Items where Year is 2021

In recent years, the mainstream press in the UK and France have devoted significant attention to illustrated imagery in communicating contemporary events. In particular, the illustrated image via reportage has become a prominent tool for articulating the identities of individuals at the margin of society, for example victims of war, refugees and displaced people. This article explores this alternative method of reporting by focusing on the considerable coverage that the Jungle camp at Calais has received through reportage across the British and French press and beyond. Utilising Fuyuki Kurasawa’s essay ‘Humanitarianism and the Representation of Alterity: the Aporias and Prospects of Cosmopolitan Visuality’ (2010), the article looks at the reporting of the refugees’ situation through an analysis of illustrations presented in articles and blogs published by The Guardian, Le Monde, Libération and Arte. It examines the potential for reportage illustrations to provide ‘thicker’ representations, more complex discourses and new or alternative approaches to the construction of identities, in particular identities that constitute ‘the other’ within the contemporary European scopic regime. The article finds that the construction of the subjects’ identity follows established tropes which are related to the methods and conditions of creation, and that there is a need to query existing approaches in order to question dominant discourses of identity. Moreover, we suggest that within the case of such image making, it is the identity of the artist/publisher/reader that is ultimately asserted, within the context of a humanitarian discourse.

This chapter explores the work of art historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929). Warburg's work, in particular the Bilderatlas Mnemosyene (known in English as the Mnemosyene Atlas), pioneered a means of 'doing' art history by juxtaposing images (mostly photographic works of art) mounted onto large panels to build an argument in pictorial terms.

The creative turn within geography has seen a number of returns to the artists’ studio as a site for exploring the vital, immanent, and affective relations that form these spaces of creative practice. Where interviews, observations, collaborations, with artists have directed attention to the non-representational, this paper approaches the studio as both a scene, and an atmospheric staging. Taking up broader discourses around the scenographic, it argues that scenes not only take account of the durational and compositional construction of studio spaces, but can be understood as a form of training and attunement through which participants are enrolled in the joint composition of studio atmospheres and registers. It directs attention to the agency that these compositions have in the production of the studio imaginary.

This research explores how blind and visually impaired (VI) people can engage with e-textiles in creative and tactile ways, by making interactive e-textile art pieces to tell their own stories. Touch, gestures used to interact with textiles and e-textiles, and association of meaning with objects are central concerns of the work, in the context of how different materials can evoke and be used in self-expression. The research focuses on how VI participants can design and make their own e-textile objects, bringing in ideas of empowerment and agency, and drawing attention to what characterises an effective ‘participatory making’ environment.
Three studies are reported. The first study observed practices at two schools for blind and VI children/young people to establish how ‘objects of reference’ are used within the classroom environment, and what other sensory stimulation is important. The second study involved two series of hands-on e- textile making workshops, at a charity for VI people, and at a contemporary art gallery, to explore how visually impaired participants can design and make personal e-textile objects. The third, a laboratory study, investigated what associations and gestures visually impaired participants used with e-textile sensors that had different textures and functioned in different ways. The research explored the potential of participatory making of e-textiles in terms of touch, personal association, accessibility, and creativity.
The research identifies some effective practices for participatory making of e-textiles with visually impaired people, including a modular approach to circuit-making. It highlights the importance of ownership of the process for the participants. It demonstrates that, although there is ‘no common language of gesture’ for touch-based interaction with e-textiles, conventions can be established through example or consistent use. It outlines the ‘lessons learned’ in working with blind and visually impaired people, which can inform other researchers, designers, or artists interested in participatory making.

On the First of May 2000, central London was beset by some of the most violent civil unrest seen on the streets of the capital for decades. Tens of thousands of activists had gathered as part of global anti-capitalist protests, drawing vast crowds under a miscellany of banners, causes and affiliations. Anti-road movement ‘Reclaim the Streets’ was one such splinter group. Over the previous five years it had staged numerous street interventions, unannounced occupations of city centre road junctions and pop-up protest parties such as the moment in mid-July 1996 when 6,000 protesters blocked a section of the elevated M41, a four-lane motorway running through Shepherd’s Bush in West London. Hidden underneath colourful dancers on stilts and wearing expansive wire-supported dresses, environmental activists busily drilled holes in the motorway tarmac and planted small trees and saplings; the noise of the pneumatic drills was drowned out by the blare of music sound-systems rolled onto the highway.

