Monthly Archives: January 2014

Samson Kambalu- Dak’art 2014

CCW PhD student, Samson Kambalu, as been invited to participate in Dak’art 2014, the 11th annual Dakar Biennale, 9 May – 8 June 2014. Dak’Art is the biggest biennale of Contemporary African Art, and is held in Dakar, Senegal. Kambalu will contribute a cinema installation screening his site-specific (psychogeographic) film, work which he has developed while looking at the general economy in Meschac Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary African Art. ‘Snow Man’ is an example of such a film which he recently made in Suzdal, Russia.

Samson Kambalu works in a variety of media, including painting and drawing, site-specific installation, video, performance and literature. His work criticises art, religion, identity and economic values in a globalised world. His PhD looks at the general economy in Meschac Gaba's Museum of Contempory African Art and imagines the 13th room of the museum.

Stupidious

Dr Malcolm Quinn, Associate Dean of Research and Director of CCW Graduate School, will be speaking at Stupidious at the South London Gallery on Saturday 8 Feb 2013, a day of talks and screenings that looks at stupidity as both a subject and a strategy of artistic production. This event follows the publication of Quinn’s article 'Stupidity is Anything at All' in a special issue of the journal Parallax, 19:3, pp. 70-82.

The event examines “the cultural importance of stupidity with a particular focus on its ethical and political effects as well as the challenges it presents to art making and critical writing. High culture is supposed to keep its audience from being stupid, yet artists and theorists have repeatedly turned their attention to this marginalised subject. Stupidity carries a number of significant associations and implications – questions of intellectual superiority, of judgment and understanding, of the nature of thought, of certitude and selfhood, of insult and exclusion, of legitimate and illegitimate knowledge.” Further information and details for booking can be found on the South London Gallery website.

Dr Malcolm Quinn's current research focuses on identity, taste and governance in the thought of Jeremy Bentham and Adam Smith, with reference to Jacques Lacan's account of the 'utilitarian conversion' in ethics. He is the author (with Professor Dany Nobus) of Knowing Nothing Staying Stupid: Elements for a Psychoanalytic Epistemology(Routledge, 2005) and 'Insight and Rigour: A Freudo-Lacanian Approach' in The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts (2010). His book Utilitarianism and the Art School in Nineteenth-Century Britain was published in 2012.

Collaborative Partnership Seminar Gen ve

On 13 and 14 January, staff from CCW visited the CCC Research-Based Master Programme and Pre-Doctoral Seminar at the Haute cole d'art et de design Gen ve (CCC/HEAD), to discuss the development of a collaborative partnership around shared areas of research interest. CCC is co-ordinated by Professor Catherine Queloz and delivers a pre-doctoral seminar aimed at developing rigorous and culturally engaged practice-led research in art and design.

Professor Chris Wainwright, Pro Vice-Chancellor of UAL and Head of CCW, Dr Malcolm Quinn, Associate Dean of Research and Head of Graduate School CCW, and Professor Neil Cummings of CCW, delivered presentations on the PhD culture and curriculum at CCW/UAL, as well as presentations on their own research and one-to-one discussions on student research projects. Following the visit, CCW/UAL and CCC/HEAD are planning a joint seminar/workshop programme, commencing in autumn 2014, on the themes of the politics of memory and environment and sustainability, which cohere with the CCW research themes and the research aims of CCC. A common aim of both institutions is to use research in art as a powerful agent of artistic and cultural transformation, intervention, and translation.