Grounding Law

I've been at the Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory 'Grounding Law' which has been a really well curated conference featuring diverse and challenging theoretical papers. I presented in the first panel 'Techne and Technology' with my paper 'Video Conferencing from Prison: Reconceptualising the Place and Space of Criminal Law'... much discussion and response followed, useful to the ever-evolving thesis.

http://www.law.unimelb.edu.au/index.cfm?objectid=DCA83080-2698-11E1-B6610050568D0140&diaryid=6227

Art & Surveillance

As I'm in the process of drafting a paper "The artist as voyeur" that probes how surveillance is appropriated by artists both as a methodology and canvas, it was great to come across this issue (how did I miss it?!):

http://www.artlink.com.au/issues/3130/art-26-surveillance/

Luckily,  a back issue was available and has just arrived in my PO box. Now, off to read ...

The Choir: story from a South African Prison

Currently on SBS TV is The Choir directed by Michael Davie. Apparently shot over several years, the film shows the story of Jabulani Shabangu, both a victim and perpetrator of crime and now incarcerated in Leeukwop Prison, South Africa. He is recruited into the prison choir that goes on to compete at the National Prisoner Choir Competition. The story tells of the transformative possibilities of music and immersion in a new community, even within the closed environment of prison.

http://www.sbs.com.au/films/movie/3304/The_Choir
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929735/plotsummary

Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g59RZCsxEkA

Prison ethnography continued

With thanks to various online friends (Fabio and Maggie via crimspace, facebook and mendeley) who are also researching prisons, here are some more references:

Ben Crewe, The Prisoner Society: Power, Adaptation and Social Life in an English Prison
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Prisoner-Society-Ben-Crewe/9780199653546

Patenaude, A.L., 2004.No promises, but I’m willing to listen and tell what I hear: Conducting qualitative research among prison inmates and staff. The Prison Journal, 84(4 suppl), p.69S–91S.

Crewe, B. & Maruna, S., 2006. Self-narratives and ethnographic fieldwork. The Sage handbook of fieldwork, pp.109–123.

Alison Liebling's idea of "appreciative inquiry" a bit, and Dot Golding's work in WA is interesting. Other prison researchers like Ben Crewe are also a great help and I found Mark Halsey's work with juveniles in WA great. 

More reading ... just what I like!

Prison ethnography

As my research increasingly implicates me in the world of prisoners, it's been good to engage with some literature dealing with prison ethnography, including:

• Loic Wacquant, “The Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” Ethnography 3-4 (Winter 2002), Special issue on “In and Out of the Belly of the Beast: Dissecting the Prison”: 371-397. http://loicwacquant.net/debates/theory-and-ethnography/
• James Sutton, "An Ethnographic Account pf Doing Survey Research in Prison: Descriptions, Reflections, and Suggestions from the Field" Qualitative Sociology Review, Vol VII, Issue 2 - August 2011
• James B Waldram, "Challenges of Prison Ethnography"Anthropology News January 2009 p. 4
• Shanta Singh, "Being a Criminology Ethnographer in a South African Prison: A Search for Dynamics and Prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the Westville Prison, Durban, South Africa" J. Soc. Sci., 15(1): 71-82 (2007)
• I missed this conference on 'Resisting the Eclipse: An International Symposium on Prison Ethnography http://www.open.ac.uk/icccr/events/prison-ethnography/

Anyone got any other suggestions?

Image source: http://www.onelargeprawn.co.za/2011/03/15/marked-men-russian-prison-tattoos-2/

Prison fieldwork commences

Google maps

Over the last few weeks I've commenced my fieldwork in  two NSW correctional centres. The process has been intense and not without difficulties as I try to negotiate inmates' (understandable) reluctance to be interviewed and the prison system's occasional partial or full lockdowns.

Nevertheless the work has been rewarding and I've found willing inmate participants to be both articulate and insightful of their experiences in using video links between prison and courtrooms. Corrective Services' staff have been incredibly helpful and obliging making the whole process as smooth as possible.

Bodies in Distress

This is slightly old news now but I just realised that I hadn't blogged about this already ... Last month I took part in 'Bodies in Distress' during Critical Animals (This is Not Art festival in Newcastle) at The Lock-Up. The event, organised by Gabriel Watts from the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, was a collaboration between researchers Drs Una McIlvenna and Rebecca McNamara and artists Mimi Kelly and me. 

The event commenced with Grace Turner singing 17th century execution ballads (beautifully) in a small cell of The Lock-Up while Una provided insights into the ballads. Throughout the performance was Mimi's ethereal and haunting video installation and haze machine serendipitously puffing smoke every time Grace sang of a death by fire. Two cells up the corridor was my audio piece 'Felonia de se' (felony of the self) installed in the historic padded cell. My soundscape was a response to medieval legal records concerning suicide cases in England, as researched by Rebecca. I aimed to evoke uneasy imagery through text fragments and dark, otherworldly audio loops.

http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/news-media/news-listing/bodies-in-distress-at-critical-animals.aspx

A panel discussion followed concerning sin, death, punishment, corporeality and the intersections of academic research and artistic practice. A fun day out!

http://criticalanimals.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/bodies-in-distress.jpg

Antony Gormley: bodies in space

Thank you to a friend, CB, who sent me this link:

http://www.ted.com/talks/antony_gormley_sculpted_space_within_and_without.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TEDTalks_video+%28TEDTalks+Main+%28SD%29+-+Site%29

It's interesting to hear a sculptor discussing the space of bodies, the body as a site of potentiality and relational to architecture and site. When we close our eyes, we can become aware of the intimate subjective collective space of the body - a place of imagination and potential, a place that is objectless and dimensionless. This is the elemental world he seeks us to engage with - the darkness of the living body and somatic experience, as distinct from the technological world.

And, of course, I was so lucky to see his work at the mouth of the Mersey near Liverpool recently.

'Covert' solo show

COVERT

CAROLYN MCKAY

12 – 30 SEPTEMBER 2012

OPENING PREVIEW FRIDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 6-8PM

galleryeight is pleased to exhibit a solo show of recent work by Carolyn McKay.

Covert presents a suite of four HD videos created by McKay while travelling around Japan last year. Filmed covertly from behind glass, windows of trains and hotels afforded her the opportunity to be a watchful eye observing the unsuspecting, revealing unconnected episodes of strangers’ lives. What she found particularly appealing about this form of surreptitious spectatorship was that the images revealed people unposed, introspective and natural. However, she sensed that she was secretly thieving a portion of someone’s daily life for her own artistic purposes. The videos appropriate and fix private moments that would normally have remained ephemeral, compelling these strangers, through DVD looping, to repeat their experiences indefinitely. On the other hand, these stolen episodes have gained a poetic resonance that may have otherwise passed unnoticed.

Thank you to Carrie Miller and The Art Life for a review:

http://theartlife.com.au/?p=7000

Sydney College of the Arts Graduate School Conference and PhD Exhibition

It's a busy week at SCA with the PhD exhibition opening tomorrow night (Wednesday 12 September) and the conference on Thursday 13th. I'm taking part in both events, with a series of light boxes in the exhibition related to my research and I'll be presenting at the conference "Videos and inmates: digitising the criminal body."

For more details, see http://sydney.edu.au/sca/graduate_school/current_students/conference/about.shtml