Michael Heilgemeir's 'Archives of the Artist-led' included in the UCL Urban Laboratory's 'Cities Methodologies 2014' exhibition – Private View Tuesday 28th October

This is a brief initial post regarding my project 'Archives of the Artist-led', which has been selected for the UCL Urban Laboratory's 'Cities Methodologies 2014' exhibition – and an invitation to come and see the exhibition.

I have previously presented work in progress from this project at my TVAD talk back in March and the feedback from this presentation helped develop this project further into an installation format that brings together a a collaborative, open-access knowledge base of artist-led spaces and the publication 'The Nomadic Studio' in an interactive setting. The display is designed by installation artist Claudia Djabbari.

A more detailed post will follow soon after the exhibition opens.

The private view and exhibition opening is on Tuesday 28th October, 6:30 – 9pm at the Slade Research Centre, UCL, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0HB. All welcome, no booking required.

Further opening times:

Wednesday 29 October, 10.00 - 20.00
Thursday 30 October, 10.00 - 21.00
Friday 31 October, 10.00 - 18.00

Further information on the exhibition and related programme of events:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanlab/events/exhibition-launch-cities-methodologies-2014

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanlab/news/cities-methodologies-2014

CITIES METHODOLOGIES is an annual exhibition and programme of events showcasing innovative methods of urban research from across UCL and the wider urban research community.

ARCHIVES OF THE ARTIST-LED is a collaborative, free and open-access database of shared knowledge on historic and current artist-led spaces or projects that anyone can contribute to. It is an attempt to map the trajectories of these crucial contributions to contemporary culture and the urban experience, as well as to preserve knowledge on initiating and successfully maintaining such projects – and make it accessible for everyone. 

Initiated by Michael Heilgemeir as a companion to the publication ‘The Nomadic Studio – Art, Life and the Colonisation of Meanwhile Space’ it is developed in collaboration with Mo Hoffmann Studios. If you would like to contribute and add an artist-led project to ‘Archives of the Artist-led’ you can simply create an account on archivesoftheartistled.org and start editing.

‘THE NOMADIC STUDIO — ART, LIFE AND THE COLONISATION OF MEANWHILE SPACE’ is a publication of photographs and texts by Michael Heilgemeir which together form an enquiry into the role of the artist studio within processes of re-development in cities today, and portray the spirit of an artists’ commune working in temporary urban sites. Operating as case study, this photographic perspective encompasses a set of vignettes, reflections, facts and fantasies extracted from the lifeworld of a transitional artist-led community in Bermondsey, South London and its 18 months in creative habitation of a complex of defunct council premises. In light of this narrative the publication also revisits the rarely told historical experience of autonomous artist spaces and their sociopolitical implications through a series of new texts and interviews with contributors Mike Nelson, Jonathan Harvey, Ron Henocq and Fran Cottell. Capturing the nature of such transient spatial interactions, The Nomadic Studio explores and highlights a vital cultural tradition of experimentation and freedom within the increasingly precarious urban zone and the extent to which these temporary artist-run spaces — despite their importance within contemporary culture and the city — are often forgotten.

Further info: thenomadicstudio.com

Michael Heilgemeir

TVAD Research Group - Plans for 2014

The TVAD Research Group has enjoyed a productive period in the past academic year 2013-14, and looks forward to further development in the current year. Development will focus on two directions: greater collaboration between TVAD’s researchers, and further external collaborations. The former will build on commonalities revealed through the sharing of research in the TVAD Talks series, for example in the shared interest the design event (Kerry Purcell) and the photographic event (Dr Daniel Marques Sampaio) and how the body opposes power (Dr Daniel Marques Sampaio) through undress (Dr Barbara Brownie). Collaboration between TVAD members has also found focus in last year’s Texts/Cities conference convened by Dr Daniel Marques Sampaio and Michael Heilgemeir, which showcased the work of other TVAD researchers among others, including Dr Barbara Brownie and Dr Marta Rabikowska, each with an interest in place and environment. We plan collaborations with the wider University research community via the University’s Centre for Sustainable Communities (particularly research collaboration with the Centre’s Dr Susan Parham), Creative Economy Research Centre and UH Galleries. External collaboration will be boosted when we are joined by our third annual Visiting Researcher, Dr Javier Gimeno-Martínez, working on national identity and globalization in design in the current academic year. TVAD comprises a group of established and emergent researchers and across the constituency; we seek to prioritise quality in our activities and outputs, pursuing publication in the most favourably rated journals in the various fields engaged by TVAD research and seeking strategic conference exposure. As an aid to quality we also plan a reading group, to facilitate peer feedback on work in progress.  

