Month: March 2019

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Falmouth F2F Portfolio Reviews

I took part in three reviews. In each case I focused on the more experimental channel mixing work, to get some feedback on this and how I might develop it. I got useful comments from each session, and will think through how to respond to these constructively.

Portfolio, Falmouth, 2019

(i) Gary, Katerina and Clare. The focus in this session was on how to present the range of outputs from the regeneration work. Clare suggested a website. Gary suggested something more like an archive, which has physical presence, and whilst more difficult to access, is more difficult to destroy. My thoughts are that it might be possible to produce something that can be configured by others in different ways (according to their interest in the work). This resonates with my thoughts about using photography as a heuristic device (whilst critiques of the photography as representation abound, the alternatives proposed are either performative or introspective: photography as a heuristic offers a more social and potentially transformative alternative). Gary’s observation was prompted by my use of the archive box I made a London Book Arts, and I could certainly make a number of these in which to present prints (and this links with my focus on prints as artifacts). I’m also still considering handmade books. I need to look again at Christian Boltanski‘s work (I have one of the boxes he produced for the Whitechapel exhibition in the 80s). Other artists to follow up: Taryn Simon (suggested by Katerina), Andrea Luka Zimmerman (Haggerston Estate work, suggested by Clare), Mary Evans (on archives, suggested by Gary) and Mat Collishaw (suggested by all). We also discussed Forensic Architecture’s Turner Prize installation (see also my earlier post on the Turner Prize shortlist) and the use of timelines and time-codes. The overlaying of a map with historical settlements also holds potential for my work, I think. Could chart changes of use in the area over time, and link to other images and documents. This also links with the work with JustMap creating a community map of the Barking Riverside area.

(ii) Steff and Michelle. I wanted to think about the form and content of my WIP portfolio in this session. Comments received reinforced the need to focus more tightly on a particular part of the project. Reflection on this has strengthened my commitment to focussing on the level of my own creative work produced in response to the my experiences and work in regeneration areas. I need to make sure that the intent in making these more experimental images is clear (there is a strong expectation, I think, that photographic work in these contexts should take a particular form, as explored in my earlier oral presentations). I think there is also a concern about the complexity of the images. Michelle expressed concern about the descriptiveness of the images and lack of clarity about what I wanted the viewer to feel, for instance, was the intention to present a dystopian or apocalyptic vision. She suggested zooming in on a parts of the image (maybe those where there is ambiguity) and consideration of the political dimensions of Robert Rauschenberg’s work (also, complexity). And another recommendation to look at Taryn Simon, as well as John Stezaker (collage, and complex images) and Brian Griffin (for instance, The Black Kingdom). The images presented are just exploration of process at this stage, so useful to think through this issue now, which I will do in a later post. If I continue with the channel mixing idea, I need to think about whether (and if so, how) the constituent images are presented alongside the ‘mix’ (or mixes), also discussed in this session. It is also possible to animate the mixes, bringing particular aspects of the image to the fore, which could address the concern about the focus of the image (which would change as the interaction between the images changes). And I could incorporate sound, as with the Roding Valley Park work. Others in the group agreed that the images might work best if printed large.

(iii) Wendy and Stella. I wanted to look forward to the FMP stage in this session. Wendy’s comments helped me to be more confident in the research dimension of the assessment of the FMP, and reinforced the the need to ensure that this was clearly articulated with the image making. We discussed the possibility of printing the images on perspex (or on acetate) as another way of invoking interaction between the images. Stella was concerned about the arbitrariness of the colour aspects of the channel mixing approach, which worries me too and which leaves me with monochrome images. I think that is fine, but I need to work through the rationale and effects of the process, perhaps in relation to the production of ‘fictions’ that project backwards and forwards from a point in time (to a constructed past and an imagined future). Am looking at Stella’s paper on Moire. Wendy confirmed that not all the work presented in the FMP has to be done in the two semesters, for instance, where the project is longer term and developing over the course of the programme. There must, however, be significant value added to the project over the course of the FMP (it can’t, for instance, be an existing body of work that is ‘tweaked’ in the FMP). The presentations by current FMP students at the conference were particularly useful in seeing how the FMP could develop.

