Friday Salon: Ethics of the Other

This Friday Salon explores ethical questions related to working with notions of the other in art and design research and practice. It is hosted by doctoral researchers from the Royal College of Art.

Drawing from themes emerging from ethics discussion groups held by RCA researchers, and also following the recent Dor Guez exhibition at the ICA, the Friday Salon will explore what is at stake in making work and research in which a notional other is implicated, whether that other is conscribed in terms of politics, geography, history, material, the institution, ecology or indeed the other of art and design research itself.

By drawing on a range of theory on this subject from psychoanalysis, feminism, new materialism, postcolonial and posthuman studies, as well as the writings of philosophers such as Jane Bennett , Jean-Luc Nancy, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Rancière, the discussion will investigate the ethical challenges facing contemporary practice when it comes to consider the other as its subject.

Ethics of the Other precedes the opening of the RCA Research Biennial Why Would I Lie?, which is exploring ethics and aesthetics in contemporary art and design research and practice and runs from 18–25 April with a major conference on 18–19 April.

The form of the Friday Salon will be relatively informal. It will begin with a number of short presentations by the RCA researchers and will be followed by questions from the audience.

Presentations will be given by Manca Bajec, Helena Bonett, Susannah Haslam, Peter Le Couteur, Carol Mancke, Brigid McLeer, Peter Wareing and Mercedes Vincente. Dr Kristen Kreider will chair the salon.

Manca Bajec is an artist and curator whose interdisciplinary work among other topics concerns space and society. Following a BA in Visual Arts and Disciplines of Performance at the Academy of Fine Art in Venice, she continued her studies of Sculpture at the Academy in Ljubljana while working in theaters as a stage designer and performer, before completing an MA in Curating at UAL in 2010.

Helena Bonett is a curator, writer and lecturer undertaking an AHRC-funded collaborative doctorate with Tate and the Royal College of Art in which she will be displaying a chisel from Barbara Hepworth’s preserved studios at the Hepworth Museum, St Ives, at other Tate sites as a means of considering her sculptural legacy. Helena is an Associate of Tate St Ives’ Artists Programme and in 2013 convened a Tate Research seminar focused on the preserved studios at the Hepworth Museum.

Susannah Haslam is a research practitioner in Visual Cultures. She studied Art History and Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths and was Associate Lecturer in the Department for Visual Cultures 2012-14. Susannah co-founded KIOSK in 2010, a research-based practice exploring multiplicities inherent to research in contemporary visual culture and JOURNEY/SCHOOL and AOTCS Press in 2011, a nomadic conversation programme and its publishing arm. She is currently pursuing practice-led doctoral research, based at the Royal College of Art and supported by the AHRC.

Dr. Kristen Kreider is a Reader in Poetry & Poetics and Director of the Practice-based PhD Programme across the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London. In these roles, Kristen works to promote an interdisciplinary, socially engaged approach to poetry and poetics, and to encourage a rigorous dialogue between creative and critical practice. Kristen’s research is situated in the expanded field of contemporary poetry and text-based art where she produces theoretical and critical writing, including a recent monograph entitled Poetics and Place: The Architecture of Sign, Subjects and Site (I.B. Tauris, January 2014), and produces practice-based outputs in collaboration with the architect James O’Leary.

Peter Le Couteur is a research-by-practice student in sculpture at Royal College of Art, working on his proposed PhD project The Little Lying Sign: Mislabelling and the Fictive Museum. Le Couteur’s work ranges between installation, writing and singing, investigating the spaces between narratives, objects and contexts. His debut album Seven New Myths is in pre-release and expected to come out later this year.

Carol Mancke is an artist, architect and educator with more than 30 years professional experience in the UK, US, Australia and Japan. She has worked in architecture practices in London, San Francisco and Tokyo and has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the Nagaoka Institute of Design and Kingston University London. Working at the intersection of art and cities, Carol seeks to create thought-provoking interventions in situations and places of everyday life through individual and collaborative projects. Her practice engages a variety of time frames—ephemeral, temporary and permanent—and ranges in scale from drawing and photography, sculpture and installation through to interior design, architecture and urbanism. Carol is the founding director of the art and architecture practice, Machina Loci, and is currently pursuing a MPhil/PhD in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London.                    

Brigid McLeer is an Irish artist, writer and lecturer based in London. She trained in Fine Art at NCAD, Dublin, University of Ulster, Belfast and Slade School of Art, London. She has published critical and creative writing in journals such as Performance Research, Visible Language, and Circa and lectured in various UK universities including the Royal Academy, Goldsmiths, Dartington College of Art and Coventry School of Art & Design. She is currently studying for a PhD by project in Fine Art (Photography) on art and its ethical relation to community, participation and political futures, at the Royal College of Art, London

Mercedes Vicente is a curator and writer undertaking an AHRC-funded doctorate at the Royal College of Art.  Prior to her current studies, Mercedes worked in New York and New Zealand. She was Curator of Contemporary Art at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and Darcy Lange Curator-at-Large. Mercedes earned masters’ degrees in Film and the Arts at New York University and in Curatorial Studies at Bard College and was Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Mercedes’ extensive writing and editorial credits include books, exhibition catalogues and art magazines including Manifesta Journal, Flash Art, Camera Austria and Reading Room.   

Peter Wareing graduated from the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in Christchurch New Zealand in 1980 (Honors Painting), and received an NZ Arts Council Study Grant to attend The New York Studio School for Painting, Drawing and Sculpture in 1981-82. He has collaborated with other artists in numerous interdisciplinary projects in theatre and the performing arts in New York, and his film/ video work has been screened in festivals and galleries in the US, Europe and New Zealand.