Recruiting interviewees for Oral History Recording

Today I went with Hannah and Fanny to visit a women's sewing group in Chadwell Heath, and a Knit and Natter group at Valence Library, Barking.  The purpose of these meetings was to meet 'older' women who may have worked in factories and who could have a story to tell - in order to arrange an interview at another date.  I think this is an issue - I would have tried to interview people there and then, to gather the data while the women were available.

In the sewing group, there was a lady who had worked in two different factories, one of which made aerosols and other domestic cleaning products in a factory down River Road.  She had had a day off sick for period pains, was told off by the male supervisor, then it was suggested she take it further with 'Mr Stanley' (who she did not know was one of the family members who owned the firm).  So she went to see him, explained the situation, and the following day, when she thought the issue was over, was promoted to Assistant Supervisor!  She loved her job.  She also told us about checking the aerosols after they were sealed.  If any of the canisters were bubbling around the rim, she had to pull them out quickly as they went past on the production line.  Twice the canister exploded in her face, and it was her glasses that saved her eyes.  No H&S legislation then!  She was reluctant to book an interview 'as I do a lot of babysitting', whereas if we could have just recorded her there and then, we'd have a great story in the bag.

Then we went to a Knit & Natter group at Valence Library, where, despite the ladies being much older, no-one had worked in a factory.

Maybe I should ring my cousin Maggie for stories from my family.

Oral History Training - Eastside Community Heritage

I attended the oral history training session, run by Hannah and Fanny from Eastside Community Heritage.  There were 6 volunteers being trained.

Checklist: 
before the interview:
- prepare interview structure
- check equipment.

Take with you:
- Audio recorder
- Spare memory card no less than 2gb
- Camera
- Leaflet about project, with your contact details
- Post it notes for pictures (labelling so you don't forget the details)
- Batteries
- Extension lead

Before turning on equipment:
- Tell them what you are doing and why
- Explain where the interview will be deposited and how
- Explain at the end what will happen to the interview and how it will be used.
- Leave a contact number and name.

Dos and don'ts for oral history interviews

Do

Explain what you are doing
Listen to the interviewee
Ask them to spell their name for the recording
Date of birth
Leave your contact details
Be on time
Ask them where they would like to meet
Check equipment
Ask fi they have any photographs
Take a picture
Stay for a cup of tea.

Don't:

Don't talk too much
Don't keep saying mmmmm - just nod
Don't contradict, argue or challenge even if you don't agree
Don't ask leading questions
Don't ask several questions at the same time
Don't be frightened of silence; people may need a few minutes to gather their thoughts
Don't parade your own knowledge, even if you have done plenty of research and lots of other interviews
Don't write on the back of photographs.

What to ask:

Two types of oral history interview:

The Life Story.

Where you ask people about an event or place or about some particular knowledge.

In practice many interviews are a mixture of the two.

It is important to think through the topics you want to discuss and to have consistency from one interview to another.

- Background, family, childhood, school
- Growing up, relationships, courtship, marriage, divorce
- Work skills, changing practices, wages
- Family, housework, children, health, finances
- Housing, transport, shopping
- Hobbies, sport, entertainment, social life, class, religion, politics.
- Crime, conflict
- Views on life - then and now
- Important events eg world events, second world war, floods
- Environment, building, landscapes, wildlife.

Starting to transfer the design for Toilet Cleaners sampler to the linen

Work in Progress

I've lifted shapes and lines from objects drawn, that are associated with my Ghanaian toilet cleaners.  I've arranged them in a sketchbook, then traced the positioning.  I've altered the position of one object - changing a toilet brush for a trigger action bottle of cleaning fluid.  And now I'm tacking the outlines.  Stitching large blocks of colour is going to be a huge task.  Let's get stuck in!

Portraits and Philosophy Symposium - 11 May 2018

The National Portrait Gallery ran an event on Portraits and Philosophy.  The organiser, Hans Maes noted philosophers are largely silent on portraiture.  For this reason the purpose of the symposium was to reflect on:

What is a portrait?
What are the moral dimensions for the audience/artist and artist/sitter?
How to convey emotions?
What is the 'essence' of the portrait?
Is a portrait non-fiction?

Fortunately the most interesting session was the first, so I could pay attention properly!

Dr Kathleen Stock - Objectification, Subjectification and the Portrait. Sussex University

Objectification is all around us - images in adverts (eg Beach Body Ready, Calvin Klein 6 pack).  It treats the person as an object, and is not just about sex (although it often is).

