Umm. Mmmm. Ahhhh… Huh? Exploring the sounds, speech, utterances and un-articulated moments in project meetings. Notes for Common Place. image: film still from Borris’ painting buses anecdote “It is my argument that to understand the full range of the voice, as an event (and discourse) entangling itself around bodies, desires, politics, identities, and nations, itRead the Rest…
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Notes towards a proposal for a Cultural Democracy Histories Research Centre
image: B+B Archive, 2003, Austrian Cultural Forum, London This is the beginnings of a proposal for a practice-based research initiative into complex, contradictory histories of cultural democracy and social art practices. This includes culture and leisure policies, all sorts of practices (invited, uninvited, publicly funded, self-funded, professional, amateur), technologies, philosophies, theories and economies related toRead the Rest…
The Sweetest Dream?
images (top to bottom): The Sweetest Dream, Nemanja Cvijanovic, flag (2005); ‘Advanced Science of Morphology, Nada Prlja, installation in Marble Arch (2006), allsopp&weir ‘Call to Prayer’, film (2006) and Loránt Anikó and Kaszás Tamás, Shelter of Hope installation (2006). In all this depressing Brexit mess I’ve been thinking a lot about the ‘reunion’ projects I did back in 2006-7 withRead the Rest…
Cultural Democracy is alive!
I went to a Cultural Democracy symposium yesterday in Manchester. As part of the launch of the publication Culture, Democracy and the Right to Make Art edited by Alison Jeffers and Gerri Moriarty, in which I have a chapter. I’m pleased to say the book is now available to read for free online here. HereRead the Rest…
Can I have a P please Bob?
I tend to glaze over and my mind wanders as soon as pensions are mentioned. I’ve potentially got at least another 26 years of work ahead of me and I struggle to think about what’s happening next month let alone in the year 2044! The current changes proposed by Universities UK are forcing us employeesRead the Rest…
Value in Doubt
“From a historical point of view – no matter how miserable my situation is – at this hour in the world’s history I have an advantage over you because I am compelled – I am speaking as a Black man, to doubt my history, to examine it, and I am compelled to try to createRead the Rest…
Johannesburg, Joburg, Jozi
I’m not sure where to start. I’ll go with the 1984 Dinner as that was my main reason for visiting South Africa. As with Singapore and Melbourne, I feel I have just scratched the surface of what there is to know about art and politics here. Repeating the format of the dinner has also beenRead the Rest…
Video postcards
Australia (1 February – 10 March 2013)
Melbourne 2
Weekly blogging hasn’t really worked. I was immersing myself in Melbourne life and didn’t really feel like writing it up at the time. The transitory space of the airplane seems to be the ideal time for this. I’m on the 14 hour non-stop flight to Johannesburg following one month in Melbourne. I’ve just had twoRead the Rest…
Singapore
In the back of a taxi heading from my hotel in the far East of Singapore towards the National University of Singapore in the west, my eye follows the container port that stretches for miles along the coast. My thoughts have been occupied by containers and the politics of global shipping for the last fewRead the Rest…