node/363

(Eva Bodkin: Belt 2010 video still)

3 x 2 x 3: Ben Parry

2011-05-31T16:06:00.001-07:00

3x3

View more presentations from generalpraxis.

3 x 2 x 3: David Overend: Exposition, Exposition, Exposition

2011-05-26T04:17:00.000-07:00

Introduction

- I am in agreement with Brad Haseman, who argues that the explanation or interpretation of the creative work is a crucial stage in performance-based research (1).

- In the next three minutes, I am going to give three reasons why exposition is an important part of using artistic practice as a research methodology. By exposition, I mean critical reflection; an academic, written form of exegesis that accompanies the practice.

- My PhD, which I completed earlier this year, was a practice-as-research thesis with the University of Glasgow, based at the Arches arts centre. The photographs I am playing here are from three large-scale theatre productions that I directed at the Arches in order to develop a ‘Relational Theatre Practice in Response to a Specific Cultural Site’.

- Now, the Arches is a very busy venue, which changes rapidly from corporate event to theatre performance to club night, often in just one day. Over three hundred events take place each year, and hundreds of thousands of people come through the doors.

- This brings me to my first point, because inevitably things get a bit chaotic.

1. The ‘Messiness’ of Practice-as-Research

- My primary research methodology has involved performance practice, and as John Freeman points out, ‘unlike [...] traditional research, performance practice is always messy and its manners are often bad’ (2).

- For me, the mess of artistic practice has to be tidied up, explained, or turned into something valuable - the way to do that is through an exposition (the written part of the thesis).

2. Failure

- ...which brings me to my next point:

- It is often in those moments of performance when the clearly defined aims of the research questions could be understood to be jeopardised that the most valuable research actually emerges. As Phil Smith points out, ‘sometimes getting things wrong helps the most’ (3).

- An exposition is absolutely necessary to derive research findings from artistic practice that has ostensibly gone wrong. In my thesis, I reflected on my work not by attempting any sort of value-judgement, but by identifying events that revealed something about theatre practice and the relationships of the site.

3. Contextualisation

- My third and final point is about the need to contextualise artistic practice:

- Paul Kleiman points out the dangers of presenting work without exposition by referring to Minimalist art, in which a potentially identical ‘product’ could result from years of diligent study or an attempt to mock the contemporary art world (4). Only some form of exposition can distinguish between these otherwise identical artworks.

Conclusion

- I want to argue that an exegesis of practice is the crucial stage in the process that makes work practice-as-research, rather than simply practice.

- And I would possibly (not definitely) go even further by suggesting that the exposition is the only element of a thesis that should be assessed for the award of a PhD.

References

¹ Brad Haseman, ‘Rupture and Recognition: Identifying the performative research paradigm’, Practice as Research: Approaches to creative arts enquiry, eds. Estelle Barrett & Barbara Bolt, London: I.B.Tauris, 2007, pp.147-157, p.156

² John Freeman, Blood, Sweat & Theory: Research through practice in performance, Oxfordshire: Libri Publishing, c2010, p.81

³ Phil Smith, Mythogeography: A guide to walking sideways, Axminster: Triarchy Press, 2010, p.110

⁴ Paul Kleiman, PARIP mail group discussion, 28/10/02. In Peter Thomson (ed.), ‘Notes and Queries: Practice as research’, Studies in Theatre and Performance 22(3), 2003, pp.159-180, p.163

3 x 2 x 3: Kirsten MacLeod: I film therefore I am

2011-05-26T04:06:00.000-07:00

CCA 3x3 K MacLeod

View more presentations from kirstenmacleod

3 x 2 x 3: Selecting a Fishing Rod for the Exhausted Artist

2011-05-25T14:56:00.000-07:00

Selecting a Fishing Rod for The Exhausted Artist

by Chris Dooks

Hereʼs an unashamedly popular proverb:

“Give a man a fish so heʼll eat for a day; teach him how to fish and heʼll eat for life”

That man could be me trying to assemble my ʻrod of researchʼ to catch the fish of PhD gold. At present, I have bits of the rod, possibly a hook, but a bewildering choice of exhausting instructions, some of which are in a language I am still learning and Iʼm only allowed to look at the instructions for snatches of time.

Iʼd welcome experienced researchers who can think outside the box and help me not waste time, which is very hard won as a new parent managing a conniving illness. The Adaptive Prism, Emancipations for The Exhausted Artist is the most satisfactory incarnation of my PhD title. The “Prism” itself, is a metaphor about adaptation within illness. But itʼs more than hypothetical. I am attempting to draw blueprints for a highly bespoke, practical, lived philosophy.

The aim is to envision, regenerate or replace the colours now missing from a previously healthy and colourful life. Research-wise, Iʼm currently inside a ʻpraxisʼ concocting music and sound medications whilst testing their efficacy for autoethnographic and potentially wider usefulness. I am writing short essays about the projects and one is on the wall in this room. These will ultimately be formed into a philosophical manifesto and idiosyncratic multimedia publication of some kind.

But there is a problem. My practice-research is currently lopsided. I have no problem with the practice as it has developed within an existing illness as a personal medication with itʼs own adaptations. I know what my ʻchaptersʼ could be and what practical projects would parallel it. But the last academic writing I did was in 1994 for my degree – and now I have a kind of handicap of very little energy.

What would you do? I benefit hugely from the learning, but my compass can go haywire at times, as my view of formal research is quite weak. B-roads can emerge and leave me whimpering at the wheel at times. I accept that all researchers

must accept cul-de-sacs as part of research, but if I had a better idea of research methods I might be able to filter more effectively.

The central problem is that because I am not used to academic journals and reading massive quantities I run out of energy fast. I am not exactly asking for shortcuts, more time-saving ideas – lets end on a particular question:

I want to write a 1000-2000 word essay on a ʻhistory of exhaustionʼ that is not [wholly] a medical history. I canʼt find much on ʻa social history of exhaustion.ʼ How would you go about such an enterprise whilst being able to work slowly in 1-2 hour bursts?

3 x 2 x 3

2011-05-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

Presentations from our 3 x 2 x 3 event on 23rd June. Podcasts to follow

Jennifer Jones:

Images from UWS PhD event 3x3x3

View more presentations from Jennifer Jones

3 x 2 x 3

2011-05-24T02:23:00.001-07:00

3 x 2 x 3

CCA Glasgow Clubroom, 24th May 2011, 2pm – 5pm

We are bringing together members of the School’s doctoral research community to explore the question:

How are you approaching the relationships between practice and research in your work?

We will make short podcasts of each 3 minute presentation for wider distribution through the school research blogs.

2.00 pm Welcome and introductions

2.10 pm

Chris Dooks: Selecting a Fishing Rod for The Exhausted Artist

Kirsten McLeod: I film therefore I am: Process, Practice & Participation in community based media

followed by discussion - facilitated by Graham Jeffery

2.45pm

Gail Sneddon: Paula, Lorraine, Shelly and Caroline

David Overend: Exposition, Exposition, Exposition

followed by discussion - facilitated by Katarzyna Kosmala

3.15 break

3.30pm

Jennifer Jones: Learning from the alternative and alternative learning spaces

Ben Parry: The subjective artist and the objective academic

Discussion - facilitated by Andy Miah

4.00 – 5.00

Next steps

5.00 Drinks

www.uws.ac.uk/showcase

uwscreative.wordpress.com

www.twitter.com/UWScreative

MashingUp: Curating/Practice

2011-05-05T08:55:00.000-07:00

University of Glasgow and UWS event
Translating Russian & East European Cultures

Centre for Russian, Central & East European Studies
supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

GoMA Roundtable Event

Thursday 12 May 2011

Top Floor Studio GoMA

2:30 to 6pm

To include a roundtable on knowledge exchange as participatory practice - exploring links

between play and visual pedagogies and the private view of the exhibition Blueprint for a

Bogey, which includes the artwork, Women@Play

This event is part of GoMA’s ‘Blueprint for a bogey’ season.

Programme

2:15 - 2:30 Tea and Coffee

2:30 - 2:45 Introduction

Katarzyna Kosmala, Jon Oldfield, Katie Bruce

2:45 – 3:45 Workshop

women@play, led by Katarzyna Kosmala

This session will involve the project co-ordinator, Katie Bruce; the

artists Rachel Mimiec and Anne Elliot as well as the Development

Worker from the Red Road Family Centre, June Aird, talking around the

project. There will also be time for Q&As.

3:45 – 4:30 Impulse paper session

Short impulse papers will be delivered on aspects of knowledge

exchange as part of participatory practice. These will be given by

Rebecca Kay, Zuly Mail Zada, and Jon Oldfield.

4:30 - 5:00 Group activity/discussion

Revolving around the themes of participation as learning/knowledge

exchange, experiential learning, and related areas.

