Category: thinkering
Guest Blog: The Museum of Broken Relationships – transforming objects transforms yourself
We’re taking part in a reading group at the University of Exeter about ‘moving objects’. It’s the lead-up to the Cultural and Historical Geography Research Group’s retreat in January, in which we will each bring a meaningful object to hand over to someone else to live with. We’ll reflect on what we choose, what its care instructions are, and how its meanings move and change with in its new life. In one of our discussions, Daisy Curtis talked about a similar project that her sister-in-law Erica Curtis had developed for the Museum of Broken Relationships. We asked. Could we read something about this? No. Could she write something about it? Yes. So here it is. Thanks Erica.
Artist commissions with MoCC: call for proposals
We’re in our second year of collaboration with Artist and PhD student Paula Crutchlow and whole crew of other people on the Museum of Contemporary Commodities (MoCC) project. In 2015 we had residencies at Furtherfield in London’s Finsbury Park. Watch the video below to see what this led to. Now we’re moving to Exeter, and have a couple of artist commissions to fill. The advert is below. Please consider applying if this is your thing, or pass it to others. Check out our MoCC website for more…
Finsbury Park 2015: MoCC Free Market
Exeter 2016 artist commisions: call for commissions
MoCC is inviting proposals for the commissioning of two dynamic public encounters that explore urgent questions related to the nexus of data-trade-place-values. We are interested in receiving applications for remote interventions as well as Exeter based working processes, and are looking for artists who can demonstrate both a critical engagement with networked processes, and experience of making in a social context. The commissions are co-hosted with Exeter Phoenix, Exeter Library and Devon Fab Lab and have been developed in partnership with Furtherfield. Final art work will be shared as part of the Exeter iteration of MoCC during May 2016, alongside a programme of film screenings, walkshops/workshops and public discussions about potential ethical futures of trade and exchange in late capitalism.
Find out more about the commissions and how to apply HERE
Our ‘Trade Justice Thinkering Day’, on 13 January.
Our latest project has been brewing throughout 2012. It starts on Friday. It’s a closed workshop with an open hour at the end. It’s being documented to disseminate the ideas that are generated. We will tweet throughout the day via @MoCCofficial. Follow us and watch out for more…
A day of collective imaginings towards new digital happenings in trade justice activism
11th January 10am-6pm, Margaret Rooms, University of Exeter
What if every shop were a museum and the objects for sale part of an ever changing exhibition on contemporary consumer culture? How would their hidden histories be revealed? How could you re-write their future lives?
The Museum of Contemporary Commodities (MoCC) is an idea developed by Dr Ian Cook (University of Exeter and followthethings.com) and Paula Crutchlow (Blind Ditch) to explore trade justice activism in relationship to ubiquitous and pervasive technologies. MoCC’s aim is to move thinking around trade justice out of the classroom, cinema and art gallery, beyond the textbook, computer and TV screen, and in to our personal experiences of everyday commodity worlds.
This ‘Thinkering’ day is the beginning of a journey to discover what kind of critical object-space-people interactions are both possible and necessary in today’s consumer environments. We’d like to open up the MoCC idea into a growing collection of co-authored events by multiple activists. We hope that MoCC will become something self sustaining, infiltrating and subversive… actively moving towards new ways of trading together.
This MoCC trade justice ‘thinkering’ is being supported by REACT, a collaboration led by the University of the West of England, Watershed, and the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
The day will be documented in various ways by ‘us’ the participants, student geographers and REACT, in order to disseminate the project and its ideas more widely in future.
Day outline:
9.30am Arrivals
10.00am Introduction Ian Cook and Paula Crutchlow
10.30am – 11.30 am 10 minute provocations by invited guests
11.30am – 12.15pm – participant intros and set up of prototyping format
12.15pm – 5pm creating prototypes, using as prompts ‘MoCC cards’ 1: smartphones / tablet computers, 2: plastic packaging, 3: bananas, 4: medicine pills & 5: cotton clothing.
5pm – 5.30pm – Open summary of the day by Jon Dovey, REACT and sharing of prototypes for an invited audience of Exeter University – staff and students – and broader local audience.
5.30pm – Drinks
Participants
Jenny Chan – Students & Scholars against Corporate Misbehavior | Ruth Catlow – Furtherfield | Dan Harris – Blind Ditch + Fjord | Dorothea Kleine – The Fair Tracing Project + RHUL, University of London | Ann Light – The Fair Tracing Project + Northumbria University | John Levack Drever – Blind Ditch + Goldsmiths, University of London | Kate Rich – Feral Trade | Alice Angus – Proboscis | James Richards – Chromatrope | Matt Davenport – Pervasive Media Studio + REACT | Sam Kinsley – Digital Cultures Research Centre | Cat Radford – Blind Ditch | Tobit Emmens – Devon Partnership NHS Trust | Jon Dovey – REACT + Digital Cultures Research Centre | Chris Hunt – i-DAT | Meredydd Jones – ROKK Media | Harry Robbins – Outlandish Ideas | Martin Thomas – RAMM | Will Barrett – Exeter University | Anka Djordjevic – Exeter University | Simon Moreton – Pervasive Media Studio + REACT
Documenters: Katie Tyler, Nancy Scotford, Maddy Morgan, Joe Thorogood, Rachel Grant, Elizabeth Baillie & Eeva Kemppainen
Filmmaker: Benjamin Borley | tumblr site
Documentation
Our participants and documenters tweeted throughout the day, and we have assembled from these tweets a Storify that gives a sense of the thinkering that unfolded…
the back office 