Members of Sensingsite discuss their history as a landscape inquiry platform and their current activities on Mersea Island since the writing of Mer-is-land-is-Sea by Susan Trangmar. Mersea Island lies between the Blackwater and Colne Rivers in Essex, England. Sensingsite is an art practice-based research collective developing arts-based responses to the political, material, and sensory natures of site, place, and space. It takes critical, experimental, and improvisational approaches to research methodologies, with a particular interest in non-linear and collaborative ways of knowing.
The second in the trilogy of projects 'Who Owns the Sea?' has in its early stages of research been informed and influenced by the territorial waters surrounding Gibraltar a politically contested British Overseas Territory located at the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula. A highly contested stretch of sea since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and a near daily site of military, and police incursions resulting in political bickering, these waters are continuously shrinking due to the land reclamation undertaken by both Gibraltar and Algeciras in Spain. Future research and production of a strand of 'Who Owns the Sea?' will be sited on the Arctic Ocean. Acting as ground zero in climate change, the focus of the research will question, explore and address the critical environmental, political, and human impact of sea ownership as experienced through the decreasing Arctic sea ice cap, and its effect on ecosystems, weather patterns, and territorial waters. The Arctic sea ice cover which helps determine the Earth's climate, fell to its second lowest level in 2019. Humanity is dependent on the ocean and cryosphere. It interconnects with the climate system through water, energy, and carbon. The impact of this melting ice cover is also political, military, and most of all economic as several nations vie for ownership and control over its greater navigable waters – a new Northwest Passage – and the opportunities this will present. 'Who Owns the Sea?' will address these global implications through the local.
These three video works interrogate urban and rural land ownership and regeneration practices. The exhibition 'Easterly Winds' is the first cultural exchange between the Government of Gibraltar and the Diputación de Cádiz, Spain, which seeks to establish communication and dialogue ties between both communities. The first phase of the project counts with the participation of 17 artists from Gibraltar, most of whom have studied at universities in the UK, bringing with them an exhaustive knowledge of new artistic media. Other artists included: Stefano Blanca, Paul Cosquieri, Nina Danino, Ermelinda Duarte, Lizanne Figueras, Vera Francis, Ana García, Francis Gomila, Patrizia Imossi, Naomí Martínez, Alex Menez, Alan Pérez, Diego Porral, Aaron Soleci, Christopher Tavares, Neville Zammit. The exhibition was curated by Magda Bellotti and Maria Soto.
'This is Little England' features an action to camera erasure of the Union until only that of the England flag remains. This work metaphorically enacts the political and constitutional turmoil that has beset the UK as an outcome of the 2016 withdrawal result of the European Union referendum. The video was specifically made to be exhibited at the Whitley Bay Comrades Club in North Tyneside. First opened in 1920, following the Armistice of World War 1, a number of Comrades Clubs were established throughout the UK by British Servicemen as a means of preserving the spirit of friendship forged during the experience of war within an establishment providing hospitality. Membership of the club is now open to the general public.