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Falmouth F2F Workshops

Really useful to get to know the facilities at the Institute of Photography, and to figure out how to make best use of what’s on offer when I visit again in the future to work on my FMP. The workshop helped to build skills in particular areas:

(i) Medium format digital. Got to know the Capture One software (similar in most respects to Lightroom) and work with the Mamiya/Leaf system in tethered mode. It would be good to hire a medium format system for the Object Lessons work in the UCL Museums, Collections and Galleries

(ii) Studio lighting. Great afternoon with Matt Jessop and fellow student Len Williamson. I have done a studio lighting course before. This gave me the opportunity to experiment with lighting and get immediate feedback by making images tethered to Lightroom (again, a new experience for me). See headshots below. My own work is in the field, but it was useful to be able to play around in a ‘controlled environment’, and this will certainly help me in the lighting design for the Object Lessons work, and for the portraits for the urban regeneration project.

(iii) Machine processing. I shoot on film from time to time. Good to learn to use the machines. However, as I think through my major project, I think there are environmental issues to consider in using film (particularly given that parts of Barking marshes are heavily polluted by the chemical plants that used to be there (and this is increasingly of concern as the use of the surrounding land switches from industry to housing).

(iv) Film scanning. As for machine processing, good to be able to use the Hasselblad scanners, particularly for my large format negatives.

(v) Preparing for print. A refresh rather than something new. Useful for getting to know the print service at Falmouth, and how to produce files specifically for that. Also helpful in thinking about file naming of outputs for web and print (which is pretty random for me at the moment). Will follow up advice on colour management at theprintspace.co.uk and tutorials on software at lynda.com

Together this made a fairly coherent package. I certainly feel more confident in planning to spend some time at the IoP in the future, and its good to get to know the academic and technical staff, and to work alongside fellow MA students.

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Ideology and Photography (Week 6 Reflection)

The independent reflection task for this week asks us to consider whether our practice may or may not be seen as adhering to a specific ideology. In the creative process, ideology will influence both the production of our work (through the intent that informs the work, and the conceptual frameworks that underpin this) and its interpretation (through the systems of ideas that inform our audience in their reading and the contexts within which they encounter our images). The means by which our work is circulated and reaches an audience (via social media, or the gallery system, for instance) is also shaped by ideology. For instance, we produce and distribute our work in a period that is politically and economically grounded in neo-liberalism and increasingly subject to the push and pull of popularism, which will influence the nature of the means of distribution and the value attributed to the work in different contexts and by different groups and communities. Whilst recognition that production, consumption and circulation of photographic images is ideologically infused is necessary, we can adopt a critical or oppositional position in our work. In doing so, it is important to be clear that this will involve contestation: we need to have a sense of what we stand for and what we stand against, and the consequences of this. My own work seeks to create or provoke different ways of thinking about social and environmental phenomena. It is inherently critical of both current practices in urban regeneration (adopting the view, as expressed by Jane Jacobs, 1961, that ‘Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody’) and some forms of contemporary theory and discourse in the arts (through, for instance, critical engagement with the idea of the anthropocene (see Demos, 2017), and the influence of object oriented ontology, (see, for instance, Harman, 2010, and critical commentary by Lemke, 2017.) How this impacts on the reception and reading of this work depends on the form of the audience and the context of engagement. Whilst the work is theoretically informed, and positioned, engagement with theory is not a prerequisite for reading and understanding the work. The work is intended to be accessible to anyone interested in issues relating to community involvement in urban regeneration and those interested in contemporary arts. The ensuing dialogue, in turn, leads to further development of the work.

Power relations are inherent in all levels of the work, from initial engagement with communities through to the circulation of the work, as is the commitment to ethical practice. I will expand on this, and how my practice relates to other practice and theory in the visual arts, in subsequent discussion of the development of my project and my work in progress portfolio, which will focus on the more political aspects of the regeneration project and more experimental form of photography.

References

Demos, T. J. 2017. Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today. Berlin: Sternberg Press.

Harman, G. 2010. Towards speculative realism: Essays and lectures. Winchester: Zero Books.

Jacobs, J. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.

Lemke, Thomas. 2017. Materialism Without Matter: The Recurrence of Subjectivism in Object-Oriented Ontology. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory. 18: 133-152.

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March 2019 Project Update

A quick catch up on where I am, in practical terms, with the various strands of my project.

1. Community engagement with urban regeneration

This is the focus of my research proposal for the FMP. Building networks, contacts and relationships is core to the development of the work. This is focusing on two areas.

(i) Barking and Dagenham.

