Earlier this month, Dr Antonia Thomas was joined by several current and former MA Contemporary Art and Archaeology students in Bilbao, in the Basque Country, to attend the Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory (CHAT) conference.
This year, CHAT delegates were invited to respond to the theme Botxo, a Basque word which translates as hole. The theme was in response to the development of the city of Bilbao within a depression since the Middle Ages. The city’s geographical context, surrounded by mountains rich in natural resources, and with an estuary feeding into the Atlantic, led to Bilbao becoming an industrial powerhouse in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Nowadays, the city is undergoing dramatic redevelopment, with the iconic Guggenheim Museum playing a key role in the city’s reinvention and transformation towards tourism and the service economy. In the words of the conference organisers: “CHAT Botxo encourages the synthesis of many topics with an eye to the spaces in between them. Urban dynamics, immigration, labour, industry, trade, tradition, modernity… in short, the unifying thread of the last two centuries; the gears of capitalism. CHAT Botxo aims to fill the botxos (holes, gaps), practical and epistemological, around these topics that contemporary and historical archaeology can help fill.”
Botxo CHAT saw a fantastic turnout from the UHI Archaeology Institute, in particular the staff and students on the MA Contemporary Art and Archaeology, with seven current or recently graduated students attending and presenting their own original research and practice.
Dr Antonia Thomas presented on behalf of the UHI TRANSECTS team and delivered a paper on how the impact of the coming of oil to Orkney in the 1970s can be explored through visual art, literature, and film as well as in archaeology. You can find out more about the project here.
Iain Davidson, who has just completed his MA, showed a short film The Pad. This sets the historical context for artworks created as part of his Saltways: Crystallising Journeys Over Time project, undertaken for his Masters final project in Contemporary Art and Archaeology.
You can watch the film here and see more of Iain’s work at iaindavidson.art.
Also showing at CHAT was Lara Band, whose final project, Diagrams of the Infinite (Fugitive Emissions), explored an experimental archaeology of methane. It comprised an 11-minute long film which combined archive and academic material, performance and folklore to take a multilinear and non-narrative path through methane landscapes. You can watch Lara’s film here.
Iain and Lara have a busy month, as they will also be in Orkney as part of the current exhibition at Northlight Gallery in Stromness! They will both be graduating with a distinction at the ceremony at St Magnus Cathedral, in Kirkwall, later this week.
Susan Pearson, a multidisciplinary artist from Whalsay, Shetland, also presented research and practice relating to her ongoing research for her MA final project.
Susan, who won a Society of Scottish Artists award in the SSA 126th Annual Exhibition last year, works in a wide range of media, including locally foraged clay, exploring her relationship with “islandness” through material connection. She sculpts hybrid figures using the clay she has gathered, to investigate human and non-human entanglements.
For CHAT, she chose to focus on one key element of this project – the creation of holes. Her presentation, Hert-Holl – A Creative Exploration of Holes on the Island of Whalsay, explored multispecies entanglements and Donna Haraway’s concept of becoming-with, challenging the delusion of any separation between human and nature.
It was also a pleasure to reconnect with some former UHI students in Bilbao.
Helena Czeczenikow, who was awarded MA Contemporary Art and Archaeology with Distinction in 2024 and who is now undertaking a PhD at the University of Lancaster, presented aspects of her doctoral research. Her project, Concrete Thinking: Drawing the Molotov Line investigates the system of war fortifications constructed between 1940 and 1941, today commonly referred to as the Molotov Line through artistic methods, primarily drawing.
Jamie McNeill, who also graduated in 2024, showed the film he created for his final project. Titled The Concrete Seed: A New Town Fable, he described this as “a redemptive tale of counter-hegemonic planning in the shadow of a deconstructed new town”. It draws on research into the post-war British new town project undertaken during his MA and consists of a satire and critique of Scottish new towns and top-down spatial planning. Jamie’s film can be viewed here.
The final presentation of the conference took the form of a powerful collaborative performance by Aileen Ogilvie and Eòghann Mac Colla. Aileen, who now works as Clyne Heritage Society’s Learning and Community Engagement Officer, graduated from the MA Contemporary Art and Archaeology in 2023 with a Distinction, following her BA in Popular Music Performance from UHI (awarded with Distinction in 2008). Eòghann is currently working on his Final Project for the MA, alongside his work as Arts Coordinator for Arran and Cumbrae.
The starting point for Aileen and Eòghann’s collaboration was An toll dubh (literally the black hole), a seminal Gaelic song lamenting the plight of the Gaelic language, which was written in the 1980s by Calum MacDonald, of Celtic rock band Runrig. They were then joined by two Basque musicians, Unai Lopez de Armentia and Iñaki Otxoa de Retana (who had previously studied music at UHI Perth!), in a powerful Basque/Gaelic musical collaboration. In drawing parallels between the marginalisation of the language and culture of both the Basque people and the Gaels, their performative call and response conversation highlighted the political nature of the past and the role of heritage in contemporary identity.
CHAT has been running since 2003 and has consistently showcased cutting-edge examples of archaeological theory and practice. Since the MA Contemporary Art and Archaeology was launched in 2020, its staff and students have been regular contributors to CHAT, and both Antonia Thomas and Aileen Ogilvie are members of the CHAT Standing Committee. The conference programme for this year is available here.
