Stuart Hall Library Research Network, Autumn 2013

Following the success of The Trouble With Research symposium in June, the Stuart Hall Library is organising a series of Research Network meetings to take place this Autumn.

Save the dates:

Thursday 17 October, 6.30-8.00

Thursday 21 November, 6.30-8.00

Thursday 12 December, 6.30-8.00

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

We welcome proposals to present at the Autumn meetings. To submit a proposal, send a 250 word summary of your intended presentation to library@iniva.org

Further details and booking information to follow shortly.

Meetings take place in the library, 2nd floor of Rivington Place from 6.30-8pm.

Iniva,

1 Rivington Place

Shoreditch

London EC2A 3BA

For more information or to submit a proposal to present at future meetings, email library@iniva.org

Guest blog post: Joshua Hastings, Stuart Hall Library Volunteer

Joshua Hastings

My time spent volunteering at the Stuart Hall Library has been a fantastic experience. I have met so many helpful and supportive people who have aided me in my undergraduate study at the University of Westminster where I have just graduated with first-class honours in BA Contemporary Media Practice.

The opportunity to produce source notes as a guide to the Library’s unique collection based on the theme of ‘Geography, Space and Place’ enabled me to extend my research interests in cultural identity to consider the environments in which identity and cultural understanding are constructed. The importance of this came as such in my last year of study when writing my dissertation and producing my major project in which I explored the history and heritage of Britain in the rural space, and the experience of migration and new settlements from the late 20^th Century to the present day. I intend to continue researching the relationship between geography, space and place, and how differing geographic locations produce varied concepts of national, cultural and racial belonging and identification.

With the help of general guidelines, I was able to freely select which material would be included in the guide. I made my selection based upon texts which helped me to understand the subject area as a newcomer, and those which I felt would be useful for others similarly exploring this subject area for the first time. I was stunned at the range of theoretic and artistic engagement in the collection and have included a select few examples ranging from general overviews to in-depth critical theory, stimulating artist works and also engaging panel discussions, each categorised accordingly.

Key themes which came out from researching Geography, Space and Place were to do with the structures of power in mapmaking and the limitations of traditional cartography in representing the world, and also how the experience of displacement and migration have altered how we presently may understand cultural identity. Also raised were questions of belonging, territory and globalisation. Whilst there are no conclusive answers or simple resolutions here, I hope to offer up multiple leads for investigation and plenty of food for thought. 

Joshua Hastings

http://joshuahastings.com

Stuart Hall Library source notes: Geography, space and place

This guide provides an introduction to resources for exploring and studying Geography, Space and Place. The library’s collection ranges from texts on Human Geography, Urban and Cultural Studies, to audio-visual material, catalogues and ephemera from exhibitions held at Iniva. Library shelfmarks can be found under each title, and keywords are listed under each abstract to indicate a general subject area for each item.The guide aims to be indicative rather than comprehensive.

The following texts introduce key themes and theories in relation to Geography, Space and Place:

Key Thinkers on Space and Place     

ESS KEY                                                                             

Edited by Phil Hubbard and Rob Kitchin

Los Angeles; London: Sage Publications, 2011

A comprehensive introduction to the key themes and thinkers of contemporary geographic and cultural studies, and explores the importance of space and place in social, political, economic life.

Human Geography/ Cultural Studies/ Urban Studies/ Anthropology

Space and Place: Theories of Identity and Location   

ESS SPA                                                  

Edited by Erica Carter, James Donald and Judith Squires

London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1993

A collection of essays citing examples from various locales between 1987 and 1991 to examine the effects of displacement and exile on the cultural production of identity and belonging, and how these experiences have disrupted concepts of place, nationhood, and home.

Cultural Identity/ Displacement and Migration/ History/ Transnationalism

Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change          

ESS MAP                                                  

Edited by Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam, George Robertson and Lisa Tickner

London: Routledge, 1993

A range of in-depth analyses critically examining recent social, political, and economic changes and the implications of globalisation for framing and understanding cultural practice in the future.