I have been making images to feed into an image bank for the Thames Ward Community Project (TWCP). My images of the Barking Riverside development were used in a presentation at the recent TWCP summit (at which the CEO of the development company, the Bishop of Barking, a local headteacher, the leader of the residents association and the local councilor spoke). I took photographs of the event and have added these to the TWCP repository. This contributes to the component of the project concerned with collaborative creation of images for advocacy.

I am working with a local arts project (ShedLife), and have an exhibition of portraits and other images of the participants to accompany a showing of the film ‘A Northern Soul’ and Q&A with the filmmaker (Sean McAllister) at the project on 27th March. The project also involves supporting young adults who are documenting the process and working with participants’ photographs and their own image making, which contributes to the component of the project concerned with working with images to gain mutual insight into and understanding of the lifeworlds of the residents.

Through the project, I am now also in touch with the Barking Creekmouth Preservation Society, the Barking Heritage Group, Thames View Community Gardeners and residents on the Gascoigne Estate. The work in Barking has contributed to the development of all three levels of my project work, and provides lots of opportunities for development at the FMP stage. I also want to open up the use of the local authority archives at Valence House and the use of images in community mapping by JustMap.

(ii) Stratford Olympic Park.

In addition to being a member of the London Prosperity Board, I am now an invited member of the EAST Education Leadership Group. This gives me direct insight into and involvement with the development of initiatives on and around the Olympic Park. In relation to image making, I am putting this on hold for the moment. I’ll continue to form links and networks to keep open the option to carry out the final project in this area. Chairing discussions at the Creating Connections East meetings has helped me to form links with community groups across the four boroughs surrounding the Olympic Park. I’ve also met with people on the Carpenters Estate through the ESRC Displacement Project, and with people organising arts related aspects of the project (principally to ensure that there is no confusion between my own work on the estates and their work – I’ll write more about community arts initiatives related to research and to urban development in a later post).

2. Object Lessons

I’ve continued to attend the weekly lectures and take part in the workshops. The students are now working in groups to produce online exhibitions based around different kinds of objects. They will present these at an all-day workshop on 22nd March. I have spoken to the course team about making images with the students and their objects in the various collections participating in the programme. The major contribution to my work, however, has been the focus of the programme on objects, which fits with the more materialist turn in my own work, and interest in artists like Cornelia Parker, and writers such as Peter Stallybrass (for example, Stallybrass, 1998) concerned with memory and materiality (see, in particular, Freeman, Nienass & Daneill, 2016). The programme has focused on the narratives that can be created around objects, and the value of objects in well-being and therapy (Solway et al, 2017). There is also, however, a growing contemporary theoretical interest in the disruptive and obstructive function of objects, and our projection of agency into the material world, creating ‘uncanny objects’ with an apparent agency and insistence, and resistance, of their own.

I am thinking about ways of using the collections, for instance the zoological collection at the Grant Museum (created to provide ‘artifacts’ for teaching and research in the Nineteenth Century but fulfilling a very different function now) in exploring these issues, and the role played by the collections in the emergence of eugenics and other oppressive regimes of thought.

The ‘uncanny object’ in a later era is explored by Lisa Mullen (2019), in ‘Mid-century Gothic’.

‘Mid-Century Gothic defines a distinct post-war literary and cultural moment in Britain, lasting ten years from 1945-55. This was a decade haunted by the trauma of fascism and war, but equally uneasy about the new norms of peacetime and the resurgence of commodity culture. As old assumptions about the primacy of the human subject became increasingly uneasy, culture answered with gothic narratives that reflected two troubling qualities of the new objects of modernity: their uncannily autonomous agency, and their disquieting intimacy with the reified human body’.

This opens up new visual possibilities in exploring the relationship between the students and the objects they have studied.

This work has influenced all other aspects of my photographic work, and, in particular, treatment of images, in print form (and also, maybe, in materialised form on a smartphone screen), as material objects. In the other projects I am exploring this, and the form that my own ‘images’ will take, and how they will be circulated and encountered (for instance, made material as different kinds of prints, as books, as artifacts, in exhibition space and so on).

3. Digital Discrimination

This is a project looking at the relationship between location and quality of internet access, the uses that young people make of the internet and the manner in which advertising algorithms feed young people in different areas with different kinds of content. The project is running in Germany and the UK. I have been making images alongside colleagues who are collecting data through surveys, focus groups and mapping. Early days in terms of seeing where this might go visually. Recent interviews in Hull indicate that there might be potential in exploring the ‘layering’ of the located embodied lives of young adults and their virtual lives online (predominantly through their phones).

