Category Archives: Public Events

Neil Brownsword, Prof of Ceramics, in Conversation at the London Craft Week 2022

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As part of the London Craft Week 2022, the Korea Association of Art and Design returns for London Craft Week 2022 with a panel of experts in the area of ceramics, glass and crafts.

The virtual event will take place 9 May 2022, at 11:00 AM . Professor Brownsword will give a talk on:

Thinking through the Past for the Future: Neil Brownsword, Artist, Researcher, Professor, Department of Ceramics, Staffordshire University, UK 

Registration is at:

https://www.londoncraftweek.com/events/conversations-in-contemporary-korean-craft/

Abstract is provided below.

https://www.londoncraftweek.com/events/conversations-in-contemporary-korean-craft/

Thinking through the Past for the Future.   

Neil Brownsword 

 Throughout history, ceramics have played an important role in the phenomenon of cultural transfer. For centuries China, Korea and Japan have influenced each other’s aesthetics, practices and technologies. Subsequent trade with the West, and the imitation and assimilation of East Asian goods and styles in the late 17th and 18th centuries greatly influenced the development of new ceramic traditions in Europe that were to gain historical prominence.  

 Since 2015 artist Neil Brownsword has explored this historic cycle of knowledge exchange, via performances staged in South Korea and the UK which have addressed the cultural hierarchies and value systems aligned to their ceramic traditions.In his work Factory (2017) staged at Icheon World Ceramic Centre, Brownsword re-choreographed the indigenous ceramic practices of two ex-factory personnel from Stoke-on-Trent and four Korean artisans to question established hierarchies of cultural production and reassign value to people and practices displaced by global economics.  

By reactivating obsolescence via non-commercialised production, Brownsword revealed a shared language of haptic intelligences developed through ethical modes of exchange between East and West.  

 Performing FACTORY in Korea enabled the actors of marginalised immaterial heritage to renegotiate their value in a context where similar embodiments of knowledge are culturally protected. Its tour to the British Ceramics Biennial 2017, furthered UK/Korea cultural exchange, strengthening Stoke-on-Trent’s regeneration ambition as a global centre for ceramics. This presentation examines the context and development of Brownsword’s collaborations and his exploration of heritage as a ‘living process’ that can be constantly reimagined for the future. 

 Neil Brownsword is an artist, researcher and educator who holds a professorial position in ceramics at Staffordshire University. Brownsword began his career in ceramics as an apprentice at the Wedgwood factory in the mid- 1980’s. His practice examines the legacy of globalisation in relation to Stoke-on-Trent’s ceramic manufacturing sector, and the impact this has had upon people, place and traditional skills. Using film and performative installation Brownsword deconstructs complex craft knowledge within industrial production to pose questions surrounding the value of inter-generational skill. His work is represented in public/private collections internationally, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Korea Ceramic Foundation, Yingee Ceramic Museum Taiwan and Fu Le International Ceramic Art Museum China. In 2009 he was awarded the ‘One Off Award’ at the inaugural British Ceramic Biennial, and the Grand Prize at the Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale, South Korea in 2015, and Whitegold International Ceramic Prize in 2019. 

New Book: Inside the Rehearsal Room by C3’s Rob Marsden

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Associate Professor and C3 Centre member Rob Marsden’s text ‘Inside the Rehearsal Room‘  is now out, published by Bloomsbury/ Methuen Drama.

Book launch at Wednesday 2nd March at 6.30 at the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. RSVP to r.j.marsden@staffs.ac.uk email

Inside the Rehearsal Room is both an instructional and conceptual examination of the rehearsal process.

Drawing on professional practice and underpinned by theory, this book moves through each stage of rehearsals, considering the inter-connectivity between the actor, director, designers and the backstage team, and how the cumulative effect of the weeks in rehearsal influences the final production. The text also includes: – Auto-ethnographic and fully ethno-graphic case study approaches to different rehearsal rooms – Interviews with directors, actors, designers and actor trainers – A consideration of the ethics of the rehearsal room and material selected for production – Practical exercises on how to creatively read a text from an acting and directing perspective.