Cultural Studies/ Globalisation/ Transnationalism/ Art & Cultural Practice

  

For Space

ESS MAS

Doreen Massey

London: Sage Publications, 2010

Massey reconsiders assumed understanding of space and time, critiquing their political and social impacts on global perceptions of populations and territorial boundaries.

Human Geography/ Globalisation/ Urban Studies

In Place/ Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, Transgression       ESS CRE         

Tim Cresswell

Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996

Cresswell examines the associations between ideology and geography, and the normalised hegemony of social structures which assume particular behavioural patterns and cultural understanding of people in the spaces they inhabit.

Cultural Studies/ Human Geography/ Power and Authority

Rethinking the Power of Maps                                                      ESS WOO                          

Dennis Wood

New York: The Guildford Press, 1992

An introductory read into the history of mapping and cartography as an organisational tool from the 16th Century to the present day, and also considers “counter-mapping” and “critical cartography” as an undermining process to national institutional authority over mapmaking. The book contains illustrations and examination of the mapping and counter-mapping of Palestine.

Cartographic Studies/ History/ Power and Authority/ War and Conflict

In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture           ESS BUR                                           

Victor Burgin

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996

The book consults a range of psychoanalytic theories to analyse the role of visual media representation in the physical space and its effects on identity construction and constitution of ‘self’ and ‘other’ in the imagined, interior, psychological space.

Cultural Studies/ Psychoanalysis/ Identity/ Visual Culture

Displacements: Cultural Identities in Question  

ESS DIS

Edited by Angelika Bammer

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994

A collection of texts which explore the continuation of culture when dislocated from its native geographical space through the experience of displacement, colonisation, and migration; the book includes contributions by Homi L. Bhabha, Doreen Massey and Julio Ramos among other cultural theorists.

Cultural Studies/ Diaspora/ Transnationalism/ Postcolonialism/ Displacement; Migration/ Cultural Identity

Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture                                   ESS ROG                                                  

Irit Rogoff

London: Routledge, 2000

The book analyses the work of international contemporary artists to examine the extent to which geography as a signifying practice can fully represent contemporary experience of migration, ‘inbetweenness’ and belonging.

Cultural Studies/ Art and Cultural Practice/ Geography/ Migration

Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media

ESS GRA

Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook

Cambirdge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2010

The book reflects on internationalism in art and curatorial practice, and considers a decentralised networked approach to communities across physical and virtual spaces. 

Art and Cultural Practice/ Globalisation/ New Media

Artist's monographs and exhibition catalogues

A selection of artists and exhibition catalogues addressing issues of Geography, Space, and Place:

Trade Routes: History and Geography: 2nd Johannesburg Biennale 1997             

682.2 BIE 1997

Okwui Enwezor

Johannesburg: Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council, 1997

The catalogue for the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale 1997 includes illustrations of artists’ works and text from writers and contributors engaged in discussion of globalisation’s history and its cultural produce born from resilience and fusion, displacement and migration.

Globalisation/ History/ Displacement and Migration

Alfredo Jaar: Geography=War                                                       AS JAA                                                  

Richmond, VA; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1991

The book features images and text on Alfredo Jarr’s provocative exhibition ‘Geography=War’ in which the artist confronts Eurocentric and divisive representations of the world as geographical truth, and critiques the disparity between industrialised and non-industrialised countries in the world. Catalogued also is the Arnold Peters 1974 map of the world which distinctly and accurately maps territories scaled in relation to their landmass.

Mapping and Cartographic Practice/ Power and Authority/ History/ War and Conflict

Ingrid Pollard: Postcards Home                                                       AS POL                         

London: Autograph, 2004

Pollard’s photographic engagement with geography, space and place addresses cultural identity, national history, and authority, particularly across the imagined marginalising boundaries of the British rural and coastal landscape documented in this book.