What follows is an outline of the planned work for some of TVAD’s researchers, who were present to represent their research at a TVAD meeting in September 2014. Other TVAD researchers’ work is outlined in the TVAD webpages.

As noted, Dr Daniel Marques Sampaio has been working with Michael Heilgemeir on the Texts/Cities conference last year (which showcased the work of other TVAD researchers including Dr Barbara Brownie and Dr Marta Rabikowska) and a related event in Berlin. A resultant volume of TVAD's online peer-reviewed journal Writing Visual Culture is planned for publication by the end of the current academic year. Michael and Daniel plan to develop the issue as an app to emphasize the visual aspects of the content with enhanced multimedia for the iPad. Daniel will deliver a new paper at the conference 'Photography and Politics: Images of Revolution' while Michael has developed his project 'The Nomadic Studio' into an open wiki and has been liaising with UCL's urban lab.

Dr Marta Rabikowska has focused on fewer targets, centred upon people, environment and discourse. She is interested in working with Michael and Daniel further. She will be presenting her research on the role of reflection at the University's SSAHRI research institute conference Betwixt and Between (October 2014) and at another conference in November. Dr Rabikowska has a book contracted on the topic of visual methods in community which summarises her research over the past six years (Rowman and Littlefield), and she is developing published work on the creative labour of diverse urban communities in London.

Dr Barbara Brownie is working on and with the 'Titles and Trailers' group. She has two books on fashion forthcoming with Bloomsbury and will have two journal articles completed within the next year.

           Polly Palmer is working on a journal article about study experiences out of the classroom and capacity for social and cultural change that this pedagogical practice promises, with reference to regeneration theory. She is contributing a research seminar on the same topic to the TVAD Talks series and is working with UH Galleries on engaging students with the Galleries’ exhibition series.

  

In August 2015, the British Film Institute will publish Dr Mark Broughton’s analysis of the 1981 television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited. Dr Broughton is working on a new book about screenwriter Nigel Kneale and plans to undertake a new study about the rostrum camera facilitated by external funding.

Dr Grace Lees-Maffei is completing two contracted book manuscripts to be published in 2016: Designing Worlds: National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization, co-edited with Prof Kjetil Fallan (Berghahn, for submission in January 2015) and Reading Graphic Design, co-authored with Dr Nicolas P. Maffei, (Bloomsbury Academic, for submission in June 2015). In addition, she is contracted to write three book chapters for the different large scale book projects on consumption and globalization, home and hospitality and verbal descriptions of furniture respectively. Dr Lees-Maffei has several projects planned for which she will apply for external funding, and a new book project proposal in process.

Watch this space for news of these plans developing!

 

Dr Grace Lees-Maffei
TVAD Research Group Leader.

Nick Lovegrove speaks about his project: Crisis Communication

At yesterday's seminar, TVAD member Nick Lovegrove presented the body of work that he produced for his MA. A video of his presentation can be found here:


Nick Lovegrove: Crisis Communication from Barbara Brownie on Vimeo.

‘Crisis Communication: A visual history of BP’s use of public relations after the Deepwater Horizon accident’

The project I will introduce is part of a larger body of work I created whilst conducting my MA in 2012. After extensive research, I produced a series of rhetorical pieces of design that explored how graphic design's techniques of persuasion could be used to expose and critique the Public Relations industry. They attempted to explain the nature, history, practices and ethics of the industry to the public, drawing attention to the way organisations attempt to control and manipulate their public image.

