Programme

Against Delivery, Slade Research Centre Woburn Square, 12-13 November 2015

DAY 1 – Against Delivery: Researching Practice

9.30am           Registration

10am               Welcome address from Susan Collins, Slade Professor, Director, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL

10.15am          Brief introduction to Against Delivery from Slade doctoral programme

10.30am          The Mark of Culture: The imprint, the gesture

A screen is suspended in the space; it is already stained. We begin with a gesture, an invitation to mark and re-mark. The imprint can be the result of an activity or a conversation. Sometimes, it is unintentional, or else it involves the motivation for reaching out, for touching, over layering, joining together or erasing. This might register as subtle shifts, as consequences of contact and encounter

12pm               Tea and coffee break

12:15pm          Re-enactments: A historiographic method to apprehend conditions of change in our liquid world.

Boris Debackere and Steven Devleminck (LUCA School of Arts)

1pm                 Lunch served in The Blackboard Café

2pm                 In The Dark

Contact printing the event. Draw with and be drawn by light.

3pm                 Against Assumptions: Preparing Disasters / Preparing for Anarchism (two sessions)

This session challenged different modes of presentation and production, while trying to tackle and resist the formats which we are familiar with by questioning “presentation” as an artistic practice which incorporates surprises. Working with the concepts of invisibility and anarchism as positive, constructive forces, we resisted dividing the one hour session into even slots of activity, thus encouraging us to use our materials as tools to construct the session and define its limits.

3pm                 Circulation Part 1: Inner Dialogue and Material Translation (two sessions)

This session took the form of an exhibition and group discussion, with the artworks responding to ideas of ‘inner dialogue and material translation’ – which is understood here as a vital element to studio-based practice. The discussion took the form of an “old-school studio critique” with all participating artists and audience sharing their thoughts about the theme in relation to the exhibited art works.

4pm                 Tea and coffee break

4.30pm            Against Assumptions and Circulation Part 1 continue

5.30pm            Closing remarks from Martha Rosler and Hayley Newman with drinks

6.30pm            Dinner served in The Blackboard Café

6.30pm             Totally Against Delivery: Encounters I

Encounters presented responses to the conference theme through performance, moving image, installation and other live forms. Staged at the end of each day, Encounters offered time for reflection and un-structured discussion, as well as an opportunity to continue to challenge the notion of “delivery” – or “against delivery” – through an engagement with practice-based research as event.

9.30pm              Close

 

DAY 2 – Against Delivery: Imag(in)ing Change

9.30am            Registration

10am               Indexing The Event

…The relationships between artists, indices and non-human actants. Explorations of ontologies, into the object, process and beyond. This workshop-based session explored research with an interest in the posthuman, anthropocene, technologies and interdisciplinary methodologies.

11.30am          Tea and coffee

11:45am          Landscape Encounters and Transformations

Sensing landscape: materials, traces, images. Finding ways of experiencing a site through sight, touch, smell, taste and other forms of engagement. The session explored different methods of encountering the environment by considering diverse material and sensorial modes of connection.

1pm                 Lunch served in The Blackboard Café

2pm                 Circulation Part 2: The Artwork in the World

This session – conceived as a counterpart to Circulation Part 1: Inner Dialogue and Material Translation – explored considerations of the artwork in the world. When does the artworld finish and the world begin?

2pm                 Embodied Change: Desire / Transformation

This session was formatted as a roundtable discussion. Numbers were limited to groups of 10, with each participant presenting their own research as it relates to the themes of desire and transformation. The intention was for the format to encourage an intimate and focused dialogue around each practice.

3pm                 Tea and coffee

3:15pm           Diagrammatic Thought

This session explored the role of the diagram as an inherently flexible form of abstraction:
a prominent scientific and artistic working method that by itself generates, de- and re-installs possible interpretations, translations, and applications. As a great, creative, transdisciplinary tool it allows for the process of thoughts to be awaken and simultaneously re-embodied in practice and in movement – invoking process: in diagrammatic thought, both writer and reader are engaged in continually interpreting and translating, evading resolution, while engaging in the creative process of thinking.

4.45pm             Closing remarks from Ladies of the Press, Kristen Kreider, Hayley Newman, Susan Collins and researchers from the Slade, EARN and LAHP

5.30pm             Drinks served in The Blackboard Café

5.45pm              Reflections on Feyerabend with Chiara Ambrosio, Paul Magee and Alan Read

6.30pm              Dinner served in The Blackboard Café

7.30pm              Totally Against Delivery: Encounters II

Encounters presented responses to the conference theme through performance, moving image, installation and other live forms. As well as programmed participation there was space for impromptu participation in an “open mic” format. Staged at the end of each day, Encounters offered time for reflection and un-structured discussion, as well as an opportunity to continue to challenge the notion of “delivery” – or “against delivery” – through an engagement with practice-based research as event.

9.30pm              Close