Passage
Introduction 2 Agnieszka Studzinska passageยน 4 Alia Syed Eating Grass 16 Heather Phillipson everything SLAPPED and CANDIED and OPENING 28 Shona Illingworth Topologies of Air 32 Kitchen Conversations 44 Contributors 46
The Wapping Project has always been a rite of passage — from commissioned artists to chefs who worked at Wapping Food in the days at the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station. Nobody who has made the journey of working with us in any capacity could claim being unchanged by the experience. The Wapping Project is never static; it avoided solidifying into something that can be easily defined. Conversion Evolution Fluidity Flux Mutability / Passage / Recasting Transfiguration Transformation Transience Transit Transition All these dynamic nouns define our state and ethos. We are obsessed with journeys. Expedition Exploration Flight Journey Migration Move / Passage / Pilgrimage Pursuit Quest Wander Transit Travel Traverse Venture Voyage 2
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We commissioned and produced many works over the years inspired by the dynamics of being, journeys and transformations including Passage, 2013, and Passages, 1996. We are returning to these themes in this volume of new writing at the time of tectonic political shifts. In the aftermath of the European Union membership referendum last year, the whole of the UK, its residents and citizens, are in the state of passage. We are on a journey drifting away. The English Channel (or La Manche as the French call it) somehow managed to stretch and is continuing to expand. Will the Channel Tunnel — the narrow submarine passage providing the only physical link with the continent — keep up with the expansive motion of water and politics above? We are bringing to you three pieces of poetry responding to the theme passage — Agnieszka Studzinska’s passage¹, Alia Syed’s Eating Grass and Heather Phillipson’s everything SLAPPED and CANDIED and OPENING. We are also sharing with you our latest international event series — Kitchen Conversations — that take place from San Francisco through London to Berlin. A text and image work by Shona Illingworth — Topologies of Air — produced in collaboration with law professor and barrister specialising in international law and human rights Nick Grief and Andrew Hoskins, Interdisciplinary Research Professor in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow, completes the volume. This multilayered contribution is a prelude to Shona’s major new art commission she is embarking on with us. Marta Michalowska & Thomas Zanon-Larcher, Directors of The Wapping Project
passageš Agnieszka Studzinska
ďż˝ 4
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noun: passage a section of a written work; paragraph, verse, extract, quotation: What is spoken is never, and in no language, what is said — this sentence of words is snowed in my ear
then
falls
apart
as snow itself [what is spoken is never] a new language in the mouth of a stranger in her always
the strangeness of language
[and in no language] haunted [like] a family house swelling with stories & voices & shadows sheltering [what is said] in walls What happens to those walls when we leave? Let the words sink their roots in the air. Let what is spoken and what is said nestle in the house of language where meaning becomes — [is never]
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This feeling is described by _______ in the following passage.
�� We come across passages that contain _______.
Tunneling through passages to get to the other side.
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The process of moving through
[from one place to another]
somewhere on the way —
crossing —
There are blackbirds in her garden in January winter visitors from Eastern Europe. The are ghosts in her garden. There are ghosts in her house inhibited — detached waiting to be taken. The anatomy of past is chalked. Elsewhere —
There are other ghosts
washed up by the sea — A newspaper headline states: 500 people die at sea, but the story is lost stray — adrift they drifted to the depths, to join the other thousands of skeletons who never made it to Europe — Sailing out of Libya Egyptians, Ethiopians, Somalis, Sudanese travelling through the Mediterranean passage to the shores of Greece —
No pictures of the sinking. No autopsies. No names in columns. No graves. They are whispering out of a world small murmurs like that of the sea
teal-blue even language is weightless in their shadows Truths concealed.
Here is a passage: Truth is the unconcealedness of that which is as something that is. Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur alongside and apart from this truth. When truth sets itself into the work, it appears‌� 1
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1 Heidegger Martin: Poetry, Language, Thought, Harper & Row: 1971 [81]
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The corridor in her grandparent’s house leads to a cellar
a hiding place.
