Suite (212)

In February 2020, 74 universities affiliated to the UCU (University and College Union) began 14 days of industrial action, launching ‘Four Fights’ over casualisation of labour, unsafe workloads, falling pay, and gender and ethnicity pay gaps. The strikes became national news, supported by staff and students alike, with vibrant picket lines at many “art schools” across the country speaking out against exorbitant tuition fees, massive pay gaps between vice chancellors and lecturers, the punitive and racist Prevent programme introduced to stop student ‘radicalisation’, the digitalisation of courses and much more. Juliet Jacques – herself a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art, where 90% of staff are casualised – spoke to artist and researcher Dr Annie Goh, a lecturer in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins and an Associate Lecturer in Sound Arts at London College of Communication, and Kyran Joughin, lecturer in film and critical practice at Wimbledon College of Art (part of the University of the Arts Lond

In the wake of the coronavirus epidemic and shutting down of much of the UK's cultural life, we have decided to bring you a series of interviews with contemporary artists, writers, filmmakers and other cultural figures, conducted via Skype (so apologies for the diminished audio quality), about their practices, the political issues that inspire them and the socio-economic conditions that have shaped their work. In the second of these Sessions, Juliet talks to Athens-born, London-based artist and writer Erica Scourti about the recent UCU strikes in higher education, and especially art colleges, the politics of freelance life, the mediation of emotion through technology, experimental approaches to memoir and the representation of subjectivity, and her translations of works by Greek poet and actor Katerina Gogou (1940-1993). A full list of references for the programme can be found via our Patreon at www.patreon.com/suite212, and are available to $3 subscribers.

In the wake of the coronavirus epidemic and shutting down of much of the UK's cultural life, we have decided to bring you a series of interviews with contemporary artists, writers, filmmakers and other cultural figures, conducted via Skype, about their practices, the political issues that inspire them and the socio-economic conditions that have shaped their work. First, Juliet talks to London-based visual artist Ilona Sagar (https://www.ilonasagar.com/) about her film works Correspondence O (2017), dealing with the history of the Pioneer Health Centre in Peckham, London, and Deep Structure (2019), documenting the Park Hill estate in Sheffield. They also spoke about Ilona's research on workers affected by asbestos and the Ford Dagenham sewing machinists strike of 1968, her interest in other artists and writers addressing healthcare and disability, and the recent UCU strikes in higher education, and especially art colleges. A full list of references for the programme can be found via our Patreon at https://ww

CONTENT NOTE: 'The Woman in the Portrait' contains descriptions of sexual violence and transphobia. Recorded on 23 August 2019, Suite (212) co-host Juliet Jacques appeared on Montez Press Radio to discuss her work in literature and film. She read her short story 'The Woman in the Portrait' (2014) about a trans woman in Weimar-era Berlin, talked about her forthcoming short story collection and her work in film, especially her short 'You Will Be Free' (2017).

This week on Suite (212), Tom Overton talks to author Shiromi Pinto about her second novel, Plastic Emotions (https://www.influxpress.com/plastic-emotions), recently published by Influx Press, inspired by the life of 20th century Sri Lankan architect and feminist icon Minnette de Silva (1918-1998). SELECTED REFERENCES Shiromi Pinto: http://www.christopherlittle.net/authors/shiromi-pinto/ Minnette de Silva: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/dec/14/minnette-de-silva-the-brilliant-female-architect-forgotten-by-history Geoffrey Bawa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Bawa Henri Cartier-Bresson Le Corbusier: https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Le+Corbusier:+Architect+and+Feminist-p-9780470847473 David Lean Pablo Picasso

Andrea Lawlor's debut novel Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl has a protagonist who can change his body at will, creating a narrative that explores space between male and female without relying on established transsexual narratives. This week, Juliet talks to Lawlor about the novel - one of the first by a trans/non-binary author on a major publisher - and the state of trans/non-binary literature more generally. SELECTED REFERENCES ANDREA LAWLOR, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (2017) - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/05/andrea-lawlor-dont-want-to-be-representative-of-a-type Travis Alabanza - https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/mar/27/travis-alabanza-interview-future-theatre Dodie Bellamy - http://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-dodie-bellamy/ Jay Bernard - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/05/speaking-out-jay-bernard-surge-side-a-poet IMOGEN BINNIE, Nevada (2013) - https://www.lambdaliterary.org/reviews/04/02/nevada-a-novel-by-imogen-binnie KATE BORNSTEIN, Gender Outl

