Technecast

This month on the Technecast, we're exploring identities, and in this episode we're joined by Abbie Cairns. Abbie introduces her research, 'Interrogating Artist Teacher Identity (Trans)Formation in Adult Community Learning (ACL)'. An educational sector often delivered by local authority, for learners aged 19+ (Department for Education, 2019). Central to the work is the belief that ACL has different qualities to other educational sectors and that these qualities impact the identity of the artist-teacher. These qualities include the low status and pay (Briggs, 2007; Augar, 2019) in comparison to Higher Education, lack of access to subject specific continued professional development (Allison, 2013) and communities of practice (Sheridan, 2018) in comparison to secondary education and precarious working hours (A Plan for an Adult Skills and Lifelong Learning Revolution, HC 278, 2021). Abbie explores her mixed methodology rooted in a grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), including life story interviewing (McAdams, 2012), autoethnography (Adams et al, 2014) and vignettes about composite character artist-teachers. These methodologies have been chosen due to their links to storytelling and is concerned with theoretical plausibility of the story (Morse et al, 2021) and how they can help us understand the phenomenon. She shares with you the story of Jessica a composite character based on four artist-teachers in ACL and extracts of autoethnographic writing on her own identity (trans)formation.-----Contributor:Abbie Cairns is an artist-teacher working in Adult Community Learning (ACL). She is currently completing her PhD at Norwich University of the Arts. Her research explores the identity (trans)formation of artist-teachers in ACL. Abbie identifies herself as an artist-teacher and is engaged in both art and teaching practices.Abbie is interested in how artist-teachers in ACL came to develop their identity and is engaged in narrative research with participants. Motivated by her own lived experience, she wants to connect with others with the same identity.Abbie is a text-based artist who makes, and exhibits work regularly. She sits on the board for Colchester Art Society and facilitates the Creative Practitioner Support Programme for SPACE, supporting emerging artists.If you want to find out more about Abbie's work, you can follow her here:Twitter: @abbiecairnsartInstagram: @abbiecairnsportfolio----The Technecast:technecast.wixsite.com/listen - technecaster@gmail.com - @technecastThe Technecast is funded by the Techne AHRC-DTP, and edited by Polly Hember, Julien Clin & Felix Clutson.Episode presented by Felix ClutsonOriginal art by Abbie CairnsRoyalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.com

We follow on from last week's episode, in which Rosalind Holgate-Smith and Jon Mason explored re-enchantment through their dance and storytelling practices respectively.This episode brings you a recording of the conversation Rosalind and Jon had at the Congress on 10 January 2022. Answering questions from the Technecast's Felix Clutson and the audience, they talked about the role of magic, about attention, about reconnecting with the emotional impressions of place, and about escaping time.==========CONTRIBUTORSRosalind Holgate-Smith is a Dancer, Artist and Educator. She creates performances, installations and visual artwork that investigates intimate experiences between people, place and the environment. She holds a Masters in Dance Creative practice, a BA (hons) in Fine Art and Choreography, and is currently a techne PhD scholarship student, based at Kingston University, where she is investigating touch as an encounter with Otherness. https://rosalindholgate-smith.comJon Mason is a professional storyteller with a longstanding focus on the folklore and history of place, and the role of myth in humanity’s understanding of life. He has a BA Hons in History with Archaeology from the University of Wales, Bangor, and an MA in Contemporary History from the University of Sussex. He is currently undertaking a Techne-funded PhD at the University of Brighton entitled “Re-storying the city: applying urban perspectives to eco-storytelling.” He can be found at https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/jon-mason and https://jonthestoryteller.com/ and on Twitter @jonmase.Technecast is an academic podcast supported by the Techne AHRC-DTP, and run by Polly Hember, Julien Clin & Felix Clutson.Contact: technecaster@gmail.com / @technecast==========EPISODE CREDITSConversation chaired by Felix ClutsonIntroduction and editing by Julien ClinRoyalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.comPlease like, subscribe and share with your friends.Thanks for listening.