Cultural Identity/ Power and Authority/ History

Landscape Trauma: In the Age of Scopophilia                               410.111 AUT LAN                             

Richard Hylton (curator)

London: Autograph, 2001

The book catalogues works by several artists featured in the exhibition of the same title, opening up revised perspectives and views of the world by distorting, disrupting and deconstructing representations of the landscape in response to national and global changes to the geographic, social and economic climate. Contains illustrations of works by; Annabel Howland, Henna Nadeem, Ingrid Pollard, Camila Sposati, S.T.I. Consortium

Visual Culture and Representation/ Globalisation

Whose Map is it? New Mapping by Artists                                     410.111 INI WHO  

Christine Takengny, Teresa Cisneros

London: Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva), 2010

The exhibition considers the role of mapping in contemporary art and the perspective from which maps have been produced and how they inform our world view. The booklet includes illustrations of artists’ works and texts from several writers.

Mapping and Cartographic Practice/ Power and Authority/ Visual Culture and Representation

Creative Compass: New Commissions by Agnes Poitevin-Navarre and Susan Stockwell

 410.111 RGS CRE

Vandana Petal, Teresa Cisneros

London: Royal Geographic Society

The book features information on a Royal Geographic Society’s initiative in collaboration with INIVA to engage new audiences with Geography as a means to further understanding of the world, its populations and environments. Building upon the Society’s extensive collection of maps and atlases, along with commissioned pieces by artists Agnès Poitevin-Navarre and Susan Stockwell, Creative Compass confronts the challenges that global change presents, explores the history of map making and the role of the map in everyday life, and the exclusion of information in cartographic practice.

Mapping and Cartographic Practice/ Visual Culture and Representation/ Power and Authority

Artists and Maps: Cartography as a Means of Knowing               795 ART                                            

Portland, Oregon: Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art Lewis; Clark College: 2003

This booklet features illustrations of artists’ works shown in the exhibition exploring the metaphoric and narrative components of maps in intersecting fact and fiction into our world view. Commentary by Linda Brady Tesner (Director of the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art: Lewis; Clark College).

Mapping and Cartographic Practice/ Visual Culture and Representation

                                                                                                             

Place

ESS DEA                            

Tacita Dean and Jeremy Millar

London: Thames and Hudson

The exhibition catalogue features illustrations from artists in addressing political, historical and social distinctions between concepts of space, place and less familiar non-places.

Urban Studies/ History/ Power and Authority

Audio-visual material

A select of archived recordings exploring Geography, Space and Place held in Stuart Hall Library’s audio-visual collection;

INIVA : ‘Nation’   

(panel discussion)                                                                  

CD 316

London: INIVA, 2009

This audio CD recorded at INIVA features discussion led by Argentine-born Gabriela Salgado exploring concepts of national and transnational identity as a subject for artists and a context for their work, with responses from artists Alexandra Handal and Nada Prija who reflect on their practice and examine to what extent local notions of belonging and rootedness have been redefined by transnationalism in the arts.

Visual Culture and Representation/ Cultural Identity/ Transnationalism

Crossing Boundaries Symposium                                                    CD 320     

London: Royal Geographic Society, INIVA, 2010

The tracked CD documents various panel discussions with geographers and artists on the convergence of humanities and the visual arts by INIVA and the Royal Geographic Society, and considers creative and critical approaches to mapping and cartographic processes, the limitations of traditional cartography, and also the technology used to produce and read maps.

Mapping ; Cartographic Practice/ Visual Culture; Representation/ Technology

Whose Map is it? 

(panel discussion)

CD 327                                                                      

London: INIVA, 2010

The CD contains two sessions, both featuring artists in discussion of their work and engagement with mapping. The first features Colombian, Moroccan and Nigerian artists exhibited in INIVA’s ‘Whose Map is it?’ show who expand on their selected themes concerning migration, land ownership and borders. How these artists have used mapping creatively is then explored by Dr Harriet Hawkins in conversation with Heath Bunting in the second part of this audio CD.