A grandfather with his empty bottles. His lost years in his living. There are footsteps on the stairs hunting family in a shaded wood. She hears an asking of questions. Observes a passage of light sentence the answer. Light is a vital component of every photograph. Light may be natural or artificial but without the appropriate type of light even the most fascinating subjects become inconsequential writes William Henry Fox Talbot in The Pencil of Nature. Subject matter is ’subordinate to the exploration of space and light.’ And so —
in the photograph —
She does not examine the subjects sitting on a balcony quietly awaiting departure. Captured in an afternoon. A grand-daughter leaving or the hand placed on her shoulder. Touching what has already vanished. The space between them like a scaffold. Light rising as if a lattice of fog from a field. They are subordinate. Souvenirs of light.
passage: A French term (pronounced “pahsazh”) for a painting technique characterized by small, intersecting planes of patch-like brushwork: A brushwork of sky & space. Patches of language in colour sinking their roots. Language as an offering. The marigold of letters. A painting in which — You are my dead ancestor. There’s a pillow & a blanket for you. Rest now from your journey. In your homecoming our departure begins.
Notes What is spoken is never, and in no language, what is said — Martin Heidegger Let the words sink their roots in the air — Jacques Dupin
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Fajar morning prayer before sunrise Zuhr mid-afternoon prayer Asr early-evening prayer Maghrib after-sunset prayer Isha night-time prayer
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Eating Grass Alia Syed
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The Mother’s Tale
�a jar �H� Azaan
“Don’t speak…………………….., Listen. Look, even the birds are rejoicing.” “Amma Jaan* how can the Muadhin climb so many stairs when they are so fat? The Maulvies don’t even do the sijda any more. Appa says the generals are forcing the Maulvies to eat platefuls and platefuls of luddoo and, if they can’t eat them, they make the Muadhin eat them.” “Don’t speak. And after prayer, back to sleep, perhaps the angels will send you dreams to guide you through the day.” “The Muadhin hasn’t ascended the staircase to the minaret. They have forgotten to renew the tape recorders and the people are either too fat or too thin to have noticed.” Droplets of water bounce ever increasing with each ablution — ants. Beads scattering across the stone ground. Every one who is any one has left, its just us with the dust balls scattering — or were they running across and away from the oncoming onslaught? The click; the click of the tape recorders; one after the other, click, click, click across the city. Everything is quiet. It took a while to notice. It could have been a question of pronunciation. Enunciation, a very long ‘aaaahhh’ and then another from the neighbouring district, and then the district next to that one; but the ‘aaaaa’ never turned into ‘Allah’, it just augmented and augmented until the sound was unbearable. “It was after that we decided to leave. No one spoke about fujr, the queue didn’t suddenly go down for the afternoon prayer.”
*Amma Jaan — mother dearest
The Sister’s Tale
Zu�R �H� �ASH��G L�NE
They hadn’t always lived alone. The household had shrunk over the years. Each departure leaving the remaining members slightly less secure, but not because of economics. After their father died, they got rid of the cook. Their mother died. Before the eldest sister married, she intimated in hushed tones something about the chauffeur. The youngest daughter left, they got rid of the caretaker. And so, it was just the two of them, two women alone in a beautiful house enclosed within a ten-foot wall. The women were very fastidious — both about their appearance and the appearance of their house.
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Sight was regulated, shapes where continually refashioned. The race was on to find the perfect cloth, one that moulded perfectly around the body. A maid came every day to wash their clothes and clean their house. Houses were getting taller, the population was growing. The two sisters construed that the neighbours who could now see their washing line would also be able to imagine the shape of their bodies. So they asked the maid, if it would be possible, whilst drying their garments, to conceal them by laying them on top of each other. Eventually, permission was granted to leave the country. The two sisters started to make their preparations. They asked the maid to construct a very strong washing line, one that would extend around and upwards towards the top of the house. The maid called all of her daughters to come and help construct the line and wash the clothes. In the city where they lived, it hadn’t rained for five years. On the night that the washing was completed, an unexpected downpour hit the city. That night and the following day the whole city rejoiced. All, except for the sisters, who were found by the maid weeks later, just before the beginning of the month of Muharram.
