Shows
TechnecastViveca Mellegård: Nature - An Apprenticeship in Indigo DyeingIn the first installment of our 'Nature' theme, Isabel catches up with friend of the podcast, PhD researcher and filmmaker Viveca Mellegård. She fills us in on how her PhD journey has been progressing, and shares an immersive soundscape of her practice with us.------------Image: Viveca MellegårdTechnecast music: Jennifer DovetonSoundscape: Viveca MellegårdLink to Episode 1 'Secrets of the Prize Papers' from the podcast On The Record at the National Archives: https://tnaontherecord.libsyn.com/secrets-of-the-prize-papers-trade-loot-and-letters------------This episode was hos...
2025-06-2035 min
TechnecastHelen Williams: Heritage and Memory - Unfinished Business: Representations of MotherhoodContinuing our Heritage and Memory series, Adrianna Chmielewska talks to Helen Williams on her research into representations of motherhood. Helen Williams is a first-year doctoral researcher in creative writing at Brunel University of London. An experienced motherhood journalist, Williams is writing a novel based around her research on the ways relationships between generations of university-educated mothers and daughters are represented in contemporary British fiction. One of the texts she is focusing on is Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other. In this podcast, Williams presents a piece of creative criticism: a monologue in the voice of the National Theatre, a...
2025-05-1630 min
TechnecastTom Hull: Heritage and Memory - Dr James Barry and Critical FabulationIn our first episode on the theme of Heritage and Memory, PhD researcher Tom Hull from the University of Brighton talks to us about his research project. Tom's project uses a combination of archival research, literary criticism and creative writing to deepening our understanding of Dr James Barry. Dr James Barry was many things. He was a pioneering surgeon, performing the first successful caesarean section within the British Empire where the mother and daughter both survived. He was an army doctor in various occupied territories, and was complicit in the racialised violence of the British Empire. And h...
2025-05-0234 min
TechnecastWomen in Music RoundtableIn honour of International Women's Day, this episode brings together PhD researchers from a range of backgrounds to explore the role of gender in musical traditions and genres (from opera to classical to popular music). Join us as we celebrate the voices of women in music research, dive into everything from Kendrick Lamar’s iconic Super Bowl performance to Dolly Parton’s timeless legacy, and share a few of our personal listening gems along the way! You can find these gems in the accompanying Spotify playlist.About the participants:Adrianna Chmielewska is a...
2025-03-0753 min
TechnecastTechnecast Cares: End of Year RoundtableIn our final episode of 2024, the team comes together for a roundtable discussion on the theme of ‘care’. Topics include: how can we practice self-care as researchers, particularly in the current turbulent HE landscape? What does care as methodology look like? And does care for ourselves or each other even matter while we are failing to care for our planet?------------Image: GoodFonMusic: Jennifer Doveton------------This episode was hosted and produced by Isabel Sykes------------Technecast is a podcast series showcasing research from acro...
2024-12-2051 min
TechnecastThe Practice of InterviewingThis episode follows a workshop on ‘The Practice of Interviewing: Perspectives from Across the Arts and Humanities’ hosted by the Technecast team on 20 September 2024. First, you will hear from four Technecast members (Isabel, Felix, Olivia, and Pragya) as they share their own interviewing experiences. This is followed by four practice interviews by Gareth Hughes, Tom Railton, Julia Schauerman, and Emma Haughton. ———————This episode was produced and presented by Eva DieterenTechnecast is a research and practice podcast supported by Techne DTPThe music is composed and generously given by Jennifer DovetonIf you’d like...
2024-12-1348 min
TechnecastFlorence Fitzgerald-Allsopp and Edwin Gilson: Nature - Nonhumans and the artsIn this episode Edwin Gilson and Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp, both researchers exploring works of art involving nonhumans at the University of Surrey, join Felix for a conversation about our relationship with the flora and fauna around us. We discuss different approaches to art based on nonhumans, the social lenses humans look through at nonhumans, and how their relationships have changed over the course of their research. -------------------This episode was produced and presented by Felix ClutsonTechnecast is a research and practice podcast supported by Techne DTPThe music is composed and generously given by Jennifer D...
2024-06-2847 min
TechnecastRosalind Holgate-Smith: Senses - Deep TouchIn our latest instalment of our series on 'Senses', we hear from Rosalind Holgate-Smith. Rosalind is an AHRC-funded doctoral researcher whose work looks at touch, particularly in the field of dance and contact improvisation. In this episode, Rosalind talks to Morag about her conceptualisation of 'Deep Touch', and how this conceptualisation informs and enriches her teaching and dance practice. We hope you enjoy! You can find more of Rosalind's work here: https://rosalindholgate-smith.com/work Photo for episode cover credited to Bernardo Chances. Technecast is a podcast showcasing research from across the arts and humanities. I...
2024-05-2432 min
TechnecastJennifer Doveton: Work and Labour - I work in the kitchensJennifer Doveton - whose lovely music you hear every time you listen to the technecast - is a postgraduate researcher in her third year at Brunel University. Her research is on middle-class subjectivity and moral value in British screen fantasy. At the moment she's looking at the Harry Potter film series and the His Dark Materials television series for markers of class in characterisation and narratives of upward mobility that reproduce neoliberal ideologies of individual aspiration. In this podcast Doveton takes a look at the role of the labour in these portal fictions and how the characters undertaking labour are...
2024-05-0723 min
TechnecastJulia Pond: Work and Labour - Dancing DegrowthIn this latest episode of our Work and Labour series we hear from Julia Pond, a transdisciplinary dance artist, teacher and researcher working with political economy. She works with choreography, improvised movement and text, humour, and, sometimes, bread dough, often siting work in public space. Currently, this takes shape in her performance project and fictional company BRED. Julia is a co-initiator of the podcast DanceOutsideDance, and is supported by TECHNE funding for her practice-based PhD research. Her work has most recently been published in Documenta Journal. ------------Image: Gani Naylor Music: Jennifer Doveton------------References:Fridman, Leora. (2022) Static Place. Santa Barbara: Punctum Books...
2024-03-2233 min
TechnecastUnit 38 (Part 2 of 2): Work and Labour - A people's design serviceDavid McEwen, a co-founder and director of Unit 38, joins Felix to continue their conversation about architecture and community. Unit 38 is an architecture practice working on community projects in east London, in particular Wards Corner in Tottenham. In this part we hear about Unit 38’s involvement with Clapton Community Football Club, as well as public commons work, situated knowledge, and community wealth in Preston.You can find out more about Clapton Community Football Club here: https://www.claptoncfc.co.uk or https://twitter.com/claptoncfcAnd info on Unit 38 is available here: https://www.unit38.org or https://www.instagram.com/stories/un...
