An MA student led symposium.
Here are a selection of the talks from the Norwich University of the Arts MA student led Slimeposium held at The Forum, 13th July, 2023.
First up for this series of talks was Helen Stokes, who is studying for a Masters in Design Communication. As this is my area I was fascinated to see how she had approached the subject of the finding of a wreck off the coast of Great Yarmouth that has been labelled ‘Norfolk’s Mary Rose’. There is a very insightful article in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/feb/25/remains-of-17th-century-shipwreck-go-on-display-in-norfolk).
Helen’s question is ‘What is the role of design in the visitor experience of a museum exhibition?’ Explained not only why she was looking at how it is currently being displayed and promoted as part of the exhibition at Norwich Castle Museum (https://www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk/norwich-castle/whats-on/exhibitions/last-voyage-of-the-gloucester), which she comments being very slick and very branded although an unusual visitor flow with lots of plinths showing the journey to the Mediterranean Sea but, more importantly, through research how she would potentially approach the project. She has dug deeper and through research found several parts of the story that haven’t been highlighted.
She has experimented with typography that is sympathetic to that used of the time of the Gloucester, which sunk in 1682 carrying the Duke of York, the heir to the throne. 250 people drowned in the event. Helen also experimented with salt water watercolours creating some very organic outcomes. She also researched the way maps were drawn and the details of the drawing of them. In her research she researched the history of cartography and in doing so could see the links to colonialism which includes the connection to the slave trade which is inherently connected to the Duke of York who was the largest shareholder of the Royal African Company, the owners of The Gloucester.
There are clearly ethical issues here and the current exhibition doesn’t appear to discuss any of them, concentrating more on appealing to the general public to visit the exhibition and rejoice in such a find off our shores. Surely the darker side needs discussing, which is what Helen is keen to show.
See more at: https://www.helenstokes.net/
Trishia Hall, has a sculpture practice and is studying for a Masters in Fine Art. Her question is ‘How can my sculptural practice give meaning to the relationship between objects and space to generate a control that can take over from language?’ This is clearly along the lines of where I am with my thinking and although Trishia’s question has a double element to it there is still much to relate to.
She wants to shift the parameters of her work, to work quicker, freer. Which I can agree with, however, this sometimes can mean you are working faster than you are thinking or reflecting and as much as I like to work instinctively I am also aware that I have recently managed to slow down and consider more. Although later in the talk she discussed how there have been periods of ‘Not doing’ which can be seen as a positive, progressive thing. Trishia is interested in artists: Mike Nelson (https://mikenelson.org.uk/), Ian Kiaer (https://www.rsa.ox.ac.uk/people/ian-kiaer) and Gebi Sibony (https://www.greenenaftaligallery.com/artists/gedi-sibony).
Trishia stated that she wants to discuss the temporal and transitional and used the word ‘chaorder’ - a delicate balance between agility and ability. I like the word and what it can mean especially when she used a comment by Sol LeWitt about the work of Eva Hesse and how he described them as ‘studio learnings’ using the idea of how work is transitioned from studio space to how it can be read in an exhibition space.
Trishia also commented on Space - Reminded when displaying her work how much it is always about space, empty space. Re-purposing - Environmental concerns and the previous life of objects. Resonance - Behind her work lies a ‘sighting’ of an object’ Scale - A change of space and the piece seems bigger and how ‘it felt disconcertedly finished’. Transdisciplinary - multi disciplines bringing the discipline into question. Installation, Environment, Collection or Sculpture? - The work in the spaces and the viewer are all integral. How the tension between the elegance and theatricality works.
I felt that Trishia’s work and the way she works are very theoretical and she clearly spends a lot of time thinking over and developing the thoughts behind her work. Much to take on board.
Jayne Stansfeld, is studying for a Masters in Fine Art. The title of her presentation was ‘Spit in the image and birds nest soup’
Spit is used in many ways in art - cleaning, it requires no chemicals and can avoid harming the original piece. - Paper maché was originally chewed paper and spat on to the object and left to harden. Jayne showed some signs from the 1940’s about ‘Not spitting on a bus’. She questioned ‘Why would you want to spit on a bus...?’ Especially relevant when you consider in recent years and the issue of the transmission of disease.
Hemp growing and spinning and nettle spinning, spit is used to join the threads. Jayne discussed the artist Allan Brown - ‘After the death of his beloved wife, textile artist Allan Brown embarks on a seven-year endeavour to weave a hand-spun dress from stinging nettles foraged in the woods surrounding his home.’ (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27374831/).
What is spit? 95% water, the rest is what makes it gloopy, sticky and contains bacteria. We create between 1-1.5litres a day. Jayne then showed and discussed two clips from films. In Titanic, Jack teaches Rose to ‘spit like a man’... In ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’ Clint Eastwood spits tobacco juice throughout the film, as the film progresses the spit become more and darker and tends to be on something or someone - he spits on one of the men in the trading post, the snake oil salesman, a scorpion, a dog an a beetle always precedes a dark event or someone being shot.
