The first of the recordings covering December’s The Edge conference are now available.
The two-day online conference marked mark the the culmination of almost two years of seminars, blogs and other activities exploring the University of the Highlands and Islands Humanities and Arts Research Cluster (HARC) theme The Edge.
The keynote speakers were be Professor Margaret Bennett, Professor Niall Sharples and Professor Mike Pearson.
Day One
- Keynote 1: Professor Mike Pearson: “’Held together by dirt’: improvising life on the edge with the British Expedition to Graham Land, 1920-22”
- Panel 1: “Islands at the edge of modernity: picturing the Western Isles”: Andrew Blaikie, Peter Moore & Matt Sillars
- Session 1: ‘Connected by the Sea’
- “Looking in from the edge: why do the statues of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) face inland? Rethinking interfaces, membranes and wrapping in E. Polynesia”, Prof Colin Richards
- “An exploration of the perceived effect of intergenerational community coastal rowing on shared social identity and wellbeing”, Mari Todd & Matthew Slater
- Panel 2: “Watermarks: A viewing of a video assemblage of sixteen artists’ work”
- Curated by Walking the Land collective and discussion with Iain Robertson and contributing artists. More information about the Walking the Land collective and a contact sheet for all artists involved can be found here
- Session 3 ‘Art & Industry’
- “Theatrical responses to the Arctic, a Post-Soviet Arctic Story”, Jack MacGregor Reid
- “The Ring Net on the Edge: Angus Martin (poet) and Will Maclean (artist)”, Lindsay Blair
- Panel 3: “‘Whale Songs’; and the possibility of escaping the human”: Alex South, Katherine Wren, Lesley Harrison & Emily Doolittle
Day Two
- Keynote 2: Professor Margaret Bennett: “Folk, Folklore & Folklife on the Edge of Academia”
- Session 4 ‘Community & Sense of Place’
- “The nature and influence of Up Helly Aa in Shetland”, Wilma Goodlad
- “The other landscape: holistic interpretations of place”, Frank Rennie
- “Over the societal edge: a new analysis of the contemporary erasure of Gaelic”, Conchúr Ó Giollagáin
- Keynote 3: Professor Niall Sharples: “Monumentalising the edge: Thinking about hillfort boundaries”
- Session 5 ‘Urban Liminal and Contested Spaces’
- “Underpasses Are Liminal Places”, Rebecca Lambert
- “Falling through the gaps: young vulnerability, resistance, agency and creativity in street situations”, Vicky Johnson
- Roundtable: “The Liminal Zone: The seashore as a metaphor for the interface between teaching and creative practice”, Mandy Haggith et al.
- Session 6 ‘Edge Effects & Borderlands’
- “Violent borders & rhizome infiltrations: Seaweeds, mutant flows & fascist micro-assemblages in 2666”, Simon Ryle
- “Along the verge: engagement, edge effect and entanglement”, Caroline Dear
- “Conceptualising landscape as an edge effect”, Rod Lovie
- Conference conclusion & announcement of the 2022 UHI HARC/SILK Research Theme by Professor Michael Rayner.