As part of the Techne January Congress hosted by Kingston University, we are delighted to share this special episode of the Technecast! Centred around the congress’s theme of Re-Enchantment, two techne researchers join us to share their work while we reflect on the power and potential of imagination, fantasy, touch, movement and connections to enact real-world magic and change. Jon Mason’s piece engages with the magic of storytelling and folklore, and how to balance that with doing historical research accurately and critically; and Rosalind Holgate-Smith shares three poems that provide insight into her practice of dancing with trees, and the enchantment of connecting to the world around us.Join the Technecast team, Jon and Rosalind at 2pm GMT on 10th January on zoom as part of the techne congress, for a live panel discussion.More information here: https://techne6.wixsite.com/reenchantmentIf you are interested in working on an episode of the Technecast and sharing your work, please get in touch at technecaster@gmail.com, we’d love to hear from you. Jon Mason (@jonmase) is a PhD researcher and professional storyteller. His research uses storytelling practice and existing “eco-storytelling” models to explore the potential to improve community engagement and community awareness through local history, folklore, and one’s own personal narratives. https://jonthestoryteller.com/Rosalind Holgate Smith is a dancer, artist and educator. She creates performances, installations and visual artwork that investigates intimate experiences between people, place and the environment. She holds a Masters in Dance Creative practice, a BA (hons) in Fine Art & Choreography and is currently a techne PhD scholarship student, based at Kingston University, where she is investigating touch as an encounter with Otherness. https://rosalindholgate-smith.com/ Technecast is an academic podcast supported by the Techne AHRC-DTP, and run by Polly Hember, Julien Clin & Felix Clutson. Contact: technecaster@gmail.com / @technecastRoyalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.com

In this, our second episode on Affect, queer theorist and cultural geographer Joe Jukes asks, "What is ‘rural’?" Joe notes how the British countryside can be thought of, and has been produced, in multiple different ways and in many different forms. They suggest that ‘rural’ is an affect, or feeling, that is aligned with a queer mode inquiry. This can be a surprising ‘use’ of rural, especially as the countryside is often assumed to be unaccommodating to queer or LGBT+ lives. Staying with both affect and queer theory, Joe explores how the feeling of ‘surprise’ can perform queer desire, and un-do rural space, opening it up to new possibilities.BIOGRAPHYJoe Jukes is a Techne-funded PhD researcher at the Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender, University of Brighton. Their study involves a creative ethnography of LGBT+ Somerset, asking whether the countryside can be thought of as a queer place, and how living in the West Country feels for queer people. Joe has curated for the Museum of English Rural Life, written for CPRE – the countryside charity, and co-convenes the postgraduate and community conference, Outside/rs 2022.CREDITSPresented by Julien Clin.Produced by Polly Hember and Julien Clin.Original art by Jonathan Mansfield: https://jonathanmansfieldart.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/jsdjukesOutside/rs 2022: https://twitter.com/Outsiders2022Royalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.comExtracts from 'Little Britain' created and written by Matt Lucas and David Walliams. Produced by the BBC.The Technecast is funded by the Techne AHRC-DTP, and edited by Polly Hember, Julien Clin & Felix Clutson.Contact: technecaster@gmail.com / @technecast