One of these outcomes was a book that acts as a critical reaction to BP's crisis management of the Deepwater Horizon accident. Using the firm's own press releases, commissioned imagery and publicly available data I created a one-off publication that acts as a timeline charting the company's response to the disaster.

After presenting the project at a conference at LCC in August, this method of visually documenting an event has resulted in a number of potential collaborations with academics from varying fields who usually rely on the written word to communicate their practice. This takes graphic design away from its usual commercial constraints, towards a wider role as a research tool.

Memory: Forgetting and Creating, Conference at the University of Gdańsk, Poland, 11-12 September 2014

On Thursday 11^th September, I spoke at the interdisciplinary conference Memory: Forgetting and Creating, at the University of Gdańsk. This is how the organisers described the topic of the conference, in their call for papers:

“In our increasingly fast-paced societies, where information is abundant and its reception is superficial, human memory appears to be an endangered phenomenon. This is why we would like to take a closer look at the complex processes of memory. These include forgetting, neglecting, negation, and detachment, along with creating, recollecting, remembering, regaining memories, and reconstructing one’s relationship with the past. We are deeply interested in examples and consequences of altered memories: invention, fabrication, deception, indoctrination or propaganda. We invite reflection on mutual relations between memory and imagination, fantasising and manipulating, forgetting and creating.”

The conference was organised by the Research Unit for Dream, Memory and Imagination Studies at the University of Gdańsk, together with the Jagiellonian University (Poland), the Federal University of Paraná (Brazil), the University of São Paulo (Brazil), and the McGill University (Canada).

It was a large conference, with more than 100 papers presented on five parallel sessions: Section A on The Arts, Section B: on Culture, History, and Society; Section C on Testimony, Fiction, and Storytelling; Section D on Psychology, Philosophy, and Education; and Section E on Memory and Literature. These parallel sessions took place on morning, afternoon, and early evening slots over the two days, creating an atmosphere of immersion in which the lunch and coffee breaks were welcome not only as opportunities to explore ideas in a more informal setting, but also as much needed moments to stretch, socialise, and refuel.

My paper, Competing Narratives of Memory in the Regeneration of Greenwich Peninsula, was presented in the Culture, History, and Society session, chaired by Cayo Gamber, from the George Washington University (US). The paper looked at shifts in political and business discourse about the regeneration of Greenwich Peninsula in London, in the years preceding the Millennium Celebrations, as the UK moved from a Conservative to a Labour Government.

The other speakers in the session were: Dorota Ściślewska (University of Łódź, PL), with the paper On the Trail of Lost Memories: Muslim Feminists in Search of Female Dignity in the Doctrine and History of Islams; Anna Miller (University of Gdańsk), with Forgetting the Gdańsk Shipyard; and Andrzej Śledź (Jagiellonian University), speaking on The Strategies of Dealing With the Post-Transition Culture Trauma: The Case of Cracow’s Club of Gazeta Polska. The session generated a lively discussion of recent Polish and British political history, trade unionism, and Muslim feminism, a discussion that continued during the very convivial dinner that closed the day.

Of the events opening the Friday proceedings, I was impressed especially by Jugów: Memory and Oblivion. Stories of Resettled Women, a documentary film presented by Sławomira Walczewska (Women's Foundation eFKa, PL). The documentary presented first-person accounts of migrations from and to Jugów during, and in the aftermath, of WW2.

The conference offered a very rich programme, which regrettably I could not sample more widely because so many events ran parallel to one another. It was a positive experience, enabling me to reflect on various possibilities for my own research, and for the project Texts+Cities, on which I have been working with Michael Heilgemeir. The focus of the strand of my research of which the paper for this conference is an example has been on tracing the import of political and economic ideologies for the definition and uses of urban spaces. A consideration of the narratives of memory that emerge in such processes had been present, but never quite on the foreground of the research.

Finally, I should mention the conference organisers, Prof. Wojciech Owczarski (University of Gdańsk), and Zofia Ziemann (Jagiellonian University). They not only put together a well-organised and enjoyable event, but also hosted it with warmth and charm, speaking to all present, and making the participants feel welcome and relaxed.

Daniel Marques Sampaio.

