Notes from the Stuart Hall Library – 2012_2013: No.7 From: Roshini Kempadoo (Animateur for SH Library) – 8th July 2013.

credit: Karen Roswell

credit: Karen Roswell

The Trouble With Research symposium held for the first time June 27th 2013, acted as a dimension to the SHL Research Network meetings Sonia Hope and I had co-convened and as a culmination of the work by the first SHL Animateur. The day was packed from 12:00 – 6:00, with some 12 contributions by artists, critics and researchers. As with the SHL Research Network our intention was to explore/expose the kinds of research involved for the artist, the scholar undertaking written research; the critic; and the cultural activist. The intention too was to frame the conversation within the context of Stuart Hall’s writings, cultural politics and modes of reflecting, thinking and creating cultural work.

Three elements were important to conceptualising the symposium.

The first was to consider perspective and place. This is to consciously consider our own projects, here in London as a metropolitan centre of Europe, from within the context of the international frame – if only to be reminded of our own perspectives and positions from which we speak. A dialogue between Christopher Cozier - an international artist, curator and cultural activist - and I became the starting point for the symposium. He was able to speak cogently about some of the ‘trouble’ associated with being construed as a Trinidadian/Caribbean artist by curators working internationally. Christopher also presented the importance of thinking beyond and through conceptual frames of identity and self, which also includes the use of technologies as a practice of self-determination, self-articulation and autonomy. 

See Christopher's project In Development: http://vimeo.com/56825269

The second element was to consider the context of the present moment as Hall so often reminds us. In other words to consider the contemporary and current neoliberal regime we all work within as cultural producers. ‘Neoliberal ideas’ Hall, Massey and Rustin remind us ‘have sedimented into the western imaginary and become embedded in popular “common sense”’ to include “naturalised” economic theory of the free market; continued corporate ownership of the media; ‘competitive individualism', ‘commercialisation of “identity” and the utopias of self-sufficiency (Hall, Massey, Rustin, 2013, 17 – 19). ‘ To this end our panel Cultural interventions in neoliberal times was concerned with the notion of autonomous thinking, cultural projects, technologies and activism. This included Ashwani Sharma’s proposed concept of subtraction of blackness as integral to his notes for a manifesto associated with futurism and Michael Berrie’s paper Dot-art (.art) detailing ways in which imminent internet domain development will effect us as artists/researchers. 

credit: Karen Roswell

And lastly the third element was to consider the production and practice of knowledge as artists and cultural researchers. I/we wanted us to consider research process, art objects and histories as central foundations for cultural knowledge and cultural politics. It is I argue, only through our knowledge of what has gone on before that we might create radical and highly imaginary projects in the present and future. To this end, contributions included Kabe Wilson’s creative storytelling art object that re-frames and re-tells a story embedded with a knowledge and history of the black power movement using Virginia Woolf’s writings; and we heard of Tahera Aziz’s sound installation [re]locate that sonically re-imagined the documentation from the Stephen Lawrence murder and subsequent enquiry. Set within the context of the Stuart Hall Library and Iniva, the contributions continue a legacy of the library, the archive and the building itself as art objects/media that socially intervene and contribute to socially and politically astute knowledge and experience. 

 

Kabe Wilson’s 'Olivia N'Gowfri - Of One Woman or So', assembled from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and rearranged to write a new novel. Photograph credit: Karen Roswell 

We ended the day in conversation with Ashwani Sharma and Layal Ftouni – to provide a focus on the continued Arab protest and uprisings and more specifically Lebanon, focusing on ways in which Arab/Middle Eastern artists provided other ways to provoke debate, thought and action. 

For all those who attended and contributed – A Big Thank You.

From the feedback and what I saw and heard there is great value in forming a network – a body of people who feel some sense of being, of coming together and exploring each other’s work and perspectives. Most folk ‘felt’ the building and the Stuart Hall Library as the appropriate space – physically and metaphorically to continue to focus on the dialogue and conversations necessary for us. 