The special authority invested in the war artist and the image had become denuded by the mid-1980s. Although an independent artist working to commission, Peter Howson’s work in the Balkans was considered to have crossed the line that distinguished between impersonal witness and overzealous artist. Unlike William Orpen’s impartial rendition of gross personal violation, Howson was deemed to have become both judge and jury, an advocate not an artist, corrupted by circumstantial evidence rather than remaining vigilant as an uncorruptible viewer. For his part, Howson was clear that the terms of engagement had fundamentally changed since the Great War: it was no longer simply about what could be seen or not seen, but also what was known and could not be denied.

"Fortunes of War evolved through an enquiry led (pre-internet) approach that focused on a Lamarkian preoccupation with the potential impact of an environment on collective and individual behaviour. The intention was to create anticipatory photographic images. A ‘retention vanish’ approach to composition placed the emphasis on framing the subject of the image from the perspective of the distraction and not the scene. Through this an attempt was made to counter pre-occupied states of mind, circumventing a censorship of expectation relating to the form of both the work itself and significantly that of its maker."

Erratically embellished with sprayed stencils, logo-rich stickers, elaborate murals, and unintelligible doodles, our urban environment overflows with irreverent and unlicensed imagery.

Classic New York freehand and wildstyle graffiti has evolved, adapted, and atomised into a democratic and divergent forms of visual expression that is captured under the nebulous term ‘street art’. ‘It is characterised’, states curator Riika Kuittinen, ‘less by a visual style than by an approach to transmission: it is unfiltered visual communication, fluidly moving across the derelict buildings,bus shelters and hoardings of cities across the world.” Armed with attitude of irreverence, equality and freedom, it is in fact a new genre that mutates and morphs at the rate of a viral pandemic. Lacking a common aesthetic, street art, a term loathed by classic wall ‘writers’ speaks loudly to a passing population, even if it remains entirely obscure to most.

The exhibition asked a number of questions about the evolution of graffiti into ‘street art’, and more recently into ‘urban art’, by way of the alleyway and backwall. Where do such images truly belong now: in the alleys of our urban centres or on the white walls of the gallery? Can they belong in both? What happens when the urban calligraphy of tags and stencils is subsumed by the auction
house, and why do we feel a sense of loss when the raw energy of street art, of urban writing, is absorbed by the mainstream media, and effectively tamed. Why is that some of the best illicit art of the street is promptly ripped off the wall, taken out of its context, seized into private hands. In effect moved from the public wall to
behind a pay wall.

This paper discusses the purposes of collecting zines and alternative press magazines in academic libraries that support fashion studies programs. Fashion is a discipline that is both creative and academic, but is also a field that is dominated by commercial interests. Fashion zines offer a form of counter-discourse to the mainstream fashion media, which engages with fashion as a phenomenon whilst challenging its institutionally held power. Zines are also emerging as a new media in fashion communications, with alternative magazines taking inspiration from their aesthetics and brands co-opting the terminology and capitalizing on their subcultural appeal. This paper focuses on the developing relevance of this medium to fashion as an industry and as an academic discipline, the challenges academic libraries face in collecting zines and small-press fashion publications, and the academic library’s role in providing access to this kind of alternate literature. Additionally, it discusses zine-making as a pedagogical tool, exploring how they can be used by students for inspiration and as a medium with which to engage with, and challenge, fashion discourse on their own terms.

There are many dynamic communities of practice within the arts but not all of them can claim to have their own research culture. Consequently, many researchers become adept at co-opting theoretical frameworks, research methods, and language from other disciplines. But what happens when we use concepts and language developed elsewhere to address our own particular disciplinary concerns? Language matters, and as the Swiss
linguist Ferdinand de Saussure noted, language is not a nomenclature—it is not simply a question of linking a set of words to a pre-existing set of things; different languages
divide up the continuum of the world differently.
It follows that the ways that we engage with other disciplines potentially has a bearing on how we see, think and talk about our home discipline. This conference explores the
challenges and benefits of research that features significant interaction between two or more disciplines. It will explore [even contest] ‘trans-’, ‘cross-’ and ‘multi-’ disciplinary approaches to research.

This study focuses on mind-maps as an aspect of design culture – the conventions and practices adopted by a community of designers. The research aims to work towards establishing the effectiveness of mind-maps as a tool for ideation. It questions the extent to which mind-maps enable students to break away from the cultural frames evoked by design briefs in order for creative cross-space associations to occur. By comparing mind-map-like diagrams produced by nine undergraduate students with codes emerging from the analysis of the corresponding briefs, the study seeks to answer the question: What levels of cross-space mapping are evident in the knowledge representation diagrams produced as part of an undergraduate graphic design, practice-based project? The study found 301 cases of internal linking, as opposed to 23 instances of cross-space mapping, however it concludes that there is value in knowledge representation diagrams for ideation and makes recommendations for their use.