In relatively poor areas there appears to be a possible interaction between the decaying physical infrastructure (public transport, for instance) and an increasingly complex, and differentiated and disempowering, online world (with snapchat and instagram being used as the dominant means of communication, bringing commercial competition for users’ online attention, but in demographically differentiated ways, driven by algorithms that appear to have a locational component, as well as being shaped by usage).

References

Freeman, L. A., Nienass, B. and Daniell, R. 2016. ‘Memory | Materiality | Sensuality’, Memory Studies, 9(1): 3–12.

Mullen, L. 2019. Mid-century gothic: The uncanny objects of modernity in British literature and culture after the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Solway, R. et al. 2017. ‘Material objects and psychological theory : A conceptual literature review’, Arts & Health. Taylor & Francis, 8(1): 82–101.

Stallybrass, P. 1998. ‘Marx’s coat’, in P. Spyer (ed.), Border fetishisms: material objects in unstable spaces. London: Routledge. 187–207.

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Juxtaposition of Images and Objects (Week 5 Reflection)

In my presentation for Positions and Practice, I expressed unease about street photography, both in relation to its mode of operation (the prowling, opportunistic, and at times invasive, hunter of images) and the forms of images produced (for instance, those which appear to denigrate or exploit the subject). Consequently, I have moved towards more collaborative forms of image making, but have remained pretty much on the hunter side of the hunter/farmer metaphor invoked earlier in the module. Over the past two weeks, however, in the development of the ‘art’ side of my photographic practice, I have explored constructed images, in particular through a process of multi-channel combining and mixing of images. The intent is to bring together, in a single frame, invocations of the past, present and future of a particular place, and to position human subjects in this hybrid re-imagined space.

The image above combines a photograph of people in a public place, mixed with an image of construction in the area (invoking the future) and a macro photograph of plants found in the mostly heavily developed and concreted space (invoking the past). In my own ‘looking’ I am attempting to identify resources that can be used in the construction of an image that explores the interaction of the past, present and an immanent future, and the relationship within this between the human, natural and built environment. In this way, the visual constitutes material in the production of an image through juxtaposition. Changes in the manner in which channels are mixed can have a marked effect of emphasis within the image, as can been seen in this alternative mix below.

This opens up the possibility of a short moving image that flips continuously from one to the other. It also influences how I shoot and edit, with both the structure and content being influenced by the use of the image in creating the multi-channel work. If I was selecting a single, standalone image from this particular setting, it would, I think, have been the image below, but this wouldn’t work in the creating the mix above (note: forthcoming post on the process and how this relates to intent and theory).

Edmund Clark, in his exhibition ‘In Place of Hate‘, arising from a 3 year study of HMP Grendon (Europe’s only wholly therapeutic prison, specialising in the rehabilitation of violent and sexually violent offenders), included pressed flowers found on the site, as a way of both highlighting the contrast (and resonances) between the harshness of human incarceration and the fragile (but resilient in its insistence to grow in the environment) natural world. My images seek a similar juxtaposition and play between contrasting elements, but within a single image. The process of multichannel mixing (described here), however, both renders each element less distinct, and attempts to convey a sense of the interaction between elements. In this work, I am neither simply hunter nor farmer (though the process entails elements of both), but rather designer, architect, collector, curator, alchemist, experimenter and more. The approach opens up the prospect of both the creation of new images for the purposes of mixing, and the incorporation of archival material, computer generated images and found images.

Edmund Clark, In Place of Hate, 2015-17.

The resulting images can be considered to be fictions of a sort, pulling together ‘untethered’ materials from elsewhere, and combining different ways of looking (and, therefore, different forms of gaze). The intent of the fiction, however, it to explore relationships in time and space, and thus the approach resonates with the idea of fiction as methods (see my discussion of the work of Francois Laruelle and the arts here). I am producing the work for an audience that wishes to explore ways in which the visual arts can be deployed, in conjunction with other approaches, to explore complex human and environmental issues. How the reader interprets the image depends very much on context, and the motivations and interest of the reader. As with all forms of image making, there is a need also to work to actively create an audience, and to seek appropriate outlets and contexts for the work. The images are clearly challenging to read (given the detail, the prints will need to be large), and the process in the early stages of development.

