From the Old Brewery

An Interview with Ekiyokere Ekiye

PhD student Shailini Vinod talks with linguistics PhD research student Ekiyokere Ekiye about her studies in literature and linguistics and her various roles as a lecturer and communications instructor in Nigeria and Scotland.

An Interview with Shane Strachan

PhD students Ian Grosz and Shailini Vinod talk with Scots Scriever and newly appointed lecturer at the School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture Dr Shane Strachan about his journey from PhD to his appointment as lecturer, about his use of Doric and Scots as a creative platform, and about his role as current Scots Scriever. Shane also reads his poem Doric Dwams, discussing the inspiration for it and his collaboration with composer Emily de Simone and cellist Aileen Sweeney.

Art and Science at the George Washington Wilson Centre

PhD students Ian Grosz and Shailini Vinod talk with the directors of the George Washington Wilson Centre for Art and Visual Culture, Drs Silvia Cassini and Hans Hones, about how they are bringing the arts and sciences together through the activities of the centre. The George Washington Wilson Centre brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines. Its members share a common concern in investigating art and visual culture: what it is; how it functions across different times, places and contexts; how we encounter or understand it. The Centre facilitates a range of activities fostering collaborative research into art and visual culture, including a regular seminar series; an interdisciplinary reading group; international conferences; and public engagement events. The Centre takes its name from George Washington Wilson, the renowned Aberdeen-based Victorian photographer. The entire collection of George Washington Wilson’s photographic plates is held by the University Library. See https://www.abdn.ac.uk/sdhp/gww-centre-2169.php [https://www.abdn.ac.uk/sdhp/gww-centre-2169.php]

Fields of Meaning – An Interview with Eden Unger Bowditch

Third Year PhD researcher Eden Unger Bowditch reads from her novel in progress Two-Hundred-and-Fifty Years at Home, and discusses the nature of ambiguity in the literary text.

Brian Keeley – Visual artist and heart transplant recipient

Brian Keeley is a final year PhD student within the Dept. of Film & Visual Culture of the University of Aberdeen.  His research focusses on portrayals of heart transplantation in contemporary art and visual culture.  Brian’s thesis is practice-based and draws upon his own experience as a visual artist and filmmaker, and as a heart transplant recipient.  Despite being a standard procedure to treat end-stage heart failure for more than half a century, heart transplantation has a cultural legacy which pre-dates modern medical science, and is therefore based on superstition and fascination.   This is still reflected in films, for example, which typically depict narratives around heart transplantation in fantastical ways - through science-fiction, horror, or bio-sentimentality.  Storylines focus on supernatural or implausible donor-recipient relationships, and research suggests that such portrayals are harmful to public attitudes to organ donation and transplantation.  Contemporary visual art - and related academic research – is often concerned with conceptual notions of identity and altered corporeality.  High-profile art exhibitions themed around heart transplantation are almost exclusively presented from non-experiential perspectives, excluding voices of those with the lived experience.  The result is a denial of the reality of what is a chronic, and life-changing medical condition, in favour of speculative or metaphorical concepts.  Brian Keeley’s research argues that persistent cultural misrepresentations and stereotypes of heart transplantation would be deemed inappropriate were they applied to people with other forms of corporeal difference, disabilities, or marginalised vulnerabilities.  Link:  Brian Keeley – The making of his 2016 artwork RENAISSANCE:  https://briankeeley.wordpress.com/renaissance/