Cutting Edge Collage Conference
At the very end of September 2021 I finally got the chance to go home to Ireland after almost two years 'stranded’ in a London in and out of lockdowns. Despite the holiday spirit, I travelled laptop in tow, because my second major conference with the Paul Mellon Centre was kicking off the Autumn term on the first week of October.
Cutting Edge: Collage in Britain, 1945 to Now was originally scheduled to run in Tate Britain in 2020 but was reimagined as a two-week digital programme, eventually running from 5 to 14 October 2021. A partnership between the PMC and Tate, the conference aimed to offer critical and creative perspectives different aspects of collage, and on its contribution to modern and contemporary British visual culture.
The conference was split into two parts. The first week was a series of four panels hosted as Zoom Webinars, with artist presentations and keynotes on the Tuesday and Thursday and four academic papers each on the Wednesday and Friday. For the second week, we hosted a pair of online workshops with papers from early career researchers in a more immersive style with 50 live participants in a Zoom meeting with break-out rooms for in-depth discussions.
As always, the best part of Paul Mellon Centre conferences is the opportunity to work with artists. This time I had the honour of hosting presentations by renowned filmmaker Judah Attille and Turner Prize winning artist Elizabeth Price, both reflecting on the wider framing of collage in their practice of linear or moving image artwork.
Two particular moments stood out for me. The first was the screening of ‘A Considered Cut’ by the Dreaming Rivers Found Footage 2021 (DRFF2021) Project, led by Judah. The full work is available to view on the PMC website until Oct 2023 and does a far better job at explaining itself than I could. A short version is to say that Judah invited a multi-disciplinary group of artists and makers to mark sections of a 13mm original copy of her seminal work Dreaming Rivers (1988), in a way drawing inspiration from not/nowhere found footage workshops. The result was a mesmerising visual journey through which the viewer could feel the generosity of process and collagic collaboration. What really struck me though in the conversation that followed was the reimagining of the idea of archive and how to ‘preserve’ material and that perhaps by marking or ‘damaging’ objects that you imbue a sense of care or value in them. Still caught on that one, but very excited to see the next iteration of the project.
The second highlight was the fourth session on Friday 8 October, Collage Politics and Punk Practices, an all-female panel talking about an all-female pantheon of ground-breaking artists. The panel included talks on Chila Kumari Burman, Linder and Sonia Boyce with a heavy name check on Judah too, all the more significant to have Chila and Linder in the audience (though I can only imagine how strange it must be to hear a paper about yourself). Though only tinkering away in the dark mute background of Zoom, it felt a real privilege to be a part of.
The videos are far too long to be linking here, so you can check them out on the PMC YouTube channel. I leave you instead with a Pondering Punk Panel.
Thanks to the co-conveners, Sarah Turner of the PMC, Elena Crippa at Tate and Rosie Ram from the Royal College of Arts for having me along on this escapade and to Dani Convey for rounding out the PMC event hub and supporting on the conference, even on her sick days!