References

Edmund Clark, 2015-17, In Place of Hate. https://www.edmundclark.com/works/in-place-of-hate/#1 [accessed 04.03.19].

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Laruelle, non-philosophy and the arts

I’ve noticed a significant interest in Laruelle’s work amongst cultural and arts theorists recently. The bookshop at the ICA, for instance, has a growing section of books on or by Laruelle. In this short post I want to consider what we might gain, as photographers, from engagement with Laruelle’s work. In doing this, my starting point is O’Sullivan’s (2017) paper, moving on to work by Laruelle (2013) and commentaries by Mackay (2012a; 2012b) and Brassier (2003). It should be noted that Laruelle’s work is famously difficult to read – Derrida complained that his work was impenetrable, but I think this arises from his objection to Laruelle’s refusal to play the conventional game of continental philosophy. Derrida is certainly as difficult to read for those outside the game.

From the start we should note that Laruelle has written specifically on photography (or rather on non-photography). I am not going to deal directly with this work here on two grounds; (i) as noted in earlier posts, the interest of philosophers in photography relates specifically to philosophical questions which are not, necessarily, of core interest to those developing theory in and of the field and practice of photography (in other words, we don’t have to take to heart, and welcome into our theoretical canon, everything that takes photography as its object, particularly in pursuing its own (field) interests); (ii) I am waiting for another reader to return the ‘non-photography’ book to the library. As Mackay (2012a) notes, photography as an idea was important to philosophers before we had the means to produce a photograph. This raises the question of the extent to which we should allow rumination on the idea of photography to dictate, or at least shape, how we think about the practice of photography.

Put in the simplest of terms (with apologies for any resulting symbolic violence), Laruelle sees philosophy as placing itself outside (more precisely, above) the real and makes a commitment (or decision) to produce accounts (understandings) of the real, with resonance, dissonance and disputation between competing, or at least co-existing, philosophical positions. Non-philosophy, or non-standard philosophy, in contrast is grounded in, and remains as an activity within, the real. It cannot produce critical accounts of alternative philosophical positions, as this would entail rising above the real to engage with alternative (philosophical) perspectives. It maintains, however, a relationship with philosophy (it is not anti-philosophy) in that it can use philosophical work as material in its own endeavours (though this will entail the projection, or descent, of philosophy into the real, through its incidences, and consequences, in practice, rather than through customary academic engagement). As a result, non-philosophy produces fictions in the world that are speculative and experimental in character, rather than proposing alternative explanations and interpretations of the world; a heuristic rather than a hermeneutic enterprise.

O’Sullivan (2017) explores six ‘applications’ (p.298) of non-philosophy to art practice. The first is diagrammatics, ‘the practice of decontextualisation, reorganisation, and general manipulation of philosophical material that have been untethered from their properly philosophical function or discourse’ (p.299). What can be done with these untethered materials, freed, for instance, from the need to represent or explain? The second is ‘art as a model’, in which art is conceived as offering, perhaps, a model for how such untethered materials might be deployed. The third is a proposal for a ‘non-art’, which refuses to (auto) position itself with regard to that which came before (and which, through its abstraction from activity, as risen above the real). The fourth is a proposal for ideological critique, offering, perhaps, and means to open up the coalition of contemporary art with neo-liberalism. The fifth is the prospect of performance fictions, where performance come from, and remains within, the world, without being about the world. The final application is the possibility of a fiction of the self, the production of a life lived otherwise, and the consequent question of the constitution of subjectivity. This fictioning entails not the dissolving of self, put the production of a more contingent self.

Both the account of Laruelle’s work and O’Sullivan’s ‘applications’ to art practice above are, by necessity, excessively compressed. I hope, though, that there is sufficient to see resonances with themes explored elsewhere in the CRJ. For instance, the move towards a more speculative way of working, and the use of ‘untethered’ material (whether purposefully untethered or by happenstance, in the case of skeuomorphs, material metaphors, where past function is forgotten in the passage into the present as design). Also the call to generate critical commentary from within practices/fields, and to utilise ‘material’ from other fields in so doing, rather than taking on the concerns of, or being objectified by, discourses that have risen, or been positioned, above practice. And earlier posts on post-humanism. Finally, there is the question of the the tendency (or necessity, perhaps, in their ‘standard’ form) for organising discourses to place their agents in super-ordinate positions, above the general population (for example, where is Frances Galton placed in the bell curve, and where do the parenting practices of the middle classes sit in the professional discourse of childcare?).