What was interesting about this presentation was the focus on the subject, the depth at which the presenter had focussed on a very specific area and had mined deeper into. Something that I felt I needed to consider to do more of, and looking forward to next year to be able to make and present about my practice to this level.
We had started to look at more and more slime and slippage within the work, sometimes literally and sometimes figuratively. When you are making work and whether your practice is as research, based , led or through there will be slippage, it becomes about the control of the slippage, how much you want to control it and how much you are happy for it to slip of its own accord.
See more at: https://www.instagram.com/artsplay747/?hl=en-gb
Sheila Robinson, is studying for a Masters in Fine Art. The title of her presentation was ‘Slime and the sea.’
Sheila is very connected to the sea and started the presentation with a great quote from The Little Mermaid (1989) ‘Darlin’ it’s better down where it’s wetter.’ Then followed a series of slides discussing slimy objects from the sea, even though very little of them actually feature in Sheila’s current work, they are clearly all part of the research into her practice.
Seafoam - A single cell algae (not pollution) that store energy in the slime they live in. ‘When large blooms of algae decay offshore, great amounts of decaying algal matter often wash ashore. Foam forms as this organic matter is churned up by the surf.’ (https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/seafoam.html).
Hagfish - 300 million years old, unchanged in that time, they live on things that have died and fallen to the bottom of the sea. They can produce 4.5 litres of slime when it feels threatened. They have 150 slime glands and shoot the mucus out of a nostril. They can scrape their own slime off themselves, the actual slime could be used in so many ways but they can’t be bred in captivity so the slime can’t be formed.
Blobfish - Live 5 miles down, have very little muscle or bone to deal with the x1000 times greater pressure.
Salp - Tubular in shape, gelatinous, with no fins and used sea water to jet propel itself.
Sea snot - A collection of overgrowth of algae. Very dangerous for marine life, as shown in Turkey in 2021. ‘The phytoplankton responsible grow out of control when nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are widely available in seawater. (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/25/turkey-struck-by-sea-snot-because-of-global-heating).
Lobsters - The female keeps sperm for up to 3 years and can attract a male for a ‘top-up’. They moult out of their skin, which is when they are most vulnerable but also release pheromones into the water to attract a mate, who will fight to protect her while she grows a new shell, he releases his sperm at this stage and then she fertilises them and keeps the eggs until she is ready to release them.
Sheila finished by explaining the sea is made of water and everything in it, all of which is doing something, looking at you. She commented that she loves things that make her wonder, it inspires her to make and create.
Desmond Brett
Against the repeated background film of various moments in film that were all very slimy to different degrees Desmond discussed the art in relation to slime, slippage and how certain creations can be seen on ‘the threshold of recognition. Decomposition and flux’.
Desmond discussed a short story by Philip K. Dick ‘Pay For The Printer’, which I have managed to get an online version of, features creatures known as Biltongs that reproduce items from originals or copies and indeed copies of copies, rendering the output of an increasingly poorer quality. This has resonated with me, especially recently when I have looked closer at the control of language between human to human and human to machine, and vice versa. Especially as I have objects being 3D printed, as if by a Biltong, that have had varied results as the language and translation have failed or at least broken down.
In John Carpenter’s film The Thing (1982) the alien assumes the shape of those creatures around it. It has no fixed identity, it seamlessly slips and slides between beings, even the beings don’t know they are the alien. This was compared to clay from the ground in the hands of the artist where it is coerced into a shape, a being, and then returned to the earth to be remade in the future. Wet worked clay can be seen as ‘not yet’ which is before it can be seen as something, it has no shape, no form, there are no known signs to identify it. ‘Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is a simulation of reality. (Kellner, D. (Feb1987). “Baudrillard, Semiurgy, and Death”. Theory, Culture & Society. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications).
Extract from Alien (1979) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/characters/nm0000453)
Ripley : How do we kill it, Ash? There’s gotta be a way of killing it. How? How do we do it?
Ash : You can’t.
Parker : That’s bullshit.
Ash : You still don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.
Lambert : You admire it.
Ash : I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.
Key Note Speaker Chris Goodman (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4573142/)
After a brief introduction as to what projects Chris has been involved in, ie Dr Who, Red Dwarf, The Witcher, Luther and Slaughter House Rulez, etc. and how he uses digital sculpting, 3D printing and clay sculpting, Chris discussed slime as used in special effects.
Why go slimy? A lot is about texture, lighting and how it can create mystery, the unknown but can have a plastic quality, especially if not used carefully.
From dry as a bone to shiny as hell With Film it is attempting to hide the joins, whereas Fine Art it is often about looking to show you behind the scenes, to expose the cracks.