Welcome back to the Technecast! Our theme for this month is ‘Affect’, thinking about feelings, forces, and in-between states. Since the affective turn in the early 1990s, the humanities and social sciences have witnessed a profound and renewed interest in how feelings function, how they move, stick to, and shape bodies (both human and non-human) and worlds. We are delighted to welcome Mary Dawson to the Technecast for our first episode on affect. This episode explores the idea of aging as a form of affective potential through a reading of Barbara Pym’s ‘Quartet in Autumn’ (1977). In contemporary society getting old is seen as a problem and aged bodies are often unsettling reminders of a future understood in terms of loss and decline. In contrast, thinking about ageing through Pym’s ‘Quartet’ and Gilles Deleuze’s work on affect and sense suggests an alternative perspective on growing older. Pym’s novel is about four colleagues approaching retirement. Through a close analysis of the text, this essay shows how nonsense in ‘Quartet’ goes beyond deconstructing social conceptions of ageing to re-think what it means to grow old. Deleuze suggests that if common sense keeps bodies in check, then non-sense is a way of orienting bodies towards affect and unleashing unrealised potential. Instead of thinking of age as a problem, ‘Quartet’ re-imagines ageing as a becoming, a never complete but always open movement towards. In other words, ‘Quartet’ is a novel which thinks differently about being human by thinking differently about what it means to get older. Mary Dawson is a PhD candidate in the English department at the University of Leeds. Mary holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Liverpool, an MSc in International Development from London, South Bank University and an MA in English Literature from the University of Leeds. Mary’s PhD research focuses on mid-century British fiction, critical posthumanism, disability studies and affect theory. Mary’s PhD is fully funded by the AHRC White Rose consortium, and her paper for this symposium is titled ‘Affect and Ageing in Pym’s ‘Quartet’. Following the Affective Turn: https://followingaffect.wixsite.com/researchPresented by Polly Hember. The Technecast is funded by the Techne AHRC-DTP, and edited by Polly Hember, Julien Clin & Felix Clutson.Contact: technecaster@gmail.com / @technecast *Image: Alice and the Dodo illustrated by John Tenniel in Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' first published edition, 1866, p. 35.Royalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.com

Technecast is hosting the Invitations Series: four conversations by Judah Attille, Therese Henningsen, Mark Aerial Waller and Astrid Korporaal. Each episode is based on a research encounter with a creative practitioner connected to the field of sound & moving image. Together, the episodes question the relationships between audience, screen, maker & subject.This final episode features Therese Henningsen and Juliette Joffé, reflecting on the ongoing curatorial project Strangers Within and the notion of 'documentary as encounter' in their own films Next Year We Will Leave (2021) and Slow Delay (2018).The two films will be publicly shown for the Strangers Within anthology launch and film programme at Whitechapel Gallery in June 2022 in collaboration with Prototype.Contributors to the Strangers Within anthology and film programme are: Khalik Allah, Ruth Beckermann, Jon Bang Carlsen, Adam Christensen, Annie Ernaux, Gareth Evans, Xiaolu Guo, Therese Henningsen, Marc Isaacs, Juliette Joffé, David MacDougall, Laura Rascaroli, Bruno de Wachter, Yuya Yokota, Andrea Luka ZimmermanStrangers Within addresses convergences between encounter, hospitality and autobiography in documentary filmmaking. It engages with the risks of encounter, unsettling assumed distinctions between host and guest; stranger and friend; self and other; documentarian and protagonist. By challenging commonly held assumptions around the division between director and subject in the documentary encounter, it unsettles the filmmaker’s presumed control over those she films. By staying with the difficulty of such encounters the camera can keep us open to risks that may otherwise be avoided or ignored: seeing oneself in strangers or becoming a stranger to oneself.Links for reading: Towards A Transpersonal I by Annie Ernaux [https://www.annie-ernaux.org/texts/vers-un-je-transpersonnel-2/]Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger [http://dorothyproject.com/book/suite-for-barbara-loden/] , excerpt here [https://www.theparisreview.org/letters-essays/6820/barbara-wanda-nathalie-leger]Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran by Gohar Homayounpour [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/doing-psychoanalysis-tehran]*Therese Henningsen is a filmmaker and programmer based in London. Her filmmaking often takes shape through the encounter with the person(s) filmed and the direction this may take. Her films have been shown at Whitechapel Gallery, Chisenhale Gallery, Whitstable Biennale, Close-Up Cinema, SMK Statens Museum for Kunst, among others. She is a member of the two film collectives Sharna Pax and Terrassen, both engaging with the social life of film. She collaborates on ongoing film and research projects with artists and filmmakers Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Sidsel Meineche Hansen and Juliette Joffé. Therese came to filmmaking through anthropology and holds an MA in Visual Anthropology from Goldsmiths College. She is currently working on a practice-led PhD in Media Arts at Royal Holloway University, and teaches on the MA Documentary and Ethnographic Film at UCL.