References

Brassier, R. 2003. ‘Axiomatic heresy: the non-philosophy of Francois Laruelle’. Radical Philosophy, 121: 24-35.

Laruelle, F. 2013. Principles of Non-Philosophy, trans. Nicola Rubczak and Anthony Paul Smith. London: Bloomsbury.

Mackay, R. 2012a. ‘Response to Laruelle on Non-Photography’ Presentation at Goldsmiths College, London. Available at: http://readthis.wtf/writing/response-to-laruelle-on-non-photography/ [accessed 03.03.19]

Mackay, R. 2012b. ‘Art and the practice of non-philosophy’ Presentation at Pavilion, Leeds, June 2012. Available at: http://readthis.wtf/writing/art-and-the-practice-of-non-philosophy/ [accessed 03.03.19]

O’Sullivan, S. 2017. ‘Non-philosophy and art practice (or fiction as method)’. In J.K. Shaw and T. Reeves-Evison (eds) Fiction as Method. Berlin: Sternberg Press.

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Imaging Time: Understanding Photography as Time-based Media

The Photographers Gallery, London, 23rd February 2019

https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/talks-and-events/imaging-time-understanding-photography-time-based-media

‘Traditional notions of photography as frozen or captured moments have long since developed into narratives where the photograph acts as ‘a space of becoming’, in which meaning can be made and explored. Photography’s relationship with time has changed in the digital age, where images are increasingly vulnerable to temporal ambiguity through manipulation and retouching, whilst instantaneous production and distribution has also encouraged a resurgence and return to the use of analogue processes’.

A lot of ground covered in this session. I will just draw out points raised by the presenters that are relevant to the development of my own work, which is clearly grappling with how to address the complex interaction of different points in time.

Catherine Yass. Previous work has taken a positive and negative image of the same scene and overlaid these on a light box. Small differences in time (between exposures) are made visible in this process. She sees the process of overlaying as disrupting sense of space and position. More recent work has involved video from a drone moving around an object, and the slowing of the video to one eighth speed to force interpolation – producing images that have not existed (like the channel mixing composites, where interaction between layers producing images as fictions). She has also looped and manipulated the Harold Lloyd clock scene to play with notion of time and direction. Likewise, leaving 4×5 sheet film in the street to decay and displaying on a lightbox attempts to explore time and decay. Reference also made to Catherine’s work featured in the Wellcome exhibition Living with Buildings: Health and Architecture, which I need to revisit (see earlier post on this here).

Phoebe Boswell. Combines drawing with photography, dealing with questions of archive, memory and time. Layering of stories from different perspectives in the family. Interesting dual channel looped video of herself and her sister sorting through the same photographs. The work begins to create new histories through the layering of accounts. Interesting question about what effect drawing from pictures has on our sense of time and image.

Erica Scourti. Explored the development of her work and the role of photography as intermediary in development and projection of a sense of self, eg So Like You (2014). Proliferation of images undermines sense of uniqueness of experience (by constantly indexing experience with the experience of others). In Bodyscan (2014) used visual recognition algorithms in apps to explore body image. Raised the question of unseen images, and the effects of auto-tagging and categorisation in relation to digital maintenance and female labour. Also refer to more recent work (giving over online and off-line digital data on self to an author to develop a persona) described in ‘Fiction as Method’.

Discussion. Chaired by Lucy Reynolds. Importance of touch and the haptic in conveying a sense of time. Reference made to Eco’s notion of an open work, which allows the reader space to interpret (as opposed to a closed work) – this is important to the complex layered images I am producing at the moment. Question of displacement, as being out of place and out of time, discussed (and displacement is a key issue in urban regeneration, of course). This was related to ‘knowing your place’ in meritocratic and eugenic discourse (exemplified in an extreme and explicit form in Singapore, of course), which denies space to dream and imagine. Discussion also of the strategy (or tactic?) of breaking down images and (re)constructing and (re)membering. Reference made to Grace Weir’s (2019) two screen installation at the Institute of Physics, Time Tries All Things (a meditation on different conceptions of time). Also, briefly, to the physicality of the mobile phone, and how people hold and touch them (undermining the supposed virtuality of images), which resonates with recent work with young adults in Hull. Closing cautionary (and important for my work, which has to keep open multiple accounts and perspective) quote from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘beware of the single story’ (which also resonates with the unreliable narrator of Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day).