Dear All,
I am sending you the information about an event linked to my current
project ROCKFLUID <http://rockfluid.com/>
As I am still working at the content, practical exercises and follwoing
discussion, you are very welcome to share any thoughts you might have, and
I hope you will allow me to quote from them as well on the day. See below
*ROCKFLUID, the art and science of memory *
*Elena Cologni, Lisa Saksida, chaired by Caterina Albano*
*Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Sat 17
March 2012, Science Festival *
**
workshops
Ages +8 ,
1.00-2.00 and 3.00-4.00
booking required [log in to unmask]
How does technology effect our perception and memorisation of place?
Starting from a memory exercise, the activity will highlight similarities
and differences between our mnemonic archive and a database, through a
journey intersecting psychology, geometry, performance and sculpture. The
current alienation of the individual induced by a technology dominant
economy is based on an urge to cut the distance over time and space in
today"s communication systems. The artistic manifestations of the project
attempt to create possibilities for encounters in shared physical spaces
where we experience the environment through moving our body/mind in space
thus regaining and defining our places (psycho-geography,relational
tactics). The work produced interrogates for example on how digital time
has influenced our sense of subjective time. This will be done by breaking
the accepted relation memory-past and focus on the present moment of
recollection. With the current obsession over constantly documenting our
lives, we may feel (and fear) that we cannot do the same with memory. By
proposing that we do change our memories in the present by recollecting
them, we may find in this very quality of instability of memory our 'place'.
Artist Elena Cologni and Scientist Lisa Saksida have had a year long
collaboration for this awarded project which explores the 'materiality' and
'spatiality' of memory through psychological and artistic tools. This
collaboration, starting from shared issues in similar context, aims at
attempting an exchange between Art and Neuro-Psychology based on the status
of objects, time and space embodiment.
This collaboration is based on the consideration of memory in its 'fluid'
and 'solid' states, as Dr Saksida suggests referring to the recollection of
events. Memory in its archival state would be solid, and, when in the
process of resurfacing would be fluid. In this sense this transitional
quality of memory can be a metaphor of Cologni's way of working, as she
considers art in a similar way, neither only matter related, nor only
ephemeral: its manifestations can vary and feed into each other.
Caterina Albano will prompt a discussion on the method, language and
possibilities of interdisciplinary collaborations, such as this. Dr
Caterina Albano is senior research fellow and curator for Artakt, Central
Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London.
Albano curates, lectures and publishes in the field of art and science,
cultural theory, and cultural history of emotion, and on the theory of
curating. She is the author of Fear and Art (Reaktion, forthcoming). Her
recent work focuses on issues of memory, space and the moving image.
Her work as curator includes: research of Artakt's two major exhibitions
Spectacular Bodies (Hayward Gallery 2000) and Seduced (Barbican Art Gallery
2007). For the latter, she curated The Voice of Sex. She co-curated the
exhibitions Head On (Science Museum/Wellcome Trust, 2002) and The Genius of
Genetics (Mendel Museum, Brno 2002). She curated Psychoanalysis: The
Unconscious in Everyday Life (Science Museum, Oct 2010-April 2011);
Crossing Over: art, science, biotechnologies (The Royal Institution of
Great Britain, Oct. 2008, Wellcome Trust and Arts Council award) and was
the curatorial consultant for the Wellcome Trust for the exhibition
Medicine and Art: Imagining a Future for Life and Love - Leonardo, Okyo,
Damien Hirst (Mori Museum, Tokyo, 28th Nov. 2009- 2010), and First Time Out
(20th January-22nd August 2011).
ROCKFLUID is awarded Grants for the Arts, Arts Council of England, within
the Escalator Programme through Colchester Arts Centre, and is supported by
Wysing Arts Centre and the University of Cambridge.
http://rockfluid.com/cambridge-science-festival-2012
http://www.cam.ac.uk/sciencefestival/events/?uid=ce3ae6e0-4321-444b-89ee-aaad8eac8a13&date=2012-03-17
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