IDEAS IN PROGRESS

AUTUMN 2006

10 October – The Otolith Group – Images Sometimes Tremble

Founded by Anjali Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in 2002, the Otolith Group creates platforms for production, curation and dialogue relating to the moving image, aurality, documentation and the archive, processes of fragmentation, and the condition of futurity. In 2003 they collaborated with Richard Couzins to make the film, OTOLITH. International exhibitions and festivals since 2004 include FLY UTOPIA, Transmediale International Media Arts Festival, Berlin; LUGGAGE-Dai/Nai, Nanjing Arts Institute, Nanjing China; Prologue New Europe, New Feminism, Cornerhouse, Manchester (2005); Our House is a House That Moves, Skuc Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Living Art Museum, Reykjavik; Homeworks III, A Forum on Cultural Practice, Beirut; VIDEOBRASIL, State of the Art, Sao Paolo, Brazil; MIR-Dreams of Space, Stills Gallery Edinburgh; and Tate Triennial: New British Art at Tate Britain, London.

24 October – The Raqs Media Collective – Indexing Empire: Archives of the Raj in London

Raqs Media Collective was formed in 1992 by Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. Based in Delhi, their work engages with urban spaces and global circuits, and the myths and histories of diverse provenances. Raqs sees its work as opening out a series of investigations with image, sound, software, objects, performance, print, text and lately, curation, that straddle different (and changing) affective and aesthetic registers, expressing an imaginative unpacking of questions of identity and location, a deep ambivalence towards modernity and a quiet but consistent critique of the operations of power and property.

7 November – Julian Stallabrass – The Face of Ethnography in Contemporary Art Photography

Julian Stallabrass is a writer, photographer and lecturer. He is Reader in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and the author of Art Incorporated (Oxford University Press, 2004); _Internet Art: The Online Clash Between Culture and Commerce_ (London: Tate Publishing, 2003); Paris Pictured (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2002); High Art Lite: British Art in the 1990s (London: Verso, 1999; updated edition, 2006); and _Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Culture_ (London: Verso, 1996). With Black Dog Publishing (London), he has also co-edited _Locus Solus: Site, Identity and Technology in Contemporary Art_ (2000), _Occupational Hazard: Critical Writing on Recent British Art_ (1998), _Ground Control: Technology and Utopia_ (1997).

21 November – Erika Tan – Mining the Archive

Erika Tan is a London-based artist, whose work has evolved from an interest in anthropology and the moving image. Recent exhibitions include Mining the Archive (Centre A, Vancouver), _Around the World in 80 Days_ (ICA/South London Gallery), Ghosting (Bristol A Bond Space; Angel Row, Nottingham; Chapter, Cardiff), a solo show at Chinese Arts Centre. Manchester, and Singapore’s inaugural Biennale. She is currently pursuing a PhD project. ‘Transnational Manoeuvering(s)’, with the TrAIN Research Centre (Transnational Art, Identity and Nation research forum), at Camberwell College of Art, University of the Arts.

5 December – Anna Best – Artist & Document

Anna Best is an artist based in London, interested in live work, public spaces, writing, digital media and collaboration. Recent collaborations and commissions include Unchain the Lunatics (2004-5). Vauxhall Pleasure (2004+), Free Lunch (2004-5), Occasional Sights (2002-3), Ice Cream Convention (2002+), PHIL (2002), Away Weekend (2001), Festival of Lying (2000), Bcnsfld (2000), error 404 (2000).

SPRING

8 February – Keith Piper – Excavating the Archive

Keith Piper is Reader in Fine Art at Middlesex University. A visual artist working with digital media, he is interested in site-specific, research-based practice exploring themes of postcoloniality and the black subject. He is artist in Residence at Birmingham City Archive and recently completed projects at the Contemporary Museum, St. Louis, the House of World Cultures, Berlin, and Duke University, North Carolina.

22 February – Diego Ferrari – Photography, Art and Architecture

Diego Ferrari is an artist and photographer who teaches at Central Saint Martins and the Escola Elisava in Barcelona. In 2004 he held an Arts Council International Fellowship ‘Artist-in-residence’ in China and last year had a solo exhibition in Bucharest. He has had solo exhibitions at Espais d”art Contemporani, Girona, Spain and at Faith House, Holton Lee, Dorset.

8 March – Gilane Tawadros – Changing States: Contemporary Art in a Global Arena

Gilane Tawadros is a curator and writer. She was the founding Director of the Institute of International Arts (inIVA) from 1994 to 2005. This year she will curate the Brighton Photography Biennial

22 March – Isaac Julien – Artists Talk

Isaac Julien is an artist and film-maker. In 2001 he was nominated for the Turner Prize for his films ‘The Long Road to Mazatlan’ and ‘Vagabondia’ (both made in collaboration with Javier de Frutos). Isaac Julien founded Sankofa Film and Video Collective (1984) and, in 2003, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Kunstfilm Biennale in Cologne for ‘Baltimore’. Last year he taught at Harvard and on the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Programme. He has a research fellowship at Goldsmiths College.

5 April – Janice Cheddie – Black Spectatorship, Fashion and Visual Culture

Janice Cheddie is an artist, writer and curator who is currently working as a research consultant for the London Authority’s Cultural Strategy Team. From 2000 to 2005, she worked at Goldsmith’s College, project managing ‘Translating the Image: Cross-cultural Arts’. She has written extensively on issues of gender and ethnicity and is currently working on her monograph ‘Fashion and Black Femininity’.