Growing out of a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, manga has become one of the world's most popular and influential graphic art forms, moving from comics into anime films and beyond. This week, Lara Alonso Corona talks to journalist and curator Paul Gravett (http://www.paulgravett.com/articles/article/manga), author of Manga: Sixty years of Japanese Comics and Mangasia about the history of manga and the cultural and political impact of the medium, as well as the upcoming British Museum exhibition on manga, the largest ever of its kind outside of Japan. SELECTED REFERENCES The British Museum exhibition - https://blog.britishmuseum.org/an-introduction-to-manga Ainu history and culture - http://www.ainu-museum.or.jp/en/study/eng01.html Moto Hagio - http://classic.tcj.com/history/the-moto-hagio-interview-conducted-by-matt-thorn-part-one-of-four Shigeri Mizuki - https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/shigeru-mizukis-war-haunted-creatures NAGATA KABI, My Lesbian Experience with Loneline

Chinese-British novelist, memoirist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo (b. 1973) talks to Tom Overton about her life in the UK and PR China, and her work in cinema and literature, which explores Chinese history, trans-national identities, class, memory, personal and physical journeys. SELECTED REFERENCES WORKS BY XIAOLU GUO (www.guoxiaolu.com) Books A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (2007) - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/jan/27/featuresreviews.guardianreview33 Once Upon a Time in the East (2018) Films Far and Near (film) We Went to Wonderland (2008) - https://player.bfi.org.uk/rentals/film/watch-we-went-to-wonderland-2008-online She, a Chinese (2009) - https://player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/film/watch-she-a-chinese-2009-online UFO in Her Eyes (2009) Late at Night, Voices of Ordinary Madness (2013) Five Men and a Caravaggio (2018) STEVEN BARKER & XIAOLU GUO, 'Notes Towards a Metaphysical Cinema Manifesto' - http://www.guoxiaolu.com/WR_MANIFESTO_1.htm 'Further Notes ...' - http://www.guoxiaolu

The 1970s were a fertile time for feminist film, producing not just a huge body of women's work - including Chantal Akerman's seminal 1975 film Jeanne Dielman - but also a corpus of journals and criticism. This week, Tom Overton talks to Daniella Shreir, editor of Another Gaze (http://www.anothergaze.com/) about the need for such publications and the history of feminist film criticism, as well as the work of Chantal Akerman, whose memoir Daniella has translated for Silver Press (https://www.silverpress.org/). SELECTED REFERENCES Marina Abramović Chantal Akerman – https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2015/october/on-chantal-akerman Dorothy Allen-Pickard - https://www.dorothyallenpickard.com Melissa Anderson - http://www.bkmag.com/2016/09/19/brooklyn-100-melissa-anderson-film-critic/ Erika Balsom - http://www.erikabalsom.com Grace Barber-Plentie - https://www.bfi.org.uk/people/grace-barber-plentie Camera Obscura (journal) - https://www.dukeupress.edu/camera-obscura Cléo (film journal) - http://cleojournal.com Marguerite

Ever since September 2015, when the allegation emerged that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, had performed a sex act on a dead pig as a student, British politics has entered a strange new reality, in which satire has endlessly been pronounced dead. In this edition of Suite (212) Extra, Juliet talks to Huw Lemmey about how to make fun of the age of austerity and absurdism, polarisation and pigfucking, focusing on Huw's new book, Red Tory: My Corbyn Chemsex Hell. SELECTED REFERENCES WORKS BY HUW LEMMEY Bad Gays (podcast) - https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/yw89yb/bad-gays-podcast-interview Chubz: The Demonisation of My Working Arse (2014) - https://rhizome.org/editorial/2014/nov/20/chubz-demonization-my-working-arse-interview-huw-l Confirmed Pigfucker (2016) - https://viletrollbooks.bigcartel.com/product/confirmed-pigfucker-political-poems-by-spitzenprodukte Red Tory: My Corbyn Chemsex Hell (2019) - http://montezpress.com/catalogue/books/red-tory-my-corbyn-chemsex-hell Theodor W. Adorno MICHAEL ASHCROFT,

This week, Lara Alonso Corona talks to Culture.PL editor and Stories from the Eastern West podcast presenter Adam Żuławski about his grandfather Jerzy Żuławski’s science fiction series The Lunar Trilogy and On the Silver Globe, the film adaptation directed by another family member, Andrzej Żuławski and first shown in 1988, and showing in London as part of Kinoteka – the London Polish Film Festival. They also discuss many of Andrzej Żuławski’s other films, the Young Poland modernist movement, and the challenges of making cinema in Communist Poland. SELECTED REFERENCES Blinded by the Lights (TV series, 2018) – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6520930/ Boris Godunov (dir. Sergei Bondarchuk, 1986) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Godunov_(1986_film) Braindead (dir. Peter Jackson, 1992) – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103873/ Cosmos (dir. Andrzej Żuławski, 2015) – http://cinema-scope.com/cinema-scope-online/bleurghing-the-unspeakable-a-stroll-through-andrzej-zulawskis-cosmos/ DAVIES, GLIŃSKI & ŻUŁAWSKI, Quarks,