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The Lover’s Tale
ASR A COUN ��R PO�� �
I dreamt of red wine, red fruit — cliffs; a soaring blue sky and a man who could see the colours. The dream was still with me in the slow build towards midday. I had spent my life listening to ghosts, tending lawns with floral borders. The flies droned, the fan beat a rhythm through the still air. The soft swish of curtains kept the sun at bay. I lay on my bed waiting for the sun to pick a partner. It was midday. I was leaving, even my shadow would not leave a trace. The dust wrote letters on the road, was the wind holding my fate also? My chemise stuck to my back. Two lovers. A strand of hair, salty from the sea air. A red dupputta caught, billowing free from the car window. Their bodies were heavy - they left deep imprints in the sand as they were dragged away. Some stories haunt for reasons other than their own. Secret vows. Did they hold hands? Watch the sea recede, the sun set, the moon rise, when did they take their last breaths? I stopped. I was at the beach. The sun had lost its stranglehold. The breeze billowed around my head. A strand of hair struck my cheek. I tripped, gasped and pulled the salty lash out of my mouth. I had found the story whilst reading a newspaper; it was more of a postscript than anything, no names, a respectable family. It was the quiet dignity that haunted me. Everything had been done correctly, he had found a job, they where leaving. So what had happened? Nothing — nothing ever really happens even when everything is. I was walking along the beach; a moment, a moment I knew nothing of, a moment of passion, purity. The sea, a vast expanse of sky and the pressure of each other’s hands. Of course, they had to leave, finally and forever.
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A Lover’s Tale
�ag�r�b �H� Lam� � t
“Sunset, the drawing down of the sun. A silent prayer before the inky blackness grabs my throat and I breathe.” “And in between?”
“Everything waits with baited breath. Blood loud — Still.” “And after?” “A stained sky. Soft winds across my lips, A chorus shimmered in golden leaves. Will the same ray touch your lips? Lick them, swallow, swallow, Even tastes travel in this moment.”
The Daughter’s Tale
Is�a tH� Da � ce
Sometimes things that have been happening very quietly will suddenly happen loudly. Did they catch us in the end? Maybe, maybe everything was so quiet that even we forgot. Forgetting can be dangerous. Amma Jaan has devised a way of growing grass inside the house under infrared light. We grow it in squares. After Asar, we take the squares with the more established roots outside, so that they can benefit from the half-light, then the moonlight. After Fajar, while the sun is rising and dew forming, we can walk barefoot across our dew kissed squares. We bring them inside before the sun gets too hot, and then turn the infrared lights on from Zuhr until Asar. The sweet smell of grass fills the house in the mid-afternoon heat while we sleep. As things have become loud again, we have taken up twirling. It makes us light. And what goes around comes around.
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Eating Grass was originally written as a script for an allegorical, experimental film under the same title (2003), shot on 16mm, encompassing five stories relating to the times of day allocated for Muslim prayer. Filmed in London, Karachi and Lahore, the film explores the overlap of time, memory and place. The shadows cast by the sun become emotional triggers in the day of a young woman as her present is continually enmeshed within the past and her present love. The title is a reference to a quote, made by president Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan, who in response to India’s exploding of a nuclear device in the early 1970s, promised the Pakistani people that they too would have their own nuclear weapon at all cost, even if it meant “eating grass�.
everything SLAPPED and CANDIED and OPENING Heather Phillipson
Many of us are starting to think with our mouths and what’s welling behind mine is a violent Pink Wafer riding an ooey-gooey dream-tide of floating Chipsticks through an overbite blurting Iced Gems turbulently somewhere between bile slipstream and a shriek. Like an orchestra advancing is how it tastes, like Travelling Toe Pivots like at roller-discos where we crack out stacked boots & finger snacks for a wild time on the rink, like at violin practise, like my gag reflex is hot to trot like a roly-poly come-on when the paunchy teacher pants into my F Holes, “How’s tricks!”
