Ukrainian Dispatches: An Academic’s Account of Fleeing Ukraine

 

Photo used with permission: CC Abel Polese

Over the weekend I have been in contact with a researcher who subscribes to the same list as myself (critical geography). Abel Polese is an academic at Dublin City University and has been escaping the Russian war in Ukraine. He managed to get his family (and non-human animals) out of the country. He has written accounts of his journey on the (Creative Commons) website Global Voices. Abel said he was happy for me to share his journals with you on my blog. I thought you might be interested in reading about it here, since he is a fellow academic. I would just like to add, the family are now all safe…

1 Fleeing Kyiv with Family and Pets (3 March 2022)

2 The Border (4 March 2022)

3 Angels (5 March 2022)

If anyone would like to donate some money to the Ukraine conflict from the UK, you can go to the Disasters Emergency Committee website here: DEC

From Ivory Towers to Passionflowers: Tina Richardson Interviews Fenella Brandenburg

 

My interview with Fenella Brandenburg coincides with her move from academia into the world of a full-time writer-author. Here we talk conference storm-outs, academic superegos, psychogeography and passion projects. I hope you enjoy our dialogue: as C. S. Lewis said ‘Fenella is on the move’!

I find Dr. Brandenburg sitting - not coincidentally, I’m sure – in the Islington café she insisted we meet in, called ‘Tina, We Salute You’ (her little psychogeographic joke). When she told me we were meeting here, I honestly thought she was making up the name. I’ve included the photo above to prove its existence.

Dr. Brandenburg, who was promoted to Reader just before her retirement from academia (it turns out this was her way of saying ‘f**k you’ to Higher Education), looks very unlike the person I saw last at the 2017 4WCOP Psychogeography Conference. It transpires she was wearing a white bobbed wig and was dressing like a ‘bag lady’ in order to maintain her disguise. It seems there is now no reason to keep up the pretence. I note that she actually has somewhat Titian hair (not unlike my own) and is a zappy dresser: not a fleece or ankle sock in sight!

Brandenburg, who recently moved from somewhere in the North of England (she seems reluctant to say where, for some unknown reason – although the academic rumour mill says it is related to reports of stalking made by another academic) to Islington to, as she says “Be with my peoples”. The pressing questions are ‘why her move from academia?’ and ‘what was the fallout of 4WCOP?’. Here is the transcript of our interview in full and unedited:

TINA: Thank you for meeting me, Fenella. I love the choice of venue. How have things been since you left academia a month ago and how did the university feel about being snubbed when you resigned the day of receiving your readership?

FENELLA: Well, it had been a long time coming, the Readership, and I had been overlooked on a number of occasions. I actually only hung on in HE for that long so that I could resign when I finally received it. You know the adage ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’, well the ‘cold’ was about 5 years of torture, but was well worth it. The adage turns out to be true, but for all the reasons that are the opposite of what is implied by the adage, if one wants to get semantic about it. That, and also I heard rumours that that Bollinger bloke was moving to my university, and I just wasn’t up to having to deal with his ‘advances’ any more.

T: I’d like to talk about David Bollinger later, if that’s alright with you, but for the moment, what have you been doing, since you left?

F: Well, I very speedily set up a local writing group. I plan to take the same approach that the postmodern university does to how it ‘tasks’ its own academics. This is oriented around what HE calls the Work Load Model (WLM), however I will be calling my model of work allocation applied to the members of my fiction writing group the WLF, The Work Load Fiction. I think this will work out well for all concerned and it allows me to take a firm hold on what is happening and provide a hypodermic approach to the management of the group (for those of you not familiar with the term it comes from communications theory, it means top down and coming from above). People love being micromanaged, despite their protestations to the contrary.

T: So what do you see as being wrong with academic workload being managed by those who are clearly qualified enough to be managers?

F: The WLM epitomises the postmodern university par excellence. It is the moment where the university’s bureaucratic superego reaches its full potential in the daily control of its academics. For Freud, the superego represents all authority figures (initially the Father), but eventually the part of the individual that negotiates with the id (the basic instincts), producing the ego, the aspect of the individual that is presented to the world. On the level of power, say a Foucauldian model of power, if you will, this is tantamount to a kind of self-surveillance. I am absolutely behind the WLM and have no problem in bringing it into the creative sphere, in this case fiction writing. Creative people can get completely out of control, there is no absolute structure for them to adhere to, and they must be constrained at all costs.