5:00 – 6:00 Exhibition

Viewing, guided by curator Katie Bruce followed by drinks reception.

Symposium ‘Mashing Up: Curating Practice’, CCA

Friday 13 May 2011

Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA)

2pm to 6pm

Programme

2:00 - 2:15 Introduction

Katarzyna Kosmala and CCA staff

2:15 - 3:30 Symposium

• Ryszard Kluszczynski, “Curating Art@ Science; curating

Mediations: Reflections on the working in-between”

3:30 – 4:00 Tea and Coffee

4:00 – 5:15 Symposium

• Brendan Jackson, “Small world, isn’t it?”

5:15 – 5:45 Question and Answers Session

Facilitated by Graham Jeffery

About the participants

Ryszard Kluszczynski is the Professor of Cultural and Media Studies at Lodz

University, Poland and Head of the Department of Media and Audiovisual Culture. He is

also a Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz.

He writes about the challenges of media and multimedia arts, cyber-culture, theory of

media and communication, information and network society. He critically investigates the

issues of contemporary art theory and alternative art. Until 2001, Kluszczynski was a Chief

Curator of Film, Video and Multimedia Arts in the Centre for Contemporary Art,

Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. He has curated numerous international art exhibitions. In

2010, Kluszczynski co-curated, Beyond Mediations, the main exhibition of The Second

International Biennale of Contemporary Art in Poznan, Poland (mediations.pl). He is editor

of Art Inquiry, a yearbook on contemporary art, and Cultural Studies Review.

Curating Mediations, curating Art@Science”, Reflections on the working

in-between.

Ryszard’s talk will focus on two recent curatorial projects, discussing complex aspects of

collaboration, exchange and the idea of transfers. He begins with the initial concept of the

Biennale and ‘cultural exchange between Europe and Asia’, via collaboration with

Tsutomu Mizusawa. He will explain how the concept of ‘cultural exchange’ has expanded,

leading towards a sort of ‘controlled chaos’.

His most recent curatorial project deals with the question of relations between art and

science. The project is expected to end in 2016. Ryszard will distinguish three different

types of exhibition conceptualisation, dealing with art & science problems. 1. Placing

art@science into the context of a general art exhibition. 2. Curating an exhibition purely

devoted to art@science. 3. Curating exhibitions dealing with the history of art@science.

Brendan Jackson is an independent writer, producer and artist. Trained in visual

communication, receiving a Fellowship in Photography at the Photographic Gallery,

Southampton University, under the stewardship of Leo Stable, and was part of the

development team for the John Hansard Gallery.

For some 20 years he worked as an artist and developer of community arts programmes

with Jubilee Arts, partnering with a range of statutory and non-statutory organisations to

develop a wide range of projects where community engagement was paramount.

Brendan produced the CD Lifting the Weight with Geese Theatre, which won the IBM

Community Connections Award and a BAFTA. His interests encompass collaborative

projects using photography and film, visual arts, oral history, writing and digital media.

The aim of his work has always been to build a sense of community, using creative

activities in everyday life. Brendan works internationally, with specific trans-national

projects over the past decade with the Institute of Polish Culture at Warsaw University and

the Borderland Foundation in Sejny, Poland.

Small world, isn’t it ?

Brendan’s talk will focus on community arts practice, which others might describe as

socially-engaged practice or as cultural animation, based on exploring synergies between

institutions, ideas and disciplines and - most of all – people. He will reflect on working

across boundaries and borders, in multiple Europe’s, drawing on his experience of working

with diverse groups of artists in a range of community contexts – exploring participation,

collaboration, inspiration and serendipity. On the one hand, there is an ever diversifying

and fragmenting ‘community of interests’ and on the other a drawing together and

merging of interests that are cross-border and permeable. There is a role for the

community artist in navigating these shifting cross-cultural tides, in re-imagining and

sharing our practice. Brendan will draw on a recent programme, which was part of the

European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. The project consisted of exchanges between three

partners (based in Birmingham & Black Country in England, Bela Rečhka in Bulgaria, Sejny

in Poland) and the development of wandering/travelling workshops, engaging with local

particularities and peculiarities. The project culminated in the UK with an international

symposium in April 2010, followed by the publication of a book We No Longer Talk in the

summer.

“MASHING-UP...” A Public Lecture Series presented by UWS and CCA. This ongoing lecture series stimulates critical, transdisciplinary research communities to discuss advanced knowledge and to build networks of excellence among producer communities. ‘Mashing up’ [definition] "a mashup is a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration...to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data" (Wikipedia, 2009). The lecture series exhibits the values of new media culture to explore synergies between institutions, ideas and disciplines. This aspiration originates with the UWS and CCA partnership, which extends to the specific areas of inquiry that we pursue. It advances the core mission of each organization to initiate applied, international research opportunities through experimental, local dialogue to foster collaborative, bottom-up, sustainable practices of development. #mashingup We want attendees to blog, photograph, film, tweet and do all they can to share the content of these talks to democratize access to knowledge.

John Vella: 30 years of practice: a blow your nose job

2011-04-27T06:24:00.000-07:00

Thursday 5th May 2011, 7pm

University of The West of Scotland Room

Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow

350 Sauchiehall Street G2 3JD

John Vella was born and raised in Sydney, Australia and moved to Hobart, Tasmania in 1996,

where he lives with his wife Sonia, and children Sophia and Vincenzo. Since dropping out of

studying architecture in 1988, he has: traveled extensively overseas, worked as a waiter,

labourer, photographer, telemarketer, truck loader, phone book factory hand, exhibitions

officer, and gallery attendant; completed a DipFA with Distinction (National Art School

Sydney), a BFA (Hons) first class and an MFA at the Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart where

he is currently the Head of Sculpture.

Vella commits acts of physical and conceptual frottage on communities, objects and

systems; 'rubbings' that recycle the act and artefact of lived experience, as a sub/perversion

of itself. Mediating status, value and 'damage by design' Vella develops diverse testimonies

to the epic and incidental aspects of our personal and material histories. Disloyal to studio disciplines, the artist's practice has developed across suburban, commission and historic contexts.

3 x 3 x 3

2011-04-27T05:48:00.001-07:00

UWS Creative Practice/Research Event

3 x 3 x 3

24 May 2011, 2pm – 5pm, Clubroom, CCA Glasgow

We are bringing together the School’s doctoral community to explore the relationship between practice and research in your doctoral project.

Prepare a three-minute presentation in any format which answers the following question:

How are you approaching the relationships between practice and research in your PhD project?

Produce a title. No abstracts. Data projection and audio playback will be available on the day. Please let us know asap if you have any other technical requirements

We propose making short podcasts of each 3 minute presentation for wider distribution through the school reseach blogs– please let us know if you don’t want to do this. Please get back to Graham by the 9^th of May with details of your presentation title. We will then circulate the final programme.

2.00 pm Welcome and introductions

2.10 pm 3 x 3 minute presentations

followed by discussion

2.45pm 3.x.3 minute presentations

followed by discussion

3.15 break

3.30pm 3 x 3 minute presentations

4.00 – 5.00

Next steps

5.00 Drinks

A playful talk on play: Thursday 24th March

2011-03-22T15:04:00.003-07:00

Image, Object and Identity: photography and the construction of meaning in the 21st century

2011-03-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

UWS Artist Teacher Programme: Public Seminar Series

Wednesday 30 March 2011 at 1pm in Committee Room, Ayr Campus

About the Seminar

This seminar will explore Valle’s personal research in the area of photography by examining closely the interrelationship between image, object and identity in the present day photographic form. The impact of recent genres in photography such as ‘anonymous photography’ brought about through the onset of social media sites such as facebook and twitter will also be explored.

About the Speaker

Valle Galera de Ulierte is a UWS Visiting Scholar in the School of Education and Lecturer in Art Education, Faculty of Humanities & Education Sciences at the University of Jaén, Andalucia, Spain.

Valle is at the School of Education to conduct research into the Artist Teacher model of education and partnership (with Glasgow Museums).

Postdigital Encounters: Creativity and Improvisation

2011-03-19T01:09:00.001-07:00

Location:: Watershed Media Centre, Bristol
Date(s):: 24 June 2011 09:00-17:00

Journal of Media Practice Symposium

Held at the Watershed Media Centre, this one-day symposium explores how digital technologies have redefined creativity and media practice within the academy both in terms of teaching and research, with a dynamic programme of presentations ranging from multiscreen film practice and locative media projects to discussions of creativity and pedagogy in the postdigital age.

This event is hosted by the University of the West of England, Bristol Department of Culture, Media and Drama, Creative Media Research Group and the Digital Cultures Research Centre on behalf of the Journal of Media Practice, Intellect Books Ltd.

£60 delegate fee, including refreshments and lunch - there are a limited number of subsidised places (sponsored by the MeCCSA Practice Network) for postgraduate students, freelancers and hourly paid lecturers who do not have the support of an academic institution.