2024-03-0828 min
TechnecastUnit 38 (Part 1 of 2): Work and Labour - A people's design serviceDavid McEwen, a co-founder and director of Unit 38, joins Felix for a conversation about architecture and community. Unit 38 is an architecture practice working on community projects in east London, in particular Wards Corner in Tottenham. The discussion explores questions of community resources, privilege and design focused on people not materials.There is a small amount of explicit language.---This episode was produced and presented by Felix ClutsonTechnecast is a research and practice podcast supported by Techne DTPThe music is composed and generously given by Jennifer DovetonIf you’d like to get involved or turn your work into a podcast, please ge...
2024-02-2126 min
TechnecastEmma Mitchell: Senses - Scenting story: unlocking olfactory memories of Georgian LondonIn this latest instalment of our 'Senses' series we hear from Emma Mitchell. Emma is an AHRC-funded Creative Writing doctoral researcher at Brunel University London whose work uses archival research and experimental literary forms and practices to reclaim the voices of marginalised women from History. Her project focusses on Georgian sex workers and works with contemporary documents, objects and ephemera to generate narratives that place women’s voices front and centre. An ex-school teacher and brand strategist, she has performed worldwide as a comedian, circus and burlesque artist, and is best known for her critically-acclaimed one-woman show, The Naked Stand Up...
2024-02-0248 min
TechnecastWinter Break Episode - Meet the TeamIt's the final Technecast of the year! We've had some lovely new members join the Technecast team this year, so we thought we'd take this opportunity to do some introductions. In this casual epsiode, each member of the team answers some questions about themselves and their research. We also discuss our favourite epsiodes from the past year, so it's a bit of Technecast Wrapped, too. We hope you enjoy!Correction: In this epsiode we mistakenly describe Vietnamese-American author Ocean Vuong as Korean. We apologise for this mistake. If you are interested in sharing your research with us in the new...
2023-12-1522 min
TechnecastIsabel Sykes: Work & Labour - From Benefits Broods to Tradwives: Media Narratives of Domestic LabourIn the first episode of our 'Work, Labour and Protest' series, Isabel introduces us to her project which explores media representations and lived experiences of working-class women’s unpaid domestic labour in the UK.Isabel is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research focuses on the intersections of class, gender, and labour under neoliberal capitalism. She is currently in the second year of her PhD at Brunel University London. If you would like to get involved with the study and you meet the recruitment criteria stated in the episode, please email Isabel.sykes@brunel.ac.uk.--------------References and quote credits here: https://do...
2023-11-1040 min
TechnecastFelix Clutson: Narratives of Nation - Football in the Globalised AgeIn our last episode on the theme 'narratives of nation', our very own Felix Clutson shares his research into football in the age of globalisation. Felix discusses the ways in which football transcends borders (for better or worse), the modern phenomenon of sportswashing, and the plight of his beloved Reading FC. After his presentation he joins Edwin for a conversation based around the question: is football eating itself?Want to turn your research into a podcast? We'd love to hear from you at technecaster@gmail.com.
2023-10-1235 min
TechnecastBeth Williamson: Narratives of Nation - The Problem of Orthography at the Royal Geographical SocietyBeth Williamson is a PhD student at Royal Holloway, University of London working collaboratively with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). Her research explores how the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) tackled the problem of ‘orthography’ when recording and mapping place names in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing how geography and linguistics, and politics and diplomacy, shaped the way the world was brought to ‘order’. In this episode of our 'Narratives of Nation' series, Beth explores the circumstances leading up to the appointment of the Orthography Committee at the RGS and the actions the committee took to achieve a uniform...
2023-09-1525 min
TechnecastGareth Hughes: Narratives of Nation - The Power of Poetic SpacesGareth Hughes is in the second year of his PhD in Comparative Literature and Culture at Royal Holloway. His thesis explores spatial transformations in contemporary French and multilingual poetry.In this episode of the ‘Narratives of Nation’ series, Gareth talks about the multilingual poems of Michèle Métail, the power of poetry to loosen the bind between nationality and language, and how entering into poetic spaces can help us to reimagine the world.--------------References:Gratton, Peter and Morin, Marie-Eve (eds.), Jean-Luc Nancy and Plural Thinking : Expositions of World, Ontology, Politics, and Sense (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012).Li, Xiaofan Amy, ‘A Post-Ori...
2023-08-2543 min
TechnecastRosie Knowles: Narratives of Nation - In Search of Therapeutic LandscapesIn the latest instalment of our ‘Narratives of Nation’ series, Rosie Knowles, a PhD researcher at Royal Holloway, tells Isabel about her research into the health geography concept of therapeutic landscapes. In this episode, Rosie shares how her family connections with the steelworks town of Port Talbot inspired her to locate her research here, where she explores therapeutic interactions and connections between this coastal, industrial landscape and its inhabitants.A multitextured landscape in itself, Rosie’s project features creative practices from storytelling to print-making, as well as ethnographic research methods such as walking interviews with members of a local men’s mental...
2023-08-1138 min
TechnecastLili Toitot: Narratives of Nation - Alsace and IdentityIn the first episode of our new theme, 'Narratives of Nation', Lili Toitot, PhD researcher at Brunel, tells Edwin about her work on the mixed national identity of the French region of Alsace. An Alsatian herself, Lili examines the documentation of the region's history through the lens of gender and war memorials. The question that emerges from this episode is: what can we learn from Alsace about nationhood and national identity?Image credit: Lili Toitot. War memorial, Strasbourg, Alsace.---------------Technecast is a podcast series showcasing research from across the arts and humanities. It is produced by Felix Clutson, Edwin Gilson...
2023-07-2839 min
TechnecastA Congress Cancelled and the Humanities in CalamityWe interrupt our scheduled programming to bring you this special episode in light of recent events. Techne's summer congress this year was cancelled due to the on-going industrial action taking place at the University of Brighton. In this episode, the Technecast team explore why industrial action is taking place at Brighton, and the position of the arts and humanities more broadly in UK higher education. A huge thank you to Luke Beesley, a Brighton PGR who gave us a really informative interview for this episode.https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/brightonucusolidarityIf you would like to share your research with the...
2023-07-1433 min
TechnecastAl Meggs: Life Writing - 5, 6, 7, Academia! (Jazz hands included)Finishing up our theme of life writing, Olivia chats to Al Meggs about his work on reclaiming cabaret.Al trained in dance and went on to a long career through the 1980s and 1990s as performer in cabaret, theatre, T.V. and film, before taking on various guises ‘behind the scenes’. Roles that ranged from stage crew to stage manager to production manager and dresser to wardrobe assistant to costume supervisor.Now, a second year creative writing doctoral student at the University of Brighton. Al's creative practice thesis, 'Reclaiming cabaret. A queer haunted autoethnography of real, researched and imagined stories of c...
