On the Third day of Christmas

On the Third day of Christmas, My true love gave to me: three exhibitions to see; two places to sleep: a set of impressions and feelings.

The Modern Language Experiment will hold the second part of their lecture programme 'sudo document' at Angus-Hughes Gallery. Cathy Lomax, Colin Perry & Jon Cairns will each give a lecture about their current research.


SATURDAY 8TH DECEMBER 2012, 3 - 4.30pm
CATHY LOMAX
Is an artist and Director of Transition Gallery based in east London. Transition is an independent and innovative gallery/publisher founded in October 2002. The gallery shows work by both emerging and established contemporary artists as well as producing publications and periodicals. Cathy's lecture will be about:

The traditional gallery system is distasteful – gentleman gallerists carousing with oligarchs to flog overpriced artworks by artists who often profess to have a social conscience. The alternative is working within the subsidised arts where securing funding is a prize only awarded to those who know how to play the game.
The whole system is full of contradictions and being an artist is as hard as it always has been. Artists need to take control and devise new models – stop the researching and the empty words and start doing. The way forward is not to compartmentalise but to integrate the making, showing, working and watching.


SUNDAY 9TH DECEMBER 1 - 2.30PM
COLIN PERRY
Is a freelance art writer based in London, UK. Colin writes reviews and profiles for Art Monthly, Frieze, ArtReview, Art in America, Modern Painters, Catalogue magazine, MAP, and catalogue texts. Currently he is working part-time as an editor at Phaidon and has presented talks with artists and academics, organised film screenings, and collaborated with artists on texts and performances. For his lecture Colin will be discussing:

Into the mainstream: Experimental film and video on TV
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in artistic strategies for intervening in broadcast television. At the same time, there has also been a expanding fascination with typologies of documentary film and video, with essay-film formats appearing in galleries across the global art network. These forms have an entwined history that is rarely discussed; their existence has important implications for how we produce and consume artistic forms and for how artistic production is funded.
There is a long history of experimental documentary in Britain, from the GPO to Channel Four’s investment in experimental film and video. But these changes have not taken place ‘top-down’. Rather, artists to have been able to win funding by forming pressure groups and collectives and combining across sectarian divides. This history shows that – even in a recession – the power of combination and collectivity can create opportunities for art beyond the commercial sphere. The talk will explore these concerns, using the works of Stuart Marshall and Marc Karlin as an example.


SUNDAY 9TH DECEMBER 3 - 4.30PM
JON CAIRNS
Is Co-ordinator of Critical Studies for BA Fine Art at Central St. Martins. Jon's work in the last few years has engaged with queer historiography and the ambivalence of interpretation, hinging on the mobile relationships between photography and performance, and between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’. For his lecture Jon will be discussing:

Feeling Your Way: art, affect and value in times of recession
There has been a renewed urgency to questions of value in the context of cultural retrenchment (brought on by cuts to arts funding, education spending etc) and the consequent threat of a return to old hierarchies of class and access when it comes to the production of fine art. In the course of my research for a special issue of Visual Culture in Britain, I have come into contact with numerous small and independent artist-run initiatives, who have repeatedly stressed the value and importance of collaboration, informality and surprise. I note a frequent prioritisation of ‘content’ and the critical encounter with art over the usual exigencies of commerce and funding.
The significance of the intuitive, the experiential, the quality and range of audience response may be perennial concerns, but I wonder whether this emphasis on the ‘affective’ structures of art – its display, how we interact with it and come to understand it – has a particular resonance right now. What kind of affective communities does art solicit and construct today? What might affect’s political value be in a moment of cultural crisis?


This weekend will be the final series in the programme and we would like to thank all the contributers in giving over their time to the project and allowing us an insight into their important research. We would also like to warmly thank Goldsmiths, Univeristy of London's Annual Fund for their kind support for 'sudo document'.

contact@modernlanguageexperiment.org
www.modernlanguageexperiment.org

Angus-Hughes Gallery
www.angus-hughes.com
26 Lower Clapton Rd (at the junction of Urswick Rd)
London E5 0PD