GSA, NVA & Carl Lavery: On Ruins and Ruination Launch

We are currently living in a new period of ruin lust, in which we are obsessed with images of dereliction and decay. This free event, organised by the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow and timed to coincide with a special edition of the flagship journal Performance Research on Ruins and Ruination (edited by Professors Carl Lavery and Richard Gough), seeks to understand why.

The day will include screenings of Murray Grigor's Space and Light and Space and Light Revisited, his two films about the modernist ruin of St Peter's Seminary at Cardross, and Lee Hassall's Return to Battleship Island, an extraordinary meditation on the abandoned tower blocks of Hashima Island in Japan. Talks from artists and academics will explore the aesthetics and politics of ruination, and there will be space to reflect on what a pedagogy of ruins might look like.

Schedule

10.00: Carl Lavery: Intro
10.10: Prof Johnny Rogers (GSA): 'A Reliquary of Ruin for an Inveterate Vandal'
10.25: Dr David Archibald (UoG): ‘Govan in Ruins’
10.40: Angus Farqhuar (NVA): ‘Ruining the Ruin’
10.55: Dr Minty Donald and Nick Millar (UoG): ‘THEN/NOW: ruin-ing Glasgow’s canal’
11.10: Coffee
11.40: Dr Simon Murray (UoG): ‘Flirting with ruin porn: some initial thoughts on ruination as a 'structure of feeling'
11.55: Lights Out (Chris Leslie)
12.10: Francis McKee
12.30: Space and Light Revisited (Murray Grigor)
13.00: Lunch
14.15: Murray Grigor in conversation with Johnny Rogers
14.45: Dr Dominic Paterson (UoG) and Scott Myles (University of Dundee): ‘Doing Ruins’
15.10: Prof Carl Lavery (UoG) and Lee Hassall (University of Lincoln): ‘Lavery and Hassall use a Platonic model of dialogue to think about the performance of ruins and the crisis of historicity….(but inevitably wander off piste with the help of Van Morrison)
15.30: Coffee and Return to Battleship Island (Lee Hassall)
16.00: Discussion of day and moving things forward (Drinks)
18.00: Close