The SHL Animateur role, which now comes to an end, provided an opportune moment to explore and become familiar with contemporary visual work and get a sense of the depth of research entailed in creating, exploring, critiquing and examining current projects. Our thoughts for coming years and the future are to continue the Research Network – beginning again in the autumn.

To think and act autonomously – independent of political and cultural pressures that conform to an agenda of economics and current politics - and yet collectively sustain and develop new ways of thinking and acting is not easy and requires much effort. I feel confident that we are teaching and reminding ourselves of just what it will take to continue practising as good scholars, artists and critics who have valuable contributions to make to the present and the future.



Tahera Aziz - http://taheraaziz.com/projects/relocate/

Christopher Cozier - http://christophercozier.blogspot.co.uk/

Dark Matter Journal - http://www.darkmatter101.org/

Hall, Massey, Rustin (2013) ‘After neoliberalism: analysing the present’ Soundings, 53, pp. 8-22. See: http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/soundings/pdfs/s53hallmasseyrustin.pdf

Roshini Kempadoo - http://www.roshinikempadoo.com

SAVE THE DATE: Thursday 27 June 2013: The Trouble with Research @ Stuart Hall Library, Iniva, Rivington Place

12:00 – 6:00pm (with registration from 11:45)

The Stuart Hall Library Research Network was established in January 2013 as a monthly meeting place for postgraduate researchers (artists, critics, curators) to present their work that resonates with Iniva’s vision for visual arts and international perspectives.

To celebrate the success of the Research Network so far, the library is hosting the symposium The Trouble with Research on 27 June, 12-6pm.

We have an exciting range of artists, critics and researchers contributing. Highlights include: Black radical literature; sound installations, racism and resistance; art online; labouring and researching in neoliberal times; visibility for black feminist and queer perspectives; and surviving globalism: artist as curator and social commentator.

Watch this space for more programme details:

Book your place online here or email bookings@iniva.org.

CONCESSIONS: For a concessionary rate of £10 (students, over 60s, unemployed) enter the code: Iniva_concession on the Eventbrite page for a discounted rate.

Guest Blog Post: ‘Storying the Postcolonial Library’ by Alice Corble, Stuart Hall Library Research Network Member

Alice Corble

I was thrilled to be invited to speak about my doctoral research on the cultural politics of public and alternative libraries at the Stuart Hall Research Library Network in April. Having been a member of the audience at previous network events I enjoyed presenting in a familiar, engaging and intimate space and thinking through my work with others in a cross-disciplinary and grounded way. It felt particularly resonant to be talking about libraries in this library, as the life and purpose of the room in which we talked seemed to speak back to the group, which was made up of individuals who have unique and special relationships to this library and others through their engagements with library work, study, art and pleasure.

I made use of the site-specificity of my talk by starting with a quotation from Stuart Hall himself, who said in a 2009 interview with Les Back that he was pleased that this library which has been named after him exists like a “subversive thing … quietly throbbing away”. I took this as a cue to introduce my interest in the way in which libraries are peculiarly living forces in society, which operate in vital and dynamic ways that are not always obvious.

My research is concerned with reading and re-imagining the cultural fabric of libraries in contemporary society. I focus on libraries that define themselves as 'public' and interrogate the nature of these 'publics' - how they are fabricated, mediated and co-constituted by libraries as unstable cultural institutions, in the present conjuncture of economic crisis and technological change. I divide these libraries into two groups: mainstream, state-run public libraries on the one hand, and alternative libraries that are formed by and for ‘counterpublics’ (as explicit alternatives or challenges to wider publics) on the other. In both cases I examine the intersections of the political with the public and the personal through tuning into the material, affective and discursive currencies of the library, and use Stuart Hall’s method of conjunctural analysis as a critical lens through which to relocate libraries in the social and political imagination.

