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Liquid Gold
Melanie Jackson and Esther Leslie, hosted by Lucy A. Sames
25 November 2020, 3-5pm
For this session Melanie Jackson and Esther Leslie will present a performance reading that draws on thematics from their recent collaborative works Deeper in the Pyramid (2018) and The Inextinguishable (2020).
Jackson and Leslie’s collaborative publication The Inextinguishable for the 39th EVA International (Co. Limerick, Ireland) is an ongoing exploration of dairy long associated with the “Golden Vein”, a 19th century descriptor for the agricultural bounty of the Limerick region. Milk is a primal fluid, identified with care – yet its sensational qualities are captured by science in bio-political skeins of big data analysis in Ireland and internationally to make it one of the most technologized fluids on the planet.
The Inextinguishable might be a sign of hope - the will to live, the light that never goes out, the fire that burns on. Brigit, the female Patron Saint of Ireland, whose pantry never emptied, so she might hand out the everlasting milk and butter, also kept a fire alight for 500 years in Kildare. It produced no ashes and it could not be approached by men. What powers lie within elements turned mythical - in fire, and in the products of dairy. The Inextinguishable explores the inexhaustible resonances of milk and butter, seen through the prism of Irish history and the calamities of the present.
Readings
A pdf of Deeper in the Pyramid can be downloaded here and free hard copies of The Inextinguishable will be mailed to participants ahead of the session upon request.
The Liquidity Cohort is a growing group of researchers who work with various notions of liquidity from the body (in the broadest sense, human and otherwise) to material infrastructures. We are interested in “liquidity” as an immersive experience of being-in-the-world and its implications for practice; questions of how to write from states of immersion, how to work from the body immersed in experience. We are also interested in hydrological and technological infrastructures and their impacts on the body and its worlds. The Liquidity Cohort was initiated by Dr. Bridget Crone (Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths) in 2018, and is open to researchers from CHASE institutions. Please get in touch if you’d like to join us. Supported by CHASE Consortium Development Grant.
Melanie Jackson is a UK based artist working with modes of non-fiction storytelling through assemblages of sculpture, writing and moving image. Recent exhibitions include Deeper in the Pyramid, Banner Repeater, London, Grand Union, Birmingham, and Primary, Nottingham (2018). The latter is a multi-faceted project of sculpture, moving image, performance lectures, and a publication, involving an ongoing writing collaboration with writer Esther Leslie. Previous solo exhibitions include The Urpflanze (Parts 1 and 2) with Flat Time House, The Drawing Room, Art Exchange and John Hansard Gallery, and with Matt’s Gallery, Arnolfini and Chapter. Jackson is represented by Matt’s Gallery and is currently a Tutor at the Royal College of Art, London.
Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London. Her books include Deeper in the Pyramid (with Melanie Jackson, Banner Repeater, 2018); Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form (Reaktion, 2016); Derelicts: Thought Worms from the Wreckage (Unkant, 2014); Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (Reaktion, 2005); and Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-Garde (Verso, 2002).
Lucy A. Sames is a Curator and Researcher living and working in the Welsh Valleys and London. She is a final year curatorial practice-based PhD candidate in the Art Department at Northumbria University, Newcastle. She is curator and convener of Wet Rest; a member of the Liquidity Cohort at Goldsmiths, University of London; and a member of the Social Morphology Research Unit in the Anthropology Department and Slade School of Art at University College London (UCL).
Terms and Conditions
By registering below you are requesting a place on this training programme or selected sessions that form part of the programme. A member of the CHASE team or the workshop leader will contact you in due course to confirm that a place has been allocated to you. If you are allocated a place but can no longer attend, please cancel your Eventbrite registration or email training@chase.ac.uk so that your place can be reallocated. CHASE training is free to attend and events are often oversubscribed with a waiting list. Failure to notify us of non-attendance in good time means your place cannot be reallocated and repeated failure may mean that your access to future training is limited.
The training is open to:
CHASE funded and associate students,
Arts and Humanities PhD students at CHASE member institutions,
and students and members of staff at CHASE partner institutions
Arts and Hum PhD students (via the AHRC mailing list)