As part of our MA we were timetabled to attend a Symposium, the definition of which is: symposium /sɪmˈpəʊzɪəm/
noun 1. a conference or meeting to discuss a particular subject. 2. a drinking party or convivial discussion, especially as held in ancient Greece after a banquet (and notable as the title of a work by Plato).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03mhyzk
Our Symposium was definitely definition 1., although we could have combined both.
The first talk was by Dr Rosemay Bass from the UEA Research Park who gave a talk on iTeams. - The programme is open to postdoctoral researchers, postgraduate students, and masters students from UEA and all other Norwich Research Park institutions, as well as students from Norwich University of the Arts. (https://www.uea.ac.uk/about/alumni-and-supporters/careers/about-our-services/gain-career-insight/i-teams).
The idea of innovative thinking, product development and looking for 'real-world' uses that solve customer problems. By using a mixture of scientists and creative thinkers the teams look to create lateral thinking supported by physical research to come at set issues in a different way.
As their website state; 'In previous years, participants have worked on projects with organisations including Adnams, the Broads Authority, Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse, and The History of Advertising Trust.
The teams have produced commercialisation plans for Norwich Research Park innovations including Insect Detection, Microplastic Detection and Movetech.'
The three areas that they are looking to explore are in 2023 are :
DNA - Detection in a Complex Milieux.
Seeds from trees that have survived recent disease
Foodbank - food use and waste.
There will be 6-10 people per team and you needed to apply by 5th Dec. I have applied and received back a questionnaire that was clearly designed to establish the strengths and weaknesses of each applicant.
The course runs every Tuesday evening from 17th January - 28th March, mainly in person with a few online. It isn't paid but I see it as a very valuable experience with a great networking opportunity and would be a good addition on my CV with regard research.
I had to initially write a 250 word application, which is here:
Why would you like to participate in i-Teams? (250 words max by 5th Dec)
I graduated with a BA Hons in Fine Art, (1st). I have never restricted myself to a single discipline, blurring the lines – combining moving image with installation, sculpture with sound, print and the body. Currently undertaking a Fine Art MA, looking to expand my knowledge, practice and experience.
My background in Advertising and Design, as an Art Director and Creative Thinker means I have always thought conceptually. From creating, producing and art directing a live Guardsman in full uniform marching in front of a 48sheet billboard and a guard’s house, to a wall with a set of eyes embedded, blinking messages in Morse Code.
I have a strong team working ethic from my time as a Senior Art Director working with not just my Copywriter but also the larger creative community. I have created and project managed many assignments from advertising campaigns, including tv (having our own train running between Norwich and Ipswich for a week with a full film crew on board), cinema ads, print projects from conception through to completion, branding development and marketing ideas. Culminating in starting my own business, which I have run for over twenty years.
If I was a successful applicant, I believe this opportunity would really help to deepen my research skills, especially working with the mix of participants. It would also be a way of broadening my network and allowing further exposure and opportunities. I know it would put my outside of my comfort zone, but I welcome the challenge.
Speaker two was Richard Sawdon Smith, Professor of Fine Art and Programme Director for Fine Art and Photography at NUA. 'An internationally exhibiting and award-winning photographer. He is a former winner of the John Kobal/National Portrait Gallery Photographic Portrait Award, a Board Member of The bookRoom Press & Archive, on the Editorial Panel of the Journal of Photography & Culture, a member of the Visual AIDS Archive, and Co-editor of Langford’s Basic Photography and The Book is A Live!. His photographs and writing are widely published.' https://www.nua.ac.uk/about-nua/meet-our-staff/professor-richard-sawdon-smith/
The talk was titled 'The Unknowing of Playing Myself/Selves: Performing Autobiography and Memory Through Staged Photographic Self-Portraits.'
The practice of Not Knowing is something I have looked to throughout my 4 year BA, having been introduced to it by Karl Foster in Year 0. I questioned it many times, it was a concept I struggled with until the penny dropped and it is something I continue to use and also to preach to any prospective students when I doing any careers work for the university.
Richard quoted Rachel Jones (University of Dundee), the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and Paul Petric, author of 'The Power Of Play'. All fundamental in his practice, the idea of 'Not Knowing' and 'Thinking Through Making', clearly evident in his work and also very much promoted and supported at NUA. This all resonated with me, not just because of being part of the pedagogy during my university career but something I look to use in my practice outside of the university, especially as part of the collective I am member of '2Faulty' - see: https://carldurban.wixsite.com/website/post/alta-ego-or-2-faulty-shh-it-s-a-secret & https://carldurban.wixsite.com/website/post/2-faulty-collective in particular.
The recent Covid pandemic brought back the trauma of his positive HIV diagnosis and living with an unknown future, initially being told he would have 5 years, maybe 10 to live, some 30 years ago. There is still no vaccine for those with HIV, it is managed and controlled. Richard uses a 'Dressing Up Box' as part of his play, adding layers in a mashed up personality. He states that 'Probably through play can we be truly creative'. The idea of dressing up being comparable to a photo-montage and the process of discovery.
'Richard combines this discussion with an exploration of issues of ageing, gender, identity, sexuality, subjectivity, masculinity, and everything in between'. (https://www.nua.ac.uk/about-nua/news/professor-richard-sawdon-smith-exhibits-work-in-celebration-of-lgbt-history-month-2022/)
This talk provided me with not just an understanding of someone I knew through my time at NUA but also helped to underpin the way I work and am looking to develop my practice. It also gave me several areas to research further looking at academic writing to support not knowing as a methodology for my RIPU unit.