The video work New Enclosures (2019) deals with the politics of power and its symbolic and active enactment – aesthetic, spatial, social, economic – in the City of London and the correlation of its economy and neoliberal desire of exclusivity and aspiration manifested by, and imbricated into, its urban fabric. Constructed anxieties of personal security and insecurity, inclusion and exclusion reveal themselves through the navigation of its socio‐spatial structure. The exhibition 'NCL LDN', a group exhibition between students and lecturers from Newcastle University MFA and Central Saint Martins MA Contemporary Photography; Practices and Philosophies. Exhibiting were Turner Prize nominated artistic duo (and Royal Academy Members) Prof. Jane and Louise Wilson, currently heads of Newcastle University's Master of Fine Art, a two-year postgraduate course designed to support the development of students' careers as contemporary artists. Second-year students from this course will exhibit an eclectic mix of work from a wide range of disciplines that reflects diversity within current contemporary practice. Artist Dr Pat Naldi Senior Lecturer in MA Contemporary Photography; Practices and Philosophies at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, also exhibited work alongside second-year postgraduate students from this course. This fine art photography course explores photography as a plural, transdisciplinary and multimedia global language that is situated at the core of contemporary visual arts practice. Students will exhibit work across disciplines that interlaces fine art, technology, aesthetics, politics, and new media. List of exhibitors: Lida Arzaghi, Gabrielle Brooks, Terry Dimoulias, Liying Hu, Grant Legassick, Yili Liu, Maria Clara Lorusso, Dr. Pat Naldi, Lara Orawski, Ana Luiza Pereira Rodrigues, Anamarija Podrebarac, Prof. Jane Wilson, Prof. Louise Wilson, Alice Adams, Eleanor Curry, Carole McCourt, Jenny Mc Namara, Rebecca Reed and Yan Yin
Borrowed from Allan Kaprow's Essays on the Blurring of Arts and Life, the event "…nonart is more art than Art art" will instead seek to challenge the very concept of the artist studio within contemporary and future artists practices. With Creative Enterprise Zones incorporating artists studios planned by the London Mayor, these urban models will not only further capitalise on the financially and culturally lucrative status of art and artists for governments, developers and other private and corporate investors within regeneration schemes, but will arguably also elevate the status of the artist above other citizens, and away from being in lived social space. Thus shifting artists' practices into a yet more sanitised inverted looking activity. "…nonart is more art than Art art" will question the very need of the artist studio and argue for artists not to reinvent the studio but to divest themselves and their practices conceptually and physically from this traditional model – one that is historically based on the romantic figure of the male artist, and art market transaction – and instead, transcend the boundaries of what it means to be an artist in the 21st century.
My research focuses on the politics of power and its symbolic and active enactment –aesthetic, spatial, social, economic. For this presentation I will concentrate on recent works I have made on land ownership, drawing a direct link between private landed rural estates and the scarcity, and subsequent overpricing of commercial value of urban property, and designated governmental urban views which expose the socio-political and ideological construction and operation of urbanism and regeneration, and its shaping of the relationship of citizens societally and to public space.
The image and text booklet 'Private [e]state' considers the ad coelum doctrine - a principle of property law - in relation to private landed estates. Originating in the 13th century, this ancient law proclaims the extent of land ownership beyond that of the surface. Although now acceptable in a limited form, real property/estate encompasses airspace, wild animals, trees, plants, flowers, water, mines and minerals above, on, and below the surface of the land. Bretton Estate is a 500-acre parkland near Wakefield in West Yorkshire within which is located the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Appearing in the Domesday Book of 1086, over the centuries the landed estate and the Hall were the private grounds of a home. Owned by four interconnected families – latterly the Wentworths and the Beaumonts – it was sold to West Riding Council by Viscount Allendale, who settled in his other landed estates in Northumberland.
At 3pm on Saturday 29th October 2016, a community based choir - Dale Singers - based in the village of Allendale (Northumberland), assembled along with an audience, on the Allenheads Village Green situated above an old mine shaft, to perform a repertoire of songs. Accessed from the British Library archives, the song lyrics performed were written in the 19th century as critical commentaries of Thomas Wentworth Beaumont, parliamentarian, owner of the Allenheads mines, and much of the surrounding land.
