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The Power of ManyOpening statement on activist photography and feminist activism for Isuse 6 of We See magazine.
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Lost, Found, Given - Stored, Shown, Seen: Artists’ Responses to the West Cheshire Museums’ CollectionsHumifusus is the Latin botanical term used to describe plants that spread out across the ground. These images were made by pressing photographic paper face down into verges and meadows, allowing plants, soil (and the occasional insect) to imprint their trace. As part of my response to Eliza Potts' Herbarium, this process offered a richly spontaneous and chaotic way to record plants within their environment. The use of video to reimagine and revivify connects me to Potts as another woman touching, and touched by, familiar landscapes, experiencing the pleasure of a haptic connection to place and plant. The sensorial overrides the pictorial, nature subsumes and entangles the human element as both merge playfully and chaotically to become one.
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Quick, Quick, Slow: Making Time for Sustainable Photography Practices in Contemporary Higher EducationAs environmental awareness grows, so do questions about the environmental impact of photography, in particular traditional film development and processing, which includes the use of plastics, gelatine and other environmentally harmful chemicals notwithstanding water usage and waste. Pioneering practice and research into sustainable alternatives to conventional processes has quickly established, supported by organisations such as The Sustainable Darkroom (n.d.). Students in Higher Education are environmentally aware and prepared to take action to mitigate their impacts where possible (Blake et al 2013). As such, there is a coalescence of perceptions within and beyond the classroom which asks to be addressed in the curriculum. This paper draws upon the research project Under a Green Light: a darkroom for the future which investigated how university darkroom practices can pivot toward more environmentally friendly methods. The paper describes the learning environment of the darkroom as a space of slowness, immersion and experimentation and the pedagogic value of this for photography students. The paper argues that incorporating environmental awareness into day-to-day teaching through systemic changes to process and practice, rather than through short term curriculum interventions, contributes to transformative learning experiences and promotes positive long-term change.
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Elvis: Other Stories to TellIn Rethinking Elvis, popular music scholars and historians look beyond Elvis' iconography to shine a light on the branding, historical and geographic reception, heritage, and fan phenomenon that sustain his legacy.
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The Future of Elvis StudiesElvis is someone who’s place in society and pop culture is inescapable, yet whose presence in the academic library and seminar room is virtually absent. In the decades-old, and now rather tired, staged battle between Elvis and the Beatles, on any quantifiable measure of scholarly interest, in academia the Fab Four would easily win. Despite Elvis’s iconism, and despite his evident and ongoing connection to a range of social issues, he constantly seems to miss the requirements for capturing scholarly attention. To some extent, Gilbert Rodman’s claim still holds true that intellectuals have traditionally been unwilling to see Presley as a figure of sufficient importance to undertake serious critical work on his life, his art, or his cultural impact. With their concerns for taste and text, film studies and popular music studies have tended to ignore Elvis. In contrast, disciplines that grapple with those same subjects as social issues have embraced the Elvis phenomenon because it is a useful case study when considering prejudice. In this section I will therefore explore three academic fields that have discussed Elvis Presley, or more precisely the issues that he represents: Southern studies, cultural studies, and legal studies. In addition to these, Elvis “scholar-fans” have produced a wealth of material, some of which is highly insightful and effectively blurs the lines between popular and academic publication. Finally, the chapter makes some suggestions about topics we might desire to see in future Elvis studies, based upon the concerns of fan studies and research on social identity. Though Elvis studies is more a trickle of scholarship than a sub-discipline, it has undergone an expansion in recent times and, like Elvis Presley himself, shows no sign of disappearing.
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Mark Duffett reflects on the issue of cultural appropriation - an interview with Jorge Carrega (in Portuguese)A discussion of the question of Elvis and cultural appropriation in interview format in Portguese.
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A Life Spent Chasing the Band? Female Fans' AutobiographiesThis chapter considers female fans’ book-length autobiographies, life stories written that recount years spent following stars, particularly from the worlds of 1960s, 1970s and 1980s rock and pop. Mass culture criticism, parasocial interaction, totemism, and participatory culture are widely understood as distinct paradigms through which academics can analyze media fandom. In parallel, I suggest they can also be seen as discursive resources that pop fans exploit in the development of autobiographic accounts. To explain this idea, I compare four case study books: My Ticket to Ride by Janice Mitchell (2021), Ah-Ha Moments by Larissa Bendell (2016), Bye, Bye Baby by Caroline Sullivan (2000), My Men, Mick and Me by Andee Baker (2020). My argument is that in such autobiographic accounts some female fans, particularly, play upon aspects of these familiar frames of thinking, not only to talk about their experiences of fandom, but also to frame their encounters inspirationally, and think about gender relations in ways that are potentially empowering.