The article offers information and insight into how the Study Skills Tutors responded to the transition to online learning because of the Covid-19 pandemic. It focuses on the importance of interactive learning strategies and teacher attitude to increase learning in the AUB context. The article briefly presents in-person teaching techniques, clearly outlines the issues presented by the move to online learning and finishes with solutions to these issues – humanising teaching by changing teacher attitude and dropping the ‘expert’ persona, which resulted in developing and undertaking activities to encourage and promote interaction in online workshops. Due to teachers acknowledging everyone was in this new situation together, the teaching and learning activities were adapted: there were paced differently and allowed for more flexibility of choice. The positive outcome of that shift was reflected in the feedback for online sessions and noticeable differences between semesters one and two were observed.

This paper is part of a continuing project of repositioning or appropriating practices from the wider cultural landscape with the intention of broadening the conceptual landscape of illustration. Specifically, the aim here is the appropriation of the work of celebrated filmmaker and journalist Adam Curtis as illustration. Rather than any detailed explanation of the intention or original context of this work, this paper aims to utilise Curtis’s practice as a hypothetical space to explore various instances of interdisciplinary appropriation and mischaracterisation in particular regards to an expanded notion of illustration.

Through a case study of the professionally made architectural model in Britain between the late 1960s and the early1990s, this article draws from archaeologist Ian Hodder’s concept of entanglement and argues that the relationship between the architect, the architectural model, and the modelmaker exists as an entangled web of shifting distributions of power governed by asymmetric tensions and mutual dependencies. In tracing the changing relationship dynamics that led to a dramatic broadening of the model’s visual styles to incorporate both realism and creative abstraction during this period, this article describes the professionally made architectural model as the locus of an intricate web of interconnected dependencies in which the model, the modelmaker, and the architect reap both the positive and negative consequences of their increasingly fraught entrapment. Demonstrating how a study of their entanglement reveals the complexities that exist within the human-object interactions that surround them, this article highlights the mutual dependencies that bind the model, the maker, and the architect together.

This thesis presents an historical account of the development of the professionally-made architectural model in Britain that aims to understand how the model came to be as it is today. With existing studies of the architectural model having been predominantly focused on its use within the design process and its cultural meanings, this thesis, in examining the architectural model from within the field of modelmaking rather than architecture, highlights developments in the making of architectural models as opposed to the dominant ‘post-production’ perspective that overlooks the role of the modelmaker and the materials and processes employed.
Drawing from extensive interviews with practicing and retired architectural modelmakers alongside historic documents and photographs from previously undocumented private archives, this thesis responds to Anna Fariello’s call for a ‘front-end’ consideration of objects that considers their making through its conceptualisation of the model’s contemporary form as an assemblage that emerged from the complex interactions between the various people, processes, materials, and ideas that have contributed to its history.
What this thesis reveals is how the contemporary form of the professionally-made architectural model in Britain emerged as a result of developments that took place during four distinct periods in its history: the initial emergence of architectural modelmaking as a distinct profession during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries; the adoption of plastics as the principal modelmaking materials during the post-war boom of the 1950s and early-1960s; the turbulent realignment of the model’s ‘stylistic palette’ during the 1970s and 1980s; and the introduction of advanced digital manufacturing technologies from the 1990s to the present day. This thesis further argues that the notion of adaptability – emerging from the combined agency of the modelmaker’s imaginative and ingenious intentions and the intrinsic adaptability of the materials, tools, and processes employed – has been the most significant influence that has shaped the overall development of the professionally-made architectural model in Britain.