T: Thank you, Fenella. I’m not sure everyone would agree with you there, but I appreciate your candour. Can I ask you: Why the move to creative writing?

F: Well, I’d met my 5 year plan: to leave at the point of my Readership. Let me just say, plans are incredibly important: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 year plans are not fiction at all, whatever academics say. They help keep you on track and ensure you meet targets, which are not at all unreasonable despite what you may read in regard to those adversaries of HE research-related policy. In regard to my move: I’m a well-published academic (as you know, your own publishing company has published some of my work on 'presupposed actualization'). I’m already an author. Really, how hard can it be?

T: Can we talk about psychogeography? What are you currently working on in that field and do you still consider yourself a psychogeographer?

F: Well, I am currently working on a project on abandoned shopping centres in the US. Partially inspired by your research on the Trafford Centre. I am also looking at a rural space, the Black Forest national park in Baden-Wűrrttemberg. As you know, I was born near there and I inherited my family cabin in the area. I am however, somewhat offended by your second question: that I may no longer consider myself a psychogeographer. I appreciate the damage done by the paper Bollinger and I delivered at 4WCOP 2017, but I feel we more than made up for that in our paper based on Ballard’s Concrete Island in 2019.

T: Talking about David Bollinger: can I ask you some questions about some of the gossip about where you and he were located. During 2016-2020 rumours abounded about where you were both working. I heard that Bollinger had an office in the Psychology Department at Huddersfield at one time. But managers in that school denied that he even existed, despite him clearly having a desk and a label on the door. One of the academics - a friend of mine, Dr. Alex Bridger - said he knew Bollinger was there as he saw his coat over the back of the chair. That, and he actually shared an office with him. I also heard that you had a temporary office in the old Maltings building, that once was the Geography Department at the University of Leeds, but has now been demolished. You also, purportedly, had an office in the School of Design at one point. But then, I also heard that you were popping up in online Zoom meetings at MMU in the early days of Covid.

F: I cannot vouch for Bollinger. You could ask Charlotte Tilbury, his wife. She’s a counsellor and also writes for The Guardian, I believe (good luck with her psychoanalysing that miscreant, is all I can say!). However, I can confirm that I did work at Leeds during the period you mention, and I will supply proof of that, which you can include on your blog. [included above]

T: Thank you for your clarification of the rumours, Fenella. Can I just ask one more question before we end the interview, for our psychogeographic audience? Where do you see psychogeography going?

F: Well, as you know, you very arrogantly labelled the current phase of psychogeography as ‘The New Psychogeography’ in your own book Walking Inside Out: Contemporary British Psychogeography. I have to say, however reluctantly, that I am more on the same page as Bollinger with this: psychogeography is reaching its zenith inasmuch as it is now all about its own undoing and negation. This is best summed up by an urban-walking colleague of mine, who will remain nameless, who said, when I asked him the question ‘Why did the psychogeographer cross the road?: ‘I’ve no idea why the psychogeographer crossed the road, but I bet when they got there they found Iain Sinclair had already written about it’!

T: Thank you so much for your time, Fenella.

Of Revolutionary Dogs and Radical Knitwear: The University Strikes (Part 1)

 

This week, on the 1st to 3rd of December, the UK University and College Union (UCU)  strikes took place. We, that is human and non-human animals, were on the picket line representing all university teaching staff in our demands to university leaders and management to improve our working conditions. You can find out about the UCU Four Fights protest here.

I was out in Manchester with my colleagues, and I did my best to get as many photos from different picket lines as I could (you can see these at the end of this post), but this post is a light-hearted one about the gorgeous bobbins I met during the strike (and their lovely human-animal carers), along with some enchanting knitwear. I plan to do a follow-up post on the banners I photographed, and the other groups that supported us.

 

I've been on university picket lines before and, anticipating meeting some revolutionary dogs, I took my gloves along so that I could stroke them (I'm allergic). Included above is a selection of the lovely bobbins. There were also revolutionary babies, but one has to get one's priorities right. There was also some novel knitwear. It's great that people put so much energy into making stuff for the strike: banners, armbands, and so on. The first image is from the picket line at the Faculty of Arts at The University of Manchester, first thing on Weds 1st, next to that Umit is sporting a fabulous armband knitted by a friend.

