A review and reflection upon ‘knowledge
is never neutral’ by The Strickland
Distribution – the series of projects
organised with Transmission that took
place over the last year within and
outside the gallery space.

The projects included a public walk,
co-research inquiry, facilitated
workshops, film screenings, reading and
discussion groups, publication launches.
Taken together, these projects set out to
explore the circumstances that surround
cultural and knowledge production. In
doing so, Strickland Distribution sought
to situate this production within a wider
set of social and historical relations, and
to self-examine our practices across these
relations.

This is a chance to review the projects,
informally, individually and collectively,
with Strickland Distribution. We welcome
project participants, and all those with
an interest in the projects to discuss
and reconsider these projects, how
the various elements developed, how
they inter-related, and what they might
potentially offer forthcoming projects.

This event was formally listed as Economy of Appearances 31st May

Strickland Distribution

knowledge is never neutral is a series of projects organised by The
Strickland Distribution taking place from September 2012 to June 2013
within and outside the gallery space. Taken together, these projects set out
to explore the circumstances that surround cultural and knowledge
production. We look to situate this production within a wider set of social
and historical relations, and to reflect on our practices across these
relations. We invite you to join us in these processes.

Creating spaces for participatory dialogue – for listening and being
listened to – the projects include a public walk, co-research inquiry,
facilitated workshops, film screenings, reading and discussion groups,
publication launches and the ongoing documentation and reconsideration
of outcomes deriving from these projects.

knowledge is never neutral seeks to foreground histories-frombelow,
collective learning, and constitutive forms of collaborative practice.
In doing so, we explore existing spaces of learning and research for their
potential for liberatory education and research praxis. By means of
renewed circulation, we will explore the relevance and potential of recent
histories of radical forms of (non)-institutionalised inquiry and
communication for our contemporary situation. We aim to develop a
practice of dialogue and co-research across different constituencies of
political struggle, and to forge social relations and links for future practice.

At a time where we are again made aware of the contestation over how
to narrate the (recent) past – of attempts to erase particular histories and
knowledge and to ‘rewrite’ official archives and ways of remembering – we
support the necessity to learn from and engage with past struggles here
and elsewhere, asking: What and how can we learn from these?
In the specific lexicon of artist-run/ artist-led/ self-organised practice, this
also calls on us to explore the implications for a diversity of cultural
expression, and group autonomy through freedom of association and
communication. Seeking to explore the potential for present-day
translations of ‘co-research’ and politically committed inquiries, we are
asking: What kinds of methodologies can, today, produce emancipatory
knowledge?

The projects will often involve a collective exploration of position
taking and position making both within and beyond the arts. This
approach acknowledges that contradictions and irresolvable tensions can,
often structurally, exist and endure, and that they are themselves a potent
focus for study. This exploration will enable (self)-reflection on the
production and circulation of knowledge, emphasising the contingent
nature of artistic thought, practice and representation within a broader set
of power-filled dynamics.

knowledge is never neutral includes:
-A public walk/discussion incorporating Glasgow’s proposed new ‘cultural quarter’ and canal development, combining critical practices of urban geography with collective urban exploration.
-A series of screenings/ readings/ discussions of ‘Autonomous’ films which explore the meaning and diversity of the movement from the mid-1960s onwards.
-A series of readings/ discussions on contemporary possibilities for co-research and DIY-inquiry, leading to a co-research project which investigates the conditions of cultural labour.
-Publication launches and workshops to explore histories-from-below: an approach that attends to subjects, forms of agency, struggles and areas often omitted from official historical studies.
-A series of workshops exploring curatorial practices elsewhere in Europe which have undertaken critical appraisals of ‘competitive cultural nationalism’, especially countries similarly undergoing nationalist  assertions of identity.

The Strickland Distribution is an artist-run group supporting the
development of independent research in art-related and non-institutional
practices. Art-related includes research forms that directly implement artistic
practice as a means of research method. Non-institutional includes forms of
grass-roots histories, social enquiries and projects developed outside of
academic frameworks and by groups and individuals normally excluded
from such environments. The Strickland Distribution operates in the public
sphere, seeking to stimulate and contribute to public education, discourse
and debate around the topics and themes addressed through its projects.

For further information, contact@strickdistro.org
or http://strickdistro.org

Key dates
15 September 2012
Austerity Urbanism: A Walk Through the Fictional City – public walk
 

16 October 2012
Reading group on Co-research and alternative
frameworks for enquiries
 

5, 12 December 2012 and 9, 16 January 2013
Autonomy screening events
 

24 November 2012
All Knees and Elbows public event and launch
 

27 November 2012
Co-research project: Subjectivities and Conditions of Culture as Labour
 

26 February 2013
An Economy of Appearances, Part 1: Workshop, Discussion, Launch
 

9 March 2013
Co-research project: Political Positioning Beyond the Institution? Public Workshop
 

30 March 2013
Competitive cultural nationalism workshop
 

31 May 2013
An Economy of Appearances, Part 2: Workshop, Discussion, Launch

at CCA Cinema

The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose.

