In the aftermath of World War II, hundreds of new journals emerged across Europe. This explosion of print was a reaction to the years of privation and lack of cultural contact between nations. It also responded to public discussion about what might now constitute a ‘European’ identity – an issue central to processes of reconstruction and reconciliation in the post-war period.
Translations were an important component of many journals. They introduced readers to foreign movements, concepts and writers, increasing awareness of cultural similarities and differences and forged alliances across national borders. This exhibition brings together a number of these magazines and highlights the overlooked and mostly unacknowledged translators.
The translators who worked for these journals are remarkable individuals. Some had been ‘silenced’ by censorship in the interwar period. Many were refugees, displaced by war, who used their knowledge of foreign languages to gain a foothold in a post-war world. All were talented figures, passionately committed to the transnational circulation of ideas. They understood that dialogue across cultural, political and linguistic divides was an essential precondition for peace and prosperity in Europe.
This exhibition has been curated by Alison E. Martin, JGU Mainz/Germersheim, Germany and Andrew Thacker, Nottingham Trent University.
The fourth segment of Formations, our year-long programme delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre, includes events in March and April under the thematic banner – Formation: DNA. The title ‘DNA’ signals identity, including scientific cataloguing practices, and medical inequalities in postcolonial contexts. Global medical history is replete with controversies over unequal medical practices, and currently, coronavirus death and illness adversely affects non-white and non-wealthy populations. Join us for conversations and workshops about identity, care, inequality, disease, and vaccination.
Thursday 18 March 2021, 5 pm – 6 pm
In this conversation event, Sophie Fuggle (NTU) talks to Aro Velmet (University of Southern California) about the impact and meaning of disease and vaccination in the French colonies of the early twentieth century.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, bacteriologists working French colonies reimagined both the epidemiology and treatment of colonial tuberculosis. What once was seen as an ancient disease now became a European import. And treatment, which in the metropole was oriented around social hygienist practices, such as education, aeration of housing, handwashing, dispensaries and sanatoria visits, became in the colonies focused on one magic bullet: The BCG vaccine, first developed by the Pasteur Institute in 1924. This reimagining of the French “disease of civilization” had profound political consequences for colonial rule – mobilising colonial administrators to rethink their policies and anti-colonial activists from West Africa and Indochina to push for reform and call into question the fundamental tenets of the French “civilising mission”. This talk explores how bacteriological science shaped politics in a globally interconnected empire – from the hospitals of Saigon to colonial exhibitions and anti-colonial protests in 1930s Paris.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Wednesday 31 March 2021, 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm & Wednesday 21 April 2021, 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm
Hero’s Journey Creative Writing Workshop (with free bespoke writing book) with Postcolonial Studies Centre writer-in-residence Eve Makis and scriptwriter Anthony Cropper.
The Hero’s Journey is a storytelling template developed by the academic Joseph Campbell and influenced by myths and legends. Taking inspiration from heroes in film, the environmental activist Erin Brockovich and Ron Stallworth in BlacKkKlansman, we’ll take a look at how it’s pinned together and how you can use the model to structure your own creative works. We’ll show you how to use your own life experiences to inform your work and make your characters as real and complex as you are.
All participants will receive a free copy of Odyssey – Finding Your Way Through Writing. ‘A roadmap for writing great stories – using your life as inspiration.’
All levels welcome. All participants will have the chance to get their work edited and included on a spoken word album, bringing their written work to life.
Wednesday 28 April 2021, 5 pm – 6 pm
Who is caring for the carers?
The ONS have reported that over 60% of COVID-related deaths on the frontline have come from ethnic minority backgrounds, yet ethnic minorities only make up about 17% of the NHS – with Black people being only 6.1% of that. This disproportion generates a lot of questions that desperately need answers.
Working closely with five Black frontline workers and NHS staff, Kwanzaa Collective UK explored the question: “How do you do a job that involves caring for others, when you are working within a system that doesn’t care about you?”
