Showing posts with label Laura Davidson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Laura Davidson. Show all posts
Thursday, 16 August 2012
Monday, 13 August 2012
12 - Pages Issue 9 : Terror
Introduction by Laura Davidson
“For reasons that should by now be self-evident, bearing witness does not imply special access to the essential meaning of critical events. Nor does being in a position to see those events with one’s own eyes privilege the testimony of any individual, no matter where they stand in relation to the presumed center of the drama, since so many other eyes are trained on it from so many uniquely revelatory positions. Logically, this observation is elementary, but as soon as discussion moves from the abstract to the concrete, agreement vanishes in the so-called “fog of war”, that atmosphere of crisis and ambiguity in which opposites confront each other only to lose their bearings, that moment of truth in which sharply defined antagonists begin to resemble each other in their confusion and desperation and truth vaporizes and indiscriminate death has the final word.”
Robert Storr September: A History Painting by Gerhard Richter (2010)
On September 11th 2001, Gerhard Richter was en route from Cologne to his opening at Maria Goodman Gallery in Manhattan. He was due to arrive at 12.30pm, almost 4 hours after the first plane hit the World Trade Centre. Richter and his wife were diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia and like the rest of the world, became restricted to watching the unedited narrative stream continuously from TV screens. For those who count themselves amongst the most cynical disbelievers in fate, it must be hard not to concede it was Richter’s destiny to be thrust somehow into the sublime horror of one of the defining moments of the early 21st Century.
The events of that September day are accompanied by a very specific and saturated imagery. It was a horror of an intensity not witnessed on the American homeland since colonial times. Ironically in the latter half of the 20th Century, it was America that had been responsible for creating the subject of such sublime imagery. The H-bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War 2 are a subject matter not unfamiliar to Richter. Unlike the atrocities committed in Japan in 1945, images of what happened in Lower Manhattan were unveiled in real time and then replayed continuously to a worldwide audience.
The string of words “nine eleven” has a meaning so intense in Western nations that it obliterates all that defined it before. Primarily it marked an increased aggression in US and European foreign policy. Retrospectively it is coming to represent a turning point in how media captures our memory of an event. What occurred in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on the 11th of September 2001 is etched into the collective memory of North American and Western European culture. When discussing the event, the attempt at grasping a meaning behind it often begins with a personal account, as if ‘we’ were all there. As if we all saw it played out in reality. The relentless media coverage for almost two weeks after the event placed us in a 360-viewing platform. We were fed images that gave us the impression of being in Manhattan above all, when everything unfolded across the ubiquitous clear blue skyline.
Over a decade later, we have become more accustomed to taking part in collective events that we are not physically a part of. Nine eleven was a trigger of this phenomenon. The removal of physical self in the Web 2.0 era has somehow come with a natural ease. It seems logical to concede that there has always been a concealed science fiction desire to be in two places at once. A strong trend has emerged in which major news stories are broken on Twitter by amateurs, often more rapidly than the conventional broadcasters. Major news events are also increasingly made out of something minor. The continual stream of news that is attached to each person through personal computers and smartphones maybe gives us more of a physical sense of being somewhere when we are in fact completely absent.
An absence of physical presence is what defines North America’s 9/11 as equally as an inability to articulate the true terror of those who did witness the events unfold in real time, without constant replay. On Gerhard Richter’s painting September, the art historian Robert Storr remarked that he himself finds it difficult to separate his personal account of the day and the images he saw on the television. In fact, a continual question that arises is how to begin the task of staging the representational on something already so represented? On something so concrete yet buried in the effervescent nature of the photograph? The occurrences in the aftermath of the event in particular, the whole of Lower Manhattan buried in a Pompeii-esque ash of office papers, seemed in themselves a poetic legacy that no artist could ever create. The political fall out has agitated some artistic response but, the decade of the War on Terror seems eerily quiet in contrast to, for comparisons sake, the Vietnam War. It is curious that an event that was so staged and so visual has barely any visual response to it.
