Frame’s talks programme continues in October with a talk by Elspeth Mitchell, a researcher and visual-arts programmer from Leeds, UK. The talk takes place at Frame’s office (Ratakatu 1 b A 9, 6th floor) on 11 October at 3–5 pm. Welcome to all!
In this discussion Mitchell will talk about her current research activities and visual arts programming in Leeds. During her time in Helsinki she has been investigating how notions of ‘responsibility’ and ‘possibility’ are necessary for thinking about curatorial and art practices that engage with a feminist problematic. What does it mean to situate oneself as practicing specifically feminist research, art, activism or politics? How does one do it? These broad questions will be explored by reading with Simone de Beauvoir’s notion of the ‘body-as-situation’, Donna Haraway’s ever important concept of ‘situated knowledge’ and Elsa Barkley Brown’s call to ‘pivot the centre’.
This work is framed by an interest in the relation between theory, practice and politics and especially the question of ‘reading’ in these different contexts. Here, reading and re-reading is seen not only as a critical and scholarly activity but also as a key aspect of artistic interventions. Reading, then, is conceptualised in the broadest sense both as a concrete practice and as a metaphor for feminist self-reflexivity, as a productive and creative process, a means and space of transmission, transformation and imagination. Mitchell will present some initial ideas which will be developed into a programme of events in Leeds in Spring 2017.
The talk is open for everyone, and takes place at Frame’s office (Ratakatu 1 b A 9, 6th floor). During September, Frame has been acting as a host organisation for Mitchell, providing her a work space and now hosting the talk about her current research projects.
Elspeth Mitchell is a researcher and visual-arts programmer from Leeds, UK. She is currently undertaking a PhD project supervised by Professor Griselda Pollock at the University of Leeds, which explores girlhood, sexuality and difference in audio-visual art practices and philosophy. She is co-director of SPUR, a contemporary arts collective based in the North of England. She recently co-convened the second international Feminist Readings symposium held at the University of Leeds in 2016, which is currently being developed as part of a bigger project into an international network of researchers, artists and activists.