Deadline for Registration: 6 May 2011

Website:: http://postdigi.wordpress.com
Contact Name:: Charlotte Crofts
Contact Email:: charlotte.crofts@uwe.ac.uk

Feminist histories and feminism's political future, University of Edinburgh, 10th/11th March

2011-03-09T09:07:00.000-08:00

Leverhulme International Research Network ‘Transnational Perspectives on Women's Art, Feminism and Curating’.

What constitutes ‘the past’ of feminism? How has this past been mediated and disseminated to the public? Which public, and where? How is the concept of feminist history, even if pluralised as ‘histories’, connected with debates around the oppressive presence of a hegemonic (read: Western) feminism allegedly disseminated from the centre to its endless peripheries? Does the concept of feminist histories imply a historicisation of feminism – that is, either its obsolescence or its perpetual re-inscription as ‘that moment’, associated with second-wave feminism against which every feminist initiative today must be measured? Does this same concept acknowledge ideological divisions within feminism? And can the quest for transnational feminist solidarity, increasingly an expressed demand of feminism in the age of global capital, provide new perspectives on feminist histories? As regards art in particular, how can we ensure that feminist histories in this context do not remain merely art-world histories but relate to broader configurations of feminism’s political cultures? Are indeed feminist histories only to exist in feminist research and curatorial projects or can they be part of broader art histories and social struggles? Can they perhaps just be part of biennials? Markets? Can feminist histories help us imagine the future of feminism as a connective, political struggle? If so, can this be realised through curatorial work at all at present or will such work inevitably be recuperated by the capitalist institution? Is feminist history – note the return to the singular – in crisis? And if so, is this a good or a bad thing?

UWS' Katarzyna Kosmala will present a paper entitled Performative Practice and Eastern European Feminist Histories.

Red Skirts on Clydeside

2011-03-08T07:21:00.000-08:00

Dates Showing:

Tuesday 8 March

Venue:

GFT Cinema 2, 6.30pm

Tuesday 8 March 2011 marks the centenary celebration of International Women’s Day which was set up to inspire women, celebrate their achievements and to bring to attention the injustice suffered worldwide by women, because they are women.

In 1915, a year into the First World War, landlords in Glasgow put up tenement rents. Women in Govan responded with a rent strike. In Red Skirts on Clydeside, directors Jenny Woodley and Christine Bellamy chart the careers of Jean Ferguson, Mary Barbour and Helen Crawford Agnes Dollan through their involvement in the strike.

Twenty-seven years after the original film was made, Govan women reflect on their lives and roles by the Clyde in a unique collaborative women’s history film project led by filmmaker, Kirsten MacLeod, in association with Plantation Productions and the University of the West of Scotland.

The screenings will be followed by a panel discussion on women and the shipyards.

Shorelines: A one day international symposium exploring place, creativity and wellbeing

2011-03-07T09:31:00.000-08:00

Date : Tuesday 15th November 2011

Organisers : School of Creative and Cultural Industries, University of the West of Scotland in conjunction with University of Wales Institute Cardiff and South Ayrshire Council Museums and Galleries

Venue : The Maclaurin Galleries, Ayr, Scotland

Keynote Speakers:
Iain McGilchrist, Psychiatrist, writer, author of The Master and His Emissary: the Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World
Chris Drury, Land Artist

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

Shorelines: place, creativity and wellbeing

This one day academic symposium, to be held at the Maclaurin Galleries, Ayr, Scotland,

will explore interconnections between creative spaces or locations and physical and

emotional wellbeing. It will seek to bring together a multidisciplinary audience of

researchers, academics and arts practitioners to present cutting edge research in their

fields, to foster discussion and further understanding about the significance of place in

the creative process and its potential to enhance the quality of human experience.

Academic paper and visual presentations are invited to address the themes of the

symposium, which are as follows:

Place: Stimulating locations, creative spaces, geographical inspiration

Creativity: creative process in the visual arts, music, literature, poetry and drama with

focus on stimulation, inspiration, innovation and cognition related to physical spaces and

location

Wellbeing: physical and mental health and connections with creative process and

physical location, spaces or places.

We would welcome contributions from practitioners and researchers from diverse

disciplines including the arts, architecture, psychology, health, environmental aesthetics,

philosophy and education.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Contributions to the symposium may be made in the form of academic papers and/or

illustrated presentations.

We are now inviting the submission of abstracts in response to the above themes.

Abstracts of 300 words max.

Submissions which do not address at least one of the symposium themes will not be

considered.

Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit full papers of 3,000 words max for

peer review. Papers selected for presentation at the symposium will be published online.

Abstracts should be copied and pasted into the body of the email, marked as ‘Shorelines

abstract’ in the subject header and sent to: Dr. Cathy Treadaway

ctreadaway@uwic.ac.uk

IMPORTANT DATES

4th March 2011 Submission of abstracts open

21st April 2011 Submission of abstracts ends

30 April 2011 Notification of acceptance of abstracts

12th August 2011 Submission of full papers for peer review

30th September 2011 Confirmation of acceptance of papers following peer

review

Contacts

Elizabeth Kwasnik Elizabeth.Kwasnik@south-ayrshire.gov.uk Tel: (01292) 445447

Anne Bontke Ann.Bontke@south-ayrshire.gov.uk Tel: (01292) 445447

KIN Symposium, CCA, Saturday 12th February

2011-02-06T14:13:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-02T13:59:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

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.

MashingUp: Pedagogy and Play

2011-01-18T13:51:00.000-08:00

UWS Artist Teacher Programme

Public Seminar Series

PEDAGOGY & PLAY

Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow,

Saturday 12th February 2011, from 10.30am - 4pm

In response to the exhibition Blueprint for a Bogey and using participatory methods, this workshop based Artist Teacher seminar will explore approaches within the visual arts to curricularising playful events. The day-long workshop/seminar, which is free to attend, will be set within the context of Curriculum for Excellence and firmly premised upon creativity,

criticality and art making.

The exhibition includes works by Andy Goldsworthy, Graham Fagen, Eduardo Paolozzi, Paulo Rego, Dave Sherry, Corin Sworn and a collaborative project by women from the Red Road Family Centre.

For further information and to book your place please email

diarmuid.mcauliffe@uws.ac.uk

For more information on the Artist Teacher Master of Education Programme visit

www.uws.ac.uk/MEdAT

Blueprint for a Bogey blog

MASHINGUP: This ongoing series of events stimulates critical, transdisciplinary research communities to discuss advanced knowledge and to build networks of excellence among producer communities.

‘Mashing up’ [definition] a mashup is a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration...to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data (Wikipedia, 2009).

The lecture series exhibits the values of new media culture to explore synergies between institutions, ideas and disciplines. This aspiration originates with the UWS and CCA partnership, which extends to the specific areas of inquiry that we pursue. It advances the core mission of each organization to initiate applied, international research opportunities through experimental, local dialogue to foster collaborative, bottom-up, sustainable practices of development.

#mashingup We want attendees to blog, photograph, film, tweet and do all they can to share the content of these talks to democratize access to knowledge.

Imagining Europe, Representing Periphery: The Body Language

2011-01-17T07:27:00.000-08:00

Current Issues in European Cultural Studies 2011

June 15–17, Norrköping, Sweden

Call for contributions

Stream: Imagining Europe, Representing Periphery: The Body Language

The Berlin Wall is one of the symbolic walls that prevail in the geopolitics of Europe, despite its physical disappearance.

A section of the Berlin Wall, now the East Side gallery, reminds us about the political, socio-economic and cultural divide between the West and the East. Symbolic walls are more powerful that their physical manifestations. It is being on the ‘right’ side of the wall that determines the versions of sovereignty, the citizenship-related entitlements, including the economy of the rights, and in a way, of the body.

The body can be seen as one of the signifiers of the wall crossing, the border crossing, migration routes and various diasporas.

We invite artists and academics to submit a visual piece, an image, a documentary or a short film, addressing and questioning the possibilities for imagining Europe while representing its peripheries, either as a physical body or as a body of knowledge.

Please submit your proposals including visual material AND a 200-word abstract/description by email to both convenors.

Information about the conference and submission instruction http://www.isak.liu.se/acsis/conference-2011?l=sv

Deadline is 14^th February 2011.

Convenors

Dr Katarzyna Kosmala Centre of Contemporary European Studies, University of the West of Scotland, UK Email: katarzyna.kosmala@uws.ac.uk

Prof Ryszard Kluszczyński Department of Media and Audiovisual Culture, University of Łódź, Poland Email: rwk@uni.lodz.pl

Published in these days the art book “Submerged landscapes: a pinhole photographic tale” by Martino Nicoletti of UWS

2010-12-22T03:07:00.000-08:00

Inspired by an ancient pagan myth, the art book, through a selection of analogical pinhole photographs, narrates the tragic love story between the fascinating aquatic nymph Agilla and Prince Trasimenus, son of the powerful Etruscan King Tyrrhenus.