This sense of the intangible is what the brief for the Terror issue was based upon. In the years leading up to the Iraq War, the apocalyptic visions of September 11th were pulsing through the veins of the world media when the Invasion of Afghanistan was announced. These representations were continually recycled to justify the War on Terror. The world had become a place saturated with hyperactive illustrations, replayed over and over, filling the citizens of predominately western nations with a fear of this unknown, slippery, indefinable enemy known as Terror. The Invasion of Afghanistan was only the beginning of this stretching decade of conflict. The War on Terror left in its wake a trail of imagery, of spectacle, of war and of the sublime that is so dense in it’s recording (coinciding with the new digital era) that grasping the concept of the conflict: Terror, is still difficult a decade later.
Contextualising these events within the realm of art has not been forthcoming –Richter began working on September in 2004 and even he struggled to grasp how to proceed with his initial drawings. In order to allow a basis for response to the Terror brief, 12-Pages directed the respondents to consider wide resources from the imagery of war to the poetic mechanisms of the sublime, to begin to render a dialogue that describes the preceding decade.
Terror will be published on 12-Pages, Thursday August 16th. Featuring new work by Beverley Bennett, Charley Peters, Gudrun Filipska and Laura Davidson.
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Project News: A Message To... Marfa
Marfa, Texas, located at 30°18′43″N 104°1′29″W |
TBC members Laura Davidson, Charley Peters and Beverley Bennett are currently working together on a collaborative project, A Message To... Marfa. Marfa is a town in the desert of West Texas, founded in the early 1880s as a railroad water stop. Marfa Army Airfield was located east of the town during World War II and trained several thousand pilots before closing in 1945, the abandoned site still being visible 16km east of the town. In 1956 the film Giant was filmed in Marfa, famously the last film featuring James Dean, who died before filming was completed. The city is now best known for housing Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation, occupying more than 10 buildings and permanently exhibiting work by artists including Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Richard Long and Roni Horn.
A Message To... Marfa involves Peters and Bennett, in London, providing Davidson with a list of instructions for actions that she must undertake in Marfa. These actions will generate material that Davidson will send back to Peters and Bennett, which they will curate and interpret to generate a remote 'drawing' of Marfa. The project will be realised over the next two months, and published online shortly afterwards.
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Beverley Bennett, Laura Davidson, Paul Mendez and Charley Peters, Along the Line (2011/12) |
TBC have recently collaborated on a book project on the theme of 'Along the Line'. Part of a large project involving artists from around the world, the book will tour to 14 international venues in 2012 before joining the collection of the Brooklyn Art Library. The first show of the tour opens in April in Brooklyn and will then travel to Chicago. The tour will reach London in late 2012.
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
Altered States
Altered States
Edited and designed by Laura Davidson.
Featuring work by Beverley Bennett, Charley Peters and Paul Mendez
Edited and designed by Laura Davidson.
Featuring work by Beverley Bennett, Charley Peters and Paul Mendez
Monday, 18 July 2011
12-Pages Issue 8: Altered States
Introduction by Laura Davidson
“A revolutionary action within culture cannot have as its aim to be the expression or analysis of life; it must aim at life’s expansion. Misery must be pushed back everywhere.”
Guy Debord
The European Avant-Garde set a precedent for art as a force to transform the cultural and social landscape. It was seen by some as a break out agent attempting to shift the dominant powers that had ravaged the continental landscape during the First World War. Almost 100 years later, art has become synonymous with selling, consumption and the ‘market’. Questions need to be raised about how art practice can reclaim and challenge prevailing powers, without being echoed by the capitalist mainstream. Art, it feels, has lost its radical edge. The exhibition Radicals and Non-Conformists at London’s National Portrait Gallery curated by TBC founder Beverley Bennett, showcased work inspired by radicals in the 19th Century. Further work was produced for the previous issue of 12-pages. It still remains elusive whether art today has the capability or desire to challenge the society it is inhabiting. The theme for Altered States arose from a reading of Gene Ray’s essay Avant-Gardes and Anti-Capitalist Vector published in Third Text, May 2007.