I quite like the branded union knitted hats. Quite a few people had the pink ones. Below, while this isn't knitwear, someone had come across a UCU mask somewhere and, on the right, Kathy (our very own union rep and one of the supervisors on the picket lines) is wearing some super knitted gloves.

It was great to meet so many people and all the folks featured here were happy to allow me to use their photos for my blog (sorry all your names aren't featured). The next post will be about those supporting the strikes who were from outside the university - both local and national organisations - and of course, the fabulous students who supported us too, who were remarkable and really lifted our spirits with their music and cakeage!

The following images are from a variety of Manchester-based picket lines, with a note of where they were located:

University of Manchester, Faculty of Arts

University of Manchester, The Queen's Arch

Manchester Metropolitan University, Students Support Outside the Righton Building

Manchester Metropolitan University, Moi Outside The Cavendish Building

Manchester Metropolitan University, The Geoffrey Manton Building

Royal Northern College of Music

The Rozzers (not picketing, but keeping an eye on any potential seditious behaviour)...

...near the Business School, Manchester Metropolitan University

 

Psychogeography News - September 2021

 

Hello All. I hope you had a good summer. Here’s September’s contribution to psychogeography related news. I apologies for it being a bit thin on the ground this month (for want of a better psychogeography pun). Thanks, Tina

Psychogeography and Walking

The RIBA Journal recently had an article about psychogeography feature in it: ‘Psychogeography allows us to explore the sensory city’ by Tszwai So. If you haven’t come across it before, the Walk Listen Create website advertises lots of events around the world. Also, see Andy Howlett's Paradise Lost event on 26th September: cinema screening and Q&A.

Cartography

There’s a lovely map from Stockport’s Gigantic Leap Frog Art Trail - available here - which took place in July. The International Conference of Cartography and Map Design is taking place on September 27 and 28 in Turkey: you can find out all about it here.

Architecture

This article in The Guardian looks at, would you believe, mafia architecture (who knew that was a thing). And, finally, this interesting and lengthy Archinect article (including some good images form the book), looks at Reyner Banham’s book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies.

Discovering Lockdown Modernism in the North

Leeds Merrion Centre Mural by Eric Taylor

Guest post by Lisa Brown

Here Lisa talks about her interest in modernist art and architecture and the discoveries her and a friend made during the last year. You can get a copy of Lisa's book here: Post War Public Art.

I have always loved to take photographs and it’s something that I would normally do when travelling so I had grand plans of the things I might see on the trip to Japan that I had arranged for April 2020. So when lockdown began and the world shrunk, I started exploring my local area on foot as I found it was the only time I had the opportunity for any real peace and to escape household jobs that were otherwise difficult to ignore.

A friend in Manchester suggested we started photographing the empty streets of our respective localities and sharing them on Instagram. But after this mini project came to an end, I found that I missed the distraction that it had provided so I continued my local explorations, and being interested in mid-century architecture I began to walk further in order to seek it out.

Over time I realised I had built up quite a collection of photographs, not just of the buildings themselves but of the public art that often accompanies architecture from this period.

I like how accessible public art is and its egalitarian properties. Art works in a gallery are by their nature, even in normal times, restricted. The viewer has to make a conscious effort to see the art. And even the most dedicated art lover has been denied access to galleries for much of the last 18 months.

The post war period witnessed an abundance of public art; perhaps it was the influence of the Festival of Britain or just a more general appetite from the architectural community for the commissioning of public works to compliment the built environment.

Rombold the Giant, Keighley by John Bridgeman

Probably my first encounter with a piece of public art was the sculpture of Rombold the Giant in Keighley. He has stood proud in the town centre since 1968 and I have fond memories of him from shopping with my mum as a small child; always fascinated by the story of the giant and his boulder tossing antics.

The easing of lockdown meant I was able to travel further afield and add extra pieces to my impromptu collection. So, the Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee and The Three Tuns mural from Coventry joined pieces from Yorkshire.

Apollo Pavillion at Peterlee by Victor Pasmore

Three Tuns Mural, Coventry by William Mitchell

After many months of pottering and helping put together a photographic collection with Bill Ayres and Simon James Hadfield, I had the idea of collating my images in a similar way.

So, thanks to The Modernist Society, Rombold is accompanied on a perambulation by 18 other works; ordered from nearest to farthest from my home in North Leeds, in a little photo-book.

How to (de)Construct a Place Setting in Three Easy Steps

1 - Define a place setting.