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Where’s the stopper not stopping the clichéd bellow at my pegbox calling on me to recap my existence. That stuff needs to end and let’s start over with, why not, big talks of g-force, micro-scanning the cosmos, outerspatial artefacts, toxic dart frogs, hacking everything recent, the ever-inflaming ethics of promoting DNA mutations, my plushy solar plexus. The violin teacher’s thumbs are on my bridge section, wafer spears up-surging, a beard at my earhole, crushed E numbers storming and screeching, “ATTENTION!” (Applaud the Pink Wafer (dairy-free and definite, even when sopping).) When I vom on the fiddler’s slip-ons it looks and smells a lot like one of us, like deep-fried child’s teeth, like I stuff in bovine hairballs, cat-gut strings, rinkydink semiquavers, knickerbocker glories, kidney stones, the Northern Lights (but the first rule of painting is forget what you know, forget the colours). With his palm on my fingerboard, with an overweight sound, I’m snagged on the Milky Way upstairs and uninstalled in my throat, astronomic and splurting. What can you do with a mouth like mine, if you breathe too near it it gets self-defensive.
Who made the first vomit the prototype the paradigm vomit the dawn of all vomit that splashed us into the snazzy neon sea of bad old days recently updated (hotter&newer in a load of worse ways) with ricocheting pointy death-cylinders and hydraulic robot vacuum cleaners like there’s nothing between us&scrappage? I laugh tenderly, liquidly, feeling like a bit of a sicko a very expert sicko and step back, wearing my face which is the face of a narrator, saying this is a horror story. A horror like gazing into your partner’s eyes over a 2for1 crisp bag at a motorway service station, knowing his sexts are crap and all feelings are treated equally here, that is, bare and fruitless, and you’ll be living through it, the years of pruning. Sometimes you don’t control the doors and the fascinating stink surfs out in mind-boggling mixes. Sometimes it’s tough to resist squirting your insides frontwards because the only way to see them is as they retch into our massive pickle of a sticky situation of years’ worth of gurgling like every loud shrub’s been fed to a Nutribullet and out pumps the gloop again. (Well, the ecological imperative is that all junk be recycled else it’ll circle Planet Earth and Planet Earth is already a lump of cosmic effluent.) 30
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Is something perfect pulsing back from the dead in your thoracic slaughterhouse? Can you pinpoint when this murder was committed? Or is it a dollop of describable revulsion first stirring when you returned home to find your heart upended and smelling different and everything inside a sickly taste and no safety crews on hand to unsnarl the driver? I wonder if the matching bruises on my inner thighs from straddling the seesaw while licking through party-food and taking big nosedives, running up chromatics, and the words I spend telling you about puking are actually wads of time and how I feel about that is forceful as I seize and twirl my fiddle and fill it with vomit, an aeroplane is thrusting and combusting in my mouth’s chemical arsenal, appearing as a spasming streak as a result of chafing. But this won’t appear as a horror simply because hippos may find it richer than a mud-bath and I am standing pink-mouthed and opened and I come from mothers and mothers and we’re fighters all nice fighters and it’s the agony matching us that’s wrenching and look at my face it’s emptying into shoes and briefcases.
