Museums, Innovation and Entrepeneurship: Forthcoming Talks

A busy few weeks of presentations about museums, international working and entrepreneurship (links included below).

Breaking Culture

Date: 26-28 January

Location: the Santa Maria della Scala Museum Complex, Siena, Italy

Quite excited about this conference as it frames the discussion in the relation of the future of culture, and unusually locates museums in the dialogue with music and cities.  The title of my paper is ‘How Not To Be National’ in which I’ll be talking about how it is possible to develop an international practice by ignoring your regional or national cultural institutional structures and going straight to global projects and collaboration. In my session I share the platform with Raquel Mesa from Action Cultural in Spain and N2U Art Group Paris.

Entrepreneurship in Cultural Heritage Workshop

Date: 2 February

Location:  Birmingham University.

I often hear myself referred to as entrepreneurial, and though never correct it, don’t believe it is a good description at all. So I’ll be talking at the Cultural Heritage Workshop about Entrepreneurship. Really the key to entrepreneurship is not pursuit of making money at all; it's new thinking that matters – Asking yourself fundamental questions about how your practice works and how to trade on your uniqueness.

Catalyst Conference (part of Spectra Festival)

Location: Aberdeen

Date: 9-12 February

This one will be a version of the Siena presentation, applying the experience of Bury to the opportunities for Aberdeen. I’m speaking on Friday 10 Feb. Sharing a platform with Chris Carney of Threshold Festival of Music & Arts, Stefán Magnússon, is the Artistic Director of Eistnaflug festival, in Iceland, and Angela Michael, Festivals and Cultural Director at VisitAberdeenshire.

In case anyone is trying to keep track, my recent presentations have involved me speaking at Museum2015 Tokyo, European Network of Cultural Centres 2015 (hosted in Bury), Museum Cluster & Cultural Landscape, Taiwan Museums Association 2016, UK Trade Mission to Seoul 2016, International Touring in Banja Luka, 2016, Chinese Museums Expo 2016 – and various UK events which I haven’t time to list.

Inauguration of Donald Trump: Sequester the Bile

Sequester the Bile

1

Will this be filmed? Will I ever been seen again?

Déjà vu to pre-empt the desire to say:

this is me and that is them - as emphatic modifiers

If the signature is left as an empty list

A loser’s garden for a nobody,

nobodies, useless eaters as a forgetful functor:

their intropunitive ignorance of a soliton that goes ahead of us

Austere defenders of the right to pay towards the certificate

with or without fear.

2

Now conditionally bijective to now

A catalogue of comparatives and superlatives been here before

those heroes, holders or changes to the governance pathway;

recursive choice mildnesses

the indecisive

bring me the head of stupid

enjoy your day of barely disguised resentment, whispered irritation

catalogue systems of libraries, ideas cosy, mediocrity built after

                bombing,
trees all the same height are the same age

in estates of easily constructed isotropic housing

Apologies (labelled transitions between states)

when to compromise only generates compromise –

the axiom of determinacy

not the axiom of choice

standing despite all possibilities to fall

We are not going out onto that jetty,

it's dangerous and no one will thank us.
In the same way valleys are better than mountains

barbarous dissolution

its budget for the new management

You are pathetic and will get what you deserve

3

Architects of the future:

The tyranny of cardinal geometry, stars and grids with sightlines

our breath will create weather OUR BREATH WILL CREATE WEATHER

truly monumental … far exceeding all expectations for our 1000

years

our arch will be bigger than your arch OUR ARCH WILL BE BIGGER

                                                                           THAN YOUR ARCH

the wall detail of cracks and crevices, beautiful colours, fronds and teeny weeny microphylls

the worst thing that could happen

this absolute future looks bleak for vertebrates