Apocalypse Now: Thinking about Ruins and Radiation
Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester
Wednesday 28 November 2012, 2-5pm, free
A study session organised by me (Dr Paul Dobraszczyk) exploring contemporary perceptions of ruin that also engage with the current exhibition of works by Jane & Louise Wilson at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester.
To book a free place tel: 0161 275 7450 or call in at the reception desk at the Whitworth Art Gallery
Speakers and topics will include:
Jane & Louise Wilson (artists)
Chernobyl, Pripyat and the death of the city Dr Paul Dobraszczyk (University of Manchester)
Why ruins? Why now? Professor Tim Edensor (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Getting a grip on time slip: decay fetishism in an age of austerity Dr Bradley Garrett (University of Oxford)
On the psychoanalysis of ruins Dr Dylan Trigg (Husserl Archives, École Normale Supérieure)
Ruins and radiation Dr Jeff Hughes (University of Manchester)
Pripyat from the terrace of the former Pollissa hotel
Since 9/11, ruins have come to occupy a central place in visual culture: as images of the aftermath of acts of terrorism or the resulting war on terror; the ruin of the housing market after the recent financial crisis; or a post-apocalyptic obsession in cinema. This session will examine contemporary notions of ruin and ruination, engaging directly with an exhibition of photographs and films of the ruined Chernobyl site by Jane and Louise Wilson, and calling on a diverse range of ruin obsessives from the fields of philosophy, science, cultural geography, art, and architectural history. Signifiers of both civilisation and barbarism, creativity and destruction, ruins call into question the solid, the enduring and the permanent, representing as they do either the end of the old or the beginning of something new. We seek to learn from this challenge presented by ruins, whether they be created by the constructive but often brutal processes of modernisation, or their opposites – the forces of destruction, both natural and unnatural, real or imagined.
Abandoned funfair in Pripyat