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Gate People: Fan History Before Elvis Heritage at GracelandAcademic accounts sometimes suggest that Graceland tourism began when Elvis’s mansion was opened to the public five years after his passing. Disputing such assertions, this chapter provides a comparatively inductive, “hidden history” of early fan visits to the Graceland gates. Its methodological approach is deliberate. Academic discussions about fan tourism are, whether consciously or not, often shaped by existing ideas and paradigms. Unless researchers inductively investigate, and increase the resolution of their scholarly gaze, they will not be able to make the distinctions that move our understanding beyond the unproductive myths and generalizations that can inform academic research as easily as they can shape commercial writing. Using historical evidence, the chapter shows that there were several overlapping eras defined by different types and scales of fan activity. These include an early phase exemplified by the disabled fan Gary Pepper, the development of intelligent networks, ritual bus tours and birthday celebrations, and finally a “massification” period associated with larger crowds and negative press stereotyping. The chapter suggests that the famous Graceland music gates physically separated the star and his fans, but they were not “prison gates.” Instead, the Graceland gates functioned as a kind of semi-permeable membrane, allowing ordinary visitors limited entry into Elvis’s world. To conclude, the piece suggests that gate vigils have now become “imagined memories” in guidebook accounts whose real participants have been made comparatively anonymous so that contemporary consumers can imagine themselves occupying the fortunate positions of the actual “gate people.”
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Welsh Devolution and the Politics of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evolving Social Media StrategiesThis chapter examines the expansion of a nascent political movement, tracing its use of social media, notably Twitter, to generate engagement and mobilise a wider network by exploiting the dynamic inherent in the platform. Yes Cymru was formally launched in 2016. Modelled on the Scottish ‘Yes’ campaign, to the extent of adopting near-identical iconography, it was given additional focus by the Brexit vote later that year, and another spike in engagement followed the December 2019 UK general election. The wider (UK) political context has shifted considerably, with the movement attempting to mobilise the increasingly prevalent view that the tectonic plates of British politics are shifting to such an extent that previously unthinkable concepts now seem feasible. By appropriating empirical research conducted utilising the social network analysis software ‘NodeXL’ and debating these findings in line with Denis Balsom’s (The National question again: Welsh political identity in the 1980s. Gomer, 1985) ostensibly outmoded ‘Three Wales Model’, this chapter examines the politics of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales both quantitatively and qualitatively. Moreover, it explores how Yes Cymru attempted to garner support for Welsh independence amidst the pandemic, in contrast to groups such as Abolish the Welsh Assembly who sought to generate closer ties to Westminster through staking anti-devolution claims.
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Quick, Quick, Slow: Making Time for Sustainable Photography Practices in Contemporary HEAs environmental awareness grows, so do questions about the environmental impact of photography, in particular traditional film development and processing, the use of plastics, gelatine and other environmentally harmful chemicals notwithstanding water usage and waste. Pioneering practice and research into sustainable alternative to conventional processes has quickly established, supported by organisations such as the London Sustainable Darkroom. Students in Higher Education are environmentally aware and prepared to take action to mitigate their impacts where possible. As such, there is a coalescence of perceptions within and beyond the classroom which asks to be addressed in the curriculum. Sustainable and alternative processes are often more time consuming than established methods and rely on having sufficient time for the gathering and processing of unconventional materials. This is problematic in a contemporary HE environment where a shortened teaching year and modularisation break up the learning experience and desiccate the attention required by durational activities. This paper will draw upon the current research project Under a Green Light: a darkroom for the future (PI Tabitha Jussa) which is exploring ways to pivot the undergraduate darkroom toward sustainable methods and will reflect on the potential and possibilities of sustainable photography in HE.
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Under a Green Light - A Darkroom for the FutureExploring the evironmental impacts of darkroom photography and how the University of Chester's darkroom has been modified toward more sustainable alternatives.
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Continental drift: Historical perspectives on the framing of ‘Europe’ in the British PressThis chapter argues that the framing of ‘Europe’ in the UK news media saw a gradual adoption of geographically ‘distancing’ language from the early 1950s (and exponentially onwards to the 2016 referendum), which fed into political debate and profoundly shaped public opinion. From the geographically correct, but dated sounding ‘continent’ to the near-universal use of ‘Europe’ to describe ‘anywhere but here’, this analysis of digitized databases suggests that the British press has shaped public attitudes in a considerably more fundamental way than the well-documented attempts by populist politicians. The role of newspapers in the formulation and distribution of ideas, in a broad sense, underpins this study. The use of the word ‘Europe’ transcends geographical reality to encompass alternative worldviews, descriptions of political positions and affinity. This chapter will unpick this linguistic evolution, examining the data derived from content analysis through the prism of place representation, ideology and emotional association.
