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The University of the Arts Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation is a forum for historical, theoretical and practice-based research in architecture, art, communication, craft and design. Find out more about TrAIN.

• Latest News

  • Announcement

    Two New TrAIN Readers

    In this year’s University of the Arts London promotion round, the TrAIN Research Centre had two successes. TrAIN Senior Research Fellows, Dr Michael Asbury and Dr Yuko Kikuchi, were each promoted to Reader. Last year another core member, Sutapa Biswas, was promoted to Reader, and TrAIN has now three Readers, all promoted while they were at TrAIN. Both Michael and Yuko completed their doctorate at the University (previously the London Institute), became post-doc Research Fellows and now Readers. Congratulations to both Michael and Yuko!

  • Introduction

    Bettina Pousttchi at TrAIN

    Bettina Pousttchi has recently arrived in London as the second Kunstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral Artist-in-Residence at TrAIN. Pousttchi will be in the UK for six months between January and June 2008, where she will research and develop new work, in her studio at ACAVA London and via participation in TrAIN research seminars and events. The German-Iranian artist studied philosophy, art and film theory in Cologne before attending the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf (studying with Gerhard Merz and Rosemarie Trockel) and the Whitney Independent Studio Programme. She lives in Berlin, where her work is represented by the Buchmann Galerie.

    Pousttchi works in large-format photography and video installation. Her most recent series of work is a sequence of twelve photographs collectively titled Parachutes and based on photographs Pousttchi took during a flight practice in Berlin.

    The helicopters, plans and parachutists in these images are only schematically visible, appearing as diminuative flying objects hurled against reworked and overdrawn skyscapes. The series addresses the assertion of state authority over territory, and continues an interest in non-places that is evident in photographic series such as Take Off (2005) and the video installation Landing (2006).

  • Update

    LOCATION: the Museum, the Academy and the Studio

    Deborah Cherry and Sutapa Biswas of TrAIN are convening a panel entitled Monuments and Memorials for LOCATION: the Museum, the Academy and the Studiothe Association of Art Historians Annual Conference, to be held this year at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, London, 2-4 April 2008.

    The booking deadline for conference tickets is 22 February 2008 Please visit the AAH website for details.

  • Report

    Tensions & Flows - DADN Symposium at the V&A, London 28-29 September 2007

    The 22 contributors to the symposium came from, or represented, different parts of the African diaspora, including Kwala-Zulu Natal (South Africa) Dakar and Saint Louis du Sénégal (Senegal) Bamako (Mali), Bahia (Brazil), Belgium, Britain, the Democratic Republic of Congo, France, Germany, Jamaica, Trinidad, Switzerland and the United States. They were theorists, curators, stylists, fashion designers, historians, established academics, fashion industry specialists and Ph.D candidates.

    In a detailed report of the symposium, Christopher Breward (V&A) noted that the contributors demonstrated eloquently both the interdisciplinary nature of the subject, and the recovery of agency. He congratulated Carol Tulloch and all those involved for having ‘pulled the subject out of the shadows within dress history to emerge as a vibrant established field in its own right’.

    Traditions, modernity and authenticity were thrown into question throughout, particularly in terms of studies on various parts of Africa. Papers provided complex alternatives to a closed history and closed sense of African dress and textiles. Speakers drew attention to the coexistence of traditional dress and different forms of modernity (Anitra Nettleton, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg); noted a need for more detailed histories of diasporic forms (John Picton, SOAS); and outlined the way people move in and out from the centre to the periphery, and back again, a more reflexive understanding of diasporic movement (Leslie Rabine, University of California at Davis).

    Papers on the issue of place and performance encouraged the need to think across boundaries and disciplines, and revealed an interest in models of identity constructed by the archive, emphasizing its importance in this field of study, as well as its fragility. This focus continued within papers on the role of museums and galleries, which addressed the representation of African diaspora dress in archives and exhibition culture. Nicola Stylianou (TrAIN) discussed the lack of objects in the V&A in relation to the museum’s imperial history – an instance ‘where the museum acts as a block rather than a conduit for the flow of diasporic articles’; the Couture Communes workshop project (Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart, 2006) was cited as a model that enabled critical thinking about African diaspora dress and production.

    Styling, photography, fashion installations and textile design were discussed as new directions for thinking about the different forms of contemporary expression of dress and the black self. Christopher Breward (V&A) discussed the notion of doubling, a continual negotiation that is part of the diasporic experience and one that is particularly marked through dress. This emphasis was continued through Van Dyk Lewis’ (Cornell, New York) discussion of the trauma of black fashion.

    Summing up the symposium, Breward noted that the use of terms such as ‘blockage, reversal, looping back and knotting have been about stopping flows’. This then is a reminder that ‘the movement of people, the movement of objects, and the movement of ideas are not always so fluid, and not always so unimpeded’. To this end, all the papers demonstrated ‘the benefits of both grounded, focused studies and theoretically informed reflexiveness’ and showed ‘how work in this field needs to be inventive in its sources and show courage in its consideration of the politics of power and identity’. He petitioned that future work think about comparative aspects – how far can the experiences and artifacts of one diaspora be conflated or contrasted with those of another? How do the they fit in with a much broader histories of migration and exchange?

  • Opportunity

    TrAIN/Schloss Balmoral Research Student Residencies

    In collaboration with Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral Germany, TrAIN is offering a four-week student artist-in-residence award. The award includes a private studio and accommodation at the Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral. Founded in 1995, this is an established centre for international artists-in-residence, situated close to Bad Ems, an ancient spa town in the German Rhineland.

    The TrAIN-Schloss Balmoral Residency will culminate in an Open Studio, and aims to offer a supportive environment with opportunities for discussion and development. It is open to applications from practice-based students currently enrolled for a research degree in any UAL College. Dates for the residency are 11th March – 8th April 2008. The deadline is Friday 18th January 2008.

    For further information and an application form please use the Contact area of this website.

• People

  • 

    Jenny Lu

    Current PhD

    My research focuses on the notion of the ‘being not at home’ in relation to identity confusion, post-colonial society and artistic practice. Exploring Sigmund Freud’s concept of the ‘uncanny’ (unheimlich), I argue that in contemporary society, obtaining the feeling of ‘being at home’ is impossible, and the ‘unheimlich’ is therefore a common experience.
    Find out more about Jenny Lu

  • To find out more about the people involved with TrAIN click here.

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© 2007 TrAIN