Prof Ian Brown, Co-Director of C3, will lead two sessions focussing on practice-based or practice-as-research.
When:
More details will be announced on our C3 MS Teams channel, or contact Prof Ian Brown.
The School of Digital, Technologies and Arts is again holding a series of seminars, chaired and curated by C3 member Becky Nunes, following a life-cycle of reserch: It will cover presentations by researchers about how projects start, how to work across teams, how to co-create research with external communities and in the second half of the season will moev to how research gets funded and reviwed.
Seminars are designed to be in person, but recordings will be available afterwards. Dates for the seminars are:
This partnership, recorded on 19 May 2022, was co-devised by colleagues at Keele University, Staffordshire University and Age UK Oxfordshire, as part of the Age of Creativity Festival 2022 and Creative Later Life 2025.
The keynote presentations and panel discussions around creative aging and placemaking, is now avaiable from the link above.
C3 Centre’s Professor Carola Boehm gave a talk on #Culture30Walks: How Creative is your Place?
Speakers included:
It covers topics and case studies exploring the following:
Recently released, in a warm and engaging audio interview, producer and Associate Professor Fiona Graham from C3 and historian Colin Winn walk to the craters and tour their perimeter. While doing so they share with us their stories behind this exciting project into the crater and talk about the special relationship that has developed with the local community. Colin is a military historian and tunnelling expert and Fiona an associate professor on the project.
The Hawthorn Redoubt was an formidable defensive position for the Germans which was blown up on the morning of 1 July 1916 by a mine that had been placed beneath the German stronghold on the ridge. The explosion, ten minutes before the whistles blew at 7:30am, destroyed the position but the timing of the detonation and the lifting of the artillery barrage meant that the position was reinforced by the Germans, leading to massive losses among the attacking British troops.
The full article and interview can be viewed and listened to at:
https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/hawthorn-ridge-a-forensic-investigation-into-the-archaeology-and-history-of-hawthorn-crater/
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.
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.
In this session, we consider existing strategies for cultural production that masquerade as avantgarde, while potentially in fact perpetuating an ideological status-quo. The role of the auteur is implicated in these strategies and examined in both presentations. The question is asked: what sort of art is really needed for our future societies?
In this session:
Wednesday 2 March 2022, Room T101
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/
A Practice-as-Research exploration by Corrin Jamal and Tim Anderson.
Henrion Gallery, Staffordshire University, 22nd to 28th November 2021.
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.
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