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Revisiting Robert Louis Stevenson in the PacificIn this Archive Case display, artists Simon Grennan and Soloman Enos re-examine the work of nineteenth century author Robert Louis Stevenson through dynamic graphic storytelling. Stevenson travelled to several Pacific islands before settling in Sāmoa in 1890. Referencing this time in Sāmoa, as well as Hawai’i and Europe, related items are brought together from the Museum's Pacific collections and displayed alongside historical publications of Stevenson's Pacific stories, set within new graphic remediations of these stories as comics by British and Hawaiian artists. The illustration-led display explores the journey of ideas across media (remediation) in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, Robert Louis Stevenson’s fascination with ‘the foreign', and post-colonialism in the Pacific, including new poetry focused on Hawaiian, Samoan and European post-colonialism. The display at the Pitt Rivers Museum celebrates work that is part of a wider research project 'Remediating Stevenson', led by a UK research team (Michelle Keown, Shari Sabeti and Alice Kelly, Edinburgh University; and Simon Grennan, Chester University), in partnership with the National University of Sāmoa. The project explores Robert Louise Stevenson's Pacific fiction, travels, and friendship with Indigenous Pacific communities. The Remediating Robert Louis Stevenson project is producing the first ever multilingual graphic adaptation of the three stories from Robert Louis Stevenson's Island Nights' Entertainments (1893). The project is also commissioning new poetry by indigenous Pacific authors, and developing a set of accompanying teaching resources for use in Sāmoa, Hawai’i and Scotland through participatory arts workshops and film-making.
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Interculturality: the metaesthetic experience of performance and cultureAbstract available in hard copy
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Devising theatre: a critical enquiry into the performer as scenographerAbstract available in hard copy
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Beyond the Playground - Exploring the Production of Playfulness as an Embodied Experience through Personal PracticeThe consensus amongst scholars is that playfulness is an attitude whereas play is an activity. This thesis interrogates conceptions of attitude and proposes a fresh definition of playfulness, suggesting it is a bodily attitude and not just an attitude of mind. Using personal practice to test existing and new knowledge, and drawing on embodied cognition theories, this thesis goes on to define a playground as a cognitive and physical arena in which bodies are at play or engaged with playful activities. Therefore, the role of a ‘play’ body is significant in the production of playfulness. Playfulness requires a ‘play’ body and a playground that is either imaginary or physical. Without these elements it cannot fulfil its purpose which is to generate humour, joy, and spontaneous fun. This thesis argues playfulness is an embodied experience and is produced with our bodies as we actively move towards something we perceive will make activity more fun. There can be a motor-intentionality towards playfulness. It starts in a playground designated for playful activities or one the body has produced, but as it continues after the activity has finished, playfulness can extend beyond the playground. Few scholars in the field of art and design have contributed to academic research on playfulness. This thesis, which is embedded with visual work to inspire and test research questions and demonstrate gaps in academic literature, highlights the importance of the ‘play’ body in producing playfulness using a practice-led methodology. The thesis’ argument that playfulness is embodied, encompassing the rules of a playground, is supported by an examination of theories of depiction, in particular Walton’s theory of fictional truth and mandated imagination. This thesis proposes that when a body makes a physical orientation towards playfulness, it is also opened to wonder, serendipity, and Kairos moments which cannot always be anticipated. Extant academic literature suggests we can frame or reframe situations to make them more amusing, but this thesis posits that our bodies, not just our minds, also achieve a spontaneous reframing by moving in such a way to inculcate playfulness. It also suggests that playfulness opens the individual to possibilities not yet considered or felt; it cultivates an environment where wonder and imagination thrive, driving creativity, and instigating humour.
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Drawing and installation on the British Peak District: Self, environment and a mobile working kitThis text reports about my practice-based doctoral research project exploring the question ‘How can the relationships between self and the outdoor environment of Bakestonedale Moor manifest in a creative arts practice from drawing and installation?’. I have developed a drawing and installation practice as the bearer and expression of my relationship with the outdoor places of the British Peak District in the vicinity of Pott Shrigley. This led to the development of the ‘mobile working kit’, a collection of modules fashioned from paper, string, wood and fabric, which I use to make drawings and mark the land with sculptural additions. My outdoor art-making events may only last a few hours but I later exhibit its artefacts as indoor art displays complemented by photographs and videos from the outdoor sites. I provide descriptions of two drawing activities outdoors, first, using a three-dimensional fence-like paper sculpture as a drawing surface and, second, drawing on a ground-based paper platform. These examples of art-making are then contextualized in reference to Barad’s concept of intra-activity where material changes in the world are understood to occur in co-constitutional negotiation of all active components. I use this concept and Barad’s understanding of performativity to describe process in art-making and in geological, meteorological and biological changes outdoors. I then relate these positions to current performance drawing in reference to the role of the artist and how the arts practice determines her connection to the outdoor environment.