Referred to Martha Naussbaum who lists significant ways of objectifying

1. Portrays a person as an instrument (ie as a means to an end, or as using the person)
- lacking in autonomy
- inert or lacking in agency
- interchangeable with others (ie not individuals)

2. Portrays a person as violable
- something than can be owned
- lacking subjectivity.

So with the above conditions, is an image, a portrait, objectifying if the above are applied?
Not necessarily.

Manet's Olympia.  What is not objectifying about this, is the gaze of Olympia - Direct and gives individuality.  Sex instrument, but in control.  However the Maid is objectified as she lacks autonomy,  is interchangeable with others, is likely to be owned, lacks subjectivity.

Encourage the viewer to see.  The viewer should see the mental life of the sitter, the free will of the personality.  It is mind suppressing to focus on other thanks than the mind of the person depicted.

Lucien Freud Sunny Morning - we cannot understand the faces

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Sunny Morning - Eight Legs, 1987 - Lucian Freud

Artist: Lucian Freud

Le Fevre, Mary Magdalene in the Grotto.

All could be representatives of a class, not individuals. They are props in general images. They are all about flesh, not thought.   Mind suppression reduces the awareness of the mind of the person depicted.

Subjectification is defined as paying particular attention to the mind of the person.

Yet portraits are silent, static, non-linear - limited in response to an individual's subjectivity eg gesture, movement and speech.  However Stock said this is not a problem, because it is common to the medium of portraiture.  The portrait is still about the individual, not the group.  About a particular named or identified person, ie not interchangeable.  Example Guardian Women's Page Contributors (see bottom for image)

Van Gogh Potato Eaters.  Represents the class.
Advertising stock photos.  Represents the consumer classes.

Portraits focus on faces - this enables unique identification.  Bodies are not so distinctive.  There are culturally mediated recognised forms of expression - dress; objects; post; gaze; composition.  EG Elizabeth I - pearls for chastity; sun for power; hand on globe.

But Portraits are not necessarily about the inner life - because of:

- angle of shot
- about nude body, not the head
- being someone else.

Nadav Kandar and Max Houghton. (in conversation)

Portrait as mirror.  Ethics of the face-to-face encounter.  Need to be understandable - self as other; narcissus.

Image of Trump on old battered royal-style chair.  Looking back.
Tracey Emin - breaks down socially constructed persona.

A look away (or death mask) shows the inner life of the sitter.  Viewer has to fill in the dots.  Viewer has to work.

Kandar uses shadows a lot in his photographs.  Shadows are part of oneself that we struggle with.  Negative.  Follows us.  darkness.  Something behind - more than is visible.  What is behind the shadow on the wall?  What has happened is not necessarily positive.  Louis XV.  Small minded to put own slant on it.

Nature gives you the face you have at 20.
By 50 you have the face you deserve.

Triangle between             Artist

                           Viewer              Seeing

All links equally important.

Hans Maes.  And Time will have his Fancy.  Portraits of Unknown People. 

Writers do not write about being overwhelmed or enchanted by a work.  Enchanting and moving art - identify them and list why.  A personal view.  Not about greatness.  Portray the innermost soul of the subject. How do we know what they reveal is truthful or accurate?  Or not misleading?  Why does it matter.  The inner self does not explain enchantment.  Complex.

- Eye contact - direct/personal engagement.
- Neutral background - no period details.
- Naturalism - real person - flesh and blood.
- Head and shoulders - proximity - face-to-face.  No up and down gaze from the viewer.
Stare; serious; stillness; reflection and self reflection.  Direct gaze leads to heightened perception.
- Unknown sitter.  Sitters were important in their time - now completely forgotten.  (Like me and my work!!)
Vanitas paintings.  Memento oblate idid - you will be forgotten.  This insight creeps up on you.
Not self defeating.

rightsandimages@npg.org.uk

Queer Perspectives: Turning the Tables - Bird La Bird. 3/5/18

What a great talk!  Bird La Bird is a feisty, queer, performance artist of Irish Catholic descent. Bird digs beneath the surface of British working class gay heritage.  Described herself as challenging, queer femme feminist.  She was speaking about Thomas Carlyle, one of the founders of the National Portrait Gallery, and who is portrayed above the entrance to the NPG.

Somewhat fuzzy, image of Thomas Carlyle, taken in poor light after the talk.

