Saturday 14 April 2007, 11:20 am
BROHP 2007 Conference, Charterhouse School, nr Godalming, Surrey, UK
The Arts Catalyst is organising a session at the British Rocketry Oral History Project (BROHP) conference, which takes place 12-14 April.
Our session will look at the work of contemporary artists who explore the cultural and architectural legacy of the Cold War nuclear and space programmes. Speakers include the novelist and journalist James Flint, artist Louise K Wilson, and curator Rob La Frenais. The session is chaired by Nicola Triscott, Director of The Arts Catalyst.
BROHP conference web-site: www.brohp.org.uk/conf.html
James Flint will discuss some of the issues raised in his novel The Book of Ash which wove American development of nuclear science into a gripping story of art, atoms, alchemy, politics and paranoia, and was inspired by the American “nuclear sculptor” James L. Acord. Louise K Wilson‘s artworks explore perceptual, social and cultural aspects of science and technology. In A Record of Fear, she created sound and video works for Orford Ness – formerly a secret military testing site. To create Spadeadam, she investigated a UK Cold War test site, now used by Britain's Royal Air Force as an electronic warfare training range. Rob La Frenais is the curator for The Arts Catalyst. He will present and review some of the Arts Catalyst’s art projects in the fields of space research and nuclear science and its work negotiating artists’ access restricted sites of science and technology in the UK and abroad.
Speakers Biographies:
James Flint is the author of the novels Habitus (1998); 52 Ways to Magic America (2002), which won the Amazon.co.uk Bursary Award for the year 2000; and The Book of Ash (2004), winner of a 2003 Arts Council Writers’ Award. He has also published a short story collection Soft Apocalypse – Twelve Tales from the Turn of the Millennium (2004). His short fiction has appeared in collections published by Penguin Books, the New English Library and the ICA. When it was published in France in 1992, Habitus was judged as in the top five foreign novels of that year's Rentrée Literaire. Time Out called it "probably the best British fiction début of the last five years". He has worked as a section editor for Wired UK and science editor of the technology and art periodical Mute, and has written features and reviews for many national newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, Time Out and Arena.
Louise K Wilson is a visual artist, whose work includes installations, sound pieces and video. Her recent work which springs from a curiosity into how the technology of flight affects our physiological states and psychological selves. To this end, she has participated in a movement experiment in zero gravity, co-opted a team of air traffic controllers in formation cycling on Newcastle Airport runway and been a passenger in an aerobatics plane repeatedly looping the loop. Previous associations have included the Montreal Neurological Institute, the Science Museum London, the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, Russia, the RSPB and Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service. Exhibitions have included Artists Airshow, RAF Farnborough (2004); Arena, Baltic (2003); Blue Streak, Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle (2003), Runway/ Spadeadam, Gallery TPW, Toronto (2003) and A Record of Fear, Orford Ness, for Commissions East (2005). Her video Spadeadam is in the Archive at the Imperial War Museum, London.
Dr Rob La Frenais is a curator and critic who has curated and produced interdisciplinary and visual art projects since 1987. Since 1997 he has worked with the Arts Catalyst, the science-art agency. Before that he was a freelance curator and organiser working in a European context in various countries, including being the Chief Executive of the Edge Biennale Trust in London and Madrid and the Artistic Director of the Belluard-Bollwerk International in Switzerland. In 1979 he founded the groundbreaking Performance Magazine, which continued as an authoritative cultural voice in Europe until 1992. He has a PhD in curatorial practice across disciplines and is an honorary Doctor of Arts at Dartington College of Arts.
Nicola Triscott is a cultural producer and curator. She founded The Arts Catalyst in 1993. As Director of The Arts Catalyst, she has commissioned more than 50 art projects and events that explore science and technology as transforming forces in culture and society. She speaks frequently on art and science and cultural aspects of space at international conferences. She was recently project leader for a study commissioned by the European Space Agency to develop a cultural policy for the International Space Station.