Samantha Clark in Stromness: ecology/art/landscape

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

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

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

Art practice and co-creation

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

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

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.