The main geographical focus of my research is the UK, specifically London, looking at public and community libraries in Lewisham, as well as the Feminist Library in Southwark. The location of my research recently extended its boundaries, however, as a result of recent fieldwork undertaken in India as an AHRC research fellow at Sarai. Here I investigated public and counterpublic libraries in both Delhi and Kolkata, the two erstwhile capitals of the British Empire in India. Hence the title of my talk ‘Storying the Postcolonial Library’, since my encounters with these libraries and the stories that circulate around them spoke volumes about the relation between power and knowledge; nationalism and culture, and caused me to rethink the dominant narratives associated with libraries in the UK. The Stuart Hall Library Research Network was an ideal sounding board to think through the current predicament of my work.

I provided a brief visual tour through some of these experiences using photographs and notes from my fieldwork and also spoke about the work and legacy of ‘Father of Library Science’ S.R. Ranganathan, who is a key figure in the story of how library theory, practice and development in India is historically connected to the UK where Ranganathan trained professionally in the 1920s. My research on Ranganathan was greatly informed by an article written by George Roe, who is one of the few researchers to have placed his work in the critical context of colonialism. I was therefore delighted when the member of the audience who responded enthusiastically to my discussion of this topic turned out to be the selfsame George Roe – a great example of the serendipity of a research network in action!

Having Maxine Miller as the formal respondent to my talk was a great pleasure, as she gently opened up points of curiosity, such as questioning how shifts in local and global media representations affect how we understand what is ‘radical’ and/or fictional about libraries and librarianship. Maxine certainly enriched the discussion in the room, as we listened to her stories of a diverse career in libraries, which has included both developing the Stuart Hall Library and Tate Library and Archives, as well as working with the National Library of Jamaica: a vibrant female-led institution that has retained the strength of an oral and musical culture within and beyond its library walls. This contrasted strongly with my impression of a very patriarchal and textual-based library culture in the National and public libraries of India.

It was great to hear the responses of another member of the audience who had been a volunteer in the Feminist Library in London some years ago, which she described as being like a place of refuge as well as a place of knowledge for women, in addition to her experience of a community regeneration project in Jamaica, which informed her view that libraries are places where people can meet and grow. This chimed well with Ranganathan’s principle that “a library is a growing organism”, a principle that my research on public libraries in India found to be rather compromised, leading me to question the growth of libraries when they are planted in colonised and ruptured grounds.

Library Animateur (a job title I am rather envious of!) Roshini Kempadoo offered me food for thought on these issues, as she posed the question of the time-bound and conjunctural relevance of libraries to culture in to the context of historical forces of nationalism, independence and postcoloniality. My next challenge is to sift through the research material I gathered in India to try to make some sense of this. Roshini also alerted us to the issue of the present pressure on libraries to be more active and performative spaces, which has a paradoxical effect of both fostering more social engagement, while at the same time curtailing spaces for deep thought and reflection.

Other engaging responses included the idea of the sacred elements of library space, which might take on a new meaning when nourished in the hands of user-led library communities. This led to the closing remark from another audience member that a library is as good as the people who work and use it, as much as the books and media that make up its contents, which reinforced the defining point of my talk, that is, we ‘story’ libraries as much as they ‘story’ us. I am grateful to the Stuart Hall Library for allowing such fertile ground for such stories to grow and intersect in this budding research network.

Stuart Hall Library Symposium The Trouble with Research - call for papers from Artists, Scholars, Critics

The first symposium of the Stuart Hall Library Research Network The Trouble with Research proposes an active (and positive) approach to researching and creating things. It also brings into question methods, techniques and decision making matters integral to making art and undertaking research. Fundamentally though we can use the phrase to recognise research and creativity as a practice and process of questioning, problematising, critiquing and contextualising culture. It is a way to recognise and wrangle with the inherent anomalies and disjunctures associated with interdisciplinary research and practice. We are currently seeking papers and artist presentations on:

• Stuart Hall’s work on culture and representation
• Artistic and/or curatorial practice
• Filmmaking and media analysis
• Cultural histories – local and diasporic
• Literary Studies including criticism and theory
• Researching visual archives

