Audio recordings of Raju Rage and Raisa Kabir at February Clothes, Cloth & Culture Group

 'Cloth on the Queer Brown Body' Raisa Kabir photo. of Raju Rage

Our Clothes, Cloth and Culture Group meeting in February featured a collaboration between two young artists, Raisa Kabir and Raju Rage. They described how they use their art and textile practices to address gendered South Asian queer identity and the meanings of cotton cloth on the brown queer body. Raisa Kabir brought along examples of her woven textiles and Raju Rage dressed in a sari printed with archival photographs.

The artists worked together on the project "There is More at Stake Than Just 3 Metres of Cloth" which represents the migrations of South Asians from North India/ Panjab to East Africa to Britain and the symbolism encoded within the turban. Sociologist Nirmal Puwar offered her thoughts and questions followed by comments from the intrigued audience.

Read more about the participants on the webpage and an audio recording of the event is available below.

Audio Recordings: Delaine Le Bas and Corrina Eastwood at the Stuart Hall Library Research Network Meeting

Delaine Le Bas and Corrina Eastwood

If you missed the event, here is a chance to listen to the fascinating talks from the artists Delaine Le Bas and Corrina Eastwood at our meeting on 12 February 2015. Both artists talked about their experiences as as part of the UK Romany Gypsy community. Corrina and Delaine showed the audience excerpts from their art practices: performance, installation and film. Their artworks revealed the complex challenges involved in defining their identities and inhabiting space.

The talks were followed by a lively question and answer session from the audience.

Read more on the webpage.

Black identity and the Role of Contemporary Art: lecture by Dr.Christine Checinska

Dr.Christine Checinska, Stuart Hall Library animateur, fashion designer,curator and academic will deliver a lecture at the Dulwich Art Gallery on Wednesday 18th February 10.30-11.30 am.

Her talk should appeal to anyone interested in art and textiles, and is part of the series: Staying Power: Art and the Black Experience.

Christine's lecture will look at the use of cloth in the work of artists: Yinka Shonibare, Maude Sulter and Barbara Walker as a way of examining three moments within the history of the ‘black’ presence in Britain, focussing primarily on issues around African Diasporas, cultural identities and histories.

More details on the Dulwich Picture Gallery webpage

National Libraries Day

For National Libraries Day we've asked two of our current volunteers to tell us about their experiences at The Stuart Hall Library and their use of the collection.

Verna Huang

My story with The Stuart Hall Library began in 2013 for my own research, which was about an exhibition called The Other Story. The very first time I visit this library, I completely fell in love with the space and had a good time here. Most important of all, I had almost all the information and materials that I needed for my research, which surprised me a lot. With my wonderful previous experience in Stuart Hall library, I decide to contribute my time and effort as a volunteer.

In this tranquil and comfortable space, I have a chance to see and work with the amazingly massive archive, which allows me to know more about the history of Iniva and British art and at the same time, learn more about archiving. Another fascinating opportunity I have here is to read journals and books which underline the issues related to minority, identity, gender and culture. The Stuart Hall Library is much more than a library; it is a dynamic space, allowing groups of artists, researchers, students and writers to collaborate together to create an energetic atmosphere.

From my own research, my favorite thing in Stuart Hall Library is the collection of material related to Li Yuan-chia such as exhibition catalogues, poems he wrote and pictures and slides of his exhibitions. He is not very well known in British art history so I am very impressed that I can see such collections about him here. Every time I see those materials, I am so touched. I just have worked here for a short period of time and I believe I will discover more in the future and do hope more people will visit this lovely space and resource. 

Charlie Edward Thomas

How did you come to volunteer at the Stuart Hall Library?

I studied Fine Art nearby at the Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design and have been visiting Iniva since then. After working for a furniture manufacturer I decided to reorient towards a library/information career. An interest in Stuart Hall and a wish to further my knowledge of art practice made the Stuart Hall Library an excellent setting in which to learn some basic information skills.

What have you learnt?

Helping to index and abstract the library's collection of journals has exercised my ability to write useful, concise texts.In preparation for this, to become better acquainted with the library's key themes, I read through all the subject words that featured in the catalogue, looking up those I couldn't readily define. There were several intriguing portmanteau words new to me : for example, Afrofuturism, coined by Mark Dery in the 1990s to describe the confluence of black culture and science fiction.

For those who like to mull over etymology and its corollaries, I recommend a look at the documentation of Iniva's Keywords exhibition and lectures from 2013.

Is there an item in the collection that's been of particular interest?

One book I spotted was Ideas and Attitude : Catalan Conceptual Art. This is probably because I have been investigating the ties between art and anarchism (the body of sociopolitical thought dating from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s What is Property? (1840), rather than the popular synonym for hooliganism). Anarcho-syndicalism was prevalent in parts of Catalonia in the late 1930s.

The book documents a later generation of artists from the region in their attempt to give significant shape, predominantly via found/modified objects, to their political heritage and present predicament. I discovered this book just browsing the shelves ; the scale of the library makes this a feasible method of becoming familiar with the entire collection in a relatively short period and doing so is a way to invoke serendipity and find that unsought but seminal, book or idea.

Cultural Threads Symposium

Following on from the great success of our November Clothes, Cloth and Culture Group focusing on the new publication Cultural Threads we’re pleased to share details of the official book launch at Central Saint Martins on Saturday the 7^th of February.

