Auto Italia South East: A recent trip to London.
The last time I was in London it was a fleeting experience. I was on the way to Belgium to collect some of my possessions; the remainder of my belongings (especially some books, and an artwork). I was invited to go to Auto Italia for an event, a live reading. Featuring the voices of Marta Barina, Moza Almatrooshi, Imani Robinson, Rhona Eve Clews, Gonçalo Lamas, and Ebun Sodipo. All were fabulous … and I shamefully can not remember the name of the head curator, but the whole event was local and very very, vocal; it was a very warm and inviting experience. I enjoyed the invitation for all attendees to move their chair and adopt the use of eye masks so as to envelop and shroud the room in a deep state of listening.
- Auto Italia South East ‘Read my lips’, London, 2018
I have two personal highlights from the experience. They are Moza Al Matrooshi’s bilingual reading; in Arabic a language that I admire visually because of its naturally cursive and calligraphic form of writing. Yet, it was lovely to hear her address cultural assimilation and migration in a graceful way. Next to Al Matrooshi’s voice I and many others were moved (in an aggressive way) by Imani Robinson. Going last, the speakers voice gave voice to the structural racism that physically and psychologically affects so many Black people throughout the world. As soon as this reading began you could feel the collective attention and mode of sensory consumption of the audience alter. The words that were spoken confronted our ears were not for entertainment. Rather, a masterclass in how to use rhythm, time, and tone to deliver an intervention; not just a reminder of the stark inequalities that remain ever nefarious but a performance that informed everyone present.
I have researched a little further into these creators and artists; below are a few points of interest, and links to some sources.
#The Boundaries of Storytelling / #Tashkeel /
#http://ebunasodipo.tumblr.com/ / #Shades of Noir / @toblacken
#https://www.martabarina.com / #atpdiary_sp3Treviso
#https://imanirobinson.co.uk / #https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/from-ferguson-to-the-uk/
#http://rhonaeveclews.com/ / #http://www.audiofoundation.org.nz/programmes/exhibitions/rhona-eve-clews-mathew-cowan
#http://goncalolamas.com/
…
All Crystals are Displayed at Site:
Sheffield’s Long Standing Contemporary Art Gallery re-opens.
Crystals are essential to Lasers, image take from Edinburgh University Engineering
‘Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)’ is an exhibition about the expansion of our crystal culture. Our ever increasing complexity of the usage of crystals as surfaces for images. From André Breton’s metaphor for the Surrealist and Freudian realisation that dreams offer insight into the workings of the unconscious. The metaphor Breton used to describe intense processes of creation; he chose the object of the crystal because it carried both a movement of extreme pressure and also a connection to the earth all but one that remains invisible. On a discourse on how that which is inorganic is animated, the author makes many a reference to art historians of yesteryear. One of them, a man called Haeckel mentored and tutored a crystallographer Otto Lehmann made some experiments that would be the first in which the term liquid was affixed to the crystal. The German term flüssige or fliessende Kristalle (liquid or flowing crystals) contained an addition to a discourse that has remained relevant since antiquity; a discussion on the relevancy of that which is stationary or that which is in motion. Lehman published his visual evidence, his microphotographs of the internal workings of crystals in a book Die neue Welt der flüssigen Kristalle und deren Bedeutung für Physik, Chemie, Technik und Biologie, Liepzig, Akad. Verlagsgesell-schaft. m. b. H, (1911). (1) Such a small historical comment, is an insightful initial source but to deepen the contemporary roots and background for this exhibition the interview between Jeanine Griffin and Jussi Parikka on medium is well worth your time.
Coinciding with this exhibition a new book by Esther Leslie was published but it is an earlier study of her’s Synthetic Worlds, Leslie references chemical mastery and new industries emerging from within this mastery. Specifically an American company is shown to have been one of the first to transform the ashes and remains of a loved one into a crystal stone; connecting directly to Otto Lehmann’s European discoveries and the material exploration of being; the discussion of the shared space the animate and its dual share. The exhibition is centred around a special structure that enables the rich plurality of creation exhibited. I only looked through once but I enjoyed Jennifer West’s ‘Spiral of Time’ a 15mm exploration of film’s continued space for rumination, the pairings of tools by Shimabuku, and the Otolith Group’s ‘Anathema’ reminds me of a dear friend of mine’s degree show work in which the computer chip’s circuitry was used to show it’s urban aesthetic and the city as a site of utopian fantasy. Finally, the animation made by Norwegian artist Ann Lislegaard ‘Crystal World (After J.G. Ballard)’ is a very pleasant linear and tonal use of animation. The shifting shapes located within its digital structures reminded me of some of the beautiful architectural achievements humans have invented.
Ann Lislegaard ‘Crystal World (After J.G. Ballard)’
The exhibition’s richness does indeed make everything different the day you ponder its contents and in many ways the collection of images and creativity on display displays the increasingly creative environment that art and science need not compete for. Recently, physicists discovered the existence of time crystals; ‘a bizarre state of matter with an atomic structure that repeats not just in space, but in time, allowing them to maintain constant oscillation without energy.’ (2) To summarize why these are so special and why there validation is important this article puts forward the idea that they show how the well established notion that matter if malleable exists in a balanced state (equilibrium), but with the existence of time crystals this allows for matter to exist in an unbalanced state (dis-equilibrium). The scientists who made the discovery used crystals to generate these mysterious objects. They used two lasers to keep the ions (atoms with missing or extra electrons) in an unbalanced state; creating a magnetic field, and then to manipulate the atom’s spin.
- Spyros Papapetros. (2012) ‘On the Animation of the Inorganic, University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. 122-123
- BEC CREW, ‘It’s Official: Time Crystals Are a New State of Matter, And Now We Can Create Them’ Science Alert, 9 MAR 2017
