Lockdown week 14

Relaxed Reductions.

Although the virus infection and death rate figures are thankfully going down there has been only very general analysis of the detailed demographics behind the generally available figures. The interactive infographic below provides analysis and some understanding of the people lost behind the figures in England and Wales.

Click image for all information

Socially Distanced Garden Meetings

Andrew Kulman, Jug and Lemons. Woodcut 2020

As the lockdown is eased socially distanced physical meetings are possible to consider between know participants. Midweek we were invited out to a neighbour’s garden and my partner suggested I leave my phone at home. I did miss it. There were a number of occasions when I reached to make a search, confirm an event or view an image, but as the evening progressed, we relaxed into our face to face live experience.  We are lucky enough to have a garden and the following evening an impromptu invitation to a fellow printmaker and partner from across the city was welcomed.  Following their 11K paces from theirs to ours, we met and dined together. On arrival a series of three woodcuts were kindly presented to us. Summer images. Another enjoyable digital free evening!

#Digital Sociality.  

A new term has appeared on my research agenda: Digital Sociality.  This describes the increased, and potentially positive social exchanges taking place during the lockdowns and isolations deployed in the global pandemic. It is coined by ethnographers (Saxena and Lee Johnson, 2020):‘During a global pandemic, the wide geographic reach of digital media allows for articulation of imaginaries across places and opens possibilities for shared worlding. Used digital platforms may widen the reach of social and cultural exchange’. 

digital drawing

Continuing making drawings with the hashtag #BLM. Below is from the 60 Years Room at Tate Britain last year that celebrated the work of British women artists from 1960s to the present day. The room focuses on the work of British women artists. It included work from several generations who have explored similar themes. Spaces and structures, the idea of home, and fictional identities featured throughout the works. The display highlighted how women artists have been under-represented by galleries.

Identity and belonging. Tate Britain. 2019. iPad Drawing.

links

https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain/display/walk-through-british-art/60-years

Alder Keleman Saxena and Jennifer Lee Johnson, 2020. 

Cues for Ethnography in Pandamning Times: Thinking with Digital Sociality in the Covid-19 Pandemic. Dispatches from the pandemic. http://somatosphere.netScience, Medicine, and Anthropology 

Lockdown week 13

UK Covid figures going down, thank Goodness.

The numbers debate: Politics (economics) Vs Science (Health)

Following art week’s decision to open my photographic archive to make new drawings relevant to  #Blacklivesmatter with the iPad for sharing on Instagram, I have posted the drawing below. It is from a photographic celebratory event at the Birmingham Hippodrome and features portraits of Birmingham’s female Black elders, in the places they feel most at home. They are brought to life via augmented reality that sees the women in the portraits tell their stories and talk directly to viewers about what home means to them. Today is also WindrushDay 2020 when communities across the country celebrate the contribution of the Windrush Generation.

Listening to Vanley, at Brumhippodrome. 2019

Home was an exciting exhibition of augmented-reality portrait photography that has grown out of a creative project by renowned photographer Vanley Burke and Friction Arts and is presented for the first time at Birmingham Hippodrome.

Vanley Burke is often described as the ‘Godfather of Black British Photography’ – his iconic images have captured the evolving cultural landscape, social change, and stimulated debate in the United Kingdom over the past four decades. His body of work represents possibly the largest photographic record of the Caribbean Diaspora in Britain, and as an avid collector, Vanley continues to connect histories through his substantial archive housed at the Library of Birmingham. From local community organisations to the Victoria & Albert Museum and Whitechapel, Vanley has exhibited widely in the United Kingdom, and as far afield as New York, South Africa and China. Find out more at vanley.co.uk

UK culture news

UK government announces theatres, cinemas and Museums can open with social distancing on ‘Independence Day’. Theatres rely on live audiences for the financial model to operate, cinemas may be able to survive with smaller audiences; Museums may be able to apply social distancing, but they will not be in a position to pay the staff to implement the rules as the income from trading is not to a sustainable level.

#printgang

Taiba rehearses her presentation

#Printgang continues be a shared forum for making and for me Lockdown Lookout drawing. This week Lucy set up her walk and Taiba rehearsed her presentation

Lockdown Lookout

Lockdown Lookout #4 Rain has been completed in the computing drawing, composing and editing stages. Digital print Proofing onto paper will be carried out this week.

Lockdown Lookout #4 Rain

Thats it

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