This week on Suite (212), Juliet talks to legendary writer and artist Stewart Home about the nine novels - including one of his own - that he has chosen and edited with Gavin Everall for Book Works' Semina series of experimental texts, 'in which the novel has a nervous breakdown'. Joining them are Bridget Penney, author of the first entry, Index (2008) and Book Works' Lizzie Homersham. SELECTED REFERENCES Stewart Home: https://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ BRIDGET PENNEY, Index (2008) - https://www.stewarthomesociety.org/interviews/penney.htm Semina: https://www.bookworks.org.uk/publishing?commission=313 Hamja Ahsan - https://www.bookworks.org.uk/node/1917 Sophia Al-Maria - https://sophiaalmaria.wordpress.com/ Art in Ruins - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_in_Ruins Ed Atkins Atlas Press - https://www.atlaspress.co.uk IPHGENIA BAAL, Merced Es Benz (2017) - https://www.aqnb.com/2017/04/27/this-is-why-i-dont-get-invited-to-weddings-iphgenia-baal-on-love-the-shitty-state-of-culture-falling-out-of-sync-in-merced

Modernism in the arts, and particularly literature, has often been portrayed as a middle class pursuit, with certain literary critics focusing on the ‘elitism’ of the movement. But does this give a true picture of its social composition? This week, Tom Overton talks to Nick Hubble about their new book The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question (https://euppublishingblog.com/2017/09/07/proletarian-modernism/), and about how the General Strike of 1926 (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/writing-the-1926-general-strike/41A4BEF1FB2C099EEEFD60A5F14C0B80), the Equal Franchise Act 1928 and the Great Depression shaped working class forms of modernism during the 1930s. (Cover image: 'Acetylene Wielding' (1917) by C.R.W. Nevinson) SELECTED REFERENCES W. H. Auden Octavia Butler LEWIS CARROLL, The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland (1865) Chung Ling Soo (magician) T. S. Eliot WILLIAM EMPSON, Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Types_of_Ambiguity EMPSON, Some Versions of Pastora

Brian Eno's huge back catalogue of work as a solo musician, band member and producer goes back decades, including high-profile work with Roxy Music, Talking Heads, David Bowie, John Cale and many others. He is often credited with inventing ambient music, but this conversation between Juliet and Brian does not talk about the past. Instead, we focused on how Brian has adapted to new music, new technology, and neoliberalism, and what responsibilities artists have to acknowledge and use their cultural capital. SELECTED REFERENCES Works by Brian Eno Discreet Music (1975) Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978) Spore (2008, video game soundtrack) - https://pitchfork.com/news/30187-brian-eno-makes-interactive-music-for-spore/ The Ship (2016) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn1riJSHhkY Reflection (2017) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dwo-tvmEKhk Bloom (with Peter Chilvers) - http://www.generativemusic.com/bloom.html Berlin Horse (dir. Malcolm Le Grice, 1970) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDj8Tc6259o Gavin Br

The Calais "Jungle", as it became known, was a refugee camp that held 10,000 people from Syria, Somalia, Eritrea and elsewhere between January 2015 and October 2016. This week, Tom Overton talks to Dan Hicks, Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford, about a new exhibition (https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/event/lande) and book that collects material, digital and visual artifacts from Calais, asking how these objects can help us understand the camp, and 21st century migration. SELECTED REFERENCES Majid Adin - https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/newpxd/the-refugee-who-smuggled-himself-out-of-the-camps-and-into-rocket-man Giorgio Agamben Hannah Arendt L'Auberge des Migrants - https://www.laubergedesmigrants.fr/en/home/ Banu Cennetoğlu, ‘The List’ (2018) - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/20/banu-cennetoglu-interview-turkish-artist-the-list-europe-migrant-crisis Danny Dorling Michel Foucault Caroline Gregory (photographer) DAN HICKS & SARAH MALLET, Lande: The Calais 'Jungle' and Beyon