Deadline: Friday 22nd May. Email a 250 word summary, a short biography (no more than 200 words) and equipment requirements to Sonia Hope, Library Manager, and Roshini Kempadoo (Media Artist, Photographer, Reader in Media Practice, UEL and Stuart Hall Library Animateur).
email: library@iniva.org

Guest blog post: Jessica Carden, Stuart Hall Library Research Network member

Grace Ndiritu, Pole to Pole

At the end of last month I was invited by the Stuart Hall Library Research Network to present my doctoral research titled, Contemporary Visual Representations of the Non-White Figure in the Arctic Landscape: British Colonial Constructions of the ‘Heart of Whiteness’ and the Black-White Binary as Fetish. Since commencing my PhD studies in late 2012, I have become increasingly aware of the importance of exposing my research and entering into dialogue with fellow practitioners. Therefore, I was delighted to be provided with the opportunity to present my work within the relevant context of the Stuart Hall Library and its research network members.


My investigation is focused on three specific case studies of artist film and video - each from Black–British filmmakers– that use the Arctic landscape as a setting to discuss issues of ethnicity, memory and belonging. Framed in the context of the British colonial construction of the Arctic territories and their place in the public imagination, my aim is to unearth the significance of the artists’ appropriation of Arctic space. The case studies include John Akomfrah’s Mnemosyne [2010]; Grace Ndiritu’s Pole to Pole [2009] and Issac Julien’s True North [2004].

Isaac Julien, True North

Further to my presentation to the group, the evening’s respondent Dr Saer Maty Ba began to unpack the layers of my research and identified several key concepts and theories which will be integral to a thorough reading of the artist’s works, providing particular insight into the practice of John Akomfrah. As Roshini Kempadoo has stated in her earlier blog post, we anchored the discussion with the question why now; what is the significance of the artists appropriating Arctic space at this point in time and can the works be read in relation to current European anxiety surrounding nationalism and notions of purity? From this point we began to discuss the intricacies of the individual works including notions of racial binary; the seductiveness of the film footage and the ethics involved in the appropriation of ethnographic archive material.

The evenings’ group covered a diverse range of backgrounds from film historians to curators, artists and theorists, and as a result the discussion was both rich and provocative. The process of compiling my various strands of research into the form of a presentation was in itself a valuable experience. The evenings’ discussion remains one of the most productive conversations surrounding my work to date and one that will undoubtedly enrich my research at this crucial stage.

Jessica Carden is a 1st year PhD student at the University of the Arts London Transnational Research Centre for Art, Identity and Nation. Jessica is a curator and co-founder of Mother Tongue, a collaborative curatorial research-led project
www.mothertongue.se

Notes from the Stuart Hall Library - 2012: No.5 From: Roshini Kempadoo (Animateur for SH Library)

I returned to the library this week reeling with exhilaration in having attended and contributed to the conference BlackPortraiture[s]: The Black Body in the West (January 17 – 20, 2013).

Organised across three distinguished venues in Paris: École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris 7 University, culminating in the Musée du quai Branly, this seminal and historical conference literally overflowed with hundreds of us gathered to talk, listen and watch a mammoth range of material about the black figure in portraiture. The spirit of the event  - of the passion for our photographs and research, of collegiate and personal warmth and support for each other, of inter-generational connectivity that respected each individual, was brought about by Professor Deborah Willis with the added support of others.  

There were too many great things to say about this powerful sense of a collective project. As a conference free from privileging the few who could afford it, it allowed people to learn substantially about the now extensive range and breadth of persons – whether artists, theorists, curators or activists - involved in exploring how we might consider portraiture[s] as inextricably linked to signifying black folk. It allowed those who attended to take time out from the pressures (physical, mentally, socially, politically) we face at this moment of crisis (financial) and celebration (inauguration of President Obama to his second term). And it also allowed for us to recognise how a collective consciousness may energise us to into more action and momentarily focus our minds and bodies on the jobs that need to be attended to.

I highlight a couple of things here people said and did as a way of providing an insight into the variety of presentations of the conference.