2023-06-231h 03
TechnecastGemma Turner: Life Writing - Writing the Lives of Early Modern 'Carers'Returning to our theme of life writing, Olivia chats to Gemma Turner about her research on early modern carers. Gemma discusses how the early modern gentlewoman Elizabeth Isham reconceptualised her difficult spiritual relationship with caring after writing her autobiographical Booke of Remembrance.Gemma works for the University of Southampton within Student Disability and Inclusion. She recently completed her MRes project entitled 'The Carer's View: A New Perspective on Chronic Illness and Disability within the Early Modern Family' at the University of York. The project examined the experiences of two women, Elizabeth Isham and Mary Rich. Her research has mainly focused...
2023-06-0947 min
TechnecastSamuel Hertz: Senses - The Sound of Environmental ChangeContinuing our theme of senses, researcher and sound artist Samuel Hertz shares his work on the sound(s) of climate and environmental change. More specifically, Samuel examines the ways in which acoustic sound-capturing methods alter human perspectives on space and time. After his presentation, Samuel joins Edwin for a discussion about all things sound, exhibiting his work in the International Space Station and the Pacific Ocean, and his recent performance art piece in Dortmund, Germany, which features a doom metal rendition.You can learn more about Samuel's research and practice here: https://www.samhertzsound.com/***************************Episode transcript: https://drive.google...
2023-05-2636 min
TechnecastViveca Mellegård: Senses - The Embodied Practice of Indigo DyeingIn our latest installment of our 'Senses' series, Isabel chats to Viveca Mellegård about her fascinating research into the practice of indigo dyeing in West Bengal.Viveca is a researcher and filmmaker and started her career making science and arts programmes at the BBC. She integrates film and photography as research methods with a particular interest in making the embodied aspects of craftsmanship visible.She’s doing a collaborative PhD with Royal Holloway and the Economic Botany Department at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Her research links Kew’s colonial era collections of Indigofera tinctoria from India to contemporary indigo produ...
2023-05-1235 min
TechnecastRachel Holmes: Senses - The Language of BirdsIn this episode, Morag chats to Rachel Holmes about her research to kick off our theme on senses. Rachel Holmes is a practicing artist and writer currently completing her doctorate project The Language of Birds at Kingston School of Art, supervised by Professor Scott Wilson. Influenced by the work of Georges Bataille, Silvia Federici, Eduardo Kohn and Dale Pendell, The Language of Birds is interested in developing a theory of luck or chance, through which the intelligence of the Other (as nature) expresses itself; historically through ritual practice. In this podcast she sets the context for her research by describing...
2023-04-1432 min
TechnecastKaren Hanrahan: A Change of Habit - Life WritingWelcome to our first episode in our new series on Life Writing. In this epsiode, Morag chats to Karen about her fascinating research.Karen’s doctoral research explores the lives of former Irish nuns, one of whom is her mother. Her work is located at the interface between a number of disciplines (history, sociology, narrative psychology and Irish Studies) and draws on narrative and life history methodologies to consider these life stories in context. These former nuns entered a religious congregation in 1950s Ireland and Karen’s study considers how they came to re-imagine an alternative self and how they navi...
2023-03-1032 min
TechnecastArchives: The sounds of botanical desire - Anushka TayDuring her artist-residency at the Archive of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, Anushka Tay composed a series of music inspired by 19th century plant collection in China. She created four multi-layered, textured pieces which range from an instrumental piano solo evoking Orientalism, to a spoken-word poem collaged with field recordings that she took around Kew Gardens during the summer.In this episode of Technecast, Anushka discusses the way that she navigated her instinctive visceral responses to a colonial-era historical archive, as an artist with East Asian heritage. She became sharply aware of the voices of people who had contributed...
2023-02-1737 min
TechnecastRudy Loewe: Archives - Black Power in the CaribbeanContinuing our theme of archives, Rudy Loewe (researcher and artist at University of the Arts London) shares their research on the Black Power movement in the English-speaking Caribbean, and the ways in which the British government suppressed it. Rudy also discusses their experience digging into recently declassified Foreign and Commonwealth Office records at the National Archives, and translating these records into art. Rudy is displaying their art at several upcoming exhibitions:Unattributable Briefs: Act Onehttps://www.staffordshirest.com/rudyloewe New Contemporarieshttps://www.newcontemporaries.org.uk/Precarioushttps://www.artexchange.org.uk/exhibition/precarious/#:~:text=This%20exhibition%20creates%20a%20platform,how%20to%20...
2023-01-2639 min
TechnecastCongress Special: Writing for a PodcastIn this special podcast for the Techne January Congress 2023 - which is based around the craft of writing - the Technecast team share some advice and experiences on writing for a podcast. In addition to input from Felix, Morag, Julien, Olivia and Edwin, we also hear from former contributor Mary Dawson, who gives her tips on scripting and recording an episode of Technecast. Towards the end of the episode the team also discuss music, and specifically the types of music that enhance academic writing. Listened to this, and interested in making your own Technecast episode? Get in touch, we'd love...
2023-01-1329 min
TechnecastEimhin Daly: Archives — Place & PerformanceThis is the second episode in our series on Archives. Artist-researcher Eimhin Daly discuss the entangled sites of their research to consider what constitutes an archival relation. Seeing place itself as an archive, they are concerned with practices of relation, specifically with unlearning relations to place and pasts that are produced by imperialism and nationalism in Ireland. ----Bio: Eimhin Daly is an artist-researcher working with performance and writing. They are currently undertaking a PhD in the School of Arts at the University of Roehampton.Their research project emerged from an engagement with site-specific feminist artworks. In following artists Alanna O’Ke...
2022-12-0532 min
TechnecastArchives: Markéta’s NotesThe contributor for this episode is Holly Antrum.This episode was recorded during the exhibition ‘Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen: Intersections in Theory, Film and Art’, at Camera Austria in Graz (11 June - 14 August 2022). Final-year techne researcher Holly Antrum staged her paper-based artist multiple from within the show, Markéta’s Notes, as a podcast for technecast. Holly Antrum’s project involves filmmaking as an expanded practice. Markéta Hašková is a matrilineal counterpart developed by Holly Antrum to explore the navigation of archives through foregrounding interpersonal collection searches with subjectivity and tactility. She has used the medium of audio record...
2022-11-2824 min
TechnecastCultivate 2022: There Are More Spaces Still To ComeThis special episode of Technecast was made for the Techne-funded 'Cultivate' conference, hosted at Kew Gardens, London, on November 10. The episode, 'There Are More Spaces Still to Come', is a 'Cultivate' special feature produced by Techne student Judah Attille, one of the conference organisers. In conversation with Judah, multidisciplinary artist Shenece Oretha speaks about sonic interventions and knowledge production in her installation, In Counter Harmony, staged in the Tin Tabernacle Kilburn and created for Brent Biennial 2022, In the House of my Love.Cultivate aims to reflect on the many areas we strive to cultivate – as Techne researchers, as practitioners, as co...