What is a ‘place setting’: the setting of a place, to set a place? The opposite of ‘to set’: un-set…unsettle. A place for whom/what? A set placing. A place for a subject. A setting of a scene. To set the scene for the subject of the place.

1 place /plays/ n 1a physical environment; a space 1b physical surroundings; atmosphere 2a an indefinite region or expanse; an area…4 a particular part of a surface or body; a spot…5b an important or valued position…7a a proper or designated niche…8a an available seat…8c PLACE SETTING

2 place vt 1 to distribute in an orderly manner; arrange 2a to put in, direct to, or assign to a particular place…2c to put in a particular state 3 to appoint to a position…5a to assign to a position in a series or category; rank 7 to put, lay…

3 setting /’seting/ n 1 the manner, position, or direction in which something (e.g. a dial) is set 3a the background, surroundings…5 PLACE SETTING

2 - Ascertain the limits of the place setting.

“How is it possible to determine, in such a situation, what truly belongs to the inside and what does not?" (Derrida 1987: 138).
The place setting exists as a singularity in space and time: on the spatial plane it exists on a surface without clearly delineated edges, and temporally it is unclear at which point the place setting becomes itself, or when it is no longer that of which it is known in regards to assembly/disassembly.

Somebody puts together the place setting. It could be the diner, it could be the cook, it could be the silver service waitress/waiter . . . it could be you. A number of possible people construct it. The placemat, cutlery, glasses, plates are laid out by following certain cultural conventions. The dining paraphernalia is placed on a surface, a table. Some of the items may rest on the placemat, if there is one, and some will not, for instance the glasses do not, although they too can sometimes sit on their own object, a coaster.

Where is the edge of the place setting? If you were to draw around the limits of the place setting you would quite probably draw around almost every single separate item that makes it up.

The margins are unclear. It appears that the outside of the place setting is also contained within the inside of it, in the fluid space between the items. The outside pours into the inside. What belongs to the place setting and what does not? Does the tablecloth belong to the place setting: the tablecloth could be removed and the place setting could still be considered to exist. What of the table? What could be utilised in the place of a table that would still enable a place setting to be called such: a kitchen counter, a TV dinner tray, a wooden packing crate. How many individual items that make up the place setting need to be removed for it to not be a place setting? Everything but a knife and fork . . . maybe . . .

How significant is the setting of the place setting: could one assemble a place setting on the pavement of a busy street, or in an art gallery? The context of the place setting might mean that a diner could not be present at the scene of the place setting. If it were physically impossible (or dangerous) for a diner to be in attendance, is it still a place setting: could a place setting be set on an airport runway and it still considered to be a place setting. It would certainly be recognisable as one, but how much does the context effect the place setting, inasmuch as it is part of the dining event. On a spectrum of contexts it is difficult to ascertain an absolutely clear point at which a place setting would not be considered to be such.

The place setting, in terms of its existence, comes into and goes out of being surreptitiously. At some point in its manifestation it becomes what is recognised as a ‘place setting’, but its materialisation is gradual and rather furtive. It is carefully assembled piece by piece, comes to rest for a period of time, then is gradually dismantled by the diner and/or an-other: disarranging the original construction. If the place setting was only considered to be a place setting at its most complete (prior to the diner’s arrival, prior to their unpicking of it), its disassembly could be seen as a destructive act. The diner destroys the place setting, like one might destroy a work of art. This could be considered an act of violence.

Considering the place setting to be a ‘place setting’ only when it is whole and complete, allows for it to be described as such even in the absence of a diner. If the place setting is set, but the diner never arrives, the place setting is still a place setting, even if its origins are not so sure. However, at some point, the items making up the place setting will all be removed.

If the place setting is seen as something more nebulous, uncertain in terms of when it begins and ends in time, the diner’s re-arranging of the items that form it, and the removal of those items during the dining process, could also be included in what is recognised as the place setting. But, we still have the issue of a beginning and end, though. Does the place setting begin when the placemat is laid or, maybe, when the first piece of cutlery is set down. Does it end when the final item is removed?

The place setting is a fragile thing.


3 - Ensure the place setting is ready for the diner's arrival.

