The Super Sargasso Sea - Common Denominators

Akademin Valand Fri Konst Unit Research Event Talk 

Saturday 27.10 2018 1-3 pm

The talk aspires to bring discussions surrounding artistic research out of the University system into the public realm and the art world.

With Josefina Posch´s artwork The Super Sargasso Sea as a starting point the talk will oscillate between the panel participants individual research interests; ocean pollution, material investigation as an artistic production, art and knowledge and public participation, to discover connections and common denominators.

The talk is a part of Taking Place, a series of events organised and presented by artist and educators working in Fri Konst at Valand Academy, read more. It has become normal in academic contexts to talk about artistic practice as a type of ‘research’, but this is not usually the way in which art is presented in the gallery or the museum. Instead, it is more usual there to focus on the finished object, performance or installation, and to detach it from the way in which it was produced. In these events, Valand lecturers talk about how processes and methods of research shape their individual works and their overall practices, and what is meant by ‘research’ in the context of artistic production.

The talk will be held in English, free entrance.

Participating panellists:

Josefina Posch - Artist/researcher/Lecturer Akademin Valand

Bethanie Carney Almroth - Researcher/Senoir Lecturer Department of Biological & Environmental Sciences

Moderated by Dr. Daniel Jewesbury - Artist/Researcher/Senior Lecturer Akademin Valand

About the participants:

Josefina Posch is an internationally active artist who since 2008 is based in Göteborg. Her practice and research exists in the borderline between sculpture, new media and social engaged work, focusing on the point where technology, biology, cloning, stereotypes, ideas and fiction meet. Posch is also active as curator, activist and lecturer; founder of Snowball Cultural Productions and board member and Gallery Manager at Galleri Box. She is a member of the Swedish Sculptors´ Association.

Bethanie Carney Almroth´s research focuses on the environmental effects of plastics and plastic-associated chemicals, using different species of fish for study. She uses biochemical and physiological methodologies to understand how exposure to microplastics, plastic additives, and environmental chemicals affect fish via different exposure routes. She is specifically interested in oxidative stress mechanisms and their importance following exposure to toxic substances. Her research group is included in the Environmental Science focus area at the Dept of Biological and Environmental Sciences.

Daniel Jewesbury is an artist, a writer and researcher, and a curator. In recent years Daniel’s art work has primarily involved 16mm film and video installation, photography, text, and performance. Much of his work begins from enquiries focused on place, urban redevelopment, and the ways in which personal memory and experience collide with the more public ‘events’ which are understood to ‘take place’. However, his research interests are broad-ranging, and range from urban studies (including enquiries into the use of public art commissioning in urban branding and social cleansing), the material cultures of nationalism and postcolonialism, the historiography of Irish and Northern Irish art, and histories of experimental cinema and artist’s film.