2022-11-1013 min
TechnecastGenre: Laughing with the BogeymanIn our final instalment of our theme looking at genre, Sarah Richardson joins us on the Technecast to talk about inclusive satire. By examining reactive characterisations of the archetypal fantasy ‘monster’ in satirical fiction, this project aims to make the argument that these textual strategies demonstrate a broader trend of empathetic storytelling in satire, presenting a genre more optimistic of both the human and inhuman. More specifically, the main focus of this research is on characterisation strategies which generate an ‘inclusive humour’ as opposed to presenting objects of ridicule and mockery. To keep reader engagement at the centre of discussion, the term...
2022-10-2434 min
TechnecastGenre: climate fiction, speculative fiction and blurring boundaries (part 2)In the second episode of our focus on climate fiction and speculative fiction (part of our 'genre' theme), University of Surrey researchers Frances Hallam and Edwin Gilson participate in a roundtable discussion led by Technecast's Felix Clutson.Frances Hallam (they/them) is an AHRC-funded PhD researcher at the University of Surrey. Their doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Aquafuturism’, explores ocean and sea creature imaginaries in 21st century speculative fiction that figure decolonial and eco-queer storytelling in the Atlantic.Edwin Gilson is a third-year PhD student at the University of Surrey, and his research relates to the Anthropocene through the lens of contemporary Cali...
2022-10-1732 min
The IntellectualGenre: climate fiction, speculative fiction and blurring boundaries Podcast: TechnecastEpisode: Genre: climate fiction, speculative fiction and blurring boundariesPub date: 2022-10-03Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationA two-parter this week. In the first part, Edwin Gilson introduces the literary label of climate fiction and investigates its usefulness, as well as the blurring of realism and science fiction, through the prism of a number of literary works set in California. Following on, Frances Hallam asks "What is cli-fi without sci-fi?". Their presentation gives us a glimpse at the interconnected histories and contemporary co...
2022-10-1223 min
TechnecastGenre: climate fiction, speculative fiction and blurring boundariesA two-parter this week. In the first part, Edwin Gilson introduces the literary label of climate fiction and investigates its usefulness, as well as the blurring of realism and science fiction, through the prism of a number of literary works set in California. Following on, Frances Hallam asks "What is cli-fi without sci-fi?". Their presentation gives us a glimpse at the interconnected histories and contemporary contentions across the scope of climate fiction and science fiction, and asks if we can meaningfully separate the two."Edwin Gilson is a third-year PhD student at the University of Surrey, and his research relates...
2022-10-0323 min
TechnecastGenre: Fantasy and the middle classJennifer Doveton is a postgraduate researcher in her second year at Brunel University. Her research is on middle-class subjectivity and moral value in British screen fantasy. At the moment she's looking at the Harry Potter film series and the His Dark Materials television series for markers of class in characterisation and narratives of upward mobility that reproduce neoliberal ideologies of individual aspiration. In this podcast Doveton takes a look at the role of the home in these portal fictions and how these spaces and places contribute to the interiority, class, individualism and ultimately the moral standing of their main characters...
2022-09-1855 min
TechnecastBeyond Human: Liz K. Miller & Jon MasonThis is the second episode celebrating Beyond Human Symposium, which was organised by Rachel Holmes, Rachel Hopkin, Liz K. Miller, Jon Mason and Simon Aeppli. Beyond Human was a techne-funded symposium held at Royal Holloway, University of London on the 26th and 27th May 2022, with keynote speakers the writer and researcher, Gyrus, and the filmmaker and lecturer, Roz Mortimer.This episode features a conversation between Liz and Jon about the themes that the symposium engaged in, around landscape, the paranormal, and connecting with non-human or beyond human forms.More information about Beyond Human:www.facebook.com/BeyondHuman.Symposiumlizkmiller.wixsite.com...
2022-08-2213 min
TechnecastPlanning a Successful Symposium: Rachel Holmes & Rachel HopkinThis month we’re excited to celebrate the Beyond Human symposium, organised by Rachel Holmes, Rachel Hopkin, Liz K. Miller, Jon Mason and Simon Aeppli. Beyond Human was a techne-funded symposium held at Royal Holloway, University of London on the 26th and 27th May 2022.Leading us through the process of creating, organising and facilitating this symposium, Rachel Holmes and Rachel Hopkin reflect on how this project came together and offer their practical tips for organising events within academia. More information about Beyond Human: https://www.facebook.com/BeyondHuman.Symposiumhttps://lizkmiller.wixsite.com/beyond-human*Rachel Holmes is a Chinese/Irish artist, wr...
2022-08-0819 min
TechnecastImaginative Confrontations with ShakespeareWelcome back to the technecast! Today’s episode features a conversation between Beth Palmer, Robert Shaughnessy and Alicia Barnes reflecting on a series of seminars and workshops called ‘Imaginative Confrontations with Shakespeare: Truth, Reconciliation, Justice’. The series tackles questions such as how do we forgive the unforgivable, and who gets to say whether we should or not? They take one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays”, ‘Measure for Measure’ to think through these issues and how they intersect with our contemporary moment, exploring the literary and cultural canon in order to address the injustices that it has excused or obscured. In addition to Beth...
2022-07-1138 min
TechnecastJames Chantry: Queering the FensThis second of two episodes produced by Outside/rs 2022, themed around Vision, Perception and Outside/rs looks gets stuck in the watery fenlands of the East Midlands, travels through time and speculates on queer futures.Can art, and particular use of media, be a speculative mode of engaging with utopian models of queer reproduction and community? In supernatural literature and folklore there are clear themes of coded queer relationships, identity and the manifestation of spectral beings. In Lincolnshire Fenland folklore, the Tiddy Mun, for example reclaim(ed) the land and waterways for displaced people, and can be interpreted as queer...
2022-06-2028 min
TechnecastSeeing Things Queerly: Moving Queerness from the Outside to the Inside of the Science MuseumIn the first of two guest episodes, curated by the Outside/rs 2022 conference, we’re exploring the unseen, emotional and sometimes smelly aspects of museum collection work. In recent years, an increasing number of institutions in the heritage sector have begun to recognise their significant role in including queer history and in battling the LGBTQ+ community’s invisibility. Historically, queer perspectives have been excluded from museum collecting and object interpretation. Acquired objects that are not explicitly connected to LGBTQ+ life have generally been read as ‘straight’, disregarding any queer significance they might hold. A single object, however, has the potential to tell...
2022-06-1336 min
TechnecastChristina Heflin: The Authenticities of the Ceremonial Hat for Eating BouillabaisseToday we hear from Christina Heflin for the final episode on surrealism.Eileen Agar’s wearable sculpture, The Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse , has a peculiar story that has never been acknowledged by scholars. In each of its images – from either archives, catalogs, publications or film footage – the hat appears to be a different object. Did Agar make an entire series of these hats like the myriad series of objects she created over the years? It would appear so, but since neither the artists nor prior scholarship address this issue, it is hard to determine the truth. This paper aims to est...