The third speaker was by Dr Véronique Chance, Course Leader and Senior Lecturer, MA Fine Art and MA Printmaking at Cambridge School of Art.
'Véronique Chance is an artist and academic with a long-term interest in the representation of the body and its relationship to performance, documentation, technology and the embodied dynamics of spectatorship. This is closely linked to her practice-led PhD research, completed in 2013 at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, during which she developed an endurance running-based art practice as part of a larger enquiry into the performative nature of human physical activity.' http://www.veroniquechance.com/about
The talk was about how as a 'Running Artist' she looks to explore the limits of the human body and running technology, her presence and performance and how as an artist she feels attuned to the senses and the body. Whilst running she thinks about potential injury, hydration, food and is not interested in competition. She states that she doesn't like running, it is not something that she naturally wants to do, it is more to with the connection and the recording of the journey and how her body interacts with the terrain, as well as the tracking of the various routes, through GPS technology. Three of her recent exploits were presented:
M25 run
London to Cambridge Commute
Thames - Source to Sea
Véronique was very holistic in her approach to any of her runs. The planning, maps, routes, problems she may encounter en route, including potential delays, injuries or the weather. All of the running is not just GPS tracked but also recorded via imagery or video which is then sent to a server, where she hopes it has recorded the journey. There is clearly jeopardy in this but one that is left to a certain amount of chance, should a connection fail and there are no recordings, then that is also part of the process.
After completing any of the runs Véronique reviews the data, images, distances, routes and everything else that she has a record of and looks to re-iterate the work in print, sculpture or digital media. Taking 4000 images that were recorded along the trip of the M25 and creating the route in a photographic sculptural way.
'A unique extendible printed bookwork/sculpture, all the archived images from the previous work were digitally printed, cut, folded and put together by hand.
This work was first shown as part of Combinations, at the Seacourt Gallery in Bangor, Northern Ireland and the Sheffield Institute of Art Gallery, in 2014 for the exibition Of Other Spaces. It was reconstructed and re-shown as part of RE:PRINT/RE:Present , at the Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge in 2015 and included in the Neo Print Prize 2016 exhibition, at Neo:Gallery 27, Bolton, Greater Manchester, from 25th August - 30th October 2016'
Throughout the work the body is absent visually but is evident in so many other ways. It is recorded through movement, as the landscape is recorded by a device attached to the body, it jumps with every step. The breathing can be heard in the recordings of the various excursions, it is rhythmic, paced and in many cases you can hear the effort going into every step. Marks in the ground are made, in the mud, the snow, the path. And indeed, when Véronique had injured her knee and could run, this was documented and the imaged from the exploratory operation were used to create 'In the Absence of Running' (http://www.veroniquechance.com/work/in-the-absence-of-running), 'A series of artworks made with photographic material from arthroscopies and surgical interventions of the artist's knees, following cartilage injury. With the activity of running a significant part of her artwork, the injury forced her to temporarily put planned work on hold.'
Our penultimate speaker was Léa Carreño. The talk was about her journey from starting out as a Knitwear Fashion Designer to her journey into film working in the costume department for large productions.
Highly talented and creative in a field I know little about but the insight into the journey from her MA at the RCA, after a BA at St Martins was fascinating. Especially when after the freedom to create what she wanted as a student was so constricted in the world of industry. Even if this she did find unbelievably restricting it did inform her of opportunities and knowledge to use later in her career. After being able to explore more working for an independent label to change again, and this time into film, was a process that showed whatever journey you are on the process is extremely valuable and will provide you in the future with knowledge, experience and contacts.
It was also wonderful to not only see the creations but also the superb photography to show the various items Léa had created. Something that can be forgotten as we document our work. High quality, stylish and individual.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/l%C3%A9a-carre%C3%B1o-aa848627/ https://www.leacarreno.com/
Our last speaker was Charlotte Dawson, a BA graduate of Norwich University of the Arts (https://www.charlotte-dawson.co.uk/bio ). Charlotte works sculpturally, as part of a graduate residency, became interested in the history of Stoke and its links to the pottery and ceramics industry, with Stoke being the heritage centre. She was looking to build connections between objects and how different objects create and contain memories, a lot of the objects were found objects, discarded and sometime broken but they still had a history and Charlotte wanted to explore more about this. Charlotte also found clay from the ground as well as broken and discarded objects. These she questioned the worth of the objects, the monetary and non-monetary. Her exhibition 'Set in Sediment - Airspace Gallery' - Set in Sediment in part is comprised of materials sourced from the earth of many post industrial sites throughout the city and questions more widely our personal relationships to the physical fragments with which we find ourselves surrounded.'
Charlotte also explored the secret language of roadworks signs, bollards and markings found on the road, coded for instruction to those as a secret language. (https://www.charlotte-dawson.co.uk/over-turned). The work not only looks at the language and coding but also the layers beneath us and what we can't see as part of the infrastructure that we all take for granted and ignore in equal measures.
As part of her residency in Blackpool she started looking at the photography that was on show describing the food on offer at cafes and restaurants. Simple, bland, un appetising meals displayed on laminated card all on plain white plates. Another code but one that simply has to convey the food on offer, images that aren't considered beyond showing the food, they are targeted to the audience. By combining these images and ceramics from Stoke Charlotte started to create three dimensional versions of the plated meals, cast in Jesmonite, functional looking but completely un-functional as they have the food already portrayed on them.
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