In the article Ray sets out various revolutionary hypotheses derived from the theoretical. The overall impression is that art has to develop an ability to be: nomadic (in reference to Deleuze and Guttari), uncompromising and unaware of it’s own significance. The importance of art in culture, Ray claims, is stopping art practice from becoming Avant-Garde once more. Art needs to escape. Revolutionary actions are not to be uncovered exclusively in the atelier of the contemporary practitioner. Instead, suggestions for the living artist are to look beyond the discipline of art, look toward revolutions in science and medicine, creativity in protest and transgressive lifestyles, still hidden and being newly formed. Not much different from the approaches of the now canonised André Breton, Alexander Rodchenko, Claude Cahun and Marcel Duchamp. How we now navigate through these ideas in a post-post modern world seems heavy laden with social responsibility. Almost so heavy in fact, it could lead to a creative block. A breaking free needs to be started off small, like the woman in the Netherlands who escaped from prison by digging a hole with a spoon.
The Altered States brief simply asked contributors to consider art as a catalyst for change. It was important that these ideas were considered in the widest possible sense, to bring a sense of plurality to a changed state. As we know too well, the drive for a reformed state in Europe post WW1 lead to in Germany, Italy and Spain the spectre of Fascism and in the East of Europe the steel face of Communism. Such extremes of belief today seem less significant in the age of Web 2.0, where multiple states of exchange between individuals can seemingly co-exist. As 12-pages’ editorial remit is to create a discourse around contemporary drawing practice and it’s definition, the featured outcomes additionally challenge the ‘drawing’ in some way.
Altered States will be published on 12-Pages, Tuesday 19th July.
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Commission News: SLICE
Slice, a Pakistani–UK collaboration, curated by Fatima Hussein and Scale |
TBC Artists' Collective have today been commissioned to produce work for SLICE, a Pakistani–UK collaborative website and accompanying exhibitions in London and Lahore curated by Fatima Hussein, artists and co-director of Other Asias, and Scale, the collaborative arts project run by artists and theatremakers Simon Daw and Paul Burgess. SLICE aims to encourage dialogue between two diverse cultures by linking communities in both countries via the creation of a new artwork that enters into dialogue with the social and physical fabric of two iconic, complex and historically linked cities. Ten artists from London and ten from Lahore have been commissioned to take part in SLICE.
TBC members Beverley Bennett, Charley Peters, Laura Davidson and Paul Mendez will produce a collaborative work for the project, which will be exhibited in both cities online. The group members will also participate in two international web conferences.
The exhibition dates are as follows:
July 2011 Exhibition opens and SLICE website launch at Ideas Store, Whitechapel, London
September 2011 Exhibition opens at Rich Mix, London
September 2011 Exhibition opens at Zahoor ul Akhlaq Gallery, Lahore
TBC are very excited by the project and will post more news about their developing work on 12-Pages during the duration of their involvement with SLICE.
Labels:
2011,
Beverley Bennett,
Charley Peters,
collaborative art,
Fatima Hussein,
Ideas Store,
Laura Davidson,
Other Asias,
Paul Burgess,
Paul Mendez,
Rich Mix,
Scale,
Simon Daw,
Slice
Saturday, 5 March 2011
TBC at Tate
Laura Davidson poses with Athanasios Argianas' Coil Studies II (the width of your hair) at Art Now Live |
On Friday 4th March TBC Members Laura Davidson, Paul Mendez and Charley Peters attended Art Now Live at Tate Britain, a programme of works that explore storytelling and participation. During the evening's live art events, Laura Davidson posed with Athanasios Argianas' work 'Coil Studies II (the width of your hair)'.
Friday, 28 January 2011
A Message To...
TBC Artists' Collective are working on a new long-term project called 'A Message To...' The project will take members of TBC to various UK and international locations to make ephemeral interventionist works based on the cities they travel to. On 22 January 2011 members of TBC Artists' Collective - Charley Peters, Beverley Bennett, Laura Davidson, Paul Mendez, James Tuitt - travelled to Oxford to complete the first part of the project. Each artist made a piece of work specifically as a message to a person linked to Oxford who has contributed to national cultural, creative or academic history.
Charley Peters, A Message To… Ann Oakley (2011)
Installed in Pitt Rivers Museum and Modern Art Oxford
Peters' work pays homage to Ann Oakley, a writer and a sociologist who graduated from Somerville College, Oxford. She has written extensively and influentially around issues of sex and gender, housework, childbirth and feminist social science. Her 1974 book 'Housewife' inspired Peters work for this 'A Message To' project, in which she wrote, 'Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualisation'. Peters' drawing is made from dirt samples collected in her studio.
Peters installed one of her dirt drawings in a display cabinet in the Pitt Rivers Museum. The cabinet, on the first floor of the museum, is directly underneath a vitrine containing ethnographic objects relating to marriage, which seemed particularly relevant to the research concerns of Oakley. The second of Peters' drawings was installed in Modern Art Oxford, hidden in a rack of postcards representing artworks that have been shown in the gallery in past exhibitions.
Beverley Bennett, A Message To… Richard Baker (2011)
Installed in Blackwells Music, Broad Street, Oxford
Richard Baker (born 1972) is a British composer and conductor, known equally for his own highly charged and distinctive music and for his performances of contemporary music, especially the music of his contemporaries in the UK. Bennett chose Baker as her subject due to his connection to her place of birth in the West Midlands, and the striking rhythms of his compositions which complement the visual tones of her drawings.
Bennett installed her drawing on a notice board in Blackwells Music store on Broad Street, Oxford.
Laura Davidson, A Message To… Maurice Bowra (2011)
Installed in a bicycle basket on Parks Road, Oxford
Maurice Bowra was an Oxford Don who was just as famous for his private life as he was for his academic career. He studied the classics and wrote several books on the subject. He wrote poetry based on his experiences of the First World War. He lived from 1898-1971. He attracted infamy when he was caught bathing nude at Parsons Pleasure in the River Cherwell by the police. Bowra apparently said to them "I don't know about you, gentlemen, but in Oxford I, at least, am known by my face."
Davidson left a message in a bottle for whoever came across her work first - a set of written instructions for how the recipient should undertake a recorded performance as a reference to Bowra.
Paul Mendez, A Message To… John Ruskin (2011)
Pad of Khadi papers deposited at the Western Computer Store, Broad Street, Oxford
‘John Ruskin was a generous man, and so am I…’
One of Oxford University’s most celebrated alumni, John Ruskin was a man who used his means for the benefit of progress, both as stern sage writer and philanthropist, evinced by the plethora of streets, schools, colleges and foundations named after him. His disciples included the likes of Mahatma Ghandi, Marcel Proust, Leo Tolstoy and Oscar Wilde.
Khadi paper is associated with Ghandi and the Khadi movement of 1930s India, where the focus was on decentralisation, taking work back to the villages and making things by hand. By installing a pad of Khadi papers at an Apple Authorised Retailer Mendez gave someone the opportunity to explore their own creativity through drawing or handwriting, thus invoking the generous spirit of John Ruskin.
James Tuitt, A Message To… Wilbert Vere Awdry (2011)
Installed at Oxford Station
Wilbert Vere Awdry OBE, (15 June 1911 – 21 March 1997), studied in Oxford, and was the creator of Thomas the Tank Engine. Tuitt produced his drawing for Awdry as his stories were a part of his childhood.
The work Tuitt created came from his interest in pattern and repetition and the feelings (frustration, impatience etc.) that come from using these processes in drawing. He chose train tracks as a motif in direct relation to W.V.Awdry, and as it was also reminiscent of the time consuming drawings he did as a child of trains, train tracks etc., all because of his fondness of Awdry's story.
Using wrapping paper on which to produce a checked pattern inspired by the identity/fabrics of Burberry, Tuitt suggests its classic/traditional appeal, the iconic status of its pattern (much like the enduring strong status of Thomas among children), and also how this fascination with trains seemingly disappeared.
Using wrapping paper on which to produce a checked pattern inspired by the identity/fabrics of Burberry, Tuitt suggests its classic/traditional appeal, the iconic status of its pattern (much like the enduring strong status of Thomas among children), and also how this fascination with trains seemingly disappeared.
Tuitt left this piece of work in the only place he felt suitable; Oxford train station. He bound the work together with string, and wrote on the covering piece of card:
Dear Wilbert Vere Awdry,
Thanks for helping to make me feel almost normal.
I needed it back then.
The 'A Message To...' project will continue to develop as TBC travel to national and international locations and intervene, through drawing, where they visit. Updates will be posted on 12-Pages.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
Project News: A Message To...
The locations of TBC's 'A Message To...' artworks in Oxford |
Yesterday TBC members Beverley Bennett, Charley Peters, Laura Davidson, Paul Mendez and James Tuitt travelled to Oxford to take part in the first stage of a long-term project, 'A Message To'. Each artist made a new artwork in homage to someone linked to Oxford who has contributed to national culture. These works were then installed in various locations across the city, intervening in public spaces. The locations chosen by each artist were as follows:
Beverley Bennett: Blackwells Music store on Broad Street
Charley Peters: Pitt Rivers Museum & Modern Art Oxford
Laura Davidson: A bicycle basket on Parks Road
Paul Mendez: Western Computer store on Broad Street
James Tuitt: Oxford Station
More details about the 'A Message To...' project and the artworks created for it coming soon...
Monday, 15 November 2010
Project News: Trace Elements - Press Release
Trace Elements
TBC Artists' Collective comprises four London-based artists – Beverley Bennett, Charley Peters, Laura Davidson and Paul Mendez – who work collectively to generate projects with a focus on drawing and its scope within contemporary art practice.
Established in 2009, their recent first show Delineation: Contemporary Dialogues with Drawing considered the presence of drawing beyond its traditional parameters and within such disciplines as writing, film, sculpture, painting and embroidery. Delineation began a series of projects that will engage the collective with other artists, writers and curators, who are invited to participate based on their individual perspectives on drawing.
Always keen to challenge creative identities and generate new ideas, the 12-Pages Online Project Space enables members and associates to regularly produce new work by means of short deadlines and notional themes, often instigating fresh lines of inquiry. 12-Pages Magazine seeks to document each key stage in the development of these and other of the collective’s investigations.
The collective’s latest exhibition project Trace Elements will continue to develop the initial themes first outlined in Delineation, exploring drawing through erasure, repetition, accumulation, trace, memory and the interruption of surfaces.
Friday, 12 November 2010
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Member News: The Show
TBC Artists Beverley Bennett, Charley Peters, Laura Davidson and Paul Mendez will be participating in The Show. Their exhibition of drawings, 'Trace Elements' selected by curator Eddie Otchere will open in January 2011 as part of The Show's cultural events programme on Millbank. The Show presents 'the freshest concepts and objects amongst the spectacle of art, music and magic' (theshowlondon.com)
More information to follow...
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Jim Mooney - Critical Responses to Delineation
Dr Jim Mooney in conversation with members of TBC Artists' Collective |
Today TBC was joined in The Crypt Gallery by Dr Jim Mooney, Reader in the Theory and Practice of Fine Art at Middlesex University, who led a discussion based on his responses to the exhibition Delineation, Contemporary Dialogues with Drawing. During the afternoon Jim shared his critical observations of the curatorial policy of the show and led the artists through the gallery in order to give a close reading of each work and identify underlying shared concerns among the exhibiting artists.