*Juliette Joffé is a filmmaker based in Brussels. Her films have been shown in festivals such as Visions Du Réel Nyon , FIDMarseille, Open City Documentary Film Festival, Astra Film Festival among others. Her first film Maybe Darkness was awarded a Wildcard For Best Documentary by The Flemish Film Board allowing her to direct The Hero With A Thousand Faces which won Best Short Film Film at Mostra Internazionale Di Cinema Di Genova. She has recently finished the mid-length essay film Next year, we will leave. She runs the documentary course in Brussels- based art school Preparts. As part of her programming practice, she was invited to introduce the work of Belgian filmmaker Olivier Smolders at Open City Documentary Film Festival 2017.*Image Credit: Still from Slow Delay, Therese Henningsen (2018)

Throughout November, Technecast is hosting the Invitations Series, which is made up of four conversations by Judah Attille, Therese Henningsen, Mark Aerial Waller and Astrid Korporaal. Each episode is based on a research encounter with a creative practitioner connected to the field of sound and moving image. Together, the episodes question the relationships between audience, screen, maker and subject.This week features a conversation between writer and curator Taylor Le Melle and independent filmmaker, Judah Attille. During the UK COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, the producers reflect on milestones in their ongoing dialogue on art practice, education, and language."On 14th December 2020, I used my Zoom H4n to record the sound of heavy rain from my window and sent the file to the writer, curator Taylor Le Melle. In retrospect, it was the equivalent of sending out a digital flare. After months into UK COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, without the benefits of practice and interaction in a dedicated artist studio, it was daunting to speculate on the status of a conversation that began in the summer of 2019 after a 16mm Found Footage workshop led by artist and filmmaker Rhea Storr. However, on 14th December, I was confident in the value of my audio avatar and its potential as a sonic invitation. I was hopeful of its appeal, its watery properties, its geopolitical poetry. The unfailing inspiration I derive from the sound of waves and rain, now a motif in my research practice, brought on renewed optimism. By October 2021, our online conversations gathered momentum. The result? A peer-to-peer, interdisciplinary, pre-recorded moving image presentation, ‘A Considered Cut’, for the event Collage as Method, Manuscript and Moving Image: Cutting Edge, one of the many generative events in the conference Cutting Edge: Collage in Britain, 1945 to Now, hosted by the Paul Mellon Centre, Yale University in collaboration with Tate Britain. ‘A Considered Cut’ is the result of an expanded not/nowhere 16mm Found Footage Workshop in collaboration with Somatic acting artist-researcher-educator, Christina Kapadocha, Artist, educator, author, researcher, Ilga Leimanis, Independent curator and writer, Taylor Le Melle with Filmmaker Ibrahim Kargbo, Artist-filmmaker, Rhea Storr."- Judah Attille, 19th October 2021 Links:Taylor Le Melle [https://sandberg.nl/taylor-le-melle/staff]not/nowhere [https://not-nowhere.org/about]The Politics of Delivery (Against Poet-Voice) by Holly Pester[https://poetrysociety.org.uk/the-politics-of-delivery-against-poet-voice/]Collage as Method, Manuscript and Moving Image: Cutting Edge7 October 2021; An event as part of the multi-part conference programme 'Cutting Edge: Collage in Britain, 1945 to Now' Paul Mellon Centre, Yale University in collaboration with Tate Britain Online [https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/whats-on/past/collage-as-method-manuscript-moving-image][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dKhvFdwWDc&list=PLf4F3b0ZQ-Hl_mYj9rndodJleGVXitdgN&index=2]*Interdisciplinary Artist, Taylor Le Melle (they/them) is one of the founding members of artists workers’ cooperative, not/nowhere.