Informed by over 20 years of directing experience in the UK and Europe, Robert Marsden’s book offers a practical guide that ultimately demystifies the rehearsal process and challenges how the rehearsal room should be run in the 21st Century.

Interviews include with Rufus Norris, Kate Wasserberg, Kirstie Davis, Ivo van Hove, Roy Alexander Weise, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Steven Boden, RC-Annie, Katrina Lindsay, Paule Constable, Stephen Mear and many more…

Upcoming Event: How Culture 3.0 is your city?

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Carola Boehm: My #Culture30Walks – How Culture 3.0 is your city?

 

Summary:

Even before the pandemic the UK, along with many other countries, has seen a shift in  how we want to value the way we engage in cultural activities, culminating in the Arts Council England’s 10-year strategy of “Let’s Create”, firmly focussing on supporting access of communities and individuals to cultural production.

For Carola Boehm, a self-described musician-tech-academic, Luigi Sacco’s concept of Culture 3.0 is a key one, characterised by ‘everyday creativity’,  co-creation, open platforms, ubiquitously available production tools and individuals constantly shifting and renegotiating their roles between producing and consuming content. This ‘doing away’ with gatekeeping systems supports access, diversity and is evidenced to simply make all our lives healthier, happier, more creative and more resilient.

In testing that notion, she took some walks and documented them in a few twitter threads. These culture30 walks aimed at making visible how places that have attended specifically to cultural policy have almost unknowingly enhanced the everyday creativity that one encounters on a simple 30 minute walk to work. One by one, a #culture30walk told her a story of how culture30 a city really was.

On February 9th, 7pm (UK time) she will explore this with thewalking artist community as part of the Walk – Listen – Cafe (https://walklistencreate.org/category/walk-listen-cafe/?post_type=walkingevent), discussing how this Culture 3.0 concept interfaces with those of the walking artist community.  

The curated twitter thread from 2019 can be still seen at #Culture30walk 

Upcoming Profs in the Pav with Ian Brown

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Celebrity and the Attention Economy: how popular culture can commodify an audience’s attention

 

Event

 

Professor Ian Brown will base his presentation on a series of artworks produced as part of artists’ group Common Culture (Ian Brown, David Campbell, Mark Durden). The work uses appropriation and the ready-made to engage audiences in a critical assessment of a celebrity culture which functions by commodifying its audience’s attention, leading to questions on its cultural and social value.

OMG I love common culture !!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️  and ME, The Total Show were made in response to an American internet celebrity who capitalized on the intimate relationship he had built with his online followers by trademarking the name ‘Common Culture’ to brand, promote and sell a range of products.  The Die Raum gallery was turned into a Common Culture shopfront, with logo, weblink and an accumulation of graphic stickers based on the online posts of the celebrity’s fan base. The Rampa gallery collates appropriated and translated material into an enclosed interior space for consumption. The two exhibitions involve a parodic mimicry of the internet celebrity’s commodification of his audience, himself and his products. This explores how the aesthetics, interactions and transactional intimacy built by internet personalities are ruthlessly deployed to convert followers into consumers and attention capital. 

OMG I love common culture!!!!♥♥♥♥ Die Raum, Berlin, Germany. 29th Feb — 19th April 2020 

Gallery Website: http://www.dieraum.net/index.php?/exhibitions/2020-0045-common-culture/

ME, The Total Show Rampa, Porto, Portugal 30th April – 29th May 2021

Gallery Website: https://www.rampa.pt/event/me-the-total-show/

Upcoming Industrial Crafts Research Symposium

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Staffordshire University’s Professor Neil Brownsword is presenting at the upcoming virtual event:

The Industrial Crafts Research Network’s two-day inaugural symposium,

Exhibiting Skill: Understanding, Documenting, and Communicating Skilled Practices of Historical Industrial Environments.

Registration for this symposium can be found here.

Poster and  Programme downloadable here.

 

PaTHES Online Social Meets – Season 4

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PaTHES Online Social Meets – Season 4

Hosted by Carola Boehm, the International Society for Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education organising virtual social meets, where we come together and chat informally about topics around current challenges for Higher Education and for our Higher Education Futures.