Background of the oneiric work is Trasimenus, the gorgeous and vast lake of Italy’s Umbria region as well as the original abode of Agilla.

The book, printed in Bangkok by Pharbim Ldt. Part., has been published in a limited edition of 99 numbered copies.

“Seen from the depths of the water, sunbeams appear just as shining reflections. Water is not only matter: it is a fluid kingdom, to which one may or may not belong. Earth is not only an element: it is a pulsating territory, to which one may or may not belong. Fire is not only a substance: it is a living realm of which one may be part, or not. The same is true of the air, if one knows anything about it. Penetrating elements or merging with them is a rare ability. Love can help. In some circumstances, premature death can also help. Sometimes. Penetrating, merging; even crossing. Bring lightning into your breast. Be blind. Keep a flame in the exact centre of your heart and follow it. A blissful blazing blindness”.

Intercultural dialogue: arts policy and practice in Europe

2010-12-14T14:35:00.000-08:00

Graham Jeffery, Reader in Music and Performance, is a participant in Platform for Intercultural Europe's Practice Exchange at Rose Bruford College in London on the 15th and 16th December. His presentation on Thursday afternoon will explore whether the transformational claims that are often made for arts practice can be shown to be more than convenient rhetorics. Are there circumstances in which artistic interventions can be regarded as substantial social actions, which might be genuinely participatory and inclusive, and catalyze meaningful social change? Or are all such claims to be treated with justified suspicion as the 'instrumentalization of culture', and terms like 'social inclusion' or 'neighbourhood renewal', associated under the UK's previous government with significant public investment in cultural activities, simply to be treated as discredited slogans?

The arts are often celebrated as addressing and catalysing issues of cultural difference, providing grounds for transmitting and expressing cultural identity, developing conversations between strangers, or publicly provoking difficult questions which are ignored elsewhere in society. But in a febrile atmosphere of shrinking public funding, with policy now more ambivalent towards claims that the arts might contribute to intercultural understanding, what spaces, places and approaches are there that might offer some hopeful pointers?

Other presenters include Jatinder Verma, Dan Rebellato, Eugene Skeef, Hardish Virk, and Helen Burrows.

The full programme is available here.

"STENOPEICA": in Bangkok a multimedia exhibition by Seubsakun Sarunputi, Martino Nicoletti, Toeingam Guptabutra and Alessandra Campoli

2010-12-10T07:45:00.000-08:00

Friday 17 December 2010, the School of Media Arts of Silpakorn University, will present a multimedia exhibition by the artists Seubsakun Sarunputi, Martino Nicoletti, Toeingam Guptabutra and Alessandra Campoli.
In the suggestive framework of an abandoned traditional Thai house, the exhibition will display the results of an original combination of photography, visual poetry, writing, music, installation and performance.
Common denominator of the collective event is the idea of “stenopeica”, meaning “pinhole”: a sharp gaze through narrow possibilities for sight.

Silpakorn University, Sanamchandra Campus, Nakhonpratom
Reun Prakumsakkee House, 6 pm.

Performance Art workshop at Silpakorn University, Bangkok, held by Alessandra Campoli, PhD candidate at UWS

2010-11-16T04:13:00.000-08:00

Alessandra Campoli, PhD candidate at UWS, is currently holding a one-month theoretical and practical workshop on Performace Art at Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.

The workshop aims to explore the creative praxis of performance art, in term of historical and aesthetic notions, as well as performance as a specific and autonomous art practice.

This is the first workshop on Performance Art held at Silpakorn University and it represents an opportunity for students to understand and experiment the possibilities of body expression and living performance as a part of their own artistic language and curriculum of studies.

Visit the blog of the workshop at:
www.performanceartsilpakorn.wordpress.com

Tensions of Art-Based Practice in Educational Settings: Research and Learning in the Visual Arts

2010-11-04T08:49:00.000-07:00

Clubroom, CCA Glasgow, 26th November 2010, 6.30pm

Dr Richard Siegesmund is Associate Professor of Art Education at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia, Athens.

One focus of his scholarly inquiry is arts-based research in the social sciences. He also writes on assessment of learning in visual arts practice. He co-edited Arts-Based Research in Education: Foundations for Practice (Routledge). His most recent publication is the book chapter, "Aesthetics as a curriculum of care and responsible choice", in Essays on aesthetic education for the 21st century (Sense). He also serves as president of Integrative Teaching International (integrativeteaching.org), a non-profit that critically reexamines the first year training of art+design college/university students as visual and social practices increasingly intersect. He completed his doctoral studies at Stanford University under the direction of Elliot Eisner. In 2003, his published research on arts-based assessment of student learning received the Manuel Barkan Memorial Award from the National Art Education Association. He currently is a visiting Fulbright Scholar to the Education Faculty of the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland.

This event is free. Please contact Diarmuid McAuliffe if you wish to attend, email diarmuid.mcauliffe@uws.ac.uk
The MEd Artist Teacher programme at the Faculty of Education, Health and Social Sciences, Creative Practice/Research group and the MSc Research Methods programme at the Faculty of Business and Creative Industries at UWS are grateful for the support of the CCA for hosting this event.

Gentle Actions: Art Ecology Action, Oslo

2010-10-23T14:53:00.000-07:00

Samantha Clark is participating in 'Gentle Actions: Art Ecology Action' at the Kunsternes Hus Oslo which opens with a symposium event this weekend, 23rd October and will run until 14th November.

For more information about the exhibition, seminar programme, film screenings and events, go to http://gentleactions.wordpress.com/about/.

S.P.I.L.L./S.T.I.L.L. is the result of a three-way collaboration between Sam, the US-based artist Anne Katrin Spiess and Norwegian ecophilosopher Per Ingvar Haukeland (University College of Telemark).

Sam's contribution project S.T.I.L.L. is documented here and will be updated over the duration of the exhibition.

MashingUp: Art+Labour, 9th November, CCA Glasgow

2010-10-19T04:54:00.000-07:00

Art+Labour is a public conversation exploring the conditions and experiences of creative labour in the cultural industries - working conditions, pay, working hours; freedom and autonomy, pleasure and obligation; insecurity and uncertainty; social reproduction, networking and isolation - and artists' organising within it - unions, artists' associations, or self-organised studio/exhibition spaces. What diverse forms of employment do artists undertake? Who are their employees? How secure and how flexible are these forms of employment? What are the conditions of employment and how are these changing? What can we say of artists' autonomy in relation to contemporary labour practices? How do cultural workers effectively organise around labour issues? What would it mean for artists to withdraw their labour in defence of conditions in one's primary or secondary employment? With successive governments' emphasis on arts' social function, how does communality express itself in competitive Creative Industries? What is industrial about the Creative Industries; where do 'Cultural' producers sit within the policy frame of the 'Creative' Industries? How do we as cultural producers recognise our own positions and dependency on/within/alongside the public sector? With the entrepreneurial restructuring of the arts in Scotland and in the face of selective public sector cuts throughout the UK, how constructive are artists' isolated appeals for a state of exception? What is so unique about artists in the social factory? These are some of the questions to be addressed during this public conversation.

The discussion is open to anyone - cultural workers, artists, students, interns, precarious and self-organised labour affiliated to academia - concerned with issues of art, labour and economics. The event will begin with a series of short position statements from invited speakers followed by discussion among panelists and audience.

Panelists include:

Angela McRobbie Professor of Communications, Dept. of Media & Communications, Goldsmiths

Scottish Artists Union The representative voice for artists in Scotland

Graham Jeffery Reader: Music and Performance, rhe School of Creative and Cultural Industries, UWS

Katarzyna Kosmala Reader, Centre for Contemporary European Studies, UWS

Gesa Helms Researcher and artist

Brett Bloom Member of Chicago-based art collective Temporary Services who recently produced 'Art Work : A national conversation about art, labour, and economics'

Owen Logan Researcher, School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, University of Aberdeen

Facilitated by Gordon Asher Effective Learning Tutor, UWS Centre for Academic & Professional Development

Event is free but ticketed, tickets available from CCA Box Office: CCA, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD tel : +44 (0)141 352 4900 http://www.cca-glasgow.com

"MASHING UP" : Art+Labour is organised by Leigh French, co-editor of Variant, and Sophie Hope, member of Making A Living, in co-operation with Graham Jeffery of the School of Creative and Cultural Industries, University of the West of Scotland, and supported by CCA, Glasgow.