The place setting awaits a subject. The place setting is calling a subject. The diner is hailed by the place setting, “interpellated” in the Althusserian sense, whether the place setting has their name on it or not, as it might at a formal dinner when written on a card. The place setting has a subject in mind, whether it is a named subject or a generalised other. The type of dinner will dictate, to a large degree, certain characteristics in the diner: it may dictate their class, wealth or social status; their associations with other diners (relative, friend, business associate); their membership of a certain group. All these qualities define the event, the place setting, and the subject. Therefore the place setting holds certain notions about the subject before they arrive at the dining table.

At a formal dinner the place setting exists for the sole purpose of a subject to be sat at it, and for that subject to utilise it within a given framework. It is an object requiring a subject to fulfil its purpose. The place setting anticipates an always already subject. In this sense the subject comes before the place setting, they exist before the place is set, as a knowable, expected attendee of the dinner. But, does the subject exist as a diner before the place setting is set? If the place setting is a one-time-only event, it is possible the subject only exists as a diner at the point they sit down at the table. If this is the case, then the place setting comes before the dining subject.

It appears that the tendrils of the place setting spread temporally in both directions. It forms a nexus which connect a past and future subject in the singularity of an event. This event, operating around the hub of the place setting, is also contingent in the changing of the subject. The subject will have been altered by the event and will not be the same subject that sat at the place setting at the beginning of dinner. Conversations might have taken place, dialogue exchanged, the subject’s psyche could be transformed, however minutely.

The place setting, as an assembly, is also part of the greater assembly which is the dining event. This could be considered to be like the Deleuzo-Guattarian “assemblage” which comes together and then disassembles. If it were considered in these terms, we could not separate the subject from the event, the subject does not attend the event they are part of the event. The place setting and the diner would be intrinsically linked, because they make up the processual dining experience.

The place setting retains the history of the event. Before the final items are removed, what remains of the place setting contains a trace of the event that has just taken place. The place setting is a recording device for the event as it is for the particular individual subject as diner. How the place setting is left at the point the diner leaves the table is an audit trail for the actions of the subject during their dinner party. If the recording could be played back the subject’s steps could be retraced. The used place setting, at the moment the diner leaves and prior to the point it is finally removed by the attending staff, alludes to an absence. The dining subject leaves their signature (their autobiography), in the rumpled silk placemat, in the not-quite-finished glass of vintage port, in the highly-polished unused silver dessert spoon. Disorder replaces order. But this disorder is telling. It speaks of a past, of an attendance.

Each individual diner will leave their history behind on the table: an archive of the event left behind in their wake. The dining subject has left their mark. Their absence leaves a sign of a past presence. ‘Elvis has left the building’ but he still exists in the discarded crumpled gig programme and trampled cigarette butts of the deserted dance hall.

The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago 1974-79, the Brooklyn Museum

References:
Derrida, Jacques. 1987. The Truth in Painting. Trans. by Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press).

Psychogeography News - August 2021

Hello Folks. Here is my take on psychogeography, and related, news for August. I hope there is something of interest for everyone. Tina

Psychogeography and Walking

This The Guardian article is about an art trail along the coast of Suffolk and Essex (you do need an account to access it though: ‘I will walk 500 miles…’. And a final reminder of 4WCOP – The Fourth World Congress of Psychogeography – which begins on September 3^rd: click here for all the details (and maybe I will see you there).

Cartography

Here is an academic research centre (CAMRI) that takes a look at the artist Cezanne as cartographer, providing a precis of Geographies of the Imagination by Doug Specht. This Wallpaper article is about the new addition to Blue Crow Media’s Modernist maps: a Modern Map of Prague. I would highly recommend their maps. I have the Brutalist London Map (please note, I am not getting paid to advertise this).

Cities

Heart Health is a The Conversation article that takes a look at cities in regard to longevity. And this New Yorker article I found after watching a BBC programme about a really interesting artist (Philip Ashforth Coppola) in New York who is trying to preserve the memory of the original subway art-based architecture of the network before it gets destroyed (I am unable to find the BBC link online, but I saw it on the BBC news channel on 31^st July). And, this The Guardian article is about a hidden London tram line which has just been reopened (as a museum) to the public at Kingsway.

Travel

In The Conversation you can find an article on some unconventional ways to travel if you can’t go away this summer. It includes micro-domestic travel, virtual reality and (believe it or not) psychogeography!

Architecture

And finally, an article in The Guardian about architecture and “modernist myopia”. This article includes discussions on Liverpool, Glasgow, London and Edinburgh.