ANNI ALBERS AND THE MODERNIST TEXTILE
26-27 January 2019
University College London
www.annialbersmodernisttextile.com

DAY 1
1. Briony Fer, Introduction
2. Grant Watson, Bauhaus Imaginista: Learning From
3. Tanya Harrod, ‘the living texture’: British women weavers and modern textiles in the 1920s and 1930s
4. Gabriela García de Cortázar, Andean Anni, or what to do in Chile when you are not ill
5. Ana Elena Mallet, Modernist Women and Mexico as inspiration. Anni Albers + Clara Porset + Cynthia Sargent
6. Lynne Cooke, Lineage and Legacy
7. David Batchelor, The psychogeometry of triangular repeats
8. Tom McDonough, Knots and the fabric of architecture
9. Caroline Arscott, Morris: Weaving as Prophecy
10. Rye Holmboe, Anna Freud's Loom
11. Briony Fer in conversation with Helen Molesworth
12. Giulia Smith, Mary Martin’s Textiles
13. Cadence Kinsey, In formation: pattern, code and being
DAY 2
14. Briony Fer, Samples, experiments, prototypes
15. Karis Medina, Warp Families: The common threads of Anni Albers’s Pictorial Weavings
16. Mona Schieren, Transcultural Entanglements in Lenore Tawney’s Fiber Art
17. Marta Zboralska, 'As organic as nature itself': Władysław Strzemiński and Katarzyna Kobro’s Bauhaus
18. Meret Kaufmann, Pattern is a teacher
19. Freya Field-Donovan, Albers and Deren

This project was made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Anni Albers and the Modernist Textile

pod ast

Art History Lectures

Our latest Short Takes comes from Ian Sanjay Patel, author of the new book 'We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire' (Verso, 2021). This important book provides a global history of post-war migration to the UK, offering fresh insights into the relationship between migration, citizenship and decolonization.

Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-were-here-because-you-were-there-immigration-and-end-empire

Speaker: Ian Sanjay Patel, LSE Fellow in Human Rights, London School of Economics
Image: We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire (Verso, 2021)
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu

www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts

SPRC Short Takes: We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire

Dr Nick Witham opens this series of dissemination sessions where four of UCL Institute of the Americas active researchers talk about their current research activity

Popular Culture: What is it and why we should care?

Cosmopolitan Lovesick Blues - The Right Profile

They're paid a fortune — but for what, exactly? What makes a good C.E.O. — and how can you even tell? Is "leadership science" a real thing — or just airport-bookstore mumbo jumbo? We put these questions to Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, Indra Nooyi, Satya Nadella, Jack Welch, Ray Dalio, Carol Bartz, David Rubenstein, and Ellen Pao. (Part 1 of a special series, "The Secret Life of C.E.O.'s.")

Freakonomics Radio

Freakonomics: What Does a C.E.O. Actually Do?

Grace Blakeley argues the case for 'Lexit' (a left-wing exit from the European Union) while Laurie Macfarlane thinks 'Remain and Reform' is our best option.

With a vote on the Prime Minister's deal imminent, what are the options? Paul Mason recently described Lexit – the leftwing case for Brexit – as a political fantasy, but is there still a progressive case for leaving the EU? Was there ever one? Or is our best chance to stay in the EU and reform it? Can it even be reformed?

We wanted to get to the bottom of all this, so on this week's podcast are two economists who share the same values but have come to very different positions about Lexit.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

Produced by James Shield.

Music: Podington Bear, Mr Frisby's Beat Pocket, and Jey Row, licenced under Creative Commons.

The award-winning Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation – the UK's only people powered think tank. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Weekly Economics Podcast

Apple Podcasts

Lexit vs Remain and Reform

The Green New Deal has rocketed to the top of the agenda in the US. It's an ambitious plan, spearheaded by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to decarbonise the US economy and eliminate economic insecurity at the same time.

But in fact the Green New Deal has some of its origins here at the New Economics Foundation. So what's the story behind the development of the idea? And how would a Green New Deal actually work, both in the UK and across the pond?

Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined this week by:

- Ann Pettifor, director of Prime Economics and one of the co-authors of the Green New Deal report published by NEF in 2008;

- Miatta Fahnbulleh, chief executive of the New Economics Foundation;

- Waleed Shahid, communications director of the Justice Democrats, who also worked on the campaign to elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

Produced by James Shield.