“MASHING-UP...” A Public Lecture Series presented by UWS and CCA This ongoing lecture series stimulates critical, transdisciplinary research communities to discuss advanced knowledge and to build networks of excellence among producer communities. ‘Mashing up’ [definition] "a mashup is a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration...to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data" (Wikipedia, 2009). The lecture series exhibits the values of new media culture to explore synergies between institutions, ideas and disciplines. This aspiration originates with the UWS and CCA partnership, which extends to the specific areas of inquiry that we pursue. It advances the core mission of each organization to initiate applied, international research opportunities through experimental, local dialogue to foster collaborative, bottom-up, sustainable practices of development. #mashingup We want attendees to blog, photograph, film, tweet and do all they can to share the content of these talks to democratize access to knowledge.

"The visual imagination: across boundaries". UWS @ ACSA Conference, Bangkok.

2010-10-12T04:17:00.000-07:00

Alessandra Campoli and Martino Nicoletti, both PhD candidates at UWS, will present a paper at the international conference organized by Asian Cultural Studies Association, at Assumption University in Bangkok (1-3 November 2010)
The 2010 conference theme is "The visual imagination: across boundaries"

Imagination has more than often been conceived of as an art of forming mental images, particularly in relation to objects and phenomena not completely perceived in reality. But if imagination resorts to images then does not the notion of the visual imagination imply a sense of redundancy? If, on the other hand, the word “visual” refers us to the sphere of sensory perception then how can we utilize the sense of sight to arrive at a realistic representation of illusion? In what sense then are images visual and in what sense are they imaginary?

These and similar questions, concerning the concept of imagination, the role of visual representation, or the use of images, have been addressed by artists and art theorists throughout the world. As a creative force, imagination has been integral in understanding individual artistic endeavours, seen as a key concept in aesthetics and art theory. And since art is a form of cultural expression, it is only natural to expect the visual imagination to abound in cultural connotations. This conference seeks to explore the connections between the visual forms of artistic expression and the concept of creative imagination across cultures.

Alessandra will present a paper devoted to the concept of ephemeral in Thai contemporary media arts. Martino will explore visual imagination in Nepalese shamanic rituals.

Document 8 International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival @ CCA Glasgow 26 -31 October

2010-10-07T08:14:00.000-07:00

Document International Film Festival raises awareness of social justice issues at local and international levels.

On Wednesday 27th October 2010, 12-6pm students, filmmakers, artists,activists and academics will explore human rights issues addressing the questions of witnessing and representation.
Katarzyna Kosmala and Kirsten Mcleod will deliver workshop based sessions.
Katarzyna (3.40pm) will lead the session on representation of sex as labour in the context of New Europe: Making commodification more visible? and Kirsten (2.30pm) will deliver a workshop on community film and human rights locally.

We have a number of allocated tickets available. Please contact us if you would like to take part in the Student Forum.

Samantha Clark in Stromness: ecology/art/landscape

2010-09-27T03:25:00.000-07:00

Last week Samantha Clark gave a presentation to the second forum meeting of
CORE (Creative Research into the Natural Environment) which was held
at the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney 23rd September. The CORE
network, funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, brings together
artists, writers, landscape architects, anthropologists and
scientists to explore creative responses to environmental change,
with a view to forging interdisiciplinary collaborative research
projects on the theme of 'Measuring the Environment: Morphology/
Mythology'. Also presenting in Stromness were Dr Jo Lee Vergunst,
anthroplogist based at the University of Aberdeen, Dr Richard Irvine,
anthropologist from the University of Cambridge, and (via Skype) David
Storch Leed, a young Inuit from the remote community of Rodebay,
North West Greenland.

Sam gave a presentation on her recent project 'A Year of Breathing'
which is leading onto a new project 'STILL' for Gentle Actions, a
series of art and ecology events at Kunsternes Hus, Oslo which will
take place next month. These interconnected projects explore our
personal and bodily relationship with global atmospheric carbon,
raise the issue of what we choose not to do, and explicitly value
stillness as a counterpoint to urgent calls for 'action' on
environmental concerns.

A Year of Breathing Blog site is here: http://
www.yearofbreathing.blogspot.com/

The blog site for Gentle Actions is here: http://
gentleactions.wordpress.com/about/
Watch this space as the project unfolds.

and more info here: http://weadartists.org/oct-23-nov-14-gentle-
actions-conference

While in Stromness, Sam also was a participating lecturer in a week
long international workshop for Landscape Architects. EMILA (European
Masters in Landscape Architecture) brought together students and
academics from five European institutions (in Spain, Germany,
Holland, France and Scotland) to explore and consider future
scenarios for the predicted rapid social and environmental change
facing the Orkney Islands as they develop new renewable energy
infrastructures.

Kirsten McLeod: screenings and events

2010-09-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

Doctoral researcher Kirsten McLeod is presenting work at two events in October and November. As part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, a short film Kirsten produced is being shown at GMAC/Streetlevel Gallery at Tron 103 on Thursday 7th October between 7-10pm. It's titled "Playtime" and is about remembering and rediscovering the joys of childhood fun. The film is also part of the touring exhibition, Time Out: Arts Showcase and will also be screened at Cardonald Library on 14th October 1-7pm and Pollok Civil Realm: 21st, 1-7pm. There is also a photography exhibition, Mutter Shutter associated with the project.

As part of the Viewpoints Community Film Festival, Kirsten is organising a Community Media Networking Day at CCA Glasgow on Thursday 18th November for practitioners and participants of community media to network, show their work and discuss issues surrounding community based media. It is a free event, between 12-6pm, with a showcase of young people's films in the evening produced by SWAMP and Plantation Productions. More details to follow, but if you are a community based filmmaker, or know of anyone who would like to take part or come along, do contact Kirsten at kirstenmac [at] clara.co.uk.

Ayr Alternative Arts Day, 25th September

2010-09-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

We are working with our friends at Ayrtime and South Ayrshire Council to support Ayr Alternative Arts Day on Saturday 25th September. It features a number of UWS connections: curated by doctoral researcher Chris Dooks, part of the day includes performances by Boy Angel Productions, a company set up by UWS graduates Lindalouise Martin and Dougie Grieg. UWS Reader in Music and Performance Graham Jeffery will also be performing From the River to the Sea, an audio piece put together with sounds from the walk from the campus to the harbour in Ayr.

The day also includes readings from acclaimed authors Eleanor Thom, author of The Tin-Kin, Jason Donald, author of Choke Chain and Karen Campbell, author of The Twilight Time, After The Fire and Shadowplay.And artist Alex Norris will present his work on The Art of the Diary. Full information on the Ayrtime website .

OLD/NEW NEW/OLD

2010-09-04T08:46:00.001-07:00

Art practice and co-creation

2010-08-21T06:37:00.000-07:00

This international collaborative project,

co-organized, co-curated and co-convened by Katarzyna Kosmala explores the themes of

Boundless Creativity/Urban Subversion

The events related to these themes take place

at Bilgi University, Santral in Istanbul on the 1st and 2nd September:

the workshop with presentations/performances, the roundtable and the group exhibition
Old/New New/Old

Altermodern context is based on a series of departures and arrivals. Drawing on Paul Virilo’s aesthetics of disappearance and Marc Augé’s idea of non-place, we have collated a series of the interactive initiatives to co-reflect upon the processes of knowledge exchange. A chaotic universe of communication, travel and migration affects and reflects the multiple genre of representing. A place can be viewed as a relational zone, a geographical landmark, or an area still–to–be–filled with signification and meaning.

Embracing the instability and movement, the project explores a domain of practice/research at the peripheries of dominant knowledge production. At the cross-roads of our academic, social and artistic expression we map the examples of creative practice at boundaries in order to reflect on alternative forms of organizing and processes of transient knowledge production, including:

Umbilical viators and exiles (Miguel Imas /Alia Weston)
Art installation and resisting dominant (Katarzyna Kosmala)
Market Estate Project: A triptych (Maria Daskalaki)
I love deadlines! Performing time (Jean-Luc Moriceau)
Music: Breathing out as organizing beyond controlling (Nick Wilson/ Howard Milner)

By intertwining a complex structure of more or less obvious connections that frame art practice today, the included and the excluded territories, localities as well as their organizational forms, we experiment with the field of potentiality for boundary-less creativity. An altermodernity becomes a method of engagement, opening up ideas for cultural production. The hybrid ways we live and work are acknowledged as the consequences of intersectionality of global markets and dominant ideologies that are continuously mediated by translation, multiculturalism and fragmentation.

The question remains and haunts us: Can creative borderline processes of a more nomadic nature carve a legitimate space for itself in a dominant culture of global markets, digital technologies and shifting social and political forces?