2022-05-0344 min
TechnecastAlchemy, Surrealism and ShakespeareWe start a new theme this episode with Shakespeare, presented by Dr Kate O'Leary. Surrealism and Shakespeare are rarely connected in contemporary discourse, despite André Breton’ s admiring references to the Bard and interest in his plays shown by Leonora Carrington and others. This is a pity, as they are more closely linked than is often suspected. Whether he likes it or not, Shakespeare is the god-father of Romanticism and Gothic, both of which were acknowledged by the Surrealists as ancestral to their own movement. Both Shakespeare and Surrealism lend themselves readily (and in the case of Surrealism, knowingly) to ric...
2022-04-0453 min
TechnecastDaniela Georgieva: Leonora Carrington & Her Surrealist AnimalsWe're delighted to be starting our March theme of Surrealism off with a talk by Daniela Georgieva on the writer and artist Leonora Carrington.A sophisticated game of table tennis in which Hummingbirds take the role of the ball, preparing a meal with vegetables that throw themselves into a cauldron filled with boiling water, a dinner table rich with wine, fruit, and caterpillars transforming into butterflies, a half-human, half-beast girl flying towards the moon with feathers shining like snow in the sun. These are a few of the fantastical scenes seen in the art and writing of Leonora Carrington. Outlandish...
2022-03-0733 min
TechnecastJulien Clin: Identity & Home“Where is home for you?” The question can be laden with hidden meanings and, often, with assumptions about identity. In this episode, writer and doctoral researcher Julien Clin reflects on place as a source of community. Dismantling both identity and the nation as imagined, probing the concepts’ discourse-theoretical limitations, giving up identity in favour of embraced alterity, Julien seeks to move from backward-looking nostalgia to Being in place. From a topological point of view fed by sense-affect, he attempts to reimagine the concept of roots as a rhizomatic engagement that, ultimately, makes and constantly remakes the Home.Julien Clin is workin...
2022-02-2335 min
TechnecastAbbie Cairns: Exploring the identity of an artist-teacherThis month on the Technecast, we're exploring identities, and in this episode we're joined by Abbie Cairns. Abbie introduces her research, 'Interrogating Artist Teacher Identity (Trans)Formation in Adult Community Learning (ACL)'. An educational sector often delivered by local authority, for learners aged 19+ (Department for Education, 2019). Central to the work is the belief that ACL has different qualities to other educational sectors and that these qualities impact the identity of the artist-teacher. These qualities include the low status and pay (Briggs, 2007; Augar, 2019) in comparison to Higher Education, lack of access to subject specific continued professional development (Allison, 2013) and communities...
2022-02-0734 min
TechnecastCongress Special Part 2: Re-enchantment, Magic, Attention & Escaping TimeWe follow on from last week's episode, in which Rosalind Holgate-Smith and Jon Mason explored re-enchantment through their dance and storytelling practices respectively.This episode brings you a recording of the conversation Rosalind and Jon had at the Congress on 10 January 2022. Answering questions from the Technecast's Felix Clutson and the audience, they talked about the role of magic, about attention, about reconnecting with the emotional impressions of place, and about escaping time.==========CONTRIBUTORSRosalind Holgate-Smith is a Dancer, Artist and Educator. She creates performances, installations and visual artwork that investigates intimate experiences between people, place and the environment. She holds a...
2022-01-1756 min
TechnecastCongress Special Part 1: Re-enchantment, Dance & Folklore with Jon Mason & Rosalind Holgate SmithAs part of the Techne January Congress hosted by Kingston University, we are delighted to share this special episode of the Technecast! Centred around the congress’s theme of Re-Enchantment, two techne researchers join us to share their work while we reflect on the power and potential of imagination, fantasy, touch, movement and connections to enact real-world magic and change. Jon Mason’s piece engages with the magic of storytelling and folklore, and how to balance that with doing historical research accurately and critically; and Rosalind Holgate-Smith shares three poems that provide insight into her practice of dancing with trees, and...
2022-01-1035 min
TechnecastJoe Jukes: Look & Look Again - Surprise, Affect & Queer RuralityIn this, our second episode on Affect, queer theorist and cultural geographer Joe Jukes asks, "What is ‘rural’?" Joe notes how the British countryside can be thought of, and has been produced, in multiple different ways and in many different forms. They suggest that ‘rural’ is an affect, or feeling, that is aligned with a queer mode inquiry. This can be a surprising ‘use’ of rural, especially as the countryside is often assumed to be unaccommodating to queer or LGBT+ lives. Staying with both affect and queer theory, Joe explores how the feeling of ‘surprise’ can perform queer desire, and un-do rural spac...
2021-12-2028 min
TechnecastMary Dawson: Affect & Ageing in Barbara Pym’s ‘Quartet in Autumn’Welcome back to the Technecast! Our theme for this month is ‘Affect’, thinking about feelings, forces, and in-between states. Since the affective turn in the early 1990s, the humanities and social sciences have witnessed a profound and renewed interest in how feelings function, how they move, stick to, and shape bodies (both human and non-human) and worlds. We are delighted to welcome Mary Dawson to the Technecast for our first episode on affect. This episode explores the idea of aging as a form of affective potential through a reading of Barbara Pym’s ‘Quartet in Autumn’ (1977). In contemporary society getting old is see...
2021-12-0634 min
TechnecastInvitations IV: Therese Henningsen with Juliette JofféTechnecast is hosting the Invitations Series: four conversations by Judah Attille, Therese Henningsen, Mark Aerial Waller and Astrid Korporaal. Each episode is based on a research encounter with a creative practitioner connected to the field of sound & moving image. Together, the episodes question the relationships between audience, screen, maker & subject.This final episode features Therese Henningsen and Juliette Joffé, reflecting on the ongoing curatorial project Strangers Within and the notion of 'documentary as encounter' in their own films Next Year We Will Leave (2021) and Slow Delay (2018).The two films will be publicly shown for the Strangers Within anthology launch and f...
2021-11-1926 min
TechnecastInvitations III: Judah Attille with Taylor Le MelleThroughout November, Technecast is hosting the Invitations Series, which is made up of four conversations by Judah Attille, Therese Henningsen, Mark Aerial Waller and Astrid Korporaal. Each episode is based on a research encounter with a creative practitioner connected to the field of sound and moving image. Together, the episodes question the relationships between audience, screen, maker and subject.This week features a conversation between writer and curator Taylor Le Melle and independent filmmaker, Judah Attille. During the UK COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, the producers reflect on milestones in their ongoing dialogue on art practice, education, and language."On 14th December 2020...