They wanted to hear what Black frontline workers have experienced during the pandemic and over the course of their career, and to answer the question: “Who is caring for our carers?”
Using the words of the frontline workers and stories from several personal interviews, they compiled spoken word poetry, personalised ‘care packages’ for them, and captured a series of intimate, anonymised portraits.
Behind the line was funded as part of a B-arts (North Staffordshire) CARE R&D. The conversation is hosted by KARVAN: ‘together we travel’ of worldlits.com.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Bonington Gallery is very pleased to present QAI/GB-NGM by Warsaw (Poland) based artist Karol Radziszewski. This exhibition will present archival materials from Radziszewski’s Queer Archives Institute (QAI) that focusses on Central and Eastern European queer history and culture.
Consistent with previous QAI presentations, this exhibition will connect to its locality by featuring materials related to Nottingham’s own queer history and culture. This site specificity is reflected in the title of the exhibition that utilises Nottingham’s International Organization for Standardization (ISO) location code ‘GB–NGM’.
Alongside archival materials from the QAI, the exhibition will feature artworks and ongoing bodies of work by Radziszewski.
Established by Radziszewski in November 2015, the QAI is a non-profit artist-run organization dedicated to the research, collection, digitalisation, presentation, exhibition, analysis and artistic interpretation of queer archives, with a special focus on the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. The QAI is a long-term project open to transnational collaboration with artists, activists and academic researchers. The Institute carries out a variety of activities and projects – from exhibitions, publications, lectures and installations to performances.
Karol Radziszewski (b. 1980) lives and works in Warsaw (Poland), where he received his MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2004. He works with film, photography, installations and creates interdisciplinary projects. His archive-based methodology crosses multiple cultural, historical, religious, social and gender references. Since 2005 he has been the publisher and editor-in-chief of DIK Fagazine. He is the founder of the Queer Archives Institute (2015). His work has been presented in institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; New Museum, New York; VideoBrasil, São Paulo; TOP Museum, Tokyo; Kunsthaus Graz, Austria; Cobra Museum, Amsterdam; Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow and Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz. He has participated in several international biennales including PERFORMA 13, New York; 7th Göteborg Biennial; 4th Prague Biennial; 15th WRO Media Art Biennale and recently The Baltic Triennial 14.
In 2021, The Power of Secrets dedicated to Radziszewski’s archival practice was published by Sternberg Press.
Header image credit: Karol Radziszewski, Afterimages, film still, 2018.
The exhibition has been curated by Tom Godfrey, Director of Bonington Gallery.
Supported by Joshua Lockwood-Moran, Tamsin Greaves (NTU Placement) and Rachael Mackerness (NTU Placement).
Technicians: Harry Freestone, James E Smith, Claire Davies, Emily Stollery.
Thanks to The Sparrows Nest for the generous support, advice and loan of the publications.
Taking place in Nottingham Trent University’s Old Chemistry Theatre, the space is reduced to a minimal setting of a table and chair, a notebook laptop and the human body. The performance aims to create an intimacy with the viewer whilst allowing the interplay between what is real and the virtual world.
Notebook Series is collaboration between a choreographer, Colette Sadler and set-designer, Philine Rinnert. The reference to a notebook in the title reflects shared ongoing process and research. The notebook is both a holding structure and platform for the collaborative process in so far as it allows the laying out and organisation of images, texts and choreographic notes or studies differently from those suggested by real time and space.
In a situation reminiscent of a lecture or public speech, the performance questions the identity of the performer. Moving between the real and the fictional in a clinical deconstruction and disassociation of the human body and its senses, the performance asks “What are you” and “Who are you” in an investigation of the human capacity for transformation and the possibility of living beyond the self.
For full details please visit the Dance4 What’s On pages
Notebook Series is part of the Nottdance Festival 2015. The festival runs from the 5 – 15 March with over 40 performances taking place over 11 days, across more than 20 venues and public spaces.
Download the full NottDance Festival programme here.
