Fiona Glen, Esther Leslie, Krystle Patel and Maybelle Peters in conversation
Doors: 2.30pm
Tickets: free (booking required)
The Sublime is a concept that has been in flux over the years. Fear, beauty, boundlessness and the inability to contain a thing are centred within this mutable term. This dynamic is exciting and historically has placed the individual in the seat of power in an attempt to contain the liquid. However, we can also approach these themes through the action of the uncontainable. What happens when we step away from a constructed position of power and rather open ourselves to a reception of boundlessness?
Join Krystle Patel in conversation with Fiona Glen, Esther Leslie and Maybelle Peters as they discuss the Sublime. This is part of a series of events produced as part of Krystle’s research residency with the Plun-Favreau Lab at the UCL Institute of Neurology. Find out more about the project here.
Fiona Glen is a Scottish writer and artist interested in the complex relationships between humans and our fellow animals, and in the lives of objects and materials. For her final MA Writing project at the Royal College of Art, she wrote Cephalopodomania – the manuscript for a short book that follows the slippery figure of the octopus through contemporary culture. Glen’s writing has been published in periodicals including Aesthetica, NOIT Journal, 3:AM Magazine, and Art & the Public Sphere, as well as in compilations including Le Grand K and Letters to the Earth from HarperCollins.
Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London. Her interests lie in the poetics of science and imbrications of politics and technologies. Current work focuses on turbid media and the aesthetics of turbulence. Her books include various studies and translations of Walter Benjamin, as well as Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde (Verso, 2002); Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (Reaktion, 2005); Derelicts: Thought Worms from the Wreckage (Unkant, 2014), Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form (Reaktion, 2016) and Deeper in the Pyramid (with Melanie Jackson) (Banner Repeater, 2018).
Krystle Patel works across writing, sound and textile to create moving image works and site-specific installations that investigate relationships. Her practice exists in time and is intentionally slippery and evasive reflecting the dynamic essence of the self. Research forms the basis of her process relying on experimentation, intuition and conversation. She is interested in language, where it is full and empty, its most abstract and literal forms, language as alive and with limitations.
Maybelle Peters is a London based artist and filmmaker working in film and CGI. Her practice focuses on storytelling using documentary, historical events, literature and oral narratives. She gained her bachelors degree in Animation at Farnham where she made her first commissioned film for BBC2. Her Channel 4 commissioned film, Mama Lou, has been shown extensively at animation festivals including Annecy, Ottawa and the Edinburgh Film Festival as well as broadcast television. She is the recipient of the inaugural Womxn of Colour art award. Her work was shown as part of The Place is Here exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary and South London Gallery in 2017. Maybelle is a practice-based PhD candidate at UCA Farnham and her practice which explores allegorical tales and myth making looks at gleaning stories from objects, personal rituals and an archive of ephemera, gestures and sounds.