UNCONFERENCE 2020 is a digital event organised by the First Year cohort of Fine Art Research Doctoral candidates at The University of Reading. Hosted on ZOOM on the 26th June 2020, the UNCONFERENCE will focus on the roles and methods that community structures play in generating knowledge within Fine Art Practice.
A dialogue will form across different modes of presentation; spoken word, video, essay and workshop activities, forging an epistemological inquiry into the generation of knowledge within a community context acknowledging the importance of active connections within an academic cohort.
ZOOM joining information (no RSVP needed):
Time: Jun 26, 2020 09:00 AM – 02:00 PM London
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84862233596
Meeting ID: 848 6223 3596
Confirmed speakers include:
Roy Claire Potter is an artist writer working across performance, publication, installation and film to address mode of articulation, particularly within the contexts of interpersonal and social violence. In February they were in session with Korean musician Park Jiha for BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, and in November they gave a reading of a commissioned short story at Tate Britain for Mark Leckey’s exhibition “O Magik Power of Bleakness.” Roy is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Liverpool John Moores University and their work is represented by A+A Gallery, Venice.
Julie Brixey-Williams is a multi-disciplinary artist, sculptor and performer, born in Essex in 1961, whose practice engages site-responsively, to co-author works with Place. She lives and works in London and is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors. After a long physiotherapy career working in intensive care, (including two years in Hong Kong where she became interested in the bodily gesture of calligraphic expression), she completed BA in Fine Art Sculpture (Kingston University 2000) and MA Art and Space (Kingston 2001). Currently she is a PhD researcher at the University of Reading working on a thesis titled “A Juicy Mixture: does R.D Laing’s experimental approach to the ‘Psychotherapeutic Crucible’ provide a useful methodology for a multi-disciplinary site-based practice?” She has worked extensively in collaboration, is a co-founder of the collective point and place, and also has a longstanding creative relationship with performer, Libby Worth. Works are held in collections including The Yale Center of British Art, Tate Gallery Artists’ Publication archive, National Art Library, Birmingham Museum of Art Library, Kingston University, University of Kent, National College of Art and Design in Ireland, Laban Centre, Queen Charlotte’s Hospital and The Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland. http://www.juliebrixey-williams.co.uk
Adam Walker is an artist with a research based practice focussed on critiques of self-perpetuating structures of inequality and speculative profferings of other ways of being. His work takes textual, performative, collaborative and digital forms. Recent projects, performances and exhibitions have taken place at and with the Serpentine Gallery and Tyneside Cinema (UK), Izolyatsia and Yermilov Centre (Ukraine) and online at www.skelf.org.uk. He is a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art where his research project is developing a concept of ‘radical care’ as a way of being. Documentation of artworks can be found at www.adamjbwalker.co.uk
Wei Zhou works as a London based artist and PhD researcher in Film and Art, following her graduation from Contemporary Art Practice at The Royal College of Art in 2019. Her work focuses on visual & verbal information flow, non-fiction film and fictional journalism, all considered as a part of constructing the simulation of reality. She has been working with an idea of political aesthetic and has developed moving image works and mixed-media installations shown in Flat-Time House London, FACT Liverpool, Mazee Netherlands and some other galleries in Beijing. Her art practice and PhD research work collage current concerns which are in relation to issues about the post-modernity and the robustness of democracy as a format for which to live by. The rise of neoliberalism is key to critique and she has engaged with the politics of media dissemination to question the way in which opinions and values are constructed, to knowledge the ways in which the media operate as a debased public sphere.
Eleanor Dare is the Head of Programme for MA Digital Direction at the RCA, a course which addresses the future and present of storytelling with emergent and traditional technologies. She is also Reader in Digital Media at the RCA, with many publications addressing epistemology and digital culture. https://www.rca.ac.uk/more/staff/dr-eleanor-dare/
Joseph Pochodzaj is a Tutor in MA Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art. His work and research focuses on the relationship between graphic design and socio-political engagement – exploring how visual communication can create platforms for debate, activate forms of dialogue and directly influence our understanding of political issues within the public sphere. http://studio.joepochodzaj.com/
Rathna Ramanathan is the Dean of Communication at the Royal College of Art. She is an international practitioner and researcher known for her expertise in intercultural communication and typography, as well as non-mainstream and experimental publishing practices. http://m9design.com/catalogue
Tom Simmons is a Senior Tutor in Research and Research Leader for the School of Communication. His research focuses on the politics and aesthetics of sound in interconnected communities, communication systems and situations, including its social, cultural and environmental implications.
Julika Gittner teaches and practices across the disciplines of art and architecture. Her sculpture, performance, sound and video works have been shown internationally and explore the social and political role of art and architecture. She has taught art and architecture at universities in the UK and abroad and has been Design Fellow in Architecture at the University of Cambridge since 2010 where she is currently teaching on the MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (MAUD). Last year Julika was awarded the SWW DTP PhD studentship to undertake an interdisciplinary practice-based PhD in Fine Art and Architecture at the Universities of Reading and Cardiff. Her thesis is titled “Manufacturing Dis-Content – Sculpture as a tool for counter propaganda,” and it aims to develop a sculptural art practice that can communicate counter evidence in today’s contested politics of space. Julika is currently collaborating with the London based social housing campaign group ASH (Architects for Social Housing) on resisting controversial housing estate regenerations schemes by challenging the deliberate mis-information characteristic of so-called resident consultation processes through sculptural interventions.
Full programme coming soon.
For more info you can go to the Unconference 2020 website
artreading.org 