[https://not-nowhere.org/about]*Independent filmmaker, Judah Attille (she/her) is a University of the Arts TECHNE practice-based PhD research candidate. Her contributions to the extended TECHNE research community includes: Africandescence, Research Poster, The In Between, Techne Congress, University of Surrey, January 2020; Situated Writing, Student Pecha Kucha Presentations (and others), Poetics of Method, Techne Congress, University of Brighton, July 2019; Spectrum Notes, video installation, Making from the Mess, Techne Student-Led Conference, St Luke’s Community Centre, November 2019.[http://www.techne.ac.uk/for-students/techne-students/techne-students/techne-students-2018-19/attile]*Image credit: Judah Attille, Downpour at Dalston Junction, 30 July 2021

Throughout November, Technecast is hosting the Invitations Series, which is made up of four conversations by Judah Attille, Therese Henningsen, Mark Aerial Waller and Astrid Korporaal.Each episode is based on a research encounter with a creative practitioner connected to the field of sound and moving image.This week, Mark Aerial Waller is in conversation with Donald Kunze, talking about Kunze's thought project ‘Boundary Language’, which considers relationships between interiority and exteriority. Kunze brings together concepts from the 17th century philosopher Giambattista Vico into association with Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek and George Spencer Brown, as a basis for his ongoing work: The Boundary Language Project. The project is energetic and expansive, itself dissolving the edges of conventional research approaches. The essay ‘The Hysteric’s Dreamworld: Uncanny Crossings in The Dead of Night’ [http://art3idea.psu.edu/locus/APCS.pdf], acts as a starting point for Aerial Waller's further reflection on the uncanny in cinema and its potential to provide challenging situations and freedom from preconceived ideas.This interview starts from an introduction of some key terms, before listening to a scene from the soundtrack of Dead of Night, followed by consideration of how Kunze’s work can lend itself to political action regards flipped boundaries.Kunze, D. (1987) Thought and Place: The Architecture of Eternal Places in the Philosophy of Giambattista Vico. NY: Peter Lang: [http://art3idea.psu.edu/locus/thoughtplace.pdf] Additional video by Donald Kunze, going further into the ‘Haunted Mirror’: [https://youtu.be/RvqQLH7_TIE]*Mark Aerial Waller’s work transitions between video, photography and installation across the narrative languages of film, television and video art. His work integrates cross-references of film, music, art, astronomy, history, science and literature with elements of pop culture that coexist in our memory. Waller blurs the lines that characterise and delimit each of these areas. His work dissolves cinematic genres and perceptions, to open a space for curiosity and the unexpected. On doing so, he creates works of unlimited significance, that fluctuates between the conceptual and the material, the cultured and the popular, the work of art and life, allowing different levels of interpretation that change through the spectator’s experience. www.markaerialwaller.comDonald Kunze was born in North Carolina and educated at N.C. State University School of Design, studying Architecture, then at Georgia State University he undertook graduate study in geography, with an interest in gentrification, voluntary community organisations, and perception of place. He pursued doctoral studies at Penn State University, where he expanded his interests to include the study of culture, philosophy, and literary criticism, becoming emeritus professor. In 1985 he co-founded the Commonplace Conferences, a series of symposia dedicated to the collaborative interests of philosophers, geographers and architects on the topic of place. Amongst his publications are Thought and Place, The Architecture of Eternal Places in the Philosophy of Giambattista Vico, and an extensive library of papers making up his website on Boundary Language www.art3idea.psu.edu . He continues to teach, advise, and write, emphasising workshops, and special events in collaboration with Claudio Sgarbi, dedicated to exploring relationships linking the arts, film, literature, and architecture.*Thanks to Astrid, Mark, Judah & Therese for sharing Invitations with Technecast. We'll be back next week with Judah's conversation with Taylor Le Melle.*Image: Mark Aerial Waller, Yoga Horror (admixed Dead of Night 1945 with video yoga routine and reenacted scenes) 2014. Image CAAM, Gran Canaria 2020. Photographer Nacho Gonzalez