Isabel Waidner is a writer and critical theorist who has published two works of fiction with Manchester-based independent publisher Dostoyevsky Wannabe, edited an anthology of exploratory queer literature entitled Liberating the Canon, and who - with artist Richard Porter of Pilot Press (https://pilotpress.tumblr.com) - curates the Queers Read This series at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. This week, new Suite (212) co-host Lara Alonso Corona asks Isabel about queer and working-class representation in 'experimental' writing, how useful such labels are, and what queer authors can take from a modernist canon that is largely white, male, cisgender, heterosexual and middle-class. SELECTED REFERENCES Works by Isabel Waidner Gaudy Bauble (2017) – https://dostoyevskywannabe.com/original/gaudy_bauble Liberating the Canon (editor, 2018) – https://www.dostoyevskywannabe.com/experiments/liberating_the_canon We Are Made of Diamond Stuff (2019) – https://www.dostoyevskywannabe.com/we_are_made_of_diamond_stuff/

Born into a Jewish family in Moscow in 1971, Yevgeniy Fiks moved to New York in 1994. His conceptual art reacts to amnesia about the USSR in the post-Soviet space, resisting nostalgia and commodification in favour of recovering repressed histories, especially those of LGBT and Jewish people; he also looks at the relationship with the USSR and the USA before and during the Cold War, and at histories of the American left, suppressed since the McCarthy witch-hunts. In this Suite (212) Extra, Juliet talks to Yevgeniy about his exhibition Mother Tongue at London’s Pushkin House from March-May 2019, dealing with the underground slang spoken by Russian gay men in the 1970s and 80s, and his wider practice. SELECTED REFERENCES PROJECTS BY YEVGENIY FIKS (https://yevgeniyfiks.com/) Song of Russia (2005-7) Lenin for Your Library (2007) Monitoring Lenin’s Sales on Amazon.com (2007) Communist Party USA (2007) The Communist Guide to New York City (2008) American Cold War Veterans’ Association (2009) A Gift to Birobidzhan

Since his violent death in 1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini remains internationally renowned as a filmmaker, but less known as a poet, journalist, critic and activist outside his native Italy. This week, Juliet talks to Italian author Daniela Cascella about Pasolini’s varied artistic practice, the persecution he suffered as an outspoken leftist and openly gay man, and the context of post-fascist, post-war Italy. SELECTED REFERENCES WORKS BY PASOLINI Articles ‘I Know’ (1974) - https://overland.org.au/2012/03/what-is-this-coup-detat-i-know/ Novels Hustlers (1955) A Violent Life (1959) Petrolio (1992) – http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/reviews/970323.23eberstt.html Films Accattone (1961) La Ricotta (1962) – http://www.alphavillejournal.com/Issue7/HTML/ArticleMurphy.html The Gospel According to Matthew (1964) – https://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n06/michael-wood/at-the-movies Love Meetings (1965) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Meetings Theorem (1968) Medea (1969) Porcile (Pigsty, 1969) The Decameron (1971) Th

Where, and how, does nature writing intersect with architectural criticism? Urban exploration? Hauntology? Nationalism and fascism? This week, Tom Overton talks to writer and Influx Press co-founder Gary Budden about how his collection 'Hollow Shores' blends nature writing and weird fiction, his collaborations with filmmaker and fellow Influx author Adam Scovell and illustrator Maxim Peter Griffin, how writers as aesthetically and politically diverse as Derek Jarman and Henry Williamson have represented the English landscape, and more. SELECTED REFERENCES Robert Aickman – https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/burial-plots-robert-aickmans-eerily-ordinary-stories DARRAN ANDERSON, Imaginary Cities (2015) – https://www.influxpress.com/imaginary-cities GARY BUDDEN (ed.), Acquired for Development By … A Hackney Anthology (2012) – https://www.influxpress.com/acquired-for-development-by GARY BUDDEN, Hollow Shores (2017) – https://deadinkbooks.com/product/hollow-shores-paperback GARY BUDDEN & MAXIM GRIFFIN, The

Best known as a poet in his native Lithuania, Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) became a titan of US underground cinema after moving to New York in 1949. This week, Juliet talks to filmmaker/artist Chiara Ambrosio and curator/critic Herb Shellenberger about Mekas' life, work and legacy. SELECTED REFERENCES Films by Jonas Mekas Film Magazine of the Arts (1963) - http://film-makerscoop.com/catalogue/jonas-mekas-film-magazine-of-the-arts Walden: Diaries, Notes and Sketches (1969) - https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/diaries-notes-and-sketches-also-known-as-walden Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069172 Lost Lost Lost (1976) - https://vimeo.com/217911753 Self-Portrait (1980) The Education of Sebastian or Egypt Regained (1992) - https://vimeo.com/40317134 Zefiro Torna (1992) - http://retentionalfinitude.blogspot.com/2010/05/jonas-mekas-zefiro-torna-1992.html As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) - https://variety.com/2001/film/reviews/as-i-was