Music this week is by Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence.

The award-winning Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation – the UK's only people powered think tank. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

What's the deal with the Green New Deal?

Cadence Kinsey - In Formation: Pattern, Code and Being

Ana Elena Mallet - Modernist Women & Mexico as Inspiration: Anni Albers+Clara Porset+Cynthia Sargent

Gabriela Garcia de Cortazar - Andean Anni or What to do in Chile when you are not ill

Tanya Harrod - ‘the living texture’: British Women Weavers and Modern Textiles in the 1920s & 1930s

Grant Watson - Bauhaus Imaginista: Learning From

Briony Fer - Introduction

by Terry Kurgan in conversation with Tamar Garb and Eva Hoffman

Terry Kurgan’s book begins with a family snapshot made by her Polish grandfather in 1939 on the eve of the war. Presenting this evocative image as a repository of multiple histories—public, private, domestic, familial and generational—she sets off on a series of meditations on photography that give us startling insights into how photographs work: what they conceal, how they mislead, what provocations they contain. Each essay takes up the thread of the story of her family’s epic journey across Europe as they flee—country by country—Nazi occupation, until they reach Cape Town, South Africa. But Kurgan takes detours, circles back, diverts attention elsewhere, enriching and also disrupting the narrative with digressions on the way Google has changed our relationship to photography, on her grandfather’s eloquent daily journals, on the shipboard flirtations of her fascinating grandmother, on vanity, on self representation, on loss and return, home and exile. Kurgan’s richly satisfying essays are part memoir, part travelogue, part analysis and they demonstrate her sophisticated understanding of a medium that has long engaged her as an artist.

Everyone is Present - Terry Kurgan in conversation with Tamar Garb and Eva Hoffman

by Anthony Gardner (University of Oxford), Magdalena Radomska (Art History Institute, Adam Mickiewicz University inPoznań), Marko Ilić (SSEES, UCL). Moderated by Maja and Reuben Fowkes (Post-socialist Art Centre, IAS, UCL)

This panel discussion brought together contributors to the special issue of Third Text on Actually Existing Artworlds of Socialism and guest respondents to debate the legacy of the socialist system for contemporary art and politics.

'Research into the institutional settings and practicalities of artistic production during the socialist period is giving rise to more nuanced accounts that complicate the distinctions made between the heroism of the neo-avant-garde and complicity of official artists, revealing an art system that was more variegated, flexible and generative than has been widely assumed. This panel examines the far-reaching implications of the understanding that artists from across the stylistic and ideological spectrum were productively imbricated in the calculated opacities and unlikely rapprochements of the ‘actually existing’ artworlds of socialism. Discussion of the specific traits of Eastern bloc artworlds and the key differences between art institutional landscapes across the Cold War divide opens onto the critical question as to what might be salvaged from the historical experience of art under socialism. Furthermore, if post-socialism is conceived not as a timeless category but as a specific historical period, then what are the prospects for the socialist project in the new social and political circumstances of unfolding global disorder?

IAS Book Launch: Another Artworld Was Possible - the Socialist Art System Revisited

by Avril Alba, Yasmin Khan, and Tom Lawson. Chaired by Tamar Garb.

This panel discussion was jointly organised by the IAS and the German Historical Institute London (GHIL), and was part of the GHIL's Contested Histories seminar series (summer term 2019). Please find the programme here and the poster here.

This panel asked how do colonial history, the Second World War, and the Holocaust intersect? As Britain embarks on the creation of a National Holocaust Memorial, calls have been made for a memorial to and a museum of Britain’s historical involvement in slavery, its colonial past, and their legacies. Meanwhile, scholarship such as Michael Rothberg’s Multidirectional Memory has argued that Holocaust remembrance also has the potential to open up routes for commemorating other contested national pasts. This panel enabled a dialogue between scholars of the Holocaust, colonialism, and the British Empire to reflect on national and transnational legacies.