Topologies of Air Shona Illingworth with Nick Grief and Andrew Hoskins Under international law, every State has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory, as recognised by the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation 1944. For a coastal State, this means sovereignty over the airspace above its land territory and territorial waters. 12 nautical miles measured from the low-water line along the coast is the maximum breadth permitted by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982. Over the high seas, which are open to all States whether coastal or landlocked and over no part of which can any State validly claim sovereignty, the freedom of aviation prevails. Even above international waters, however, it is generally recognised that States can establish restricted or danger areas for peaceful (i.e. non-aggressive) purposes subject to the requirement of reasonableness. In the interests of safety and by international agreement, coastal States assume responsibility for controlling parts of international airspace over the oceans. For example, the UK provides air traffic control services over parts of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean even though the airspace concerned is international. Beyond airspace is outer space which, as declared by the Outer Space Treaty 1967, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means. However, the question of the upper limit of airspace — the boundary between airspace and outer space — has not yet been resolved. One theory, based on the Karman line, places the boundary at 62 miles (100 km) above the earth where the atmosphere becomes too thin to support aeronautical flight.
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Extracts from a conversation between Nick Grief, specialist in international law and human rights, and Shona Illingworth
Sonny chasing bubbles Working film stills (2017) Shona Illingworth
ICJ 1996: The destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space or time
International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons
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Yesterday was a beautiful morning here in The Hague that featured a picture-perfect snowfall. As a tropical State, the Marshall Islands has experienced “snow� on one memorable and devastating occasion, the 1954 Bravo test of a thermonuclear bomb that was one thousand times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb. When that explosion occurred, there were many people, including children, who were a far distance from the bomb, on our atolls which, according to leading scientists and assurances, were predicted to be entirely safe. In reality, within five hours of the explosion, it began to rain radioactive fallout on Rongelap. Within hours, the atoll was covered with a fine, white, powdered-like substance. No one knew it was radioactive fallout. The children thought it was snow. and the children played in the snow. and the children ate the snow. So one can understand that snow, while beautiful, has a tragic and dark history in the Marshall Islands.
Tony de Brum Former Foreign Minister Republic of the Marshall Islands International Court of Justice Republic of the Marshall Islands v Pakistan 8th March 2016
Midday, 15th April 2010. Sonny is sleeping. The airspace over London is strangely quiet As though an invisible boundary edge has lifted And my thought space can speed upwards, unimpeded I stand on a balcony five floors up, Looking west, Above me the flight paths are empty I hear bird call, North of Skogar Fine volcanic ash fills the air Oviline basaltic andesite Glass, silica, fluoride Trachyandesite Hot dirty thunderstorm Injecting the jet stream, Heading southeast Number 1702–02 100 million cubic metres Of un-compacted tephra Sharp-edged, fine — grained, black and glassy Fire broken fallout from a Dark grey eruption plume Seven days and 10 million people weighted to the ground Sonny stirs, breathing in The change in the air I can’t put my finger on it, I hold the odd feeling of space above my head, Close, It feels immense I get out my camera and place it on a tripod, I frame the sky and press record 36
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Flight Paths with Ash North Atlantic Airspace Working still (2017) Shona Illingworth With thanks to NATS
Bikini Atoll Marshall Islands Working image Shona Illingworth
Plutonium [ 239 ] Cesium [137 ] Strontium [ 90] Pouring down Raining down
Preserved in the layers of Antarctic snow A radioactive signature in the geological record
From the work of geologist Jan Zalasiewicz on the Anthropocene
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today my head hurts they say that when a rocket is launched into space it changes something in the atmosphere and people get sick yesterday they launched a Soyuz TMA-8 spacecraft the Steppe was so beautiful behind the coal mine so many flowers black tulips
Taxi Driver, Karaganda, Kazakhstan Former prisoner of Dolinka, former Gulag labour camp, Karlag, Karaganda, Kazakhstan From Karlag, (2006), Shona Illingworth
