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AHRC
Project Objectives:
To draw together expertise in the arts and social sciences to investigate
cultural agency, in particular the relation of cultural work to
processes of urban social change:
1. to compare methodologies in the arts and social sciences
as applied to contemporary cultural work in settings of urban change;
2. to examine specific cases of cultural intervention in urban change,
seen from the viewpoints of both artists and academics in the social
sciences, to refine questions and difficulties in current policy
and debate;
3. to reconsider the concept of cultural agency, in relation both
to cultural work (as in the arts in urban change) and as the term
is used in the social sciences to refer to development work in non-affluent
situations);
4. to prepare, present, discuss and revise a set of papers as the
basis for an edited book, in an appropriate environment for immersion
in the problem (at a retreat centre in Devon);
5. to define further research questions, particularly those produced
by a collision of methodologies, and further bids for funding for
a longer and in other ways more extensive research project;
6. to consider how the workshop's findings might feed into policy
debate and academic development, and offer a one-day symposium (costs
not included in this bid) to disseminate findings;
7. to disseminate findings also in summary form by electronic means
through the Critical Spaces pages of the University of Plymouth
website.
The workshop will investigate the concept and potential impact of
cultural agency, as an aspect of creativity, in situations of urban
change. A core group of participants at post-doctoral level will
be drawn equally from the arts and social sciences to find new ways
in which to consider these questions. The core group of 10 will
meet in two prepared sessions of 48 hours each, one in the Spring
and one in the Autumn of 2007. Each core participant will prepare
a paper for one session, and act as respondent for another paper
at the other session. Up to eight international participants will
join one or more sessions. Additionally, a one-day open workshop
on cultural agency for utopia will be held on July 12th in Plymouth,
with international participation, prior to the 8th International
Utopian Studies Society conference: www.utopia2007.org.uk.
CRITICAL SPACES
The dynamics of change in relation to culture and the culture industries
AHRC workshop project 1/1/2007 - 31/12/2007 University of Plymouth
Convenor: Dr. Malcolm Miles (Reader in Cultural Theory, promoted
to Professor 1/9/2007)
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Click here for a PDF of the REPORT
ON COMPLETION OF THE WORKSHOP
Keynotes
from the Utopian Studies Society Conference 2007:
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Lalit Kishor-Bhati
Auroville- A Utopia in the Making
All the problems of the humanity are essentially the problems
of harmony – 'Sri Aurobindo'
It is about developing a new mind set towards the harmonious co-existence
of all. Auroville's quest and experiments for 'Utopia' are aimed
at 'Realising Actual Human Unity'.
Auroville, established in 1968, in South India, today, has 2,000
residents representing 42 nationalities. It has UNESCO's endorsement
as a unique project of great value to Humanity. Auroville has a
pioneering status in wide use of renewable energy, natural resource
management, environmental restoration, organic farming, waste management,
innovative architecture and low energy and appropriate building
technologies, rural & regional integrated development initiatives
and also the aspects of self governance, conflict resolution, alternative
economy and education.
• Click
above player to hear podcast of Lalit Kishor-Bhati's presentation
www.auroville.org
• Esther Leslie
Utopia in a Snowglobe
Taking Brecht's watchword 'erase the traces' as one starting-point,
and Little Nemo's visit to a glass cave in Slumberland in 1905
as another, this paper traces a relationship between utopia, transience
and transparency, as figured in the materials of glass and ice.
The manifestos of Bruno Taut and Paul Scheerbart, which plea for
glass architecture and alpine architecture respectively, are related
to the tradition of ice palaces, the first of which is said to
have been built on the River Neva in 1739 to accommodate a honeymooning
couple. In this paper, utopia is found in a snowglobe.
•
Click above player to hear podcast of Esther Leslie's presentation
www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/staff/LeslieEsther
www.militantesthetix.co.uk
• David Cross
The concept of Utopia as 'no place'
keeps possibility open by liberating thought from convention.
As an artist, I am stifled by the dichotomy of Theory and Practice,
with its implicit separation of mind and body, and its binary
division between the ideal and the actual. I propose we work instead
with a three-part model similar to Aristotle's Theoria, Poiesis
and Praxis, which have truth, production, and action as their
respective purpose or aim. I would like Praxis to be understood
in the spirit offered by Karl Marx, and developed by Jürgen
Habermas: using all the faculties in conscious, ethically grounded
and transformative (inter)action. As examples of efforts to achieve
such transformation, I shall show some projects by Cornford &
Cross, including Utopia (1999), which explored generosity both
as a form of control and of resistance; Why Read the Classics?
(2005), a play of dazzling illusion and blind idealism; Words
are not Enough (2007); a confrontation between denial and 'the
possibility of hope'; and Trance Nation (2007), which stages a
reciprocal gaze between rationalism and mysticism. My impulse
to make art springs from a lively sense of dissatisfaction at
the gap between the ideal and actual. For me, praxis begins with
an attempt to close that gap, follows with a recognition that
the attempt is doomed, and hopefully, leads to a way of coming
to terms with it. Transformations in pursuit of an artistic ideal
seem to demand a change not only in social situations, but also
in myself.
•
Click above player to hear podcast of David Cross' presentation
www.cornfordandcross.com
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