The first day (Thursday 17th January 13) had to belong to the footballer Lilian Thuram (the most capped player in the history of the France national team). As a recent commissioner of the exhibition l’inventiondu sauvage (2011/12), and having written a Manifiesto por la igualdad (Manifesto for Equality), he was in conversation with Manthia Diawara and eloquently and quietly restated the interconnectivity between racism, sexism and homophobia. Through a familial story that introduced us to his Guadeloupian mother, his time in football and why he works against racism in France for his son’s future, he reminded us of our duty to be vocal as there were a lot of people who would like to maintain the status quo.

The first two panels that took place on Friday morning (18th) Memory & Nostalgia: The archive in the Black Body (chaired by CherylFinley, and including Pamela Newkirk, myself, Celeste Marie Bernier, Brendan Wattenberg, Renée Mussai and dedicated to the life and work of PetrineArcher-Shaw) and Black Bodies: Live and Uncensored (chaired by IsoldeBrielmaier and including Simon Njami, Carrie Mae Weems, Elizabeth Colomba, Jean-Ulrick Désert, Lyle Ashton Harris, Daniele Tamagni) contained details of inspiration, imagination, and insight into the historical and contemporary creative projects of black portraiture. Whilst on Saturday 19th the panelists continued to enthuse and titillate the audience through presentations including those in the panel Black Erotics: New Theories on Race and Porn with contributions from Carla Williams, and Mireille Miller-Young. Hank WillisThomas chaired the panel Contemporary Voices: naming and Branding the Black Body to include some of the younger generation of artists and theorists exploring the black body including Nana Adusei-Poku, Alexis Peskine, Misa Dayson and Aja Monet. Whilst the panel Out of Africa: Young Women Behind the Lens featured work by Zanele Muholi, Nandipha Mntambo and Ayana V. Jackson provided the emergent voices of women artists.

The conference required stamina from us all – both physically and mentally because of its sheer intensity and at times gruelling pace. But it was worth every effort. It is not that often that conferences inspire us – they are all too often a sounding box for egos and intellectual power show. But when orchestrated as a creative/intellectual project like this was, they are able to transport and propel us into action. Thanks to Deborah Willis, the conference organisers, sponsors and conference staff for making history.

Other Links:

Black Portraiture(s) Facebook page.

Conference Website, Tisch Photography and Imaging, New York University.

Next Future Website featuring Lilian Thuram foundation.
 Terrence Jennings Photographs of Black Portraiture(s) conference.

Review @Stuart Hall Library - Moving Images: Dreams, sights and memory, 13 December 2012

The reading group took on a different form last Thursday when Roshini Kempadoo and Library staff screened an extract from Martina Attille's Dreaming Rivers (1988) and Zineb Sedira's video artwork Silent Sight (2000).

Thanks to everyone who attended. A recording of the discussion will soon be available via the library website. You can also listen to recordings of our previous reading group sessions.

The films are strikingly different, conceived in separate geographical time and space, but it was possible to draw parallels between them. In both films, the narrative focus is on the figure of the mother- in both cases a migrant - who is absent, but also very much present in the lives of the children (in the case of Dreaming Rivers) or the child (looking at her mother who wears a veil, in Silent Sight) who speak about her.

Roshini contextualised the group discussion by referring to critical writing on Attille and Zedira’s work, and also by highlighting the historical and cultural contexts in which they were made, including the importance of communities and networks (Attille was a member of the Sankofa Collective, for example) and the availability of funding for the arts. The discussion broadened to consider issues of representation of difference in media images, as well as in the processes of cultural production.

The latest UK Census statistics had been publicly announced the day before, and one of the group participants recognised the relevance of this in relation to thinking about representation, specifically the palpable anxiety expressed by some sections of the media about the proportion of ‘foreign-born’ individuals now living in Britain – that communities once considered to be ‘ethnic minorities’ were now not necessarily in the minority in some British cities – and what are the underlying reasons for such anxiety? As perceptions and formations of cultural identity become more complex against the background of rapidly changing politics, how can this be articulated and analysed through art, media and the image?