This thesis presents an historical account of the development of the professionally-made architectural model in Britain that aims to understand how the model came to be as it is today. With existing studies of the architectural model having been predominantly focused on its use within the design process and its cultural meanings, this thesis, in examining the architectural model from within the field of modelmaking rather than architecture, highlights developments in the making of architectural models as opposed to the dominant ‘post-production’ perspective that overlooks the role of the modelmaker and the materials and processes employed.
Drawing from extensive interviews with practicing and retired architectural modelmakers alongside historic documents and photographs from previously undocumented private archives, this thesis responds to Anna Fariello’s call for a ‘front-end’ consideration of objects that considers their making through its conceptualisation of the model’s contemporary form as an assemblage that emerged from the complex interactions between the various people, processes, materials, and ideas that have contributed to its history.
What this thesis reveals is how the contemporary form of the professionally-made architectural model in Britain emerged as a result of developments that took place during four distinct periods in its history: the initial emergence of architectural modelmaking as a distinct profession during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries; the adoption of plastics as the principal modelmaking materials during the post-war boom of the 1950s and early-1960s; the turbulent realignment of the model’s ‘stylistic palette’ during the 1970s and 1980s; and the introduction of advanced digital manufacturing technologies from the 1990s to the present day. This thesis further argues that the notion of adaptability – emerging from the combined agency of the modelmaker’s imaginative and ingenious intentions and the intrinsic adaptability of the materials, tools, and processes employed – has been the most significant influence that has shaped the overall development of the professionally-made architectural model in Britain.

A story team’s journey on an animated feature such as Corpse Bride (2005) is similar to that of the audience. It is emotional, full of story and character, has astounding visuals – and it is unlikely you will have experienced anything like it before.

When agreeing to work on Corpse Bride, you are agreeing to wholeheartedly embody Tim Burton’s imagination. By signing the contracts, you accede to keep production secrets and leave your life at the door for the duration of your stay. In exchange, you enter the Burton world – you become a ‘Burton Body’, a crew member. You become dedicated to Burton’s incomplete vision, you enter the ‘dark, edgy, and quirky realm of the “Burtonesque”’ (Salisbury 2006: xviii), and with this agreement there comes glory ‘but also its own, unique set of difficulties, not least in the expectations that both studios and audiences now have of him and his output’(Salisbury 2006: xviii).

Sixteen years later I can reflect on my experience and the processes and write with hindsight. I hope to give a fair account of what it is like to be a ‘Burton Body’ and to explain what story development means on an animation feature. This essay provides an overview of how story teams and their ideas inform the final script, observing that the screenplay is not the beacon of light in stormy seas, but more like a large ship loosely anchored nearby.

Weaving history, literature, and environmental humanities with sections of life-writing (travel-writing based upon various long-distance walks), this hybrid form explores narratives of Climate Change from the very earliest (eg, Ruskin's observation in the 19th Century) to the very latest (eg news reports from the summer of 2019). It is the culmination of a wide range of research from the archival to the experiential.

This was a creative keynote for the Gothic Nature symposium, University of Roehampton, September, 2019. It was edited and published in the peer-reviewed Gothic Nature journal in Spring, 2021.

Manwaring, K. (2021) HEAVY WEATHER: A Creative Intervention.
Gothic Nature. 2, pp. 285-294. Available from: https://gothicnaturejournal.com/

Since ancient times literature has been awash with tales of strange weather; accounts of nature’s real destructive power blending into mythology, fantasy and folklore. This new collection gathers the best stories of ecological upset, nightmarish meteorological extremes and inexplicable atmospheric phenomena from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, when pioneering authors began to weave the otherworldliness of environmental disturbances into supernatural or uncanny experiences.

With stories from Algernon Blackwood, Herman Melville, Mary Shelley, Daphne du Maurier and many more, this foray into severe winters, stifling heats, roiling oceans and piercing gales offers the perfect read on a rainy day – or night.

Is it possible to achieve authenticity in the fictionalisation of a historic figure? To research my novel, The Knowing – a Fantasy, extensive experiential and archival research was undertaken. Having covered the experiential approach elsewhere (2020), here I focus primarily upon the archival. In this palaeographic enquiry I describe the discovery of a possible lost manuscript by the Reverend Robert Kirk – a version of his famous monograph, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, Fairies (1691). I analyse its provenance and content in a comparative study with extant MSS, contemporary accounts, and scholarship. I situate this enquiry within my own practice-based research undertaken for my PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester (2014-2018) and what this potential discovery means for Kirk scholarship. I draw upon the work of Scott (1815), Lang (1892), Rossi (1957), Sanderson (1976), Stewart (1990), Hunter (2001; 2012) and Warner (2006), as well as more recent scholarship by Maxwell-Stuart (2014), Baker (2014), DeGroot (2015), and Temple (2019). How the archival discoveries revealed secrets of Kirk’s life (through painstaking textual analysis and transcription), and how the context of these discoveries (research libraries; a Scottish castle; a winter’s writing retreat and long-distance summer walks) all fed into the portrayal of Kirk and his world, will be discussed.

