Singularity
visual culture

During the last two days – 4th and 5th of February -  I had the opportunity of following Paul Lowe’s Tweetcast from Photography next, an International Conference at Nordiska Museet in Stockholm. Paul Lowe is Course Director at the Masters in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the University of the Arts London, LCC.

The keynote speakers at the conference were Martin Barnes, Elizabeth Edwards, Jens Erdman Rasmussen, Joan M. Schwartz and Martin Lister.

Thanks to the magic of the hashtags (#photonext) you can now re-read the broadcast and share some very interesting points raised – Jens Erdman Rasmussen curator Danish National Museum of Photography requoted ‘museums are concentration camps for art’. You can follow the whole list of tweets tagged #photonext

I asked Paul Lowe through Twitter if he could pass on a question to Jens Erdman Rasmussen, one that troubles me:
is the curator the new artist?

Coincidentally, yesterday, while Paul Lowe was broadcasting from  Sweden, some of us MAVIS students had a field day with artist Sean Lynch.

If I have learnt anything from Sean is definitely that the Artist is the new Artist, and perhaps also the new Curator - or has it always been? At some point, we spoke about the role of the curator in the preparation of his last exhibitions. After a long and very interesting answer he asserted and resumed that ‘not much, really’ – joking then about our future as students of Visual Arts Practices on a Curatorial strand.

But the thing is, when an artist develops his or her own practice in such a methodic and persistent way as Sean Lynch does, exhausting research paths as an everyday strategy, the role of the curator in shaping the presentation of the work is already done. Is it not?

These conversations remind me of a great post by EYECURIOUS entitled, Word of the Year 2009, where the concept of curator is re-evaluated and polished.

CityArts and the Heritage Council in association with the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media and the School of Media, DIT present Archive | Image | History
December 3rd Moved to December 2nd 5.00 – 7.00pm - The Oval Room, The Rotunda, Parnell Sq. W. Dublin 1

Whilst archives and archival practices have been a consistent feature of the historian’s work, visual artists and cultural practitioners have also engaged the archive as site, form and source to appropriate, reconfigure and interrogate it. This forum brings together a number of practitioners and researchers to focus on notions of memory-building and archiving in the context of historical representation, exploring ideas of experience, memory and community, authenticity and authorship, notions of the public and public-ness, and the politics of the archival imagination.

Participants

Walid Raad

The Loudest Muttering is Over: Documents from The Atlas Group Archive. Raad uses photographic slides, notebook pages, and videotape excerpts as historical artifacts attributed to various sources or characters such as Dr. Fadl Fakhouri, a leading historian of Lebanese history, or Souheil Bachar, an ex-hostage. The findings and claims of these figures are inspired by historical circumstances and objects such as the role of the car bomb in the Lebanese wars, and existing captivity narratives.

Anthony Haughey

Remembering to Forget the Past: The Destruction and Recovery of Archives. Haughey has been working on post-conflict situations over the last decade specifically in relation to Northern Ireland and the Balkans where the destruction and recovery of archives has been one of the features and legacies of conflict. A starting point for some of this work is the description by Dr. Kemal Bakarsic, librarian of Bosnia’s National Museum, of the firebombing of the National and University Library during the bombardment of Sarajevo when ‘fragile pages of gray ashes, floated down like a dirty black snow. Catching a page you could feel its heat, and for a moment read a fragment of text in a strange kind of black and gray negative, until, as the heat dissipated, the page melted to dust in your hand’.

Catherine Morris

The praxis of community remembrancing: projections from lost Irish archives The cultural practices of the Irish Cultural Revival breathed new life into the dying body of the nation. The Revivalists called the past into being through street parades, collecting of folklore, staging and publishing Irish legends and histories, initiating art and museum exhibitions, and by travelling with theatre productions and magic lantern shows. Using archival sources, Morris will investigate how this emergent nationalist culture depicted itself in public space drawing connections between the politics of commemoration and repressed histories.

Chair: Martin McCabe, DIT Fellow, Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media

Martin Parr’s Lecture at the Ranelagh Multidenominational School, Sunday the 28th of September 2008, as part of the Ranelagh Arts Festival.
Duration: 52mins.
Thanks goes to Ramona Farrelly at Brightlife, for her technical support, and Maryrose Lyons for her help with the recording.
If you would like to get a copy of this video for educational purposes, just contact me.

Martin Parr discusses his long career as one of the most original and innovative photographers of our time. From the early days of taking black and white photographs of Ireland, notably A Fair Day (1984), Bad Weather (1982), the groundbreaking The Last Resort (1986) and up to his most recent work exploring globalisation and tourism. Martin’s unique perspective on the follies and vanities of our time has consistently enlighted, amused and even alarmed. A photograph by Martin Parr is instantly recognisable as his: in a world in which we are bombarded by the visual media, his image always engage and can never be ignored.

Entries are still being accepted for the Ranelagh Outdoors exhibition of street photography to be judged by Martin Parr. Further details at the bottom of this page.

Date –Sunday 28th September at 2.00pm
Venue: Ranelagh Multidenominational School
Tickets: €10

Tickets must be booked in advance at The Ranelagh Arts Festival web site.

Ranelagh Outdoors – Photo Exhibition

Date – Friday, 26th September – Sunday, 28th September
Venue: Ranelagh Multidenominational School
Time: On view from 11am – 6.00pm, entry is free.

This exhibition is of original photographs taken outdoors in Ranelagh. Street photography has inspired and been the subject matter of many of the great photographers including Martin Parr who will be judging the exhibition and awarding a prize. We hope to have a large contribution from local amateur photographers.