Audio Commentaries

Primer / Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme

Nat Raha reads 'Love is the Message', a text commissioned by The Common Guild in response to Sharon Hayes' exhibition 'Ricerche' at 5 Florence Street in Autumn 2021.

Commentary / Love is the Message by Nat Raha

The third event in Corin Sworn's research series 'Moving in Relation' takes the form of an interview and conversation between Corin Sworn and political geographer Louise Amoore.
 
Louise Amoore is author of 'Cloud Ethics: Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others' (2020) and lecturer at Durham University whose research has informed Sworn’s current investigative performance practice.
 
Sworn and Amoore discuss understanding algorithms, AI ethics, and the intimacy that connects together human and algorithmic relations. With reference to Sworn’s performances ‘eco-co-location’ and ‘This Harmonic Chamber’ they consider what place these technologies occupy in the world.
 
Touching on different histories of science and the prioritisation of rationality over embodied knowledge, algorithms are understood as an arrangement of propositions which are often used to model likelihood. Algorithms shape and are shaped by their porous engagement with the world; they participate in generative algorithm-to-algorithm relationships and demonstrate fallibility through enacting logics of misrecognition or ‘algorithmic madness’. Sworn and Amoore’s conversation reflects on the ways algorithms inform our everyday perception and impact how we interact with one another from an interpersonal to a judicial level.

‘Moving in Relation’ – Louise Amoore interviewed by Corin Sworn

Writer and researcher Priya Jay responds to Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, ‘May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth: Only sounds that tremble through us’ (2020–2022), in this newly commissioned Commentary –
 
"Together, there is a conspiracy to breathe. Tremble rises under the skin and they move in a way that is not dance but eruption. And so goes the enchantment. THOSE WHO CHANT DO NOT DIE."
 
Abbas and Abou-Rahme's multi-channel sound and moving image installation was presented at Florence Street by The Common Guild earlier this year.

Commentary / Priya Jay

‘The Last Librarian in Glasgow’ by Onyeka Igwe is a short play for libraries set in the near future. The play follows two individuals who join forces in an attempt to resurrect the now-lost tradition of the public lending library. Working through their own indistinct, hazy childhood memories, and instructions from a zine, they start to assemble what they think might be the essentials of a community library, in an old, empty warehouse building.

The play was originally performed at Langside Library, Woodside Library and Hillhead Library in April 2023. 

Performed by Elicia Daly, Pauline Goldsmith and Louis Pearson.
Script by Onyeka Igwe.
Sound mix by Chizu Anucha.

‘The Last Librarian in Glasgow’ is part of a project about public libraries called ‘anywhere in the universe’, developed by The Common Guild, supported by Creative Scotland, Ampersand Foundation, Hope Scott Trust and Culture Ireland.

Onyeka Igwe – 'The Last Librarian In Glasgow' (2023)

Writer and programmer Caitlin Merrett King responds to Nicole Wermer's 2024 exhibition 'Day Care' with 'The Golden Z' .

'Day Care', Wermers' most substantial institutional UK presentation to date, took place in The Common Guild's temporary premises at 60 York Street, generating discourse on overlooked labour hierarchies, corporate structures and the politics of urban space.

"The building was so positioned that from the roof, whilst enjoying a £1 beer and a scrounged tab, you could see the backs and innards of the surrounding buildings: air conditioning shafts sputtered and hummed, abseiling window cleaners wiped away grey suds from tinted glass exteriors. Seagulls making their nests on precarious ledges dropped twigs and grit and faeces onto huddled financial district workers gulping up quick cigarettes on the pavement below."

Commentary / Caitlin Merrett King

Following Lawrence Abu Hamdan's presentation of 'Live Audio Essays' as part of Glasgow International in June 2024, artist and writer Neil Clements responds to this suite of performances. Addressing Abu Hamdan's spatial approach to sound, Clements considers the architecture we inhabit and the mechanics of remembering.

"Is it possible for an artwork to address a political topic with such directness, such efficacy, that it ceases to be an artwork altogether? This is a question that the multifarious activities of Lawrence Abu Hamdan would appear to pose, crossing as they do the boundaries dividing social commentary, public advocacy and criminal investigation."

Commentary / Neil Clements

Led by writer Laura Guy and artist Steven Grainger, this session introduces a year-long project that explored recent histories of the city of Glasgow through queer and trans cultural practice. Framed by the idea of ‘inventing vocabularies’ – Ann Cvetkovich’s description of telling lesbian stories through oral history approaches – the session will focus on the methods and materials that the project explored. 