Contemporary Art and Environmental Aesthetics

2010-08-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

UWS Lecturer in Digital Art Samantha Clark has just published this article in the journal Environmental Values. Abstract follows:

Aesthetic debates within contemporary art have been tangential to the debates in environmental aesthetics since the 1960s. I argue that these disciplines, having evolved separately in response to the limitations of traditional aesthetics, may now usefully inform each other. Firstly, the dematerialisation of art as the focus of aesthetic experience may have environmentally useful consequences. Secondly, Gablik's 'connective aesthetics', like Berleant's 'aesthetics of engagement', folds aesthetic experience into the social as a kind of environmental aesthetics. Thirdly, contemporary art's flexible readings of 'framing' can respond to 'frameless' natural environments, and finally, Kester's 'dialogical aesthetics' may be enriched by Berleant's systematic account of 'contextual aesthetics'.

Spaces of encounter: Artists, conversations, and meaning-making

2010-08-11T05:40:00.000-07:00

Several members of the UWS research community have just been at RGU in Aberdeen for the North East Scotland Visual Arts Research Network's doctoral summer school. Alongside presentations of some fascinating practice-led doctoral projects, including UWS' Kirsten Mcleod's work on participatory film making and community media, there were keynote presentations and seminars from Ray Langenbach, Jay Koh, Kathleen Coessens, Chu Chu Yuan, and Graham Jeffery.

The slides from Graham's presentation are reproduced below.

Spaces of encounter: artists, conversations and meaning-making

View more presentations from generalpraxis.

Call for papers: Practice-led research in the arts

2010-07-21T10:04:00.001-07:00

Special Issue on Practice-Led Research in the Arts

Creative Industries Journal (Intellect)
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=145/

The Creative Industries Journal is planning a Special Issue on Practice-Led Research in the Arts/Creative Industries.

Ideas for papers looking at any aspect of Practice-Led Research in the Arts are greatly welcomed, as are "work-in-progress" suggestions. Approaches to Practice-Led Research in the Arts/Creative Industries - from all disciplines that work in the area - are greatly encouraged.

Suggested topics/foci might be as "blue skies" as entirely speculative individual investigations of creative or critical knowledge in a particular arts practice (eg. Creative Writing, Film-making, Drama, Fine Art, Art and Design, Music, Architecture). Or topics might focus on "sector specific/knowledge transfer" type investigations, linked to the needs/aims of particular Creative Industries sub-sectors. All welcome.

This Special Issue will be an opportunity to explore the many aspects of Practice-Led Research in the Arts, and to consider both the development of knowledge through arts practice research and the investigation of modes of engagement, actions and activities, and critical understandings.

While undoubtedly it will be impossible to cover every possible area of this considerable set of human practices, it would be pleasing to show a great cross-section.

Initial enquiries - preferably by 1st September - can be made to:

Professor Graeme Harper FRSA, Special Issue Editor, at:

graeme@graemeharper.com

Deadline for drafts will be: 31 October 2010

Final Drafts: 1 December 2010

MA: Music: Innovation and Entrepreneurship

2010-07-01T16:35:00.000-07:00

‘There’s something happening in here.

What it is ain’t exactly clear…’

(For What It’s Worth/Buffalo Springfield)

Although Stephen Stills wrote those lyrics about a riot on the Sunset Strip back in the revolutionary 60’s, that sentiment could just as easily apply to the current state of the music industry.

A new music initiative from the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) is addressing this situation by offering a ground-breaking new course that aims to be as creative, energetic and innovative as the best of '6os thinking and create its own educational revolution.

The worlds of academia and business have been radically brought together in UWS’ MA Music: Innovation & Entrepreneurship which commences in Glasgow this September.

It is a one-year course aimed at anyone who is passionate about music and wants to set up their own music-related business.

The MA is the first course of its kind in the UK and has the backing of major iconic figures from the music industry including Geoff Travis of Rough Trade whose forward thinking attitude resulted in what we now know as the independent sector.

Programme Leader Alan McCusker-Thompson says:

‘The traditional music industry is a ghost that’s sitting at the table. Everybody keeps talking to it as if it’s still there but it’s dead. This course is about learning to ‘think different’. It’s not about working in the music industry. It’s about working with music’.

To show how much the times are changing, in the first semester students ‘homework’ will include organising a one day music conference at the CCA during which an entire album featuring a variety of Scottish acts will be recorded, mixed and mastered from scratch, the packaging designed and the whole thing physically manufactured and given to delegates as they leave the conference. It will also be made available, digitally, around the world on the same day.

While the programme is ideally suited to artist entrepreneurs who wish to set up their own record labels, management or publishing companies, it seeks to go beyond this and develop music-related business ideas that may span everything from apps to fashion to hotels and beyond.

‘In one sense, the course is a blank page. We don’t know where it’s going to go but we want to create the environment where talented, energised individuals can push the envelope in generating new income streams’.

In effect, the course, which is delivered right in the heart of Glasgow at the CCA (Centre for Contemporary Arts) will function as a business incubation unit for cutting-edge, music products, processes and services.

Each student will have their own ‘digital board’ drawn from academia and the creative industries who will support them throughout their year of development and the programme will ultimately connect students with potential backers for their ideas.

‘Music has a phenomenal reach and cachet within the creative industries and enhances all media platforms both aesthetically and commercially. That’s why we’re involving practitioners from business, the internet, the film, TV, games, publishing and fashion industries…oh yes, and the music industry’.

The course will suit those who have an undergraduate qualification or prior experience in music, the performing arts, art and graphic design, media, film, business or any of the creative industries; however it is not confined to these backgrounds.

The programme is delivered mainly at the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in the centre of Glasgow, where the University’s School of Creative & Cultural Industries has a hub and also at Film City, Govan. Delivery of some programme options will also be offered at the University’s Ayr and Paisley campuses.

Applications can be made through www.uws.ac.uk

Contact Programme Leader, Alan McCusker-Thompson on 07977 224258 or alan.mccusker-thompson@uws.ac.uk for further information.

Mashing Up: Practice+Research: Graham Jeffery

2010-05-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

Graham Jeffery's introductory presentation for the MashingUp:Practice+Research symposium.
Practice/Research: debates and dialogues

View more presentations from generalpraxis.

Mashing Up: Practice+Research: Nic Jeune

2010-05-20T04:22:00.000-07:00

Videos from Artswork Media at Bath Spa University, where Nic Jeune, one of our guest speakers yesterday, is the director.

Why is being at Artswork Media not like being at University? from artswork media on Vimeo.

Artswork Media: The Student Experience from artswork media on Vimeo.

Mashing Up: Practice+Research: Chris Dooks

2010-05-20T04:04:00.000-07:00

The first in a series of posts from our MashingUp: Practice and Research symposium at the CCA on 19th May.

Here's the text of the talk by artist Chris Dooks. Links to his work can be found at www.dooks.org.

My name is Chris Dooks and I am a Polymash. I’ll be speaking about my

perception of mash‐ups and musing on interdisciplinary art and trying to work

out if I have any role in this. I guess my talk is related to, as opposed to being

about the wikipedia definition of the web mashup ‐ where two sources of

content are merged to form a new fusion.

I’m not a Polymath, though, oh no, even though I liked being called one by a

High Falltuin’ newspaper. My definition of a Polymash, as opposed to a true

Polymath is someone whose output is a little more bastard‐like, in the Heinz

57 sense. A little shambolic, not always creating patterns of logic and order –

hence Polymash, unlike someone who is the living embodiment of “Having

Learned Much” – the Greek definition of a true polymath the practitioner of

which, is an exemplar of this “Having Learned Much”.

Not me. I’ve learned maybe six or seven things and hundreds of short cuts,

plus I’m terrible with numbers. I’m probably fairly low‐IQ. I’m aesthetically

driven, so I would fail a Mensa test. A Polymash – the word I invented, is more

a make‐do mashup noun – a bit Health Robinson. If you’ve ever seen TVs

Scrapheap Challenge I am the bodger, welding different parts of my practice

together to fit, and if the measurements are wrong, I’ll just say it’s part of the

charm of the piece. I am in constant dispute with someone in the USA who

claims he invented the word polymash, but I believe it’s me, five years before

him. He owns the dot com, I am the dot org.

My registered business name is Polymash Digital Art Services. And my brief talk

and screening explain why I became my own sort of mash‐up and what my

awareness and definition of a mash‐up is, so lets start there. Some people

define a mash‐up in musical pop terms when you graft Kylie’s chorus onto

Missy Elliot’s verbage. Or as the Pet Shop Boys said : “Che Guevara and Debussy

to a Disco Beat”

But mash ups or genre‐clashes have always been around. In fact you might say

that any new cultural artifact is a mash‐up because it presents say, 50%

original creative thought in the 50% context of it’s precursers. This is like true

traditional music, that keeps some of the old with some of the new, to survive.

We live in showy times, so I think one of the reasons we are discussing this

idea today is because the mash up has risen very high in the cultural radar, and

musical or video mashups are easy to share on your facebook page.