These questions were considered in detail, particularly from the personal perspective of individuals engaged in their own processes of identity formation, and their participation in engaging with, and participating in cultural media practices.


Further reading:

Attille, Martina and Maureen Blackwood, 'Black Women and Representation', in Charlotte Brunsdon (ed.), Films for Women (London: British Film Institute, 1986). ESS FIL

Diawara, Manthia, ‘The Nature of Mother in Dreaming Rivers’, in Black American Literature Forum, vol. 25, no.2, Black Film Issue (Summer, 1991), pp.283-298. *

‘Martina Attille’, in Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Women Film Directors: an International Bio-Critical Dictionary (Westport, Conn.; London: Greenwood Press, 1995), 23-26. REF WOM.

Moore, Lindsay, ‘Border Crossings, Translations’, in Arab, Muslim, Woman: Voice and Vision in Postcolonial Literature and Film (London: Routledge, 2009), 128-141. ESS MOO

Sedira, Zineb, ‘Mapping the Illusive’, in David A. Bailey and Gilane Tawadros (eds.) Veil: Veiling, Representation and Contemporary Art (London: Iniva, 2003), 56-71.

* not held at Stuart Hall Library. Available via Jstor.
The reading group returns next year, details to be confirmed. For more information, email library@iniva.org


Happy holidays!

Notes from the Stuart Hall Library - 2012: No.4. From: Roshini Kempadoo (Animateur for SH Library)

Food Programme in the Rafah refugee camp. Photograph: Said Khatib / Getty Images

In 1967, Debord proposed that social modern life is being replaced with its representation and is the ‘historical moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life.’ 
Debord, Guy (1994) thesis 42.

The Hyper- Image

I have been thinking about Debord’s writings in relation to taking photographs, photographers work, the technology and what I call the hyper-image. Extreme and formulaic compositions, overly dramatic intensities of colour and light, the impetus to take the most spectacular events and scenes. The hyper-image is being sought after, published, commented on and distributed online by those who take them (vanity distribution), those who think they will sell and attract, and those who re-circulate them for being ‘cool’. The intense, dramatic, uncanny, weird, spectacularly beautiful or shocking image is normalised into the everyday visual experience of the world. It is as if photography has become an extreme sport or an extreme game of hunting. Perhaps it is as a result of photographers’ having such overly sophisticated technology in their hands, or simply the response to the hyperrealism of the movies – 3D, 4D, 5D. 

So it is in wonderment and horror that I consume these unrelenting and heightened, fetishised images. Whether the horrifying images of the conflict between Gaza and Israel with dramatic lighting and almost painterly composition, or the quirky imagery of dancers in situ published in our ‘free commuter newspaper’ – reduced somewhat by the banal subtitle A Celebration of Joy In The Everyday.

Speaking of visuals that I consider of a different kind and motivation, over the last few visits to the SH library, I have begun looking through the catalogued material from Iniva audio-visual archive in the three drawers at the back of the room. There are some wonderful historical references to be drawn upon of work that Iniva has instigated, been associated with, been involved in or simply felt that the work needed to be in the archive/library as a resource. Ironically I am distracted by the surface and flickering imagery as I play them. The poor quality VHS tapes is exaggerated on the slick LCD flat screen.

Poor technology aside, the visual works are still stunning and pertinent. Works by Gurinder Chada, Martina Attile, Monika Dutta, Flow Motion amongst others throw up the underlying ongoing concern that motivates my re-visitations to older works and resources of this kind. I can’t help but recall Henry Louis Gates giving the Rivington Place lecture (2010) when he spoke about the importance of institutions, building and legacy. Not only is it the only way to counteract hegemonic tendencies that exclude and marginalise, but also provides no excuse for the next generation not to have sight of such works, efforts, discussions and no excuse for scholars, teachers, educators to be referring to such works in the future.

