SOUND::GENDER::FEMINISM::ACTIVISM 2016

Full conference details, including the abstracts and bios of each presenter are available in the SGFA 2016 Programme.

Christine Eyene

Christine Eyene is an art historian, critic and curator. She is a Guild Research Fellow in Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, where she collaborates to Making Histories Visible, an interdisciplinary visual arts research project based at UCLan’s Centre for Contemporary Art, led by Professor Lubaina Himid. She is also a doctoral student at Birkbeck, University of London, with Professor Annie E. Coombes, and is writing a thesis on South African photographer George Hallett in relation to African literature.

Eyene’s areas of research and curatorial practice range from contemporary African and Diaspora arts, Black British arts, and gendered art discourses, to non-object-based art practices notably sound art. Other interests include:  urban cultures, music, design and socially-engaged initiatives.

Her recent exhibitions include Resonances: Second Movement (Espace Croix-Baragnon, Toulouse, 2016); Murder Machine (Ormston House, Limerick, 2016); All Of Us Have A Sense Of Rhythm (David Roberts Art Foundation, London, 2015); Embodied Spaces (Framer Framed, Amsterdam, 2015); Residual: Traces of the Black Body (New Art Exchange, Nottingham, 2015); La Parole aux Femmes (Fondation Blachère, Apt, 2014); Reflections on the Self – Five African Women Photographers (Hayward Touring exhibition, Southbank Centre, London and UK, 2011-2013).   

www.eyonart.org

Abstract:
Coming at it from a black perspective: curatorial attempt on the sounds we make
This lecture draws from Christine Eyene’s curatorial practice and its focus on African and Diaspora women artists. It will take as point of departure Where We’re At! Other Voices on Gender (Bozar, Brussels, 2014), an exhibition that broached historical, socio-political and cultural contexts to address issues such as the (mis)representation of non-western bodies in mainstream visual culture, and present counter-narratives by culturally diverse women’s, feminist, and queer aesthetics.

Shifting from the art “object” and the commodification of the body, Eyene will discuss developments in her approach leading to non-object-based art practices, particularly sound as a discursive medium ranging from the personal and intimate, to collective socio-political positioning.

Part of a preliminary research to a women artists and sound exhibition currently developed in the UK, Eyene will explore what could be encapsulated in the term “dialectics of refusal” implying: both the refusal to be silenced matched by diverse sonic modes of expression, and being silent as a form of agency; “speaking” or emitting sound from an identity/gender/ability-based position while refusing to perform assigned identities.

Also included in this lecture will be a reflection on multi-layered forms of marginalisation, notably in terms of access to technology. This will lead to consider diverse sonic traditions, especially non-Western, and examine the significance of sonorities, patterns and textures pre-dating the machine, as well as the interpretative shifts brought about by digital culture and the very process of digitisation.

Vron Ware

Vron Ware, Chair of Sociology & Gender Studies in the dept of Criminology and Sociology, Kingston University. Author of 'Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism & History' (1992/2015); Out of Whiteness' (2002) with Les Back; and Military Migrants: fighting for YOUR Country (2012), my research interests encompass questions of 'race', whiteness, gender, national identity, militarism and historical memory, and peace education. I am increasingly fascinated by our relationship with the living world, particularly birds and other migrating species, and have been trying to factor this into my work on racism and militarism.