When someone emails you a video of five cats singing Independent Woman by

Destiny’s Child in North of England flat caps, smoking fags and playing the

double bass and banjo, it is likely to go viral very quickly. In internet mash up

terms that’s an oldie but goodie now.

When two genres clash for the first time though it’s a real thrill. Twin Peaks

was a mash up and David Lynch is a Polymash par excellence; He distills

several cultural elements like an alchemist ‐ the combination of nostalgic

midwestern film drama augmented by manipulating Jungian psychology, bits

of Bunuel and peppered with primal performance art under the marquee of

trust by a broadcaster. The Twin Peaks mash up really sealed the term

Lynchian – which is almost mash‐up shorthand now. If we hear it now, we

know it’s going to be a heady mix. And mix is the key word.

But maybe we are reading too much into mash‐ups, maybe the mash up is just

an early form of wholistic idea‐integration, like those of the Rennaisance

artists. Initial mashups, and in fact early works by artists, musicians and

filmmakers can often simply wear their techniques on their sleeves, so you are

more likely to witness a culture clash, a bastard pop and so on, early on in

someone’s career. Maybe that’s all a mashup is.

Perhaps as artists get more confident they want to be seen to grow and

develop, so the mash up becomes subtle, a little more refined. And then when

it is really grown up it becomes it’s own thing in it’s own right. It just becomes

good work, like Lynch, just a good mix of elements. It maybe doesn’t need a

name anymore. Maybe there’s something playful or Juvenille in the mash‐up,

maybe the mash‐up is like the first few seconds of the early universe where

everything is hot and molten and potential systems are not yet fully formed,

anything could happen, it’s exciting! One thing is grafted onto another. And

then a few billion years later it all cools down a bit, systems form, patterns

emerge, planets are bourn, arts council grants are signed and then you get

your own show at the CCA.

Anyway, I’ll stop here on mash ups, because I’m not a mash‐up, but I think it’s

useful to see, to what extent that different creative worlds stay or stray from

their own boxes even if the same person made these apparently disparate

forms. This is the daily mesh of the Polymash’s practice. It is very common

now in new media artists, to see writing, directing, composing, wordsmithing,

singing, speaking, performing by the same artist ‐ for example the same

shambolic Northerner in my case.

The following vaguely chronological list sounds a bit Me Me Me. In fact, I was

talking to a manager of an arts centre in Ireland and she said she always knew

when she had an email or letter from an artist immediately as it had a lot of I, I,

I in it.

So… I have worked as…

Malt Whisky Salesman. New Media Artist. Photographer. TV Director. Film

Maker. Sound Recordist. Artist in Residence. Musician in Residence. Storyteller

in Residence. Course Tutor. Course Leader. Curator. Psychogeographer. Sound

Artist in Residence. Festival Director. Web Designer. Book Cover Designer.

Podcaster. Course Governer. Body Double in a Sex Scene for the less popular

Irvine Welsh film The Acid House. Irvine Welsh’s Driver. Technician at FE

College. Gofer. Anthropological Researcher. Archivist. And finally Malt Whisky

Drinker.

I knew what I wanted to do when I was 8 though.

I wanted to direct Raiders of The Lost Ark. I was a religious little kid and would

constantly get these epiphanies in church, but curiously more so in cinema. I

think what had really happened is that I had discovered culture; orchestral

music and the photographic image. I would be a famous film director. Or a

priest.

Cinema seemed to be the place where everything overlapped. The writer, the

photography, the score, performance – a team effort of different disciplines

honed by a director. I wanted to be close to God and the director was a kind of

god. I made little super 8 films, used cassette recorders together to edit

soundtracks. I was a lonely wee kid at times, and mainly did everything myself.

In my head, I was on course for big stuff and I was barely at the big school.

Fast forward to 1991 and I am sneering at some layabout pot‐head on my film,

tv and radio course in Cleveland. I failed to get into a grown‐up university or

film school because I was obsessed by a girl at school who looked like Kate

Bush. That was then, now in 1991 I am the hardest working kid in

showbusiness. Or student BTEC film.

Anyway this pot‐head was having a chat with one of the course leaders, typical

of his type who didn’t really want to be teaching, so the lazy buggers got on

perfectly well. Why was I sneering at this lazy, dopey pseudo‐goth? Because he

hadn’t decided what he wanted to do. He wanted to do a bit‐of‐everything. A

master of nothing, I thought. Little did I know I would be doing a little bit of

everything for art and for a living.

Fast forward to 2010. Everything has changed. Everything. My TV directing

career was over by 1999. I am in the eleventh year of a highly inconvenient

sickness. I have had to change every aspect of my life. Everything.

My body betrayed my ambition. It’s not quite Diving Bell and The Butterfly, but

to coin a frankly useful cliché – I had to undergo a paradigm shift. I became a

Polymash.

I nearly changed my name to Polymash by deed poll. I also nearly became a

Buddhist Monk. Here’s how it happened.

I realised over the years I hadn’t been single minded, I’d been a control freak

but had picked up some useful skills along the way. Although back on my BTEC

I was very focussed, I didn’t work well in a team, so unconsciously I’d been

picking up all these weird little skills. I stayed back late to learn how to edit

radio programmes with a chinagraph pencil and razor blade – this was the

beginning of the music side of my career, I’d master the edit suite – this

enhanced my music technology whilst video‐editing, I learned how to word

process and design sleeves for VHS covers – this was the beginning of my web

design practice, I mastered blue‐screen video – this became photography and

photoshop, street vox pops – this became podcasting and sound recording.

Back then, I thought all this meant I was going to be a filmmaker. What it

actually meant after my diagnosis in 1999, was that I had a digital artist’s

skillset and to a small extent the world was to turn in my favour.

This is where Polymash comes from. Where collision of situation and skillset

have to plot or carve a niche in the world. And that’s what I do. I ended up

having a reasonable portfolio across the board. And it means I don’t just

subscribe to the visual arts newsletter of the SAC, it might be for an electroacoustic

residency, or like in Brighton where I was songwriter in residence for

Terence Conran’s Embassy Court – a modernist building.

Before some clips I want to recount a wee tale from a few years ago where I

did actually turn into a bona fide mash‐up. I was talking to a friend about a

writer I think. We are both M.E. sufferers, so there’s often a bit of cognitive fog

to say the least. Low oxygen in the brain and the odd silly synapse.

I was trying to say how the trouble with this writer was that they “over‐egg the

pudding” and complicate things. What I actually said was “The trouble with her

is that she overcomplicates the egg” which was actually a better sentence than

my rational mind, had in mind. This sums up my approach to making art,

where malfunctions of my mind and body result in combinations and leaps

that would not take place otherwise. Probably more mashed potato than

mashup in the traditional sense.

I will now present some clips of work. I am just going to say literally a few

words about each piece and then if there are any Q and A – that would be ideal.

The first piece of work I will show is a 5 minute video made in 2005 by myself

and furtherfield.org about my Psychogeographic Tour of Edinburgh – The

Erica Tetralix Polyfaith Tour of Edinburgh. I have handed out some maps of

the tour you can take away with you.

clip from http://netartfilm.furtherfield.org/?q=node/26

What you have just seen is a lie. A kind lie. And I am going to spoil the ending

of the project. This is a project about shrubs. It has nothing to do with religion.

It is aimed at people searching for something. I worked for many years with

the middle east festival in Edinburgh and I was a fairly devout Buddhist. I still

hold many of the teachings dear. One of the teachings I like, is that there’s a

focus on proximity in Buddhism, that you’ve to pay attention to this moment,

or this breath, or this object and so on. But in practice people look elsewhere

for enlightenment. And not just enlightenment – holidays. People go for

hundreds of miles to go on holiday, yet don’t know how many varieties of bird

sing in their back garden, where they come from and where they go. So

Polyfaith.com takes you on a story around ten stations in Edinburgh. And

there’s something to see in each station. But there’s something hinted at all the

way through. And that is shrubs. So there’s two ways to read the tour. And I’m

interested in that moment when the penny drops, because when that penny

drops there might be a minor epiphany and for (me) ‐ the Athiest who lost

faith due to reason, that’s a nice place to be. Death underpins all my projects.

Polyfaith.com is now defunct, but I have a mirror site up if anyone wants to do

the tour. Come ask me with a pen and paper. I also have another tour of

Edinburgh available which is very popular, which takes place in Advocates

Close.

OK. Keeping it eclectic, I am now going to play you some music from various

projects over the years. This is a two minute reel. The visuals are not so

important.

Music Reel Screening.

Lastly, I am going to end with a 7 minute film that was made in 1997 just

before I became unwell. It was part of Scottish Screen’s Prime Cuts series. This

cost £30,000 to make, which I would have rather have had for a deposit for a

flat because I tended to do everything myself. The idea of this project was that

it trains everyone with union rates, so I was obliged to have help. It didn’t stop

me from doing everything else. At the time, it was the only non‐narrative

(although I don’t like that term) film Scottish Screen had funded.