Karlag (2006) Video still Shona Illingworth
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Feb. 21, 2010 Tab E Radio Transmissions And Intercom Extracts: Chat Log for KIRK97 All times in GMT/Zulu MIC: Mission Intelligence Coordinator, a crew position SO: Sensor Operator Safety Observer: additional pilot to back up checklists/procedures in case of kinetic strike JAG25: Joint Terminal Attack Controller Slasher03: AC-130 Gunship Bam Bam41: Helo Air Weapons Team Highlighted areas are radio communications … 00:42 (Kirk97): Jag25/Slasher03/Kirk97 we are eyes on a vehicle, personnel in the open, definite tactical movement, cannot PID weapons at this time, how copy? … 00:44 (Jag25): Jag25, roger, ground force commander’s intent is to destroy the vehicles and the personnel, right now Kirk97 is showing that the individuals egressed the trucks holding cylindrical objects in their hands *radio static* … 1:07 (MC): screener said at least one child near SUV. 1:07 (Sensor): bull (expletive deleted)…where!? 1:07 (Sensor): send me a (expletive deleted) still, I don’t think they have kids out at this hour, I know they’re shady but come on. … 04:13 (Bam Bam 41): (unintelligible) weapons and ICOM chatter with tactical maneuver. Break. Um, understand we are clear to engage. 04:13 (Pilot): Okay, he’s clear to engage so he has Type Three. I’m going to spin our missiles up as well. … Classified
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Shift perception skywards and the coordinates of threats become more ambiguous, dissolving war imaginaries in seemingly perpetual space filled with new levels of terror and carnage for those under constant surveillance on the ground. The new haunting of war is surely exposure to all that which appears uncharted, unowned and untamed, and yet which is invisibly gridded, tracked and targeted. Andrew Hoskins, media sociologist, in conversation with Shona Illingworth
There is not yet a human right to protect the freedom to exist without physical or psychological threat from above. Conversation between Nick Grief and Shona Illingworth
Working still (2017) Shona Illingworth p. 40-41: Working still (2017) Shona Illingworth
Kitchen Conversations On the 29 March 2017, the day UK Prime Minister Theresa May sent a letter to the President of the European Council Donald Tusk triggering the article 50, setting the UK on the path out of the European Union and cementing a set of ugly neologisms for English dictionaries, we hosted our first Kitchen Conversation discussing democracy, place and memory in a lecture hall at California College of Art in San Francisco. It was a meaningful coincidence. We showed a programme of artists’ film entitled Shifting Ground in a place on a tectonic fault-line while feeling the metaphorical tremors of the political decision enacted that day on the other side of the Atlantic. We created the concept of the 21st century Kitchen Conversations as a metaphorical space to talk about politics, economy, history and science through art, architecture and design. It is inspired by the Eastern European tradition of critical private conversations about art, world politics and dissatisfaction with the state of affairs that happened in kitchens from Warsaw through Moscow to Vladivostok, from Tallinn through Kiev to Tbilisi during the long decades of communism. Those distant Kitchen Conversations were pockets of freedom, spaces for thinking out loud (to the accompaniment of a radio or TV at full volume fooling ‘bugs’), venting outrage, plotting protest and dreaming up the future. For our first London series of Kitchen Conversations, we invited curator and writer Vicky Richardson to dream up a programme. The Future Laboratory, one of the world’s most renowned and respected futures consultancies, opened its office to us and our audience to host discussions triggered by film, architecture, poetry and new economic theories. In May, June and July 2017, we explored ideas of Creative Destruction and whether it can be a positive force. These conversations reflect our ambition to reject taboos and fixed positions. The term ‘creative destruction’ was originally coined by the economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942 and is the title of a new book by Phil Mullan arguing for
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profound cultural, political and economic change. We asked whether the creation of the new must go hand in hand with dismantling old ways of thinking and structures. Political ruptures in recent months appear to be destructive, but may have unlocked a new period of creative freedom where the old rules and certainties no longer exist. Next, we are taking the Kitchen Conversations to Berlin. Kitchen Conversations don’t need to happen in a kitchen… KC 01, San Francisco Wednesday 29 March: Shifting Ground with Karen Fiss, Jeanne C. Finley, Lynn Marie Kirby and Meghana Bisineer KC 02, San Francisco Friday 1 April: Thought for Food with Karen Fiss, Jeanne C. Finley, Meghana Bisineer among others KC 03, London Thursday 25 May: On Ruins, Wrecks ands Renaissance With Phil Mullan, Josh Wright and Richard Wilson KC 04, London Thursday 29 June: On Artists’ Response to Destruction and the Need for Unbounded Space With Shona Illingworth, Andrew Hoskins and Elisabetta Gasparoni KC 05, London Thursday 20 July: On Destruction and Preservation in Creative Process With Alia Syed, Noski Deville, Smout Allen and Agnieszka Studzinska
Contributors Agnieszka Studzinska has an MA in Creative Writing from the UEA. Her debut collection, Snow Calling was shortlisted for the London New Poetry Award 2010. Her second collection What Things Are was published by Eyewear Publishing in 2014. She is currently working on her third collection — The Branches of a House, as well as a PhD at Royal Holloway. Her PhD explores the poet’s relationship to the image and notion of home in poetry. Studzinska is collaborating with poet George Szirtes on an anthology of contemporary poetry focusing on the ideas of home — The Poetics of Home. Alia Syed is an artist filmmaker. Her recent works combine her interest in storytelling with a compelling presentation of history as visual narrative. Her unique approach sutures different subject positions in relation to culture, diaspora and location. She was shortlisted for the 2015 Jarman Award and her latest film On a wing and a prayer was shown at the 2016 London Film Festival. Syed’s films have been shown at numerous institutions around the world including Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2012-13); 5th Moscow Biennale (2013); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010). Heather Phillipson works across video, sculpture, music, drawing and poetry. Her forthcoming projects include the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, in 2020, a new online commission for Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, a sculptural commission for Art on the Underground and a major solo show at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, all in 2018. Phillipson is also an award-winning poet and has published three volumes of poetry. She was named a Next Generation Poet in 2014, received Poetry magazine’s Friends of Literature prize in 2016, and writes a regular column for ArtReview magazine. She received the Film London Jarman Award in 2016. Shona Illingworth works across video, sound, photography and drawing. She is known for her immersive video and multi-channel sound installations, and evocative, researchled practice in which she explores the dynamic processes
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of memory, cultural erasure and construction of histories in situations of social tension and trauma. Her work has been exhibited internationally, with shows at the Museum of Modern Art, Bologna, FACT, Liverpool, UNSW Galleries, Sydney, and the Wellcome Collection, London. Upcoming exhibitions include Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto, and Imperial War Museum, London. A book on her recent work will be published in 2017. Nick Grief is a professor in Kent Law School and a barrister practising from Doughty Street Chambers. He specialises in international law and human rights. He graduated with a PhD on public international law in the airspace of the high seas from the University of Kent, where he currently teaches. He was a member of the legal team which recently represented the Marshall Islands in the International Court of Justice in cases against India, Pakistan and the UK concerning the obligation to negotiate in good faith towards nuclear disarmament. The team was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for its work in the ICJ. Andrew Hoskins is Interdisciplinary Research Professor in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow. His research connects multiple aspects of emergent digital society: media, memory, conflict, risk, security, and privacy. His latest book (with John Tulloch) is: Risk and Hyperconnectivity: Media and Memories of Neoliberalism (2016). He is founding Editor-in-Chief of the Sage journal of Memory Studies. His AHRC Research Leadership Fellowship with the British Army’s Historical Branch in Whitehall and The National Archives exposed the impact of cultural, technological, economic, and policy change on organisations, archivists, and records, and on the history of warfare (archivesofwar.com). The Wapping Project would like thank its Members. The writing commissions published here were made directly possible by their generous and continued support.
The Wapping Project is a platform for risk taking and continuous development of ideas, thoughts and people. It is our investment in, and enthusiasm for, the artists that we commission that forms the backbone of the artistic programme. The Wapping Project questions and aims to redefine accepted boundaries through commissioning, nurturing and championing artistic talent. We exist to enable artists to work with unrestrained ambition.
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