In November, the Technecast is hosting the Invitations Series, a series of four conversations by Techne PhD students Judah Attille, Therese Henningsen, Mark Aerial Waller and Astrid Korporaal. Each episode is based on a research encounter with a creative practitioner connected to the field of sound and moving image. Together, the episodes question the relationships between audience, screen, maker and subject. These exchanges invite you to creatively unsettle conventions around objectivity, ethics and participation at a live online social event (Date TBC), hosted by a group of researchers and practitioners involved with moving image.In this first episode, Astrid Korporaal talks to creative practitioner and Birkbeck University Lecturer Dr. Sophie Hope. They discuss the use of performative strategies and role play in research and collaborative art practice, as well as the importance of long-term conversations, time to pause, and thinking in dialogue.***Images and projects discussed in order of appearance:1. Derek di Fabio, Conquer the Sky!, Almanac Projects, 2013. [almanacprojects.com/public-programm…conquer-the-sky]2. Sophie Hope, Cards on the Table, developed with Ania Bas, Sian Hunter-Dodsworth, Sophie Mallet and Henry Mulhall3. Theron Schmidt, Untitled, 20194. Frames of Representation festival symposium, 'How to think' with Laura Cull and Rajni Shah [www.framesofrepresentation.com/]5. Sophie Hope, Performative Interviews (still), 2007.6. Sophie Hope, 1984 Dinners (Johannesburg), The Bag Factory, 2014. [1984dinners.sophiehope.org.uk/project/jo…rg-dinner/]7. Virginia Ariu, Untitled (Care, Community, Ecology), 2020. For #almanaccare, 29 June - 20 December 2020. [almanacprojects.com/public-programme/almanaccare]8. Sophie Hope and Jenny Richards, Manual Labours, 2013-onwards [www.manuallabours.co.uk/]9. Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly, Meanwhile in an abandoned warehouse (screenshot), podcast series about cultural democracy, ongoing. [miaaw.net/]***CREDITS:Presented by Astrid Korporaal & Sophie Hope.Royalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.comThe Invitations series image is a Eurasian woodcock visiting a balcony in Amsterdam.The Technecast is generously supported by Techne AHRC DTP.

Shortly before his arrival in London in 1704, composer and conductor Johann Sigismund Cousser recorded some important advice in his notebook. Under the heading ‘What a virtuoso should observe upon arriving in London’, Cousser wrote down thirty-three tips given to him by fellow German and musician Jakob Greber. While some instructions are clearly aimed specifically at visiting virtuosi like Cousser, Greber’s advice alludes to many of the key practical concerns experienced by a whole range of London’s musicians, whether celebrated Italian castrati or inexperienced English instrumentalists.With the help of Cousser’s notebook, this podcast seeks to challenge romantic stereotypes that, even today, portray musicians as lone geniuses, wedded to their art, and apparently unmotivated by money. Instead, eighteenth-century musicians are revealed to be hardworking, entrepreneurial, and well-practised in both commercial and musical pursuits.CONTRIBUTORLizzy Buckle is a PhD student at the Foundling Museum and Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research explores the musical networks involved in organising charity benefit concerts in eighteenth-century London. Her exhibition ‘Friends with benefits’, which runs from 22 October 2021 to April 2022 at the Foundling Museum, visualises the complex connections between musicians working in London in the 1770s.Additional voices by Claudia Chapman, Colin Coleman, Christian Leitmeir, Sam Hillman, and Tom Hillman.=====Presented by Julien Clin.The Technecast is funded by the Techne AHRC-DTP, and edited by Polly Hember and Julien Clin.CREDITSImage: James Vertue, Harpsichord fin du 18ème siècle (Copyright Gerald Coke Handel Foundation)Royalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.com