Bird did an analysis of Thomas Carlyle - and it was not favourable.  She found much of what he did totally offensive - he instigated homophobic rules across empire.  H was an intellectual Victorian, Calvinist (who hated women) - yet there are 82 portraits of him in the NPG holdings.  Bird had been on line and found many quotes attributed to him in various racist, fascist, misogynistic, homophobic Twitter feeds and the like, all labelled as "motivational men quotes".    Bird was quite clear that generally Institutions do not make clear the racist (or other obnoxious) backgrounds of key figures (eg Enoch Powell).  Carlyle had called for a return to slavery in 1953, 20 years after its abolition (c1840) in the British Empire, referring to Quashee (this is a racial slur - meaning black Sunday's child).  Also had a poster Pumpkins or Potatoes.  This was questioning whether affluent migrants wanted to employ former slaves, or Irish and set slaves against starving Irish migrants from the potato famine.

Bird spoke about Margaret Gibb, aka Ann Hunt, who vandalised Thomas Carlyle's portrait at NPG.  subsequently arrested and convicted, sentenced to 6 months for damage to portrait.  But was she a vandal or campaigner?  Seen as criminal in police surveillance photo.

Gibb, in her suffrage campaigning, was multiply imprisoned, and was a hunger striker.  Gained a medal from the WSPC - Deeds not Words.  Was also a chess champion - so was a strategic thinker.

Margaret Gibb, courtesy of Museum of London

Bird also spoke about Frederick Douglass, a black Victorian anti-slavery campaigner.  She noted Dickens, Tennyson, Ruskin all supported Carlyle in his defence of a slave murderer, General Eyre, where nearly 1000 slaves died.  Additionally she had identified Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde had supported Carlyle in his views.

Bird stressed there is a need for institutions to give the full picture.  Dr Caroline Bressey has done a very good write up of Carlyle on the NPG website which describes him accurately as a learned, albeit racist, intellectual.  But this is buried deep in the website.  Not easy to find.

Good book - Catherine Hall.  White, Male, and Middle-class: Explorations in feminism and history.

Instititions (like NPG) are site of collective memory.  This needs to give a different narrative to the dominant perspective (ie white male perspective).  Get the people who are represented to write the label - because they will have the ability and right to describe their complexity.  Is this what I am covering when interviewing my cleaners.

And the Fitzwilliam sampler is finished

Copy of section of Elizabeth Billingsley's 1653 sampler

Signed and dated in the corner

Thank you Eilene Cross for running the workshop.  There is no way I could have done this sampler without the class and very detailed instructions that you provided.

This is a tutor and class to look out for if you are an historical embroiderer.

The Museum is not Neutral - Fitzwilliam Museum Study Day

The best study day I've attended in years!

Key points:

Caro Howell, Director, Foundling Museum

Ornament, By Product or Instrument

Ornament is never neutral.  Historians tend to be male and the victor.  Approach stories from different perspectives.  Include the audience in the reassessment.  Eg in the cafe (now study room) the walls are covered in names from children's books ... who were foundlings.  When I saw this on a visit, I understood that children would buy into the museum, because they would identify with the characters they had read about.  Also adults.  I identified with the names from books of my generation, and those like Harry Potter, but I was not familiar with Hetty Feather.

Great quote from Caro:  The voice of entitlement accuses of dumbing down.

Artists have a freedom to hold a number of narratives in balance at the same time.   The Foundling uses modern artists' art as a call to action; to showcase talent and its own charitable status.  Yinka Shonibare is one of their trustees, and his work Trumpet Boy has inspired many narratives from visitors.  

Installation-view-of-Yinka-Shonibare-MBE,-Trumpet-Boy,-2010-©-Yinka-Shonibare.-Photograph-by-Dan-Weill-Photography

The Foundling likes the agency of contemporary artists to the gallery.  The artist's ambition to effect change on contemporary issues, makes them more accessible.  The Foundling uses the power of artists and art to change the world.  

Caro noted that children and women are absent from the imagery at the Foundling(!). Their presence is only represented by the objects - often created by the artists.  

Caro listed various organisations with whom they work eg Central St Martins, because their students produce work of high standards.  Standards are important to the Foundling.  I know the Foundling appears reluctant to work with groups other than those already known to the commissioning team, because when I was at the City Lit, one of our class members made some heart-wrenching soap sculptures that were brilliant, and was given the brush-off by them.

The ongoing story at the Foundling - how to tell history to children?  Via art and images.  Find the gaps and fill them intelligently.  Find the positions of the audience in the work.   This is why one of their Victorian artworks has been reproduced with Hetty Feather included - gets buy-in from children. 

Neutral = neutered!

Jasleen Kaur, DecoloniSingh

Went to Glasgow School of Art, thence to RCA

Minorities are excluded from creative industries. Interested in Decolonising Museums.  Placing people between invisibility <-> hyper visibility.  