TBC would like to extend their thanks to Jim for his insightful and generous contribution to the exhibition programme. A transcript of the discussion will constitute part of the catalogue for Delineation, Contemporary Dialogues with Drawing, which TBC will be writing over the forthcoming months. This publication will also contain a transcript of yesterday's panel discussion led by artist John Timberlake and featuring TBC members Beverley Bennett, Charley Peters, Laura Davidson and Paul Mendez, as well as a collection of critical essays addressing current concerns in artists' drawing practices.
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Dialogues with Drawing: Trisha Brown
Untitled (2007), Charcoal on paper
Untitled (2007), Charcoal on paper
Revolution (2006) Charcoal on paper
American choreographer Trisha Brown is featured in Move: Choreographing You at the Hayward Gallery. Her company are also performing at Tate Modern as part of Dance Umbrella in London.
Last year, her drawings were featured in a solo show at Sikkema Jenkins in New York. Her drawing practice informs and dictates her choreographic work with diagrams produced for works such as Locus (1975) and Glacial Decoy (1979). In conversation at the Hayward on October 16th, Brown stated that her major new piece would be based on sketches of small boxes containing marks, which move across the paper. Keeping to her choreographic approach Brown declined to be pinned down on what this new choreography might be. Known for choreographic works which pioneered everday movement and the transient nature of dance, it is curious that her piece It's a Draw (2003) aims to record bodily gesture. The untitled drawings above have been made during this perfomance.
Postioned above a sheet of white paper, with charcoal in hands and feet, Brown falls towards the paper, dragging dusty black marks along with her. It's a Draw records her movements but also, engages the audience in a historical debate about how dance is archived. From the Greeks to the present, different methods of dance preservation have been explored, with drawing being one of the most useful tools. The most famous dance notation systems are Laban and Benesh, all of which Brown appears to be referencing in a more personal and archaic way in It's a Draw. Her position within this debate between dance and art was commended by her inclusion in Documenta 12 and also in the Hayward exhibition, which aims to fully mark out this discussion.
More information:
Friday, 10 September 2010
Dialogues with Drawing: Hypercomics
A hypercomic aims to tell a story by transforming the linear narrative of the comic book into multiple storylines, placed on a wall or computer screen. The objective is to allow the reader differing viewpoints on characters, events and places. This concept of storytelling is what informs the exhibition Hypercomics: The Shapes of Comics to Come at Pump House Gallery, curated by Paul Gravett.
The comics featured still use drawing as a key tool in telling the story, but what has essentially changed is the way in which the storyline unfolds. It appears that by using installation as a tool to present a comic allows the reader to consider infinite possibilities in a narrative.
One key example of this is Dave McKean’s installation The Rut (2010). The storyline is difficult to follow at first, until the reader realises that the tale is being told from three different viewpoints. Drawings are situated around the room, containing relived memories of a traumatic childhood event. This explosion of memories is juxtaposed with the photograph shown above. Such a curatorial decision allows the reader to glean greater meaning from a narrative that would otherwise be trapped on a page. Here, McKean’s hypercomic is suggesting that the comic book is in fact a dissection of the mind.
On the ground floor Warren Pleece’s The Montague (2010) brings this state of multiplicity into the digital realm. The viewer is invited to select a short animation detailing the character profile of the inhabitants of a block of flats. On the wall are comic strips depicting a short event in their life. It becomes apparent here that the drawn medium is comfortable placed in the digital world, where interactivity and choice are key to reader engagement. This understanding is what allows the exhibition to give us a fleeting insight into the new and ever changing art of digital storytelling.
Hypercomics: The Shapes of Comics to Come is on at Pump House Gallery until Sept 26.