2021-11-1231 min
TechnecastInvitations II - Mark Aerial Waller with Donald KunzeThroughout November, Technecast is hosting the Invitations Series, which is made up of four conversations by Judah Attille, Therese Henningsen, Mark Aerial Waller and Astrid Korporaal.Each episode is based on a research encounter with a creative practitioner connected to the field of sound and moving image.This week, Mark Aerial Waller is in conversation with Donald Kunze, talking about Kunze's thought project ‘Boundary Language’, which considers relationships between interiority and exteriority. Kunze brings together concepts from the 17th century philosopher Giambattista Vico into association with Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek and George Spencer Brown, as a basis for his ongoin...
2021-11-0535 min
TechnecastInvitations I — Astrid Korporaal & Sophie HopeIn November, the Technecast is hosting the Invitations Series, a series of four conversations by Techne PhD students Judah Attille, Therese Henningsen, Mark Aerial Waller and Astrid Korporaal. Each episode is based on a research encounter with a creative practitioner connected to the field of sound and moving image. Together, the episodes question the relationships between audience, screen, maker and subject. These exchanges invite you to creatively unsettle conventions around objectivity, ethics and participation at a live online social event (Date TBC), hosted by a group of researchers and practitioners involved with moving image.In this first episode, Astrid Korporaal...
2021-11-0127 min
TechnecastLizzy Buckle: Practice Makes Perfect? How to Be a Musician in C18Shortly before his arrival in London in 1704, composer and conductor Johann Sigismund Cousser recorded some important advice in his notebook. Under the heading ‘What a virtuoso should observe upon arriving in London’, Cousser wrote down thirty-three tips given to him by fellow German and musician Jakob Greber. While some instructions are clearly aimed specifically at visiting virtuosi like Cousser, Greber’s advice alludes to many of the key practical concerns experienced by a whole range of London’s musicians, whether celebrated Italian castrati or inexperienced English instrumentalists.With the help of Cousser’s notebook, this podcast seeks to challenge romantic stereotype...
2021-09-2029 min
TechnecastVictoria Burgher: A Material Way Through the MireThis is the first episode in a series on Practice. Artist Victoria Burgher explores how practice can engage with political issues such as colonialism, imperial legacy and racism. Victoria uses various materials –- for example sugar, bagass, rubber, which are all linked to colonial crimes -- to challenge symbolic values. Her current project, funded by Techne, focuses on porcelain's associations with whiteness and how subverting porcelain's material properties like 'purity', as well as its more traditional uses for fragile, nimble pieces displayed in vitrines can critique notions of white supremacy and structural racism.In short, this episode is about Victoria's at...
2021-09-0628 min
TechnecastRuth Hansford: The Musician at the Cocktail PartyMost of us have heard about Beethoven or Evelyn Glennie's deafness. But all musicians' hearing, just like everyone else's, deteriorates over time, with age and especially because of noise. So how do you keep performing as a musician when your hearing deteriorates? What techniques do musicians develop to cope with it? And what do cocktail parties have to do with it?CONTRIBUTOR BIORuth Hansford is getting closer to finishing her PhD in the Music and Media Department at Surrey. She has a background in languages and literature and a long-standing interest in listening and storytelling. Her PhD journey, which started...
2021-08-2720 min
TechnecastCian O'Farrell: The Materiality of Digital MusicWelcome back to the Technecast! We’re kicking off August with our new theme of music and we are delighted to welcome Cian O’Farrell onto the podcast. This episode looks at the ecological materials that digital music technologies consist of. Often, digital music is thought of as immaterial and completely divorced from the ecology of the planet. Yet, as Cian explores, the materiality of digital technology is very much an ecological one. This episode looks at how music can activate contingency and connections with the world beyond the Anthropocene.Listen to Cian’s compositions, ‘From the Core to the Mine’ an...
2021-08-0928 min
TechnecastDiann Bauer & Suhail Malik: On Speculative TimeContinuing our theme of ‘futures’, we are delighted to share a conversation between artist and writer Diann Bauer with writer and theoretician Suhail Malik about time. The focus of Diann’s research is time outside of human experience and how it impacts how we live in relation to the anthropocene. With this in mind the conversation begins with an quote from a 2016 article by Malik and Armen Avanessian about the idea of ‘The Speculative Time Complex’ where Suhail says:'The main reason for the speculative reorganisation of time is the complexity and scale of social organisation today. Systems, infrastructures and networks a...
2021-07-2734 min
TechnecastCongress Special: Mindfulness, Meditation & Research with Allan Kilner-Johnson*Re-released to include the live panel discussion from the Techne Congress*---This special episode is part of a two-part series we are releasing as part of techne's annual congress, which is this year hosted by Loughborough University around the theme of 'Back to the Future'. We invite you to step away from your screens at the congress for a reflection on how mindfulness, research and creativity work in tandem, and how we can learn from the past to move forward and shape the future. We are delighted to welcome Dr Allan Kilner-Johnson to the podcast who shares his important work...
2021-07-071h 07
TechnecastCongress Special: Utopia(s) & the Commons – Looking back to move forward?*Re-released to include the live panel discussion from the Techne Congress*---This is the first of two special episodes of the Technecast in conjunction with the Techne Congress, held this summer at Loughborough University. The Congress theme was "Back to the Future" and how looking back can help us move forward. In this episode, we discuss utopia – or utopias – and the commons, and how these notions fit into the contemporary, post-postmodern moment. The first part of the podcast comprises a chat between Robin van den Akker and Tamara de Groot, who historicise utopia in society, education and the arts. They also...
2021-07-061h 17
TechnecastElla Muir: Clothing Queens in England and France, 1515-1547Continuing our theme of materials, in this episode we welcome Ella Muir (@ellabrookmuir) to the technecast! She shares her research on the study of history through clothing as a form of material culture, the commonality of clothing as a form of communication and how, in the face of historic sumptuary laws and modern-day restrictions, clothing was and remains the single most powerful way in which we materially express ourselves to the world. Clothing in the early modern period was inherently bound up in ideas around status: access to the most sumptuous of materials and richest of hues was controlled by...
2021-06-2835 min
TechnecastDressing the Phygital Self – Rose Coffey on AR Filters and Instagram FaceIn this episode, Rose Coffey discusses how AR filters and edited selfies posted by Generation Z onto Instagram can be seen as forms of dress of the phygital self. Whilst considering self-representation across our evolving social space, the term phygital, is here understood as phenomena existing beyond conventional notions of time and space, through the merging of societal realms. Ultimately, this form of self-representation is being facilitated by the smartphone as a technological extension of the human body, where the self is performed through repeated gestures and aesthetic practices. Finally, by offering critical insights into self-representation and broadening the understanding...
2021-06-1424 min
TechnecastRachel Hopkin: Making Friends Through Narrative FramingContinuing our theme of technology, we welcome Rachel Hopkin (@Rakishi) to the technecast! Placed within the context of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, Rachel's podcast essay examines the human instinct to anthropomorphise the technology in our lives, and through a close analysis of Human Robot Interaction in the film Silent Running (Trumbull, 1972), she explores how the narrative framing of Robots and AI on screen not only reflect and encourage this instinct, but also foster a cyclical conversation between Science Fiction, science reality and the society which produces and absorbs them both. Rachel Hopkin is a first year, full-time, TECHNĒ funded PhD...