Control exerted through surveillance in its many forms is a ubiquitous part of everyday society. For instance the estimated 4.9 million Closed Circuit Television Cameras (CCTV) installed on the streets of the United Kingdom – accounting for 20 per cent of the world's total – means that walking in the streets of the UK your image can potentially be captured on surveillance cameras up to 300 times in a single day. The nature of CCTV technology itself is unable to intervene in acts of crime. This lack of intervention is, what Foucault (1975) claims, gives the panoptic schema its strength of 'power of mind over mind'. Through this paper I argue that the effect of CCTV networks on citizens is pernicious in its psychological method of control based on sociologically and politically motivated constructed anxieties of personal security and insecurity. With the implementation of CCTV networks in our contemporary era portrayed as preventative, safeguarding individuals and their freedom, I critically analyse citizen relational behaviour in public spaces, and towards other citizens, and considered how collective responsibility has been absolved and shifted towards the ever-present gaze of the 'eye in the sky'. Ultimately CCTV institutes a moral regulation, an imposition of social norms, at the exclusion of 'others' and 'difference' within public spaces. These spaces are consequently activated as sites of psychological incarceration aimed at behavioural self-control, what Lyon (2013) calls 'moral architecture'.
Central Saint Martins has since its 2011 relocation to King's Cross, London, become the corporate face of University of the Arts London (UAL). Its building is the flagship of the largest urban redevelopment in Europe – King's Cross estate. The site is an example of neoliberal corporatisation of urban space whereby 'public' spaces are given up for 'privatised' spaces in which citizen spatial participation and contestation is regulated by the capitalist concerns of estate owners. On 19 March 2015 a group of art students entered the administrative reception area of Central Saint Martins, and made their way into the boardroom pretending to assemble for a meeting. Waiting until the staff had left, the students then occupied the reception. Protesting at the closure of courses and wider institutional concerns, OccupyUAL, was born. They followed Occupy movements and other student occupations taking place worldwide. Through this paper I propose how faced with 'no alternative' OccupyUAL turned the building into a site of political contestation. Their demands to democratise the university with financial transparency, fair pay, no racism, and free education, was not the only means through which to achieve this I contend. It is through the occupation, public workshops, and talks staged within the space, that democratic participation, I argue was realised. For in our neoliberal society that privileges private spaces, as Don Mitchell writes, 'what makes a space public', one in which there can be political representation, is when a group 'takes space and through its actions makes it public'.
Urbanism as process and product is the source and profit of capital production. Hence the city, its urban fabric and socio-spatial structure manifest and correlate with its economy. Historically the image of the urban skyline of church and civic towers was the visual manifestation of this economy. In contemporary times this has been replaced by the vision of corporate skyscraper buildings. Taking London as an example, this presentation will analyse a series of urban views from the Mayor of London's London View Management Framework to argue how this policy guide purports a controlled view, and thus 'image', of London that exerts ideologically constructed politically positioned value systems that shape how we relate societally and to public space. These views are constructed to perpetuate and engender imaginative past state, and current and future neoliberal desires. Yet at the same time they highlight a paradox between the desire to designate and protect views of St Paul's Cathedral and other historical buildings - the heritage of state power and empire - image of London - and simultaneously the 'need' (neoliberal, capitalist, economic, political) to create and purport an aesthetic urban skyline image of financial affluence and economic power – a 'world city' – espoused through the development of tall buildings throughout the capital and the City of London.
'Views of a city: creating London's image' constitutes a singular artwork that acts as an archival collection of photographic recreations of 27 designated and protected views across London. These views, under the aegis of the London View Management Framework (LVMF), are a component of the Mayor of London's London Plan. The LVMF forms part of the strategy to preserve London's character and built heritage. The document outlines the policy framework for managing the impact of proposed urban development within the scopal frame of 27 designated and protected views. The desired 'image' of London expressed through the London Plan, and the LVMF views, is, on the one hand, the aesthetics of a past heritage of Empire and power as the heart of the British Empire inscribed into the very fabric of its buildings, and on the other, the aesthetics of a current and future neoliberal world city as expressed through its iconic tall corporate buildings, in order to attract and consolidate further capital. Both 'images' are the sites and sights of the London skyline that the Greater London Authority is attempting to coalesce into one within the LVMF policy guide. Captured over a three year period between 2011 and 2014, 'Views of a city: creating London's image' photographically recreates the 61 images that constitute the 27 designated and protected views. The work interrogates the political establishment's choice of, and value set upon, these sanctioned views above and instead of, 'other' ways of encountering and viewing the city, their construction, how they operate, and their effects on London visitors and citizens alike.