Her provocations:  How to decolonise when listening to marginalised voices?  Griselda Pollock - Culture is a weapon - if it was not, we would all have access to it.  

Try Sara Ahmed, Institutional Racism book.  

Kaur wanted to put a turban on a statue of Lord Napier in London. White generals in India, in the time of the Raj, assimilated the turban.  Putting a turban on the statue required permissions, but on boundaries of two boroughs, much red tape, plus permission from the current Lord Napier.  So wrote the current Lord Robert Napier - tied a turban on him instead.  Her father did it as he ties better turbans. (Their lunch was Coronation Chicken - how imperial!!). 

Diversity is more than tokenism.  Kaur spoke of The exhaustion that museums are echo chambers for white male privilege. 

Kaur spoke of hierarchies of art and media. Bricks in the Tate or bricks in an Indian brickyard with a pile of cow shit?   Rural and urban brickmaking.  Values in cultural production.  Careful, artistic work, or primitive, gestural and intuitive (is this what I am doing with my stitch?  Not working to a plotted pattern, but intuitively working it out as I go?)

Matt Smith

What a great speaker! He'd been working with parian ware - fake marble created by mixing porcelain with flux.  Cheap slip casts of important people (according to whom?!).  Flux is an unstable substance added to porcelain for the purpose of memoralising (or stabilising?).  So who was picked for these casts - and by whom?  Only one non-europeans, but much facial hair!  

He also spoke about man marl - a German phrase that indicates we also need to remember the painful things we have done.  Matt had chosen about 6 key figures and staged them each on a wall, with a newly drawn wallpaper that showed some of the horrible things associated with these people.  Truly shameful things associated with 'heroes'.  

Forget his name, but he was influential in creating an opium trade

And this is Matt Smith's wallpaper representing it.

Lord Havelock

I find this one horrific and really disturbing

Lord Havelock (General in Boer War) tied sepoys (captured opponents) to cannons and executed them by firing the cannons, to scatter their body parts.  The Sepoys believed the body had to be complete at death, so Havelock was spectacularly attacking the remaining peoples, by exploding their captured forces.  (The General Havelock was a pub in Ilford, where I was brought up, and the name was explained to me, as him being a Boer war hero.  Really!).  

Richard Sandell, worked with National Trust, as consultant for Prejudice and Pride last year. 

His role was to position the NT for equality issues.  Prejudice is now shown in society via silences and avoidance.  There is a link between museums and silences reading these groups.  This is a polarised debate which needs to be facilitated debate and ethically shape it.  Felbrigg Hall, where there was a 50th anniversary of decriminalisation of homosexuality exhibition about the gay final owner of the house, led to a huge debate about whether volunteers should be required to wear the rainbow lanyard.  He recommended a calm and nuanced response to audience reaction.  Some volunteers were put on backroom duties and it led to a few resignations from the role, and a right wing media campaign bad-mouthing Prejudice and Pride, stating people would leave the NT in droves.  Notably, in 2017 c240 people ended their membership out of 4.2 million.  And in 2018 there has been a surge in membership to 5million.

Richard Sandell was part of the Pride march (in Brighton?)  where the National Trust had a banner in the parade, and as they went past various groups he could see people saying "O - M - G!!  The National Trust!".  Presumably because the visitors did not expect to see the NT in this context.

There are various places in the NT with strong LGBT histories eg Sissinghurst and Vita Sackville-West and Felbrigg Hall with ...  Kingston Lacey with W J Banks did a piece on the history of 51 executions of gay men during Banks life - they put nooses in the entrance hall, with the knot positioned to represent how old these men were when executed.  Very dramatic.

50 years of decriminationisation - it's not a celebration.  There are still issues.  How to navigate ethical challenges - understand audience responses.  

Necessary to identify the Values they stand by.  Not different perspectives on it.  Different views, but be very clear on their, National Trust values.  

Catrin Jones Holburne Museum, Bath

Should the curator be neutral?  I was tired now, and did not take notes.  

I asked a question about how the lessons from Prejudice and Pride could be applied to the Women and Power theme at NT.  Gain resilience from Prejudice and Pride.  Be clear about contested histories, but in a safe environment.  Polarised but not avoided.  But above all be braver in interpretation.  Tell the story from the perspective of the non-dominant.

Me and Matt Smith

I bought the catalogue of the Flux exhibition, and beetled over to ask Matt to sign it.  My friend Vanda exclaimed "Cathy, you're such a tart!", so when Matt asked what inscription I wanted, I suggested "Two tarts together!"  which he duly wrote.  Great day out!