2021-06-0244 min
TechnecastCapitalism and the Smart City: Kim Clarke's 'The Walkers'The smart city is an urban environment that uses technology to collect data and then uses those data to manage, monitor and ‘improve’ its systems and infrastructure. This, supposedly, makes life easier for its citizens and radically transforms the city. There are, however, significant social, political and cultural implications.Our guest in this episode — the first of two on the theme of Technology — is creative writer Kim Clarke, whose research argues that, far from being anything inherently positive, such data-driven technologies work to ingrain capitalist ideology at an often-unconscious level. The term ‘surveillance capitalism’ comes to mind.Kim also reads an extract f...
2021-05-1816 min
TechnecastRowan Evans: Translating Bird CallsContinuing the Technecast’s miniseries on Nature, we hear from the poet, composer, sound artist and techne PhD researcher Rowan Evans. He introduces a recording of a poetic performance that recounts an instructional sequence about translating bird calls through Old English, which was recording running through Leigh Woods in Bristol. We then spoke to Rowan about the methodology of absurdity, magic and play; his doctoral research on contemporary poetic encounters with early medieval languages; and about the epistemological limits of language to contain non-human nature. We hope you enjoy!Rowan Evans is a poet, composer and sound artist. His most re...
2021-05-0428 min
TechnecastSummer Meadow Phillips: SpeciesismI am Summer Phillips and my work is a symbiosis of art and science, utilising a multi-disciplinary approach to ask key environmental questions arising from human perceptions and subsequent behaviours. My current writing is a series of short, interlinked science fiction stories based on perceptions and creations of world: exploring the topics of speciesism, altered ecologies and parallel universe theory. I am interested in how our perception of animals, a branch we also reside upon, affects how our world could be re-built, to either thrive or decay.Story collection in progress: “Millimetre” – Interlinked speculative fiction tales based on perceptions & creations of wor...
2021-04-1522 min
TechnecastSophie Declerck: On Touching And When Less Is Not MoreThis Technē Cast episode addresses the theme of ‘touch’ and the different ways of thinking the tactile sense is subjected to in Western culture. Whilst touch is central to our aesthetic experiences of food, sex, music, art and design, it is also shrouded in taboo and loaded with negative associations. This episode touches on all these debates – the perceived neglect of touch, touch hunger, and the impact of sensory marketing, haptic technologies, and COVID-19 on our tactile encounters – and expresses hope for a rehabilitation of the sense of touch and our feelings of connection with the material world.Sophie Declerck is a AHRC...
2021-04-0631 min
TechnecastSylvia Solakidi: The Pulse of Love and GriefFrom sensory experience to emotions, from the crossing over of tactility and aurality to the crossing over of love and grief.This itinerary is explored through lonely train journeys that encounter Susan Sontag’s 'In America', Pablo Picasso’s 'Science and Charity'; Connie Palmen’s 'Logbook of a Merciless Year', Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree Live Tour and the philosophy of tactility of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Luce Irigaray.It all begins with taking the pulse: listen to your heartbeat by placing two fingers on your wrist.Sylvia Solakidi is a PhD researcher at the Centre for Performance Philosophy, University of Surrey...
2021-03-2332 min
TechnecastEdwin Gilson: Enduring EdenEdwin Gilson is a first year doctoral researcher at the University of Surrey, studying representations of the Anthropocene and regional mythology in the contemporary fiction of California. A BA and MA graduate in American literature, Edwin is particularly interested in modern environmental US fiction. In this podcast, he presents a summary of his initial PhD research into the relationship between the Anthropocene's physical realities and the enduring mythology attached to California nature - as reflected in 21st century environmental fiction.Music by David Fesliyan. Photo by Jeremy Perkins.
2021-03-0826 min
TechnecastSelin Genc: Creative CartographiesIn this episode Selin Genc collaborates with Orestis Lepine to interweave prose and music to explore the feeling of vertigo she suffers during her artistic process. Drawing on various creative traditions such as Land art, Colour Field Painting, speculative fiction, and cartography, she attempts to chart her predicament and find traces of analogous experiences in the works of others. The literary references mentioned in this podcast can be found in Italo Calvino’s ‘Collection of Sand’, 'Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings', and Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘Dreamtigers’.Selin’s visual works can be viewed on her website https://selingenc-art.wixsite.com/portfolio
2021-02-2818 min
TechnecastJon Mason: Folklore and Myths in Urban SettingsA professional storyteller since 2015, Jon is fascinated by the connections between folklore, history, landscape and identity - which he is pursuing through his PhD at the University of Brighton. In this podcast, he discusses "eco-storytelling" (the use of myth and folktale to promote environmental awareness) and illustrates how its reach can be broadened through lessons from oral history theory and subculture studies. If we are storytelling beings, what stories do we make to address urban life? How can these be brought to bear to enrich our understanding of place and its connections to ourselves?Twitter: @jonmaseFacebook: "Jon Mason Stories and Music"h...
2021-01-3031 min
TechnecastInvitations: Astrid Korporaal & Sophie HopeA conversation with creative practitioner and Birkbeck University Lecturer Dr. Sophie Hope and Astrid Korporaal around the use of performative strategies and role play in research and collaborative art practice, as well as the importance of long-term conversations, time to pause, and thinking in dialogue.
The first episode in a series of conversations by Techne PhD students Judah Attille, Therese Henningsen, Mark Aerial Waller and Astrid Korporaal. Each episode is based on a research encounter with a creative practitioner connected to the field of sound and moving image. Together, they question the relationships between audience, screen, maker and subject. These...
2020-11-1826 min
TechnecastRuth Hansford: Enduring PsychoanalysisRuth Hansford talks to Professor Bran Nicol, Head of the School of Literature and Languages at Surrey, about cultural “extramural” psychoanalysis and its enduring themes. In the early days of lockdown, over Zoom, they explore hysteria, otherness, language, performance and narrative, intimacy and “extimacy”, and how these can be seen in Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window, a film that also resonates for our contemporary confinement. It includes reference to Laplanche and Pontalis's 'The Language of Psychoanalysis' (Routledge, 1988). Photo credit: Nicholas Heath
2020-07-3117 min
TechnecastElizabeth Siddal's Chaotic MedievalismIn this episode, doctoral researcher Nat Reeve unspools the spiralling weirdness in the art and poetry of Elizabeth Siddal (1829-1862). You might know Siddal as the face of Millais's Ophelia, but this episode explores her own creative work. We'll wander through some of her works, close reading relentlessly as we go, and trace how they reimagine compositions, retell stories and queer their medieval source material. If you've an interest in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, illuminated manuscripts, macabre ballads and a creative process best described as 'dismembering', the ensuing twenty minutes are decidedly for you.Music also by Nat Reeve, from Ophelia, a...