No One Sees Black Screening.

Mashing Up: Practice + Research

2010-05-13T05:40:00.001-07:00

A One-Day Public Symposium at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow

Wednesday 19^th May, 1.30-5.30 pm
Please book with CCA for Symposium
Kathryn Elkin, CCA
+44 (0) 141352 4900
www.cca-glasgow.com

“MASHING-UP...”
A Public Lecture Series
presented by UWS and CCA

This ongoing lecture series stimulates critical, transdisciplinary research communities to discuss advanced knowledge and to build networks of excellence among producer communities.

‘Mashing up’ [definition] a mashup is a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration...to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data (Wikipedia, 2009).

The lecture series exhibits the values of new media culture to explore synergies between institutions, ideas and disciplines. This aspiration originates with the UWS and CCA partnership, which extends to the specific areas of inquiry that we pursue. It advances the core mission of each organization to initiate applied, international research opportunities through experimental, local dialogue to foster collaborative, bottom-up, sustainable practices of development.

#mashingup We want attendees to blog, photograph, film, tweet and do all they can to share the content of these talks to democratize access to knowledge.

At UWS, we pride ourselves on the vocational and practitioner-led focus of our curriculum. Many of our academic staff have spent years working as cultural producers, artists and entrepreneurs outside of the university sector, and bring their knowledge of practice in the arts and cultural industries to bear on their teaching and research. At the same time, universities strive to build meaningful relationships between their research and teaching activites and wider communities, in order to justify their position as ‘places of learning’ and to maximise the social, cultural and economic ‘impact’ of academic work.

As the learning landscape becomes more convergent, with collaborations of all kinds characterising modern higher education research and teaching, it is important to consider the implications of these forms of academic practice. In this symposium we bring together practitioner-academics, artists, and researchers to consider such questions.

Knowledge-based communities often seem to divide themselves into distinct tribes of either theory or practice. But whether explicitly articulated or tacit, theory is always informed by forms of practice, and practice is always informed by theory. Within the disciplines that make up the creative and cultural industries, practice-based research has become increasingly prominent, but the place of such work within higher education can be contested, because it communicates knowledge in ways that are not necessarily written traditionally or ‘theoretically’ but expressed otherwise, for example through the production of artefacts in visual art, design, performance, music or moving image. At the same time, higher education must develop critical awareness and theoretical and analytical capabilities, to produce more competent and skilled practitioners and researchers.

Creativity, invention and discovery depend upon challenging disciplinary boundaries, playing with orthodoxies, and making new connections. Creativity may also involve leaps into the unknown or experimental and unorthodox approaches. However, funding and policy imperatives often mean that researchers are under pressure to justify the’ impact’ of their work in economic and practical terms; and artists involved in research, particularly in higher education, are expected to account for their methods and approaches in externally verifiable ‘research’ terms. So terminological confusion abounds.

What can researchers learn from artistic methods? Practitioners and theorists may have more common methodologies than they think; the media theorist and the journalist often utilize similar methods of inquiry. Artists and scientists conduct controlled experiments which depend on deep expertise, specialised knowledge, highly skilled technical facility, and intuition. Can cultural and artistic research reveal common ground between theory and practice? And in this context, how does theory help to illuminate practice?

SCHEDULE

1.30 pm

Welcome and Introduction:

Anne Gifford, Head of School, School of Creative and Cultural Industries

1.40 pm

Mashing Up: Practice + Research: an introduction

Graham Jeffery, Reader, Creative & Cultural Industries, UWS

2.10 pm

Polymash artistic practice

Chris Dooks, Artist

2.40 pm

Questions/Discussion

2.55 pm

Coffee

3.15 pm

Parallel Sessions:

1. Social Creativities? Artistic Practice with Communities

Kirsten McLeod, PhD student, UWS

Jackie Sands, arts and health coordinator, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde

(Chair: Katarzyna Kosmala)

2. Solitary Creativities? Reflections on the individual “creative process”

David Manderson, Lecturer in Creative Writing, UWS

Rachael Flynn, PhD student, UWS

David Scott, Lecturer in Music, UWS

(Chair: Graham Jeffery)

3. Producing creativities? Mediating the university/work divide

Nic Jeune, Director of Artswork Media, Bath Spa University

Peter Broughan, Lecturer in Film-making/Producing, UWS

Paul Tucker, Lecturer in Broadcast Production, UWS

(Chair: Anne Gifford)

4.15 pm

Panel/Plenary: Ecologies of learning: Research/Practice/Creativity – feedback from sessions

Chair: Katarzyna Kosmala/Graham Jeffery

4.45 pm

Closing Keynote: creative practice: research and the academy

Prof. Graeme Harper, Bangor University

5.15 pm

Close

Please book with CCA for Symposium
Kathryn Elkin, CCA
+44 (0) 141352 4900
www.cca-glasgow.com

Creative Practice/Research @ UWS

GI Festival and Curriculum for Excellence @ Tramway, 28th April

My Glasgow Granny from Donegal

Remaking Society

Alessandra Campoli: Edges

Sensory Worlds

Markko Maetamm: art in a changing society

Place, home, and place-making

Cultural Hijack: Rethinking Intervention

The Wonders of the Visible World

The Wonders of the Visible World

Read More Journal Launch: Threshold Artspace, Perth

Shorelines Exhibition, Maclaurin Gallery, Ayr

Shorelines: Place, Creativity and Wellbeing

Art, Resistance and Alternatives: a screening and discussion with Oliver Ressler and Katarzyna Kosmala

MEd Artist Teacher @ GoMA, 1st October

The Deptford Machine

Whose Story is it Anyway?

Vault Lounge: Art, Money and Value

Knowing Ways

Making Routes

Public Preparation

3 x 2 x 3: Ben Parry

3 x 2 x 3: David Overend: Exposition, Exposition, Exposition

3 x 2 x 3: Kirsten MacLeod: I film therefore I am

3 x 2 x 3: Selecting a Fishing Rod for the Exhausted Artist

3 x 2 x 3

3 x 2 x 3

MashingUp: Curating/Practice

John Vella: 30 years of practice: a blow your nose job

3 x 3 x 3

A playful talk on play: Thursday 24th March

Image, Object and Identity: photography and the construction of meaning in the 21st century

Postdigital Encounters: Creativity and Improvisation

Feminist histories and feminism's political future, University of Edinburgh, 10th/11th March

Red Skirts on Clydeside

Shorelines: A one day international symposium exploring place, creativity and wellbeing

KIN Symposium, CCA, Saturday 12th February

Substratum at Sound Thought 2011

Translating Russian and East European Cultures

MashingUp: Pedagogy and Play

MASHINGUP: This ongoing series of events stimulates critical, transdisciplinary research communities to discuss advanced knowledge and to build networks of excellence among producer communities.

Imagining Europe, Representing Periphery: The Body Language

Current Issues in European Cultural Studies 2011

June 15–17, Norrköping, Sweden

Call for contributions

Stream: Imagining Europe, Representing Periphery: The Body Language

Published in these days the art book “Submerged landscapes: a pinhole photographic tale” by Martino Nicoletti of UWS

Intercultural dialogue: arts policy and practice in Europe

"STENOPEICA": in Bangkok a multimedia exhibition by Seubsakun Sarunputi, Martino Nicoletti, Toeingam Guptabutra and Alessandra Campoli

Performance Art workshop at Silpakorn University, Bangkok, held by Alessandra Campoli, PhD candidate at UWS

Tensions of Art-Based Practice in Educational Settings: Research and Learning in the Visual Arts

Gentle Actions: Art Ecology Action, Oslo

MashingUp: Art+Labour, 9th November, CCA Glasgow

"The visual imagination: across boundaries". UWS @ ACSA Conference, Bangkok.

Document 8 International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival @ CCA Glasgow 26 -31 October

Samantha Clark in Stromness: ecology/art/landscape

Kirsten McLeod: screenings and events

Ayr Alternative Arts Day, 25th September

OLD/NEW NEW/OLD

Art practice and co-creation

Contemporary Art and Environmental Aesthetics

Spaces of encounter: Artists, conversations, and meaning-making

Call for papers: Practice-led research in the arts

MA: Music: Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Mashing Up: Practice+Research: Graham Jeffery

Mashing Up: Practice+Research: Nic Jeune

Mashing Up: Practice+Research: Chris Dooks

Mashing Up: Practice + Research

“MASHING-UP...”A Public Lecture Series presented by UWS and CCA

This ongoing lecture series stimulates critical, transdisciplinary research communities to discuss advanced knowledge and to build networks of excellence among producer communities.

“MASHING-UP...”
A Public Lecture Series
presented by UWS and CCA