Coinciding with Grainger’s ‘Power of Things Not Declared’, a poster project across the city, the event will be accompanied by a small display of ephemera that traces queer and trans interventions within Glasgow’s public realm. 'Inventing Vocabularies’ nvited attendees to think through these partial documents alongside practices of storytelling, making, and organising in the present.

Library Session / Laura Guy & Steven Grainger – ‘Inventing Vocabularies’

Francis Whorrall Campbell responds to the exhibition 'Myths of the new future' with his text 'On Allegory as Cut Form'.

Commentary / Francis Whorrall-Campbell

Artist Talk / Peng Zuqiang

In their first public talk in Scotland, author, curator, historian, and museum director Dr Kholeif tours audiences through a freewheeling journey from Glasgow, where they grew up and studied, to Cairo, downward through Khartoum to Chicago, from Jeddah to Los Angeles, via London to Sharjah, and back again.

Detours / Omar Kholeif

Library Session / Orsod Malik

Dr. Tamara Trodd is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Edinburgh, with a specialism in film and photography. She is editor of the book, 'Screen/Space: The Projected Image in Contemporary Art' and author of the new book, 'The Art of Mechanical Reproduction: Technology and Aesthetics, from Duchamp to the Digital', which is out now with the University of Chicago Press. She has published previously on the work of Thomas Demand, with an essay in the journal Art History, entitled 'Deforming Pictures'. Tamara offered her thoughts on Thomas Demand’s his exhibition at The Common Guild and his Dailies series, in relation to the question of realism in contemporary art. Her title was: 'The Dailies: Thomas Demand's Dreamwork.' 
This talk took place on Thursday 5 November at The Common Guild. 




Exhibition Talk / Dr. Tamara Trodd on Thomas Demand

In conversation with Katrina Brown, Director of The Common Guild, theatre maker Graham Eatough talked about his experience of developing ‘At Twilight’ with Simon Starling, with particular focus on the performances. He also offered his thoughts on theatricality and visual art more generally - the recent ‘theatrical turn’ within the visual arts in the context of an historical anti-theatricality.

‘At Twilight: A play for two actors, three musicians, one dancer, eight masks (and a donkey costume)’ took place on the 26, 27 and 28 August at Holmwood House, a National Trust of Scotland property on the south side of Glasgow.

Graham Eatough is a theatre maker who also works in visual arts and film, and worked in collaboration with Simon Starling on ‘At Twilight’, he is co-writer of the script and director of the performance. His most recent projects include directing 'Lanark: A Life in Three Acts' for the Edinburgh International Festival and the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow which won the Herald Angel Award, 'HeLa' by Adura Onahsile which won Scottish Arts Club Best Scottish Production at the Edinburgh Fringe, and 'The Making of Us', an interdisciplinary collaboration with artist Graham Fagen for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2012.

Artist Talk / Graham Eatough in conversation with Katrina Brown

Tiffany Jenkins is author of the critically acclaimed 'Keeping Their Marbles: How Treasures of the Past Ended Up in Museums and Why They Should Stay There' and regularly writes for The Scotsman, The Guardian, The Spectator and The Independent. Her talk will take us through the history of debates over cultural ownership, cultural appropriation, and explain why no one culture owns culture.

This talk took place on Tuesday 19 September at The Common Guild.

Tiffany Jenkins / 'Who Owns Culture?'

Tom Jeffreys with Katrina Brown, Ruth Ewan, Colm Guo-Lin Peare and Ed Hollis
‘A Place for the Work and the Human Being’ concluded with the tenth and final event in the series, reflecting on a year of talks and discussions with artists, architects, curators and academics throughout 2019.

Writer Tom Jeffreys leads a conversation between artist Ruth Ewan; writer and Transmission Committee member, Colm Guo-Lin Peare; Ed Hollis, Professor of Interior Design at Edinburgh College of Art; and Director of The Common Guild, Katrina Brown. The discussion will reflect on the histories, themes and ideas presented by earlier speakers and draw upon propositions from Rémy Zaugg’s 1986 text, ‘The Art Museum of My Dreams’, which was the central catalyst for this series.

'A Place for the Work and the Human Being / 10. Panel Discussion

Visual Arts: Projects / Events / Exhibitions

The Common Guild

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks