October

a cryptojudaic reading room

The cryptojudaic reading room at Bath House Gallery launched a new phase in the Judaica project, a line of artistic research led by Ben Spatz. The first decade of the Judaica project (2012–2022) was an open-ended exploration of contemporary diasporic jewish identity through songwork. It adapted a laboratory theatre methodology to the context of university-based artistic research and generated numerous written and audiovisual publications.

cryptojudaica (2023–) marks the shift from an open-ended approach emphasizing diaspora and methodology toward a more focused intention to disentangle jewishness from whiteness and develop new forms of institutionality in apprenticeship to black and indigenous studies. Historically, cryptojews were those forced to undergo conversion who nevertheless continued to practice jewish ways of living in secret. Here the term is used to suggest the complexity of relations between jewishness and whiteness in the present, which may involve a mixture of coerced assimiliation, voluntary complicity, and critical resistance.

Works exhibited:

reading room (chevruta)
participatory installation with desk, books, worksheets

@cryptojudaica
108 randomized Instagram videos on three channels

Postmemory
three-channel looping video installation 

the human ceremony
single-channel video (7:28)

 

Credits:
Nazlıhan Eda Erçin, Lab Team (2017)
Agnieszka Mendel, Lab Team (2017)
Caroline Gatt, Lab Guest (2017)
Lxo Cohen, Research Associate (2022-23)

The DOgS 

1st Oct – 12th Nov

Michael Stewart + Louis Benoit + Moira Benoit + Hyunkook Lee + Katia Sochaczewska 

The DOgS exhibition was a further exploration of the themes from a poetry book of the same name by Michael Stewart; a book about what humans have done to the world and what we have done to ourselves. For the exhibition, Michael Stewart collaborated with Halifax-based artist Louis Benoit to produce visual representations in the spirit of the poems. Drawing is an intuitive activity for Louis, and his aim is to get that energy and immediacy down on the paper; which is why his tools of choice are the pen and ink. Michael came across Louis’ work by chance and instantly knew Louis had to be the illustrator for his new book of poems. In turn, Louis loved Michael’s poetry.

For this presentation The DOgS was also accompanied by a soundscape composed by Katia Sochaczewska and transformed with innovative binaural sound by Hyunkook Lee, accessed via a QR code printed on an accompanying postcard. 

On Friday November 10th Calderdale-based land artist Winston Plowes was invited for a closing event to create his signature mandalas from dog treats on the roof terrace of Sovereign Design House.

Music at the University of Huddersfield has a long and proud history and the university is at the cutting edge of historical performance scholarship; in addition to academia this research takes flight in the act of performance – communicating cultures of sound, time, space and perceptions. This kind of work can change the way we perform music of the past.

This is what the Historical Performance Day was all about; inviting academic audiences and members of the public to interact with aspects of western art-music with which they are unlikely to be familiar.

Two concerts were contextualised by an accessible Q&A with the performers, discussing the research basis of the work shown. Members of the public interacted with performers, asked questions, and otherwise engaged with artists in a way that is rarely encountered at typical formal concerts.

The day included concerts from Four's Company Baroque Chamber Ensemble and The Meiningen Ensemble, and was convened and curated by Dr David Milsom.

In this research talk History PhD researcher Folusho Oladipo discussed her work on what gets excluded by hero narratives in activist histories.

Folusho's research explores the processes of history-making that exclude rather than include, using a case study of the women’s movement in Colonial Nigeria to analyze how, in excluding the contribution of the non-elite the scope of activism is reduced, mirroring the processes in wider society that reinforce hero-making through a system of class hierarchy.

Click here to watch a video of the talk on Youtube.

In 2019 the surviving Tiller Girls, representing many different generations of dancers, met up for a reunion in Blackpool. Alison J Carr went along with Helena Öhman, to record the event and talk to the women. The footage of the event shows glamorous older women, posing, chatting, laughing, negotiating one another, reliving memories, and showing Carr how to pose as a Tiller Girl.

Click here to watch a film of Alison J Carr and Charlotte Goldthorpe in conversation, followed by a screening of 'They Danced as One' live-scored by Rob Bentall

They Danced As One is the resulting film. Black and white archival footage of filmed theatre performances depict Tiller Girl dances giving visual descriptions to pair with the stories. Interposed text highlights their speech. To complete the work, the sound artist Rob Bentall created a sound score that challenges the images by resisting a nostalgic reading.

In her work Carr takes seriously the overlooked labour and lived realities of women who perform sexiness and glamour: showgirls. The artist also invokes the showgirl as an archetype, a complex web of traits and desires that maybe we all want to step into at times. Hyper-visibility and invisibility. What kind of freedom does visibility give? Or what prohibitions?

Accompanying this live-scored film screening Carr was in conversation with Charlotte Goldthorpe drawing on Goldthorpe’s recent archival research exploring how sexuality is viewed by ourselves and others as we age. With a particular focus on fetishist communities, this research asks why we assume a kind of ‘beige respectability’ in older communities? Within her current study, Goldthorpe works alongside rubber and latex enthusiasts over the age of 65 and the Bishopsgate Institute Fetish Archive, drawing on historical collections of rubber and latex fetish, alongside collected oral histories towards developing artefacts and articles as part of a larger portfolio.

Throughout history ghost stories have described the sounds ghosts make, from the rattling of the chains of Jacob Marley, the moaning of the white ladies that roam our great houses to the classic ‘Boo’ of the Scooby Doo spooks.

But do ghosts actually make a sound? History is filled with people who claim to have created inventions to help us ‘hear’ ghosts, they range from the very simple to the highly technical, but how do they work? And do they actually work?

For this special Halloween event held at Huddersfield Art Gallery participants joined Dr Nik Taylor and Ashton Carter to explore the strange world of ghosts, technology and acoustics. Various devices were demonstrated as they explored how sound is made, how to detect spooky goings on and tried their hand at being ghosts and ghostbusters!