Slime through the ages Going back to The Blob, Quatermass 2 things became more blobby, more slimy. With this being in the 1960’s and the cultural context of the cold war , a lot of films were about playing on people’s paranoia. In the 1970’s with films such as The Exorcist (1973), Alien (1979) the details and the creatures became more guttural, grotesque and materialistic. The use of methyl-cellulose the amount of slime increased (on the tongue of Alien), American Werewolf in London (1981) and The Incredible Melting Man (1977), the 1980’s became an apex of slime, especially with The Fly (1986). Since then special effects have been about trying to make things more flesh like, more solid but with an element of slime or moisture to make it feel more flesh like. The more you see films with CGI the creatures have less slime, they are a lot drier, cleaner and with higher definition. Technically they often don’t show the contact with the floor as it’s difficult to continue any surface rendering beyond the object.
Really fascinating talk and a privilege to hear how someone from a Fine Art and indeed sculptural background has used this within the film industry and although he doesn’t actually technically own any of the creatures made, not even with intellectual property Chris believes you still need your own creative outlet
Marina Velez Vago
Marina’s talk presented a paper that gave initial insights into a number of artists with the emphasis being on ‘flow’. Below is a selection of points from the paper.
Cap_able. Knitted clothing that protects the wearer from facial recognition software. ‘Cap_able addresses the issue of privacy, opening the discussion on the importance of protection from the misuse of biometric recognition cameras’ ‘The algorithm that shields facial recognition is integrated into the texture designed to be worn without losing effectiveness, blending perfectly with the volumes of the body.’ (https://www.capable.design/home-1).
Nina Elder - Tongue Stones. Elder lets the landscape flow into her. You can touch a stone but can you feel it? ‘Tongue Stones depicts Nina Elder’s futile attempt to gain intimacy, knowledge, and empathy with geologic materials by forcing them into her mouth.’ (https://www.ninaelder.com/uplift).
Tania Kovats - Orgasm no 23 (2020). Kovats draws with her left hand , whilst pleasuring herself with her right hand. ‘...the Covid19 Pandemic Lockdown that are made through touch and reflect on how human touch has been associated with contamination.’ (https://biennial.drawingroom.org.uk/drawing/tania-kovats-orgasm-no-23/).
Herman de Vries. - Flora Incorporata. A documentation of all the plants he has eaten and therefore become a part of.
Hito Steyer - How Not To Be Seen. Becoming invisible in plain sight. Either as a superhero, living in a gated community or being a female artist over 50!
Marina Velez Vago - 50095 (2019). Her research has become elastic as nothing planned worked... ‘The video and sound together with the shepherd’s biography help to visualise the relationships between shepherd, sheep, land, trees and artist.’ (https://www.marinavelez.com/50095).
Yoko Ono - Fly Piece (1963) - An instruction piece of work that let respondents react and ‘fly’ as they wish. This enabled the artist to conduct research. There is much to explore with Ono’s Instruction Art - ‘Yoko Ono’s iconic artist’s book Grapefruit (1964), a compendium of her instruction-based artwork.’ (https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2015/07/15/happy-belated-birthday-to-yoko-onos-grapefruit/)
Chrissy Ralph
A performance artist who presented a verbal performance piece to a backdrop of a film that had many uncomfortable moments in, as she forced a spoon in her mouth and worked her way around an arrangement of objects on the floor. There was much dribbling (slime) and . She mentioned that ‘her mouth and her mind were so arid’. Various elements were mentioned in the spoken piece, subtle references to artists and issues of alluded to within the text. Childhood memories and even regrets. It was all very dreamlike and poetic. As a viewer it was both difficult to watch but entrancing, combined with the spoken word you drifted in and out of what your senses could deal with. Very personal and exposing of the artists thoughts, yet also masked through the two mediums.
Chrissy’s Instagram has a series of stories titled ‘eat it’, ‘kiss it’, ‘bite it’. These and other pages from her website along with some very graphic and powerful images of artistic exploration with these themes are very focussed on the mouth, what can be put in it, what it feels like to do things with it and what mark it can leave on objects. Her website, which contains very little copy to support all the imagery even states; ‘I am obsessed with mouths.’ (https://www.chrissyralph.com/contact).
This was the last of the presentations for the day and on reflection every different presenter had brought something very powerful to the event. I was particularly struck by the extreme focus and level of research by everyone but especially the second year MA students who seemed so much more advanced than I am with my practice. Will I be able to get to this level in a year? Can I really become this focussed on what it is I want to discuss and more importantly how I may want to explore and discuss my work at that stage?
The idea of a Slimeposium as a subject for a symposium and how this was shown quite literally by some but also more about the slippage and constantly changing areas within art with others was a feast of information and points of view. Sometimes trying to grasp a concept presented or more importantly trying to develop an idea from a concept to an actual outcome can be about handling slime, trying to stop it seeping through your fingers, some sticking, some escaping, some transferring on to other surfaces.