                                                                        --Evolutionary Biologist J.B.S. Haldane

Transmission Gallery is delighted to present the first exhibition and talk in the U.K by Goa-based artist Tejal Shah. Working across diverse media such as video, photography, performance, sound, installation, and drawing, Tejal Shah positions her work within a feminist and queer framework. She is currently interested in the intersections of art, ecology and healing in relation to consciousness. Her works also focus on topics of sex, sexuality, body, gender and natureculture while challenging normative social hegemonies.

Between the Waves is the title of Tejal's project which will be exhibited at Transmission during May 2013. Vivid and lush, this 5-channel video installation was first presented at dOCUMENTA (13), 2012. Shah creates sensual, poetic, heterotopic landscapes within which she places subjects that inhabit personal/political metaphors – embodiments of the queer, non-binary, eco-sexual, inter-special, technological, spiritual and scientific, where multiple historic and mythological references are layered, woven and problematised.

Shah’s work becomes practically and publicly political through its situated context and her subject position(s). The making and distribution of radical works such as Between the Waves is a real challenge for artists in India where freedom of speech and creative expression all too often face serious censorship from state and non-state actorsActions of love, sensuality or sexuality being performed by her subjects can be read as assertively political – articulating the right of a subjectivity beyond the scripted gender binary enforced through various expressions of social as well as state repressions in contemporary democracies.

At a talk at the CCA Cinema on Saturday 4^th May at 3pm, Tejal will speak about Phase 2 of Between The Waves, which delves further into theories of queer ecology and georaphy, as well as discussing her practice in relation to the political implications of showing her work, and sharing her current obsessions.

Jennifer Moon

work by Los Angeles based artist, adventurer and revolutionary Jennifer Moon including:

Phoenix Rising, Part 1: This Is Where I Learned Of Love

and Boot Camp For Revolutionaries Workshop - 23rd March 1pm (booking essential)

Sinead Dunn and Sogol Mabadi

Sinéad Dunn is a writer and ceramicist based in Glasgow, her work explores the interstitial relationship between folk crafts, made objects and historicized events as a space for understanding citizenship in (post)colonial situations.

Sogol Mabadi is a performance artist based in Glasgow. Her practice relies entirely on the active participation of the audience member and explores what happens when one lifts the veil and enters an other´s emotional, psychological and psychic landscape. She asks questions of proximity, contact and sense of other.

2-6pm Saturday 30th March, Atrium Space, T103

A half-day, facilitated workshop to consider recent critical explorations by curatorial practices which engage with nationalism(s) in North/Eastern Europe.

We propose an ‘outwardness’ in listening and looking, in locating ourselves within a wider European dynamic. To put that dynamic to the test and our lived relation within it. To gain insight for reflecting on the specificity of our experiences here in Scotland.

We’ll inquire into the work of curators in countries – as differently as Finland, Norway and Estonia - which appear to be undergoing strengthening assertions of national identity formation, perhaps not dissimilar to that which we are currently experiencing in Scotland today.

What we do share with our neighbours are the conditions of neoliberal globalisation, which (while historically contingent) are being presented to us as a ‘national
challenge’. And through this ‘national gaze,’ culture (alongside a renewed ‘search for traditions’) is increasingly being re-purposed as a competitive factor of ‘national economic growth’.

Our explorations in this workshop will not attempt to address Scotland directly, but instead try to create a space in which to reflect on and inform our perhaps similar contemporary experiences to those of our North/Eastern neighbours.

The workshop will consist of a short series of screenings of  international presentations (15-20mins) by Rael Artel, Power Ekroth and Marita Muukkonen each followed by facilitated discussions of the issues arising from them.



2-6pm Saturday 30th March 2013
Atrium space, Trongate 103, Glasgow G1 5HD

Refreshments Provided

knowledge is never neutral is a series of projects organised by The Strickland Distribution taking place from September 2012 to June 2013 within and outside the Transmission Gallery space. Taken together, these projects set out to explore the circumstances that surround cultural and knowledge production. We look to situate this production within a wider set of social and historical relations, and to reflect on our practices across these relations. We invite you to join us in these processes.
Creating spaces for participatory dialogue - for listening and being listened to - the projects include a public walk, co-research inquiry, facilitated work- shops, film screenings, reading and discussion groups, publication launches and the ongoing documentation and reconsideration of outcomes deriving from these projects.

The Strickland Distribution is an artist-run group supporting the development of independent research in art-related and non-institutional practices. Art-related includes research forms that directly implement artistic practice as a means of research method. Non-institution- al includes forms of grass-roots histories, social inquiries and projects developed outside of academic frameworks and by groups and individuals normally excluded from such environments. The Strickland Distribution operates in the public sphere, seeking to stimulate and contribute to public education, discourse and debate around the topics and themes addressed through its projects.

Public Workshop Saturday 9th March 2-6pm

This project (in three parts) is organised by The Strickland Distribution as part of its knowledge is never neutral programme with Transmission Gallery.

The project revolves around cultural and knowledge workers concerned with understanding more about our working conditions and practices. The project consists of three complementary parts: a reading/ discussion group; a co-research inquiry; a workshop on the inquiry’s findings.

We started from the basis that cultural production – such as visual art, performance, sound – is itself a form of knowledge production.
If knowledge is never neutral, any form of knowledge production and distribution deserves our critical exploration; so as to understand its relation to how economic and social values are assigned, and to understand our own conditions of doing, not least in relation to one another.

As a collective self-inquiry into culture as labour, the co-research project began with a series of discussions based on a short succession of readings. These readings introduced and the discussions explored the themes of research and learning in settings outside of academia or formal arts education. As a group of ten co-researchers we proceeded to conduct a three-month self-inquiry into our own positions and practices as cultural workers. Coming to the end of this exploration, we want to continue some of our inquiries within the context of a larger public workshop.
 

What are our experiences of culture as labour?
How, where and when is what we do work or not-work?
How are these marked by precarity and insecurity?
In what forms do and can we self-organise, co-research and be active subjects in these processes?
What effects do these experiences have on experiencing ourselves and others as embodied subjects?

We are inviting you to come along and take part in a facilitated workshop, jointly exploring these questions and others in a variety of ways.
We are also interested in hearing from you, anonymously, about actual experiences within cultural production of:

- precarity and insecurity and/or
- definitions of work or not-work.

To submit your experiences and for further info about the event: http://tinyurl.com/d3qvl25 

Place: Transmission Gallery, 28 King Street, Glasgow G1 5QP 
Refreshments provided

(non)Workshop and Performance

Second Sight
(non) workshop 12-2pm                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                performance 3-5pm

Saturday 2nd March

Group Show

Group show with work by Scottish based artists Suzanne Dery, Ashanti Harris, Ash Reid, Joe Sloan, Urara Tsuchiya

Slumber Party hosted by Urara Tsuchiya

Resource Room Open Days

Book Launch & Screening

Stuart Gurden launches his publication The Creative Ordeal, produced as part of his exhibition Early Reflections With Reverse Gate (Transmission 2012)

Stuart will also screen a new film: Apple/Mackintosh/Blackwrap/Mylar

Annual General Meeting - all full members are required to attend or to send apologies

Week 1 - Wednesday 5th December 2012, 7pm
The Working Class Goes to Heaven (La classe operaia va in paradiso)
(Elio Petri, 1971, Italy, 125 mins.)
The Working Class Goes to Heaven viscerally depicts the conflicts
between productivity and ‘the refusal of work’, the machine and
the body, production and reproduction, order and desire. “I was a
piecework labourer, I followed the politics of union, I worked for
productivity, I increased output, and now what have I become? I’ve
become a beast, a machine, a nut, a screw, a transmission belt, a pump!”
 

Week 2 - Wednesday 12th December, 7pm
The Suspended Years:
Movements and Political Journeys in Porto Marghera
(Manuela Pellarin, 2009, 49 mins.)
Based on testimonies with militant workers, The Suspended Years charts
the intense series of workers’ struggles that took place in and around
the chemical production plants of Porto Marghera in north eastern Italy
from the mid-1960s until the late 1970s. The movement began in the
factories but rapidly spread far beyond the factory walls to encompass
and question the whole of social life under capitalism.
 

Week 3 - Wednesday 9th January 2013, 7pm
School Without End (Scuola Senza Fine)
(Adriana Monti et al, Italy, 1983, 40 mins.)
School Without End follows a group of housewives who had undertaken
the ‘150 hours’ course, whereby employers conceded to paying for 150
hours of learning activities by employees. The women then continued
their education independently with seminars on literature, the body,
and the image.
 

Week 4 - Wednesday 16th January 2012, 7pm
We Want Roses Too (Vogliamo Anche La Rose)
(Alina Marazzi, Italy, 2007, 84 mins.)
Through archive material and the personal diaries of three women,
We Want Roses Too portrays the change brought on by the feminist
movement in Italy during the 1960s and 1970s. “In this film, I chose
to examine the history of women in Italy from the mid-1960s to the
late 1970s in order to relate it to our current present so charged with
conflicts and contradictions…”

a part of knowledge is never neutral with The Strickland Distribution

www.strickdistro.org