Stuart Hall Library Research Network Meeting Ingrid Pollard and Olumide Popoola

The Stuart Hall Library Research Network is a forum for postgraduate researchers to introduce an aspect of their work, followed by a discussion.

Ingrid Pollard: The Im/Possibility of Photographing an Absence.

Ingrid Pollard is a British artist and Photographer.

Research questions:
How do we render the invisible through photographic images and form?
How are ideas of haunting and ghosting articulated through photography and landscape?
The presentation explores the im/possibility of recording a ‘presence’ and the ‘sense of an absence’ through photography; through examination of historic photographic images and my own visual practice. To address various statements:
does there need to have been a human presence at the site, particularly historic moment for their correspondingly to be a sense of an absence?
Can the sensible presence also be tied to a particular event, landscape, or can memory be ascribed to a site rather than in the divisional.

Primary texts: Laura Marks: The Skin of Film, Olu Oguibe; the Substance of the Images, Ulrich Bear: Spectral Evidence.

Olumide Popoola: Fishing for Naija – Border-crossing as framework for language and literary form.

Olumide Popoola is a Nigerian-German novelist, poet, playwright and performer. This presentation will discuss how conceptual ideas of border-crossing can give rise to original means of storytelling, by giving a brief overview of a practice-based PhD project in creative writing at the University of East London.

The novel intervenes into current themes of African-Diasporic literature that deals with dual- or multi-heritage, by de-contextualizing Yoruba pronouns within the English text, questioning the trope of a fixed African (or Nigerian) tradition. It marries contemporary concepts of gender with Yoruba mythology, the trickster god Eshu in particular, and questions how both thinking and language need to expand, to carry theoretical understanding and arrive on new ground.

The Stuart Hall Library Research Network is a meeting place for discussion of practice-based or more conventional forms of research that may include: curatorial practice; visual arts; global art; film and media; cultural studies; cultural activism; postcolonial studies; literary studies, including criticism and theory. We are also looking for exciting and engaging ways of uncovering research, presenting in a variety of forms. This might include individual presentations, presentations in pairs, in conversation/dialogue with each other, or presenting a group project.

If you are interested in introducing your research to an informal, engaged audience, please email a 250 word summary of your intended presentation to Sonia Hope, Library Manager at library@iniva.org