Homepage is at https://pathes.org/pathes-online-social-meets-season-4/

SEASON THEME: Colonisation, Coloniality and Whiteness in the Academy

Led by Dr Thushari Welikala, St. George’s, University of London, UK & facilitated by Prof Carola Boehm, Staffordshire University, UK

Season 4 Online Social Meets focus on how the continuing processes of colonisation, coloniality and whiteness are being utilised by the geo-political Centres to create a particular type of ‘global’ higher education. Colonisation and coloniality are processes that perpetuate the hegemony and the supremacy of whiteness within higher education systems across contexts. Whiteness reflects a set of “narrative structural positions, rhetorical tropes and habits of perception” (Dyer, 1997, p. 12) that enable power structures to continue different forms of coloniality of knowing within higher education institutions, despite the absence of white bodies (Shahjahan and Edwards, 2021).

Audre Lorde (2007) identifies whiteness as a mythical norm that enforces the supremacy of whiteness over others’ life and thought, maintaining the core of white dominance brought on by colonization and enslavement. Whiteness, as the colonial superstructure (Quijano, 2000), operates within current higher education under the guise of global university rankings, globalisation, internationalisation and projects on decolonisation and inclusion, shaping our social and educational imaginary and futurity through colonial ontologies and epistemologies (Christian, 2019).  

The global higher education magnifies white supremacy through racial neo-liberalisation, capitalism and competition, constructing particular values and beliefs about what is meant by learning, teaching and Being human. In question here is, how the often invisible and uncontested whiteness moulds the social- cultural and intellectual imaginaries within higher education and their impact on the process of maintaining and continuing the coloniality of knowing, supressing alternative ways of perceiving the world.

References

Christian, M. (2019). A Global Critical Race and Racism Framework: Racial Entanglements and Deep and Malleable Whiteness. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 2019, 5(2) 169–185

Dyer, R. (1997). White. Routledge.

Lorde, A. (2007). An Open Letter to Mary Daly, in Sister Outsider. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, pp.57-62.

Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from South, 1(3), 533–580.

Shahjahan, R.  A. and Edwards, K. T. (2021). Whiteness as futurity and globalization of higher education, Higher Education 10.1007/s10734-021-00702-x

For your time zone check on https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/

Friday                15/10/2021                   4.30pm-5.30pm (BST, UK Time)   LINK

Friday                22/10/2021                   4.30pm-5.30pm (BST, UK Time) 

Thursday (!)      28/10/2021                   4.30pm-5.30pm (BST, UK Time)

Friday                05/11/2021                   4.30pm-5.30pm (BST, UK Time)

Friday                12/11/2021                   4.30pm-5.30pm (BST, UK Time)

 

Beyond Preservation

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Endangered Ceramic Skills Symposium

Saturday 16 October 2021, 9am to 5pm
Potteries Museum & Art Gallery

Bethesda Street, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent ST1 3DW

Beyond Preservation: re-evaluating Intangible Cultural Heritage in the UK Ceramic Industry

Global economics and advances in automation technology have radically
transformed the landscape of the UK’s ceramic industry in recent decades.
Whilst these transitions have facilitated greater productivity, once
commonplace skills associated with ceramic manufacture have now been
displaced, threatening the continuation of much traditional knowledge.
Should such practices, deemed outmoded or economically unviable for
contemporary ceramic production be simply relegated to history or the
trails of heritage tourism? What value is there in safeguarding this
knowledge for the future? How can traditional practices be revived through
new modes of thinking and creativity in a digital age?


This symposium builds upon these questions, and highlights specialist
skills at significant risk of being lost from the industry, surveyed through
recent research for the Heritage Craft Association’s Red List of Endangered
Crafts. Making particular reference to North Staffordshire’s intangible
cultural heritage*, scholars together with former employees and current
representatives from the ceramics industry, will explore a variety of
perspectives concerning a re-evaluation of the industrial crafts and their
revitalisation through contemporary exchange and adaptation.


Although the symposium will be taking place within a cultural event, it will
discuss ways to connect with the local community beyond cultural
institutions, so that they can develop, engage and participate in ‘their’
intangible heritage. It is hoped that this event will introduce new ways of
valuing industrial ceramics skills that are not influenced by the immutable
heritage discourse of experts, by facilitating those that were and are still
involved in the industry to articulate the value of their own heritage.