There are an estimated 4.5 million CCTV cameras installed on the streets of the UK. More than in any other European country, this accounts for 20% of all the world's CCTV cameras. Walking in the streets your image could potentially be captured on camera up to 300 times in one single day. In 1992 Newcastle upon Tyne was one of ten local authorities in the UK to pioneer a CCTV network installed by the police authority. Most other towns did not develop similar systems until after the James Bulger murder case in 1993. As part of this scheme, Northumbria Police, in partnership with the City Council and local businesses, installed a 16-camera surveillance system in the commercial centre of the city of Newcastle. This was to be the first within a city centre location, and the most advanced technological system in Europe at the time. Developed in direct response to the knowledge that this surveillance system had recently been installed in the commercial centre of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, 'SEARCH' was a project made for Television. Accessing video footage from the CCTV network of the artists Pat Naldi and Wendy Kirkup executing a choreographed walk around the city centre, 'SEARCH' consisted of twenty-ten second sequences transmitted during the commercial breaks. It was broadcast on Tyne Tees Television between June 21st and July 4th 1993. City centre CCTV systems, as in Newcastle, conceptually echo Jeremy Bentham's eighteenth century Panopticon. This technological monitoring of space makes possible a panoptic practice proceeding from a place where the eye can transform foreign forces into objects that can be observed and measured and thus control and 'include' them within its scope of vision. The cameras 'neutral' vision deals with unedited time; it records rather than intervenes, its real purpose being one of replay & reconstruction 24 hours a day. This chapter explores through the artist project 'SEARCH' the complex political, psychological, and gender loadings of surveillance technologies in the control of city spaces. As we relinquish control over our own images that are legally classed as public, the chapter analyses the activity of the phenomenon of surveillance, in itself not a new phenomenon, to address current debates of privacy and public spectacle.
'East of Eden' is a virtual garden in a constant state of growth. The instant a user logs on, flora native to the geographical location where the user logs in from is automatically digitally generated and planted in the garden. Over time the number of the differing flora generated in the garden will mirror the number and geographical diversity of the locations of the users who have logged on and had a presence in 'East of Eden'. The history of empire, the military, mapping and botany are inextricably linked. Yearly in London in early summer to coincide with the military ceremonial parade which takes place on the occasion of the official birthday celebrations of Queen Elizabeth II, red geraniums, taking over from the spring red tulips, are planted in the Queens Gardens in the semicircular enclosure located at the top of the Mall in front of Buckingham Palace. These geraniums are cultivated to precisely match the scarlet colour of the ceremonial tunics of the Foot Guards of the Household Division who comprise the regiments of the military ceremonial pageant. The Victorian garden style bedding of the semicircular enclosure forms part of a regal processional way redesigned at the beginning of the 20th century in commemoration of Queen Victoria. An imperial space in the landscape of London, it constitutes a geographical location for military pageantry and ceremonial spectacle. In his Essays on Travel (published 1918), Robert Louise Stephenson noted, "inside a garden we can construct a country of our own". The recreation of an ideal landscape, a vision of paradise has been a constant preoccupation in the history of the world. The most famous the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon, was built by Nebuchadnezzar II for his homesick wife, who longed for the landscape of her native Persia and its pleasure gardens or paradeisos. At the end of the last Ice Age you could only attribute about two hundred surviving species of indigenous flora to the landscape of Britain. Subsequent plant introductions into the country have mirrored the geographical explorations and expansion of the British Empire; the date of the arrival of a plant has reflected the exploration of a new country. It is this endeavour that has shaped and developed the landscape and gardens of Britain. This introduction of foreign plants, in particular to gardens of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, became a horticultural expression of patriotism and imperial display, providing its audience with the power to imaginatively travel without ever having to leave the home.