2020-07-0222 min
TechnecastLiz K. Miller: Listening to TreesThe common terminologies used by soundscape ecologists to describe different types of sound are (broadly speaking) animal sounds, human sounds and elemental earth sounds. Liz K. Miller presents her key findings from her thesis to show how these categories fail to capture the soundscape of trees, asking where the sounds made by trees fit into this lexicon and study of sound. Trees are an essential part of the ecosystem but, as yet, have no place in our classification system. Liz presents beautiful soundscapes and field recordings from Blackheath Forest in the Surrey hills and Clocaenog Forest in North Wales, leaving...
2020-05-2415 min
TechnecastTinkering And Listening: Jo LangtonDuring what may soon become known as the lockdown period of history, Jo Langton explores a history of electroacoustic music, which is also a history of composers' integration of technology, studio craft and music aesthetics.
2020-05-0212 min
TechnecastWhatever Next? An Interview with Careers Consultant Liz WilkinsonWe spoke to Liz Wilkinson, a technē Careers Consultant, who gave us some valuable advice and insights about what to expect after the PhD finishes, and what we can do to prepare for this turbulent and challenging time. We covered everything from imposter syndrome, to time management and spinning plates; from advice for filling out postdoc and job applications, to how to book a one-on-one tutorial with Liz. Technē students can book a one-on-one tutorial with Liz by emailing: Techne.careers@careers.lon.ac.uk or calling 0207 863 6008.
2020-02-2815 min
TechnecastPhilosophy & Critical Theory with Ruth Hansford & Christian GilliamIntroducing the technē conflux: Philosophy and Critical Theory! Ruth Hansford, PhD researcher in the Music department at Surrey, talks to Dr Christian Gilliam, formerly at Surrey and now at Cambridge, who has devised a series of events on philosophy and critical research. They discuss how we can keep a sense of perspective, grounding our research in various traditions of thought and knowledge, but without getting overwhelmed. Or to put in another way, the importance of keeping your eye on the birdie.https://technecriticalmethods.wordpress.com
2020-01-1514 min
TechnecastMary Kate Connolly: On MotherhoodThe fact is that family life is messy, oozing, and complex. It also has a burning vitality; an immediacy and a total lack of escape. There is no ego allowed here. It is a life lived in extremes - the technicolour abandon of sprinting through fallen leaves, followed by the mind numbing slowness of time passing during a meltdown outside the front door...
2019-12-2209 min
TechnecastEmily Dickinson and the Poetics of ReticenceReticence is an essential component of most, if not all, poetry. Eve Grubin identifies four elements that are central to reticence in poetry: absence of emotional language; withheld narrative information; unstated messages; and unexpected breaks. Exploring a dynamic, phenomenological encounter between Self as ‘reader’ and the Other as ‘poem’, Eve presents an original reading of what she terms the ‘poetics of reticence’. Taking Emily Dickinson’s work as a test case, Eve argues that reticence resides at the core of the reader’s experience of Dickinson's poetry.
2019-10-2308 min
TechnecastKaty Jackson: Why Care About Cutlery?In this podcast Katy Jackson examines the weird and wonderful world of nineteenth-century cutlery, and discusses why these important objects are so commonly overlooked today. Making use of the CLiC Dickens Project, produced by the University of Birmingham, Katy Jackson demonstrates that in novels of this period it is predominately male characters who show extreme anxiety over their knives, forks, and spoons. Looking at sources as diverse as The Pickwick Papers and Victorian carving manuals, it is possible to unpick cultural attitudes and find that cutlery can teach us more about the public imagination than you might expect...
2019-05-0811 min
Technecast'Inside and Outside of the Archive' by Joana P R NevesWhat does it mean to visit an archive? How does it feel to use an archive as your base, your "home", for days, weeks or months? How do the papers inside the archives relate to the outside world? Why is there often a sense of trepidation or mysticism shrouding the prospect of an archival expedition? Joana P.R. Neves uses her experience at Smithsonian's Archives of American Art in Washington DC to explore these issues. Establishing a relationship between archival finds, the present day and her own research, Joana reflects of the "usefulness" of archives and art.
2019-03-0416 min
TechnecastMilkshakes And Morphine by Genevieve FoxIn this month’s episode we hear from creative writer Genevieve Fox, who looks at the relationship between her new book, her memoir, and her current research on memory for her forthcoming novel. As a second-year PGR, Genevieve is doing a practice-based interdisciplinary Creative Writing PhD which engages with writers such as Virginia Woolf and their relationship with selfhood and memory. Genevieve’s memoir, 'Milkshakes and Morphine: A Memoir of Love and Life', is about a collision between past and present, between a childhood she tried her best not to remember and an adult experience of cancer that forced her to l...
2019-01-3113 min
TechnecastBenjamin Bland: Researching the Extreme Right and Underground Music CultureIn this month's episode we hear from the historian Benjamin Bland. He presents a new interpretation of the role of fascism within contemporary British history, charting the history of the British neo-fascism and explores the reflections of fascism in underground music cultures from Morrissey, to Joy Division, to the white supremacist rock band Screwdriver. Benjamin reflects on the fact that at the start of his research the idea of Brexit wasn't comprehendible and President Trump hadn't announced his candidacy for presidency. Benjamin's historical research into punk and different fascist movements in Britain shows that the extreme right has actually influenced...
2018-12-0213 min
TechnecastAbout a War by Abi WeaverIn this podcast film director Abi Weaver speaks about her latest feature documentary, 'About a War' that explores violence and social change through the testimonies of ex-fighters from the Lebanese Civil War. The film will be screening at the Curzon in Soho, Wednesday 28th November.
2018-11-0115 min
TechnecastOrgasmic Streaming Organic GardeningIn this TECHNEcast we interview TECHNE PGR Irene Revell and Karen Di Franco (AHRC CDP) about their recent exhibition, 'ORGASMIC STREAMING ORGANIC GARDENING ELECTROCULTURE at Chelsea Space this summer featuring artist Claire Potter.
2018-10-0913 min
TechnecastDr. Louise Gray interviewJo Langton talks to Louise Gray about her thesis and what it feels like to have finished and handed it in. This interview took place before Louise's viva, which she has since completed successfully making her Dr. Louise Gray.
2018-09-0514 min
TechnecastLoss Of Surface by Alice Colquhoun'Watch catastrophe unfurl from the shoreline'. The Thetis was a submarine that sank in on its trials out of Liverpool in 1939. There were 103 men on board. By releasing water and petrol, the workmen managed to bring the submarine to the water's surface where it stayed for three days, where loved ones watched from the shore, before the Thetis sank once more to the bottom of the ocean. 99 men perished. Listen to the writer and performer Alice Colquhoun's thoughtful and musical piece that discusses this tragic historical event and its engagement with the symptoms of war and its evisceration of surfaces.
2018-06-2315 min