Multidirectional Memory? National Holocaust Memorials and (Post-)Colonial Legacies

by Chris Knight (Anthropology, UCL)and Jackie Walker. Chaired by Tamar Garb (IAS)

With the publication of ‘The Responsibility of Intellectuals’ half a century ago, Noam Chomsky burst onto the US political scene as a leading critic of the war in Vietnam. Privilege, he argues, brings with it the responsibility to tell the truth and expose lies, but our intellectual culture only pays lip-service to this ideal. The essay has been described as ‘the single most influential piece of anti-war literature’ of the Vietnam war period.

Since then, Chomsky has continued to equip a growing international audience with the facts and arguments needed to understand – and change – our world. According to The New York Times, Chomsky ‘may be the most widely read American voice on foreign policy on the planet today.’

This book revisits ‘The Responsibility of Intellectuals’ half a century on. It includes six new essays written to celebrate Chomsky’s famous intervention and explore its relevance in today’s world. Nicholas Allott, Chris Knight, Milan Rai and Neil Smith have studied and written about Chomsky’s thought for many years, while Craig Murray and Jackie Walker describe the personal price they have paid for speaking out. The book finishes with Chomsky’s recollections of the background to the original publication of his essay, followed by extensive commentary from him on its 50th anniversary.

IAS Book Launch: The Responsibility of Intellectuals

Elisabeth Lebovici, art historian and art critic offers a response from the context of her book – ‘Being There – AIDS Activism at the end of Twentieth Century’. This is part of a Preview Seminar: Protest - Remembering Derek Jarman, that marked the 25th anniversary of Jarman’s death and reflects on What Jarman’s legacy is, as an artist and activist, today? Special guests come together to discuss the creative worlds, controversies and friendships that surround Jarman’s pioneering - interdisciplinary practice.

TRACK 7: Seminar Programme - Part Two / Protest, Outrage & Remembrance
Elisabeth Lebovici, art historian and art critic; Being There – AIDS Activism at the end of Twentieth Century.  Lebovici offers a wider perspective on the global struggles against HIV/AIDS, and its integration into art histories, discourses and practices - as an important framework to consider Jarman’s activist and artistic legacy.
About Speaker
Elisabeth Lebovici is an art historian and art critic, whose research, writings and lectures investigate the intersection of feminism, gender studies, queer politics, LGBTQ activism, and contemporary art. Among numerous publications, she is the author, of a new book Ce que le sida m’a fait: art et activisme à la fin du XXe siècle (What AIDS has done to me. Art and Activism at the End of the 20th Century) Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2017. The book restores the voices of friends in the fight against AIDS; articulating the “I” and the “we” of then and now; examining facts and affects little known to the French and European public; analysing the epidemic of representation which followed the emergence of AIDS: such is the agenda of this book, conceived by Lebovici as a “discourse on method” in which the personal is always political, and public and private spheres are closely intertwined. Engaged alongside French and American AIDS activists, Elisabeth Lebovici was a privileged observer, as an art historian and journalist, of the debates of the 1980s and 1990s.

Further Information
A range of iconic works were explored in the context of the highly anticipated IMMA exhibition, Derek Jarman, PROTEST! that opened on 15 November 2019. This significant retrospective offers the timely opportunity to explore many interdisciplinary aspects of Jarman’s life and work. Through Jarman’s work, the seminar traces key social, political and cultural shifts of the period 1960 – 1990s. Exploring many of the socially volatile topics that charged Jarman’s activities, his feelings of alienation, associations with the punk movement, and protests by intellectuals against the repressive totalitarian state of Thatcher England and Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act. Through the continuum of ‘Protest’ , topics of exploration include: Painting and Life; Memoir and Writing; the HIV / AIDS crisis; Stigma and Cultural memory; Protest and Personal Freedom and LGBTQ activism.

Speakers included: Sean Kissane (Curator, IMMA); Olivia Laing (author / writer, UK); Elisabeth Lebovici (art historian, critic, France): Dr Robert Mills (Professor, Medieval Studies, UCL, UK): Charlie Porter (writer, Turner Prize Juror, UK); Richard Porter (artist / Pilot Press, UK); Jon Savage (writer, broadcaster, UK); Dr Catherine Silverstone (Reader, Queen Mary University of London); Peter Tatchell (Human rights campaigner, UK), Karim White (Thames & Hudson Publishing, UK) and Tonie Walsh (LGBT rights activist, journalist, Ireland). Invited curators, artists, writers, educators and activists share their views on Jarman’s contemporary relevance and the precarious cycle of politics today.
This seminar took place on 14 November 2019 at IMMA. Return to the dedicated playlist ‘SEMINAR PROTEST - REMEMBERING DEREK JARMAN’, to listen back to other speaker’s responses and presentations.
Image Credits: Derek Jarman. Courtesy Basilisk Communications Ltd

SEMINAR: PROTEST - REMEMBERING DEREK JARMAN (7) / Elisabeth Lebovici

Welcome to the eleventh podcast in our series ‘Life in the Time of Coronavirus’. Having been asked to speculate on the concepts of immunity and immunisation, Peg Rawes, Professor of Architecture and Philosophy at the Bartlett School of Architecture, thinks about the use of graphic technologies to predict, project and ostensibly protect. Looking at Buckminster Fullers problematic dymaxion maps, the artist Tom Corby’s graphs, chronicling his own long term illness, and the philosopher Gillian Howies meditations on living with dying, she situates the pervasive anxiety the virus has unleashed in relation to older and ongoing issues around representation, vulnerability, and mortality.

Cover image: Blood and Bones by Tom Corby. Courtesy of the artist
Music by Smallhaus and the BBC Sound Archive. ​​​
Speaker: Peg Rawes (UCL)
Produced and edited by Albert Brenchat-Aguilar
Communications by Patricia Mascarell Llombart
Executive Producer: Tamar Garb

Life in the Time of Coronavirus. 11# Immunology: Visualizing Uncertainty And Vulnerability

Our latest Short Take is provided by Camilla Schofield, Senior Lecturer in Modern History at UEA. This year, in conjunction with her fellow editors Daniel Geary and Jennifer Sutton, Camilla has produced Global White Nationalism: From Apartheid to Trump, an important anthology of writing covering different historical examples and geographical regions. Camilla talks to us about this substantive contribution to the really urgent discussions about whiteness, and the kind of political and scholarly intervention that it represents.

Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-toward-global-history-white-supremacy

Speaker: Camilla Schofield, Senior Lecturer in Modern History at University of East Anglia
Image: Global White Nationalism: From Apartheid to Trump (Manchester University Press, 2020)
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu

www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts

SPRC Short Takes: Toward a Global History of White Supremacy

Despite severe economic difficulties (having been suffering from tightening US sanctions even before the pandemic wiped out tourist earnings), Cuba’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has proved to be more effective than any other in the region: the country’s death rate from the virus is the lowest in the Americas, apart from some small islands with populations of less than 200,000. This seminar will seek to explain this ‘positive deviance’, by identifying features of the public health system before the crisis, and responses by government, public health authorities, scientists and the population, that made it possible.

Speakers:
Professor Pedro Más Bermejo is a Physician with more than 25 years’ experience in the disciplines of hygiene, epidemiology, microbiology and nutrition. He is, amongst other prominent positions, leader of Cuba's national technical group on COVID-19 and National Director of Epidemiology, Ministry of Public Health.

Dr Emily Morris is a development economist, based at the UCL Institute of the Americas. She has previously worked at the Economist Intelligence Unit, School of Oriental and African Studies, Inter-American Development Bank and London Metropolitan University. She has published, presented and consulted widely on Cuban economic performance and policy, the subject of her doctoral thesis. She is currently engaged in multidisciplinary UK-Cuban research collaboration as coordinator of the ‘UCL-Cuba Research Network’.

Cuba And COVID - 19 Edit Youtube

The IAS is a space dedicated to intellectual freedom where disruptive thinking is not only allowed but encouraged and supported. It is a centre of advanced research, debate and dialogue across any kind of boundary, intellectual or institutional. It’s a forum where difficult, even intractable, social questions can be exposed to the scrutiny of rigorous critical enquiry from a variety of perspectives

This Soundcloud channel showcases content produced by the Institute of Advanced Studies and its research centres.

Note on the logo: the blue and green background is a detail of a banner (300x120cm; oil paint, oil pastel and compressed charcoal on canvas) that artist Lucile Haefflinger produced for and which is on display at the IAS.

Cadence Kinsey - In Formation: Pattern, Code and Being

UCL Institute of Advanced Studies