Visual Culture and Representation / Displacement and Migration/ Mapping and Cartographic Practice

Whose Map is it? The Content and Meaning of the Spaces we Encounter

CD 329

London: INIVA, 2010

This CD is a recording of a panel discussion between Paul Goodwin and Alex Vasudevan held during INIVA’s ‘Whose Map is it’ exhibition, focusing on the city space and analysing migrant patterns in urban areas. The panel elaborates on contemporary mapping practices by artists in relation to their research, examining urban development in Lisbon and the history of squatting in Berlin.

Urban Studies/ Visual Culture ; Representation / History/ Displacement ; Migration

Volunteers for Closed Week, 12-14 August 2013

End of Closed Week, 2012

Stuart Hall Library, part of Iniva at Rivington Place, is a special Library focusing on international visual arts.


The Library will be closed for a week in August (12-16) to undertake essential Library housekeeping work, and the Library team are looking for volunteers to help.

This is an opportunity for:

- those with an interest in libraries

- pre-library school applicants to acquire basic Library skills

You will gain valuable insights into how a special Library collection is managed and organised by working on tasks including:

- Shelving

- Journals maintenance

- Basic catalogue work

- Collection care


Professional Library qualifications are not essential, but knowledge of how to use a Library and searching catalogues is required. You will need to be available for three days, from Monday 12 to Wednesday 14 August, 10.30-4.30.

Lunch and travel expenses will be reimbursed.

Please email a CV and covering letter to Sonia Hope, Library Manager explaining why you would like to volunteer at the Stuart Hall Library.

Closing date: Friday 2 August.

Informal meetings to be held week beginning 5 August.

Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) explores key issues in society and politics, creating a platform for artistic experiment, cultural debate and exchange of ideas. We work with artists, curators, creative producters and writers to promote a greater understanding diversity in a rapidly changing world.

www.iniva.org

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

Late night opening on July 4th until 20:00

Still taken from Oh Adelaide (2010)

. © Sonia Boyce, courtesy the artist.

Sonia Boyce: Scat

Next Thursday, July 4th, we will be open until 20:00 to celebrate Iniva's current exhibition, Scat: Sound and Collaboration, by Sonia Boyce. Come and visit our section of the exhibition which includes books, films, magazines and other items from Sonia Boyce’s archive.

Cover girls is a spread of popular magazines with Black British female music artists. There are also articles relating to Sonia Boyce’s long-term archive collection project, Devotional.
Find books on pop music culture amongst the artists’ books, group exhibition catalogues and critical theory volumes on the Library shelves.
Films and documentaries will be available to watch with headphones:
An Audience with Shirley Bassey:  ‘50 minutes of showbiz magic’
Top of the Pops, 40th Anniversary, 1964-2004
The Story of Lover’s Rock, Melenik Shabazz’s documentary on British ‘romantic reggae’

International Zine Month

We also invite you to celebrate International Zine Month in the Stuart Hall Library. On the evening of July 4th we'll display a selection of some of our favourite zines, so please drop by and have a browse, and feel free to donate your zines! 

Photo by Sheena Balkwill

Research Symposium 'The Trouble with Research'

For booking tickets please go to: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/6727709761%20target= email: bookings@iniva.org

concessions rates are available - please use the promotion code (type: Iniva_concession) at the bottom of the bookings page:  http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/6727709761%20target=

Stuart Hall Library Questionnaire and Prize Draw

Iniva is developing a library membership scheme for the Stuart Hall Library. A membership scheme will provide our library users with extra benefits (bespoke library research services, enhanced library opening hours, discounts at events with partner institutions etc.). At the same time the income from this scheme will help to ensure the future of the library.

Please fill out the short survey by following the link below and help us understand your views on our proposed scheme. We also welcome your recommendations for wider library activity. Send your completed questionnaire to library@iniva.org and we will enter your name into our prize draw for a set of Iniva publications. Make your opinion count!

Photo by Christa Holka

http://www.iniva.org/library/library_questionnaire

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