Independent filmmaking is often faced with difficulties. For the team behind San Sabba, the issue resided in the invisibilities embedded in the film’s location: a concentration camp within the city of Trieste. This article will explore how and why the writer and director of San Sabba considered Trieste as an archive of multiple histories, memories, and postmemory due to the historical findings the film is based on, and how silenced history informed a phenomenological examination of what a landscape can add to the collective memory. Linking other locations in the city, which contribute to the elucidation of stories and histories deprived of public attention, this article analyses the historical data and considers the ontological qualities of the landscape as an archive where dominant narratives impact the understandings of present and past identities.

Independent filmmaking is often faced with difficulties. For the team behind San Sabba, the issue resided in the invisibilities embedded in the film’s location: a concentration camp within the city of Trieste. This article will explore how and why the writer and director of San Sabba considered Trieste as an archive of multiple histories, memories, and postmemory due to the historical findings the film is based on, and how silenced history informed a phenomenological examination of what a landscape can add to the collective memory. Linking other locations in the city, which contribute to the elucidation of stories and histories deprived of public attention, this article analyses the historical data and considers the ontological qualities of the landscape as an archive where dominant narratives impact the understandings of present and past identities.

A series of eight film screening and expanded events, which featured 22 artists. It drew on Film Talks: 15 Conversations About Experimental Cinema's discursive pairings, enabling them to show and perform work.

The applied interaction, between maker and work, in a specific context, further developed the conversation for all - peer-to-peer, artist-to-audience, work-to-context - enriching subject related understanding.

The public returning to the printed text re-animated the original words, indicated further questions and offered new insight, all that can only occur in an informed live interaction.

The events sought to explore (in different ways) how practitioners and viewers can be brought together in sites of co-presence, be part of a collaborative and discursive enterprise that shares and explores conceptual and contextual encounters.

Film Talks is an edited collection of unique conversations on experimental cinema from a range of eminent and emerging film and video makers. The book represents a contemporary snapshot of the ways in which experimental cinema is perceived by its practitioners, often in relation to other art forms, moving image culture at large and wider social issues. It is an invaluable guide for those keen to immerse themselves in the insights and perspectives that only artists can offer.

Research Methods: The Basics is an accessible, user-friendly introduction to the different aspects of research theory, methods and practice. This third edition provides an expanded and fully updated resource suitable for students and practitioners in a wide range of disciplines including the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.

It is structured in two parts – the first covers the nature of knowledge and the reasons for doing research, the second explains the specific methods used to conduct an effective research project and how to propose, plan, carry out and write up a research project.

This book covers:

• Reasons for doing a research project
• Structuring and planning a research project
• The ethical issues involved in research
• Different types of data and how they are measured
• Collecting primary and secondary data
• Analysing qualitative and quantitative data
• Mixed methods and interdisciplinary research
• Devising a research proposal and writing up the research
• Motivation and quality of work.

Complete with student learning tasks at the end of each section, a glossary of key terms and guides to further reading, Research Methods: The Basics is the essential text for anyone coming to research for the first time.

New to this edition is free access to a set of digital resources. This contains case studies, to- do lists, quizzes on aspects of research related to the chapters in the book and useful PowerPoint presentations for lecturers.

Inclusivity and Equality in Performance Training focuses on neuro and physical difference and dis/ability in the teaching of performance and associated studies. It offers nineteen practitioners’ research-based teaching strategies, aimed to enhance equality of opportunity and individual abilities in performance education.
Challenging ableist models of teaching, the sixteen chapters address the barriers that can undermine those with dis/ability or difference, highlighting how equality of opportunity can increase innovation and enrich the creative work. Key features include:
• Descriptions of teaching interventions, research and exploratory practice to identify and support the needs and abilities of the individual with dis/ability or difference
• Experiences of practitioners working with professional actors with dis/ability or difference, with a dissemination of methods to enable the actors
• A critical analysis of pedagogy in performance training environments; how neuro and physical diversity are positioned within the cultural contexts and practices
• Equitable teaching and learning practices for individuals in a variety of areas, such as: dyslexia, dyspraxia, visual or hearing impairment, learning and physical dis/abilities, wheelchair users, aphantasia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autistic spectrum.

The chapter contents originate from practitioners in the UK, USA and Australia working in actor training conservatoires, drama university courses, youth training groups and professional performance, encompassing a range of specialist fields, such as voice, movement, acting, Shakespeare, digital technology, contemporary live art and creative writing.
Inclusivity and Equality in Performance Training is a vital resource for teachers, directors, performers, researchers and students who have an interest in investigatory practice towards developing emancipatory pedagogies within performance education.