More details at https://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/c3centre/files/2021/10/Beyond-Preservation-programme-v1.5.pdf

 

 

Staffordshire University Arts Collection Exhibition

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Staffordshire University Arts Collection

Our Fine Arts department has the pleasure of inviting you to the ‘Staffordshire University Arts Collection Exhibition’ and an exhibition of two of our MAns Fine Art students ‘ Loss of information’

The Staffordshire University Art Collection exhibition showcases some of the work from the University Arts Collection in the Cadman Fine Art Space, featuring the work of past students, staff and even some of our current technical team. Michael Branthwaite and Fine Art Students Eve Travis and Lorna Lakin have been combing through the collection gathering the names and dates and creating a new archive of the collection. To extend their life, and find new locations to share this diverse range of artworks, this exhibition will allow university staff to ‘loan’ artworks from the collection, they will then be installed in their new location and recorded in the archive. As well as the physical collection there is also an entire slide collection and degree show catalogues stretching back to the 1980’s. This project is very much the beginning of a longer-term ambition to track the history of Fine Art at Staffordshire University back to its inception at the Bartlem School of Art in the early 1900’s.

How it works, firstly please come and enjoy the exhibition! 10-17:00 22-25th September. On the 28th September you are welcome to the closing event 17:00-18:30 to enjoy some refreshments as well as the MAns exhibition. At the event we will be on-hand to take details of the work University staff want to loan and will then work with estates to have it brought to you and installed.. ( We will need full name, email and a room number.)

If you require further information please get in touch with: M.branthwaite@staffs.ac.uk

 

Staffordshire University Arts Collection

NoiseFloor 2019 Call for Works and Proposals

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We are pleased to announce that NoiseFloor will once again be hosted by the Music and Sound department in our Cadman Studio Complex at Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK.

  • Dates: May 7th and 8th 2019
  • Deadline for abstract submission: 18th January 2019
  • Deadline for Registration: 15th March 2019

NoiseFloor is an interdisciplinary event with a focus on experimental composition. This year we are pleased to announce our KEYNOTE PRESENTATION from SIMON EMMERSON, professor in Music, Technology and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Our theme this year is Engagement.

“Who cares if you listen” is the title of an article from 1958, famously misattributed to the American composer Milton Babbitt. (Babbitt wrote the article, but the title was imposed by an editor).

60 years after Babbitt’s article, experimental or contemporary music is still often perceived as being “difficult”, “irrelevant”, or “out of touch”. To what extent are these conceptions and stereotypes merited? Should we as practitioners make more effort to engage with wider communities? Can this be achieved without diluting our work? Or is there an argument that our work should be governed by purely academic or aesthetic concerns? More generally, how can “challenging” art works or academic outputs reach wider audiences while still retaining their integrity? To what extent should our work engage with our social and environmental surroundings?

Works (compositions and performances) and proposals (for papers, lectures/recitals, panel discussions, workshops and other ideas) addressing this theme are particularly welcome. Of course, proposals for other relevant topics will also be considered. Submissions are invited from composers, academics, practitioners, individual researchers, postgraduates and any other interested parties.

Submissions should fall into one of the following categories:

  • 20-minute paper presentation (with 5 minutes for questions)
  • Fixed acousmatic works (up to 8 channel)
  • Acoustic instruments and electronics
  • Popular music and interactive systems (2 channel audio with video)
  • Fixed audio visual music (2 channel audio with video)
  • Workshop
  • Panel discussion

Please submit details of your composition, performance or proposal in the form of an abstract of between 250-300 words, together with brief biography (150 words), programme notes, and, where relevant, any links to audio/video examples of your work to our online submission form at:

http://staffordshire.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_57Tlg8B2e90P6At

Registration: The fees are £60 for presenters and for attendees, £35 for students. Concessions will be available for students of Staffordshire University. There is no submission fee.

Please note that you will need to provide your own performers and instruments and that contributors will be required to attend the event. More information is available at http://noisefloor.org.uk/ or by contacting a member of the organizing committee: