Pedagogies of the Ear investigated acts of listening as a critical register of social and political life to break with linear models of teaching that pursue objective comprehension.
The Study Evening framed listening as a pedagogical strategy with emphasis on collective listening, non-hierarchical gathering, translation, reciprocity and care. Participants included professor Gail Lewis with artists Evan Ifekoya, Hannah Catherine Jones, Katia Kameli and Raju Rage.
Evan Ifekoya’s current work investigates the possibility of an erotic and poetic occupation using film, performative writing and sound, focused on co-authored, intimate forms of knowledge production and the radical potential of spectacle. Their ongoing project A Score, A Groove, A Phantom explores archives of blackness, sociality and inheritance as they diffract through queer nightlife and trauma in the present moment. Ifekoya is an Art Foundation Fellow in Live Art for 2017. Ifekoya’s recent work has been presented at: Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire; New Art Exchan
Hannah Catherine Jones (aka Foxy Moron) is an artist, scholar, multi-instrumentalist, radio presenter (NTS), composer, conductor and founder of Peckham Chamber Orchestra – a community project established in 2013. Her broad practice is connected through a central spine of inclusivity and decolonisation. Myths (both ancient and modern), word-play, appropriation and her own voice (in song) are her materials. The videos she composes use fragmented appropriated footage, as do her orchestral compositions. HerOweds are a temporal form of self-reparation, a method of connection with ancestors though sonic ritual using voice, theremin and video. Jones has recently commenced a DPhil scholarship at Oxford University exploring the relationship between Afrofuturism and Gesamtkunstwerk through the art-music of Sun Ra and Wagner. She has performed and lectured internationally, including at Harvard, Oxford, Trinity, LCC, ECA, NYU and has exhibited widely including at Modern Art Oxford, Vitrine, IMT, Almanac galleries, London.
Katia Kameli is a French-Algerian artist. Kameli’s work is closely related to her personal experience of dual identities, exploring multiplicity and the ‘in-between’. Through video, photography, installation and drawing, she investigates intercultural spaces, intersecting identities and their construction. Thus, it is possible to use the emergence of other visions, forms and positions. This ‘third space’ questions historical accounts and can generate a critical stance that allows the rewriting of history and narratives. Her most recent solo-exhibitions include: What Language Do You Speak Stranger, The Mosaic Rooms, London (2016); Future, Artconnexion, Lille (2016); Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York (2014); 7 Acts of Love in 7 days of Boredom, Transpalette, Bourges (2012); Duty Free, Videochroniques, Marseille (2012). She has participated in numerous groups that include: Friends, Center Pompidou, Paris (2016); Made in Algeria, Mucem, Marseille (2016); Entry Prohibited to Foreigners, Havre Magasinet, Boden, Sweden (2015); Where we’re at, Bozar, Brussels (2014); Lubumbashi Biennale, Congo (2013); For a Sustainable World, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Portugal (2013); The Bridge, Museum of Marseille (2013); Dak’art, Dakar Biennale (2012); Higher Atlas, Marrakech Biennale (2012); And Bamako Biennale, Mali (2011).
Gail Lewis joined the department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck in September 2013. She studied at the LSE for her first degree in Social Anthropology, followed by an MPhil in Development Studies gained from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex. Her PhD in Social Policy was gained at the Open University, where she was a member of the Social Sciences Faculty between 1995-2004 and again between 2007-2013. Between her two spells at the Open University she worked at Lancaster University in the Institute for Women’s Studies, where she was Head of Department. She is also a qualified psychodynamic psychotherapist. She was a member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group and one of the founder members of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent. Her academic interests centre on the constitution of subjectivity as racialised and gendered, psychoanalysis, black feminism, experience as a site of knowing and knowledge production, social policy and welfare practice, psychodynamics of organisational process, multiculture and formations of national belonging.
Raju Rage is an interdisciplinary artist who is proactive about using art, education and activism to forge creative survival. primarily using their non-conforming body as a vehicle of embodied knowledge; they aim to bridge the gap between dis/connected bodies, theory and practice, text and the body and aesthetics and the political substance. They work in performance, sculpture, soundscapes and moving image, focusing on techniques of resistance and utilising everyday objects and everyday life experiences in communicating narratives around gender, race and culture. They investigate history, memory and trauma, with an emphasis on colonial legacy, its continuation and impact on the body and contemporary diasporan identity. Rage has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as ICA, Iniva, Autograph, 198 Contemporary, William Morris Gallery, Edinburgh Artists’ Moving Image Festival, Framer Framed, nGbK as well as being a published writer, radical educator and co-founder of London based arts collective Collective Creativity. www.rajurage.com