Image sourced from pumphousegallery.org.uk
Sunday, 5 September 2010
Review: CSM MA Fine Art Degree Show 2010
When one thinks of Central Saint Martins, one automatically opens a large chapter of art history and contemporary art practice. An exhaustible list of the art world’s greats have studied in the building on Charing Cross Road; Gilbert and George, Bruce McLean, Anthony Caro, Peter Doig, Anthony Gormley, Peter Blake, Rebecca Horn and Mark Titchner to name a few. We passed over the threshold eager to view the offerings of the MA graduates of 2010, carrying this great history within our collective memory.
We stalked the corridors, climbed mountains of stairs, and weaved in and out of studio spaces, looking for something; looking for someone that revived the phantoms of the past. We climbed the stairs again; in desperation we looked out over the rooftops of Central London, hoping we would catch the fleeting ghost of original thought. The over-use of metaphor in this review is clichéd, yes; but clichéd is the perfect word to describe the work we encountered. It is also the ideal distraction from having to say how much this degree show disappointed.
What we discovered was simple: work that was too aware of the history of the walls within which it was produced. The overwhelming sensation we felt was supreme arrogance. Why should these students try? Galleries can promote these artists with the Holy Trinity: Central. Saint. Martins. These students presume their names are written on gold. Who cares if it challenges contemporary practice! Success is measured through the ability to sell.
It feels right to end this review with a clichéd rhetorical question: If Central Saint Martins is synonymous with history; then what is history synonymous with? Ghosts - and it appears that building on Charing Cross Road is full of them. Such a shame they aren’t making the artwork.
Photo credit: Fin Fahey (2006)
Thursday, 2 September 2010
Work in Progress: Laura Davidson
Photo research for work that will be exhibited in Delineation.
More work can viewed on lauraelizabethdavidson.com
Monday, 10 May 2010
Save Middlesex Philosophy
The national media have been reporting on the news that Middlesex University’s Philosophy department is faced with closure. The university boasts one of the best Philosophy departments in the country, with internationally renowned PhD and MA programmes and is the home of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy. It is the top performing research department at Middlesex, rated 5 in the last Research Assessment Exercise. Many of the academics that teach at Middlesex also contribute to the respected Radical Philosophy journal.
Dean Ed Esche has taken the decision to axe the subject because it is not as financially beneficial as other disciplines. Evidently, this action of giving commercially viable subjects preference over top quality intellectual enquiry has caused outcry in academic circles worldwide. Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zižek and Judith Butler, to name many others, have all voiced their support for the department in letters to British newspapers.
The students have been staging a sit-in since last Tuesday in a bid to draw attention to this barbaric announcement. They have been occupying the mansion house at Trent Park peacefully, studying and giving lectures.
The Observer reported on the story this Sunday:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/09/middlesex-university-cuts-protest-philosophers
There is also an online petition, which currently boasts more than 13,000 signatures:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-middlesex-philosophy.html
A wordpress blog documenting the occupation and support for the department:
http://savemdxphil.wordpress.com
Radical Philosophy journal:
http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/
Dean Ed Esche has taken the decision to axe the subject because it is not as financially beneficial as other disciplines. Evidently, this action of giving commercially viable subjects preference over top quality intellectual enquiry has caused outcry in academic circles worldwide. Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zižek and Judith Butler, to name many others, have all voiced their support for the department in letters to British newspapers.
The students have been staging a sit-in since last Tuesday in a bid to draw attention to this barbaric announcement. They have been occupying the mansion house at Trent Park peacefully, studying and giving lectures.
The Observer reported on the story this Sunday:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/09/middlesex-university-cuts-protest-philosophers
There is also an online petition, which currently boasts more than 13,000 signatures:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-middlesex-philosophy.html
A wordpress blog documenting the occupation and support for the department:
http://savemdxphil.wordpress.com
Radical Philosophy journal:
http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/
Friday, 2 April 2010
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