BETWEEN TEXTS AND CITIES - CALL FOR PAPERS

BETWEEN TEXTS AND CITIES

A themed edition of Writing Visual Culture

CALL FOR PAPERS

Writing Visual Culture is the journal of the TVAD research group. It publishes original double-blind peer-reviewed open access scholarship on all aspects of visual culture, spanning art, design and media. We are seeking submissions for a new themed edition exploring the relationships between texts and urban spaces in contemporary society.

The urban spaces with which this edition is concerned are those of the contemporary, networked cities that have emerged since the crises of Capitalism of the 1970s. These contemporary networked cities are inseparable from texts –

-                          from the ideologies that underpin their physical structure, their many organisms, their policies and functioning;

-                          from the production, consumption, and circulation of information and data, which have turned cities into environments that require to be explored through their physical presence, as technological artefacts, as textual objects, and as symbolic entities;

-                          from dissenting discourses that resist and challenge the transformations wrought by processes of Globalisation.

The aim of this themed edition is to reflect on ways of producing, reproducing, consuming, and actuating the urban; ways that approach experience and interpretation of the urban not as discrete activities, but as inseparable from one another.

We welcome submissions guided by, but not limited to, the following topics:

·         Analyses of representations (fictional, cartographic, theoretical) of urban spaces and of the ‘urban experience’;

·         The influence of New Media, Big Data, and imaging technologies in the understanding of, and action within cities;

·         Ideal cities, utopias, dystopias, heterotopias;

·         Political and economic ideologies and urban spaces;

·         Arts in the city;

·         Textual interventions in urban spaces (graffiti, advertising, etc.).

Abstracts of 200 words for papers of 3000-6000 words should be submitted via email to Daniel Marques Sampaio (d.marques-sampaio@herts.ac.uk)  and Michael Heilgemeir (m.heilgemeir@herts.ac.uk) by Monday 1^st September 2014.

Abstracts should make clear the connection between the proposed paper and the theme of the journal issue.

Completed papers must be original and not have been published previously or accepted for publication elsewhere, and be ready to be submitted in late November 2014.

We welcome also expressions of interest for visual contributions (e.g. videos, artworks, etc.), as the journal issue is part of a project that will include an exhibition, the details of which will be published in due course. 

Deadline for submission of 200-word abstracts	MONDAY 1st SEPTEMBER 2014
Deadline for submission of completed papers	FRIDAY 28th NOVEMBER 2014
Publication	Mid-2015

Writing Visual Culture: /https://journals.stca.herts.ac.uk/

TVAD: http://www.herts.ac.uk/research/ssahri/research-areas/art-design/tvad-theorising-visual-art-and-design.html

TVAD Blog: http://tvad-uh.blogspot.co.uk/

Anthropology and Photography conference, British Museum, 29-31 May 2014

Conference poster

On Friday 30th May I presented an illustrated paper at the Anthropology and Photography conference at the British Museum, organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute. My paper 'Excavating images: a photographic response to an archaeological excavation' was selected for inclusion in the Archaeology and Photography panel, convened by Dan Hicks (Oxford University) and Lesley McFadyen (Birkbeck). I gave a draft of this paper in March at a TVAD research seminar, and the feedback from colleagues helped to develop the paper, which references my experience as an Artist in Residence during an excavation last summer.

Here is my abstract:

In 2013 Timespan Heritage Museum in Scotland commissioned photographic artist Carolyn Lefley as their Artist in Residence during the excavation of a longhouse ruin. This paper explores the relationship between photography and archaeology, referencing Lefley’s methodology and photographic output.

This illustrated paper examines the parallels of the process of excavation, of peeling back the layers of earth to reveal evidence of the past and the indexical quality of a photograph to record reality. What is interesting about most excavations is that the site being revealed pre-dates the invention of photography.