Reflecting on historical moment and the visual leads me to comment on Obama winning the election. Whatever you might think of what the country stands for, the US folk have been progressive enough to return an African American to the Presidency in this climate and at this moment. He has everything to gain and nothing to lose now. And such an astute speech often championing difference, dignity and compassion over and above the predictable Presidential rhetoric –

How often do politicians remind us that they are thinking beyond their own career to speak of:

‘Arguments we have are a mark of our liberty… open to the dreams of an immigrants daughter… [and] when we accept certain obligations to one another and the future generations… President Obama’s acceptance speech, Chicago – 6th November 2012. 

And so I reflect on the complexity and interrelationship between social and cultural politics and visual art that is embedded in the SH Library. And some of the great works that still continue to be made as continued works to those I view including: The Unfinished Conversation, at the Liverpool biennial (2012) by John Akomfrah, commissioned by Autograph ABP; I reflect on my meeting yesterday with Alanna Lockward at Rivington Place and her Art Labour Archives as curator, cultural activist and commentator on citizenship, race and Caribbean art. 

And Sonia and I finally manage to finalise a date and a pre-xmas event for a discussion of work by artists Martina Attile and Zineb Sedira. The evening will be based on screening extracts from Dreaming Rivers (1998) and the video artwork Silent Sight (2000) and discussed within the context of writings on Attile and Sedira’s works. 


Check the website and hope you note the date. Moving Images: Dreams, Sights and Memory in SH Library @ Rivington Place, Thursday 13th December 2012 from 6:30.

http://www.iniva.org/publications_prints/voices_on_art_amp_culture/veil

Notes from the Stuart Hall Library Fall - 2012:

Roshini Kempadoo - Iniva's First Animateur for SHL 

Two quotes that I really struck me:

The first is the catalogue entry I read from the Pan-Afrikan Connection: An exhibition of work by young black artists (1983):
'In developing our sense of "some bodyness", we are trying to avoid blind mimicry. We are trying to recreate and develop our humanity.'

The second is from Denise Ferreira da Silva's article 'No-bodies: Law, Raciality and Violence' (2009), quoting Foucault: "'the essential role of the theory of right is to establish the legitimacy of power'". (2009: 220)

This by way of an introduction on my part and to those who may be interested in a regular contribution of thoughts, notes, quotes, ideas, responses to my exploring the publications in the SHL, Iniva at Rivington Place, London. As you would have seen on the Iniva website (see: http://www.iniva.org/library/news/stuart_hall_library_animateur), the idea of this is to give more exposure to some of the wonderful material from the library and the (audio/visual/written) Iniva archive. As someone who creates - making artworks using photography, and who writes about art and visual culture, I hope to share with you how I make use of such a library full of beautifully rich material on the visual arts, cultural politics and institutional histories.

I had intended to re-familiarise myself with any work that was associated with the artists and writers involved with the forthcoming conference being organised by the Blk Art Group Research Project 2012 on 27th October 2012. Sonia (the SHL librarian) kindly dug out material for me including a couple of booklets of exhibition documentation and Kobena Mercer's edited series Annotating Art Histories of four publications published by inIVA and MIT press between 2005 and 2008.
But this was not to be...
Instead I read through and prepared myself for a discussion with two writers and scholars about issues of ethics, multiculturalism and cultural politics - equally interesting and so relevant to what I am sure will be part of future discussions, presentations and conversations. The articles I perused are:

Ferreira de Silva, Denise (2009), 'No-bodies: Law, Raciality and Violence', Griffith Law Review, 18: 2, 212 - 236.
Sharma, Ashwani (2009), 'Postcolonial racism: white paranoia and the terrors of multiculturalism', in Huggan, Graham & Law, Ian, (eds.) Racism Postcolonialism Europe, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 119 - 130.

They make for great reading - and inspiration for considering the ethics of violence (as it is enacted onto black Brazilian bodies) and the melancholic space of Europe.
My first contribution to the blog - less wordy, more visuals and hope to have some people commenting. More later.
Roshini