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Material City was a programme of interdisciplinary conversations, fieldwork and creative responses which sought to address the ways in which the urban environment has been imagined, experienced, lived in, worked on, moved through and looked at. It was led by Situations in association with Arnolfini and the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol.
See our companion wiki-site at http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/MaterialCity/Home
The Material City programme is funded by Arts Council England South West and the AHRC.
These events have now passed.
Wednesday 7 February 2007
Artist Lucy Orta and Archaeologist John Schofield discuss Greenham Common
Greenham Common has an illustrious but controversial past, having served as a Royal Air Force base in World War II, and an American airbase for much of the Cold War. Artist Lucy Orta and archaeologist and military heritage specialist John Schofield discussed their collaborative engagement with Greenham Common through their involvement with Common Ground, an interdisciplinary research group which set out to explore the site through archaeological survey and artistic intervention. Common Ground Research Group website http://www.soton.ac.uk/~kmp401/researchgroup.htm Download guidenotes
Download transcript
Wednesday 13 December 2006
Artists Nils Norman and Heath Bunting in conversation
Nils Norman and Heath Bunting share a common commitment to the political potential of artistic practice. Bunting emerged from the 80s committed to building open/democratic communication systems and social contexts. He came from the street up, passing through and often revisiting graffiti, performance, intervention, pirate radio, fax/ mail art and BBS systems to become an active participant in the explosion of the internet. He has produced many highly recognised internet projects, and has helped form a strong context for the practice of net.art. Recently, he has moved into the field of genetics proclaiming it to be the next 'new media', and is also developing work in the area of physical network performance.
Nils Norman’s work is informed by urban politics, traditions and histories of utopian thinking and ideas on alternative economic systems that can work within the city. For the past decade Nils Norman has been devising a series of imaginative proposals for improving urban living conditions through community-based initiatives.
Our apologies but due to the speakers' wishes a transcript of this event is no longer available. However if you are interested in Heath Bunting's work please visit www.irational.org and you can read more about the work of Nils Norman at www.dismalgarden.org/
Tuesday 7 November 2006
Dr. Brigitte Franzen, Curator of Sculpture Projects in Munster 2007
The fourth edition of Sculpture Projects Münster will open on June 16, 2007, running parallel with Documenta 12 in Kassel, till September 30, 2007. Mounted every ten years, this large-scale international exhibition invites artists from all over the world to create new work in the city of Münster. Under the direction of the curators Kaspar König and Dr. Brigitte Franzen and Associate Curator Dr. Carina Plath, the thirty-five artists participating in the 2007 exhibition will examine the character of contemporary sculpture and its relationship to public space. As in 1977, 1987, and 1997, Sculpture Projects will analyse the interdependence between the arts, the city, and the public. In this lecture, Brigitte Franzen gave a rare preview of the curators’ plans, reflecting back on previous Sculpture Projects Münster, and the exhibition's position with a prevalent biennale culture. www.skulptur-projekte.de Download guidenotes for lecture Download transcript
Wednesday 11 October 2006
Wrights and Sites: Simultaneous Drift (4 walks, 4 routes, 4 screens)
Wrights & Sites (A Mis-Guide To Anywhere) presented a performance-lecture on their site and walking-based practices that overlap with architecture, urban exploration, activism and autobiography. Download transcript
Wednesday 7 June 2006
Ergin Cavusoglu and Professor Tim Cresswell
"There is no more authoritative writer on place than Tim Cresswell” suggested one reviewer of Cresswell’s acclaimed study Place: a Short Introduction, 2004 (Blackwell Publishing). Situations invited Professor Cresswell, newly appointed Chair of Human Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London to reflect on the work of artist Ergin Cavusoglu. Raised in Bulgaria as part of the Turkish minority and now based in London, Cavusoglu draws on his personal experience of migration to create mesmerising video works. The artist presented extracts of his recent works including Point of Departure, which transforms the mundane activities of Stansted and Trabzon airports into strange, beautiful and unsettling frontier points. Cavusoglu, who was short-listed for the Beck’s Futures Prize in 2004 and exhibited in the British Art Show 6 which toured to Bristol in summer 2006, joined Professor Cresswell in conversation. Download transcript.
Wednesday 22 February 2006
Paul Rooney and Dr. Dan Hicks in conversation
Paul Rooney’s videos could be described as meditations on the mundane. His works are often the outcome of musical collaborations with disenfranchised members of the community, inviting them to describe in detail their surroundings, jobs or dreams. This conversation between Rooney and archaeologist Dr. Dan Hicks, University of Bristol, explored Rooney’s enchantment of the urban environment. Download transcript
Wednesday 15 February 2006
Iain Sinclair responds to Francis Alys' film Guards
Among contemporary British writers, no one has made the city the central subject of their work to quite such an extent as Iain Sinclair. Here he responds to Francis Alÿs’ acclaimed film, Guards, with excerpts from his novels and literary references to the City of London. Download transcript
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