Lefley collaborated with archaeologists to make a photographic response to the excavation. Fieldwork was combined with research exploring notions of home, the Highland Clearances (including diaspora and migration), excavating and documenting, art and archaeology. Out of this research and time spent daily at the dig, Lefley made new work using a variety of photographic techniques to create new artefacts that now sit alongside the findings of the excavation in the museum. The paper concludes with a presentation of the photographic output from the excavation. ‘The Diaspora Stones’ are a new collection of pseudo photographic fossils exploring key themes linked to the excavation, including abandonment, home and migration. ‘The Descendants’ are a series of photographic portraits taken at the dig site, which reference the tradition of the human scale in archaeological photography. 

The Diaspora Stones, Carolyn Lefley, 2013

The Archaeology and Photography panel was in a more relaxed setting in a seminar room in the Clore Centre, at the British Museum. The chairs were arranged in a semi-circle, which encouraged dialogue. It was an encouraging, yet critically engaged group, including academics and practitioners from across the disciplines of art, photography, anthropology, archaeology and heritage, with many knowledgeable across all of these fields. Colleen Morgan (University of York) presented 'Archaeological Photography as Dangerous Supplement?'. Colleen states in her abstract: "Archaeology has a long, complex, and fascinating entanglement with photography, a relationship that continues into the digital age. To understand the florescence of digital photography in archaeology, we must inhabit an interdisciplinary space, a space that lies between the compound field of visual studies and archaeology but that also attends to issues of representation, authority, and authenticity”. Colleen's paper beautifully summed up this interdisciplinary space of visual studies (and visual art) and archaeology. Another paper addressed this notion directly: ‘Dust on the Lens: Intersections in Archaeology and Art Photography’ Ursula Frederick (Australian National University). Ursula’s excellent paper looked the work of Australian photographers who “think and practice archaeologically”. Antonia Thomas (University of the Highlands and Islands) presented an engaging, well-written biography of photographs of the Brodgar Stone and explored “the role that photography plays in constructing archaeological narratives”. Helen Wickstead (Kingston University, cofounder of the Art+Archaeology http://www.artarchaeology.org research group) and Martyn Barber (English Heritage) presented ‘Drawing on Photographs: Aerial Photogrammetry and Virtual Mapping, 1865 to 1900’. This paper interrupted “the assumed visual equivalence between aerial photographs and maps by highlighting the work that has been necessary to allow aerial photographs to operate like virtual maps”. The full list of papers in this panel can be seen here: http://www.nomadit.co.uk/rai/events/rai2014/panels.php5?PanelID=2938

There is not enough space in this blog post to discuss all of the papers in this panel, let alone the whole conference (which had an overwhelming amount of parallel panels). I enjoyed being part of this panel and got some helpful and encouraging feedback on my paper (mainly in the all-important coffee breaks / wine reception!). I’m hoping some of the connections I made during the conference will lead to future collaborations.

Highlights from the rest of the conference include:    

• The keynote by Elizabeth Edwards (De Montfort University) ‘Anthropology and Photography: a long history of knowledge and affect’.
• Panel 27: Archives, Art and Text convened by Barbara Knorpp (Brunel) and Marcel Reyes-Cortez (Goldsmiths).  
• Panel 28: Photography as a research method, convened again by Marcel Reyes-Cortez.
• Panel 23: One City, Multiple Stories: Visual Narratives of LondonUrbanism, convened by Kristin Koptiuch (Arizona State University) and Akanksha Mehta (SOAS).

It was an extremely rich programme, of which I only scratched the surface, because of all of the parallel panels. The RAI are planning on bringing out a publication to archive this event, but only a selection of the papers will be included. I’m going to finalise my paper and as well as submitting to the RAI, I will also look at submitting this paper to photography journals and online interdisciplinary journals. Overall, it was a really positive experience, which I’m still processing and reflecting on. Anthropology and archaeology are not areas that have conscientiously influenced and informed my practice until the residency last summer, which has sent me on a trajectory into new areas. 

Here are the slides I used to illustrate my spoken paper: http://www.slideshare.net/lefley/excavating-images-carolyn-lefley-2014

An interesting synergy of photography and archaeology is represented on the RAI flickr site for this panel, where my works sits alongside the work of delegates Antonia Thomas and Ursula Frederick.

You can read about my Art/Archaeology residency from last summer here: http://timespan.org.uk/category/carolyn-lefleys-blog/)