Panel Discussion: Once Through a Lens

Manual, a performance by Siobhan Davies and Helka Kaski, activated by Andrea Buckley. Performed as part of Figuration of Place: many full less still, an evening of screenings by Keira Greene and performance by Siobhan Davies (July 2016); one of four Jerwood Staging Series events, supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation. Image: Hydar Dewachi
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In this panel, speakers Paul Clarke, Laura Molloy and Eileen Simpson & Ben White discuss current debates surrounding the documentation and endurance of a single, or body of, work. Taking an understanding of preservation technologies, such as the archive, as performative spaces in which social power is negotiated as opposed to a static depository of knowledge, the panelists will access the role of mediated forms of documentation, such as text, still photography, moving image, and digital technologies, in determining how art practices remain. While the process of translating the physical, ephemeral, or time-based results in representations that are fixed in their form, the discussion will focus on their performative qualities – in that they host the potential for renew, reinterpretation, reproduction and recontextualisation. Chaired by Lauren Houlton, Exhibitions Assistant and Events Programmer, Jerwood Visual Arts.

This event has been organised to mark the end of the first Artist in Residence. Throughout 2016 photographer and film maker, Hydar Dewachi, recorded and responded to the breadth and impact of Jerwood Visual Arts’ programme.

Dr Paul Clarke is a Senior Lecturer in Performance Studies at University of Bristol. He is the director of theatre company Uninvited Guests, whose work has toured nationally and internationally, and is a member of the art collective Performance Re-enactment Society (PRS). From 2008-2010 he was the Research Fellow on Performing the Archive: the Future of the Past, hosted by University of Bristol’s Theatre Collection and Arnolfini archive. He is an investigator on the AHRC-funded project Performing Documents and is currently co-editing the book Artists in the Archive, to be published by Routledge.

Laura Molloy is an artist and doctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute and the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. She is interested in digital curation and information literacy practices within specific research areas and professions. Her doctoral project focuses on digital curation and digital literacy skills in contemporary UK visual art professional practice. Her visual practice engages with the use of traditional techniques in response to our increasingly screen-based visual environment.  She is Arts & Humanities Section Editor for the Data Science Journal and joined the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts in 2016.

Artists Eileen Simpson and Ben White work at the intersection of art, music and information networks, and seek to challenge default mechanisms for the authorship, ownership and distribution of art. Their ongoing project Open Music Archive is an initiative to source, digitise and distribute out-of-copyright sound recordings and is a vehicle for collaborative projects exploring the material’s potential for reuse. Recent projects have been shown as part of British Art Show 8 (2015-17), and at Modern Art Oxford (2016), La Synagogue de Delme Centre for Contemporary Art, Delme (2013), Casa Luis Barragán, Mexico City (2012), VBKÖ Vienna (2012), Camden Arts Centre, London (2011), The Women’s Library, London (2010) and the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010). Eileen is a Senior Lecturer at Manchester School of Art. Ben is a PhD Candidate at Queen Mary University of London.