Studio 14: A Material World

Studio brief

As the title suggests, this Studio will be based on the processes that are intrinsic to the design and making of textiles. However, it will also be looking at the materiality of these textiles as objects.

We will be looking at the meaning and significance of material artefacts, and how they can give us a greater understanding of our culture and times. Researching into the context of the design and manufacture of textiles connects to issues of identity, wellbeing, memory, consumption and value. Material as object, garment, furnishing, art, can explore how textiles are embedded in our cultural traditions and give us insight into ourselves and our society.

We will be visiting galleries and archives to examine how the material artefact informs us, and how as practitioners, your understanding of making will be the starting point for further inquiry.

Details

Tutors	Emma Davenport

Dissertation studios

1/2

Studio 01: ideas in places

Ektoras Arkomanis

This studio prescribes a direct treatment of place, whether subjective or objective.

Studio 02: Narrative and Storytelling

Jon Baldwin

This studio focuses on modes of storytelling and narrative conventions. We will particularly consider how narrative intersects with, and informs, identity.

Studio 03: The Conquest of Joy

Aleks Catina

This studio encourages dialogues around the cultural production at a time when narratives founded on certainty have ceased to make sense.

Studio 04: Bullshit, propaganda and post-truth

Jeremy Collins

This studio will look at the emergence of the notion of ‘post truth’ and explore links between other ideas around propaganda and Harry Frankfurt’s argument about ‘bullshit’. We will consider the usefulness of these ideas, and how they can be explored in creative practice.

Portrait of Frau Fiber, a textile worker and activist

Studio 05: Meaningful Work

Paul Harper

This studio will consider the value of making -in itself, independent of the product or outcome, exploring the idea of craft as meaningful work.

Studio 06: Writing Rough

Andrew Hewish

What are the outer limits of the essay? Write on the edge of the possible in a rich, researched and evidenced discussion which creatively explores the expanded field of the essay.

Studio 08: The things you can tell just by looking (or, Oriented Writing)

Ajay Hothi

Writing tells us who we are and how each of us thinks and interprets the world.

Studio 09: Le Marteau Sans Maître

Joseph Kohlmaier

Digging through the deepest layers of archaeological time, André Leroi-Gourhan (La geste et la parole, 1964) concluded that for millions of years, human culture and technology evolved without complex language, rational planning or abstract ‘thinking at a distance’.

Studio 10: Globalism

Harriet McKay

For good or ill, we live in a global world. Whilst this may appear to be obvious, globalism is only a relatively recent term as is the phenomenon itself. What do we mean by this? How did we arrive in this place?

Installation art by the Korean artists, M. Kyungwon & J. Joonho

Studio 11: Performative Acts: Art, Architecture and Writing

Nico de Oliveira

In the last decade or so we have moved from objects to subjects or audiences. In parallel, the word performative has been adapted from a theoretical term to a key rubric within the discourse of contemporary art, architecture and beyond.

People break off stones from the pavement to use as ammunition. Photo: Robert Nagle, 1997 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Studio 12: Decay, Repair and Back Again

Gabriele Oropallo

Things break down and decay. In this studio you will experiment repair as strategy to negotiate breakdown, and you will practice mining patina and weathering for information and stories.

Anonymous stencil of a quotation from a letter from Leopold 1 of Belgium to his niece, Queen Victoria

Studio 13: ‘If I stay silent nothing will change’: Identity, Politics, Social Change and Creative Culture(s)

Christina Paine

This cross-disciplinary studio considers how power, culture, politics, identity, representation, activism, social media, and mass culture theory intersect with a range of arts practices, including photography, architecture, design and fine art, film studies, fashion and music, sound, pop art, and theatre.