Squirmish at the Oasis: an evening of performance and rant hosted by Agency of Noise at the Kinsgate Workshsops Trust in affiliation with Camden Arts Centre

Squirmish at the Oasis takes its name from Luigi Russolo's fourth noise network 'Skirmish at the Oasis' performed in Milan in 1913. 100 years on the Agency of Noise contemplate changes in technology and the culture industry that provoke new questions around the deliberate use of noise within music and art. Through live acts of enquiry and experimentation five artists unravel paradoxes associated with the use of noise in art, music and the gallery space. The works challenge tensions, contradictions and possible oxymorons that emerge through the use and acceptance of noise within an artistic framework. Featuring: DAISY DIXON / GRAHAM DUNNING / POLLYFIBRE / DANE SUTHERLAND / MARNIE WATTS

Pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture and land use in the Bolivian Amazon

We present an integrated palaeoecological and archaeobotanical study of pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture in the Llanos de Moxos, a vast seasonally inundated forest–savanna mosaic in the Bolivian Amazon. Phytoliths from excavated raised-field soil units, together with pollen and charcoal in sediment cores from two oxbow lakes, were analysed to provide a history of land use and agriculture at the El Cerro raised-field site. The construction of raised fields involved the removal of savanna trees, and gallery forest was cleared from the area by AD 310. Despite the low fertility of Llanos de Moxos soils, we determined that pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture sufficiently improved soil conditions for maize cultivation. Fire was used as a common management practice until AD 1300, at which point, the land-use strategy shifted towards less frequent burning of savannas and raised fields. Alongside a reduction in the use of fire, sweet potato cultivation and the exploitation of Inga fruits formed part of a mixed resource strategy from AD 1300 to 1450. The pre-Columbian impact on the landscape began to lessen around AD 1450, as shown by an increase in savanna trees and gallery forest. Although agriculture at the site began to decline prior to European arrival, the abandonment of raised fields was protracted, with evidence of sweet potato cultivation occurring as late as AD 1800.

Teacher beliefs about listening in a foreign language

This study investigated, through a questionnaire, the stated beliefs and stated practices of 115 foreign language teachers in England regarding listening pedagogy: whether such beliefs and practices reflect the literature on listening, whether beliefs and stated practices converged, and what factors might underpin them. Responses indicated a mismatch between teachers’ stated belief in the importance of teaching learners how to listen more effectively, and the lack of evidence in their stated practice of such teaching, with a focus instead on task completion. Findings are discussed against the accountability agenda of the study’s context, and its implications for teacher development highlighted.

Liquid trust

Video performance with Live Sounds, Szuper Gallery (solo)

Seminar: access all areas

Sensory Objects presented their research and their Sensory Labels for the British Museum at a seminar called Access All Areas organised by the Visitor Users Group.

Concrete gown for immaterial flows

Concrete Gown for Immaterial Flows was a sculptural installation and performance commissioned by the Hayward Gallery as part of the Mirrorcity exhibition (14 October 2014 - 4 January 2015). In an age of increasingly abstract power, ideology is disavowed as a twentieth century relic. We are instead told we are governed by pragmatic decisions based on charts and figures. Responding to this notion, Concrete Gown for Immaterial Flows is comprised of a concrete materialisation of abstract financial charts. It forms a stage upon which a series of live music performances take place. Musicians were commissioned to produce new interpretations of Nathan Alterman's "Morning Song", an old Zionist love song to the state, promising to clothe it in concrete and cement. Thus, the immateriality of financial transactions is made physical and given the monumental language it lacks in a patriotic offering for our times.

Progress report from the strategic sanctuary for the destruction of free will

Progress Report from the Strategic Sanctuary for the Destruction of Free Will presents a new work combining film, music and installation that juxtaposes the setting of the institution with the aesthetics of psychedelia.Progress Report from the Strategic Sanctuary for the Destruction of Free Will is an installation, film and sound work that takes over the gallery. Using plain white card, it distorts the structure of the gallery’s architecture, producing a paranoid shrunken space. Inside this space, performers in cardboard costumes re-enact abstracted, broken gestures drawn from video documentation of acid trips, psychedelic dancing, rehab sessions and radical psychotherapy workshops. Progress Report from the Strategic Sanctuary for the Destruction of Free Will has been formed through Pil and Galia Kollectiv’s research into the anti-psychiatry movement, their interests in counter cultural movements and their studies around biopolitics and the proliferation of societal medication. In 1958, having had a life changing experience with LSD, former alcoholic Charles Dederich founded Synanon, a drug rehabilitation program based on residential care and an aggressive form of group therapy called ‘The Game’. The organisation gradually evolved into a controversial alternative community, described in a critical pamphlet as creating Strategic Sanctuaries for the Destruction of Free Will, “a subversive program for mixing delinquents and lefties”. In 1984, anti-psychiatrist R. D. Laing described tranquillizers as chemical straight jackets. With our growing understanding of the plasticity of the brain and the potential to shape it, the tension between liberation and control in the struggle over the mind continues to define our relationship to labour, culture and production. Interrogating these ideas, the exhibition poses the question of whether a collective body can overcome the solipsism of the incommunicable experience of the individual mind.

I killed my father, I ate human flesh, I quiver with joy: an obsession with Pier Paolo Pasolini

Group show, curated by Invisible Exports Gallery. Featuring work by Michael Bilsborough, Lizzi Bougatsos, BREYER P-ORRIDGE, Asger Carlsen, Troels Carlsen, Walt Cassidy, Andy Coolquitt, Vaginal Davis, Carlton DeWoody, Joey Frank, Paul Gabrielli, Ludovica Gioscia, Luis Gispert, Terence Hannum, Karen Heagle, Timothy Hull, Doug Ischar, Brian Kenny, Jeremy Kost, Aaron Krach, Yeni Mao, Leigha Mason, Mark McCoy, Robert Melee, Lucas Michael, Jennifer Needleman, Brent Owens, Paul P., Paolo Di Paolo, Franklin Preston, John Russell, Xaviera Simmons, Duston Spear, Scott Treleaven, Ramon Vega, Jordan Wolfson, Dustin Yellin

Amor intellectualis diaboli

An essay on love and liberty in the writings of Gillian Rose, Marquis de Sade, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, written in response to the following provocation: "Encore un effort. A banderole publicitaire carries the breathless descriptions of the new fashions for 1968, when anything goes and details place the accent on this or that part of the body and its adornment: a pair of shoes that come off in a struggle, for example, the heel of one snapped off; a striking checked shirt, with two buttons undone; a light-coloured trench coat (perfect for a May day); a blouson-style jacket that allows easy freedom of movement; place casual slacks worn with an ankle boot. Beauty is in the streets as fashion becomes democratic (or so say the houses of haute couture), while the philosopher of the boudoir extorts us once again to make an effort if we wish to be republicans. Here, to an assembled crowd of sensitive men and women, which petit-maitre or dangerous man of principles would suggest that the only moral system to reinforce political revolution is that of libertinage, the revenge of nature's course against the aberrations of society?"