07 Feb 2015

11:00 to 16:30

A day-long symposium about contemporary textile practices and multiple cultural influences to mark the launch of Cultural Threads (Bloomsbury: 2015).

Speakers include: Christine Checinska, Godfried Donkor, Françoisé Dupre, Jessica Hemmings, Toril Johannessen, Jasleen Kaur, Sarat Maharaj and Sarah Rhodes.

The event is free and open to the public although it is essential that bookings are made in advance:

bookings@jessicahemmings.com

The book features a chapter from Christine Checinska, currently Library Animateur at the Stuart Hall Library. Recordings of our November event can be found here. 

January Research Network Meeting Audio Recordings

See the bottom of this post to listen to the fascinating and thought-provoking presentations at our research network meeting last week. The speakers were:

Onyeka Igwe and J.D. Stokely: Memory, Representation & the Archive: The Use of Autoethnography in Performance and Film.

Kabe Wilson: The Intersectionality of Football Terrace Hate Speech

Onyeka Igwe: still from her film 'We need new names'

Onyeka Igwe and J.D. Stokely "Our work is interested in the idea of using archived materials to create a "necessary fiction" that explores the complexities of our ancestral histories. How can we as artists challenge the western simplification and belittling of black history through auto-ethnographic practices?

J.D. Stokley: performative lecture 'Reparations'

Kabe Wilson: The intersectionality of foootball terrace hate speech

Kabe Wilson "Through the lens of Stuart Hall's theory of 'inferential' racism, I will unpick the ways in which the complexity of intersectional hate speech means that the essentialist narratives of media and legal assessment remain inadequate tools for responding to it."

Read more about their ideas on the Library webpage

'Cultural Threads' listen to the panel discussion at the Clothes Cloth & Culture Group

Jasleen Kaur

Dr. Jessica Hemmings, editor of
'Cultural Threads: transnational textiles today'

The November 2014 Clothes Cloth & Culture Group meeting was a panel discussion to mark the publication of  'Cultural Threads: transnational textiles today'. The panel consisted of the editor Dr. Jessica Hemmings, contributors to the book and the featured artists and designers : Dr. Christine Checinska, Sarah Rhodes and Jasleen Kaur. Curator Dr. Jenny Doussan responded to the publication as an external voice.

Audio recordings of the of event are available to stream at the bottom of the page.

Cultural Threads considers contemporary artists and designers who work at the intersection of cultures and use textiles as their vehicle. Ideas about belonging to multiple cultures, which can result in a sense of connection to everywhere and nowhere, are more pertinent to society today than ever. So too are the layers of history - often overlooked - behind the objects that make up our material world.

The publication closely mirrors many of the aims and interests of the Clothes, Cloth and Culture Group. For example, in seeking to demystify postcolonial theory and show how it is embodied and articulated through textiles. The emphasis on textiles as a record of lived experience also recalls the ‘conversationals' or items of clothing or cloth that our presenters have used to introduce themselves and which exemplify their interest in and human connection to the subject.

Sarah Rhodes

Dr Jenny Doussan  & Dr Christine Checinska

Michael Bryan and Marcia X speaking at the Research Network Meeting, November 2014

The two emerging artists presented their experiences as artists who explore race, the black body, identity, gender and representation in their individual art practices and writing. Michael Bryan and Marcia X each showed thought-provoking images of their art works and offered the audience insights into their often difficult experiences in art education. Michael Bryan described how he faced censorship of his performance art at college. Marcia X encountered lack of support or dismissal of her identity-focused explorations. A lively discussion with the audience followed - if you missed the event, you can listen to the streamed audio recordings below.

Disobedient Objects at the V&A: 'Express Yourself' event with Christine Checinska

The second Stuart Hall Library Animateur, Christine Checinska, will be speaking at the Victoria & Albert Museum this Friday evening, 21 November in response to the Disobedient Objects exhibition. 

Christine's talk will be part of the free, drop-in 'Express Yourself' event which starts at 6:30pm.

The talks will focus on how today's protesters initiate their campaigns or change the world using social media, film, "flash mobs, hashtags, selfies, up-cycling, masquerade, TEDtalks, PechaKuchas, films and freedom songs"

Christine will speak about the African diaspora's material culture in Britain as a vehicle for quiet and overt activism; making a statement about oneself, and oneself in the world, from both an individual and collective level.

Research Network: Call for Proposals

The Stuart Hall Library Research Network is a forum for researchers, artists, academics, curators, students and activists to introduce an aspect of their work. It is a meeting place for the discussion of practice-based or more conventional forms of research that may include: curatorial practice; visual arts; film and media; cultural studies; cultural activism; postcolonial studies; literary studies, including criticism and theory.

We are looking for exciting and engaging ways of uncovering your research. This might include individual presentations, presentations in pairs, in conversation/dialogue, or presenting a group project.

If you are interested in presenting at a future Research Network session, send a 200 word proposal outlining your topic to the Library Manager. The meetings will take place in the Stuart Hall Library from 6.30 -8.30pm. Each presentation will be 20 minutes long (2 presenters per session). Previous themes have includedPost-Colonialism and globalisation

• Issues of race and diversity in the visual arts
• Diaspora; social and cultural perspectives
• The intellectual legacy of Stuart Hall and cultural studies
• The politics and philosophy of identity

This is not intended as an exhaustive list and all presentations on practice or research that in some way resonates with the activities of Iniva are welcomed.

The closing date for this round of proposals is the 19th of December 2014.