This webpage provides additional supporting information for my Oxford Humanities Open Call Expression of Interest application
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Below are some indicative images from the astronomical films we would like to project, and pages from the Bodleain’s copy of The Book of Fixed Stars. New artist’s films would also be projected.
PARTNERS & OUTPUTS
ABOUT MY WORK
I am a poet, artist and critic. I am also a Senior Ruskin Tutor on the BFA and DPhil programmes at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, and a Visiting Lecturer and Guest Professor at colleges and universities in the UK, Spain and China. I work across media, but especially with poetry, drawing, photography and film, exploring the complex relationship between words and images, in particular the temporal character of the former, and the spatial character of the latter. Recurring themes are love, memory (especially its relationship to history and place), and spirituality. I am influenced by Surrealism, the environmental crisis, psychoanalysis, and world mythologies, particularly those of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Hinduism and Buddhism.
Prizes for my writing, art, lecturing and academic studies include: the BOC Group Emerging Artist Award; the Magenta Flash Forward Photographers’ award (Magenta Foundation, Canada); the Geoffrey Rhodes Commemorative Bursary for the most outstanding student in the Preliminary Examination in Fine Art, Ruskin School Art, Oxford University; the Fitzgerald Prize and Stapledon Scholarship (both Exeter College, Oxford University).
Grants and awards include: Arts Council England (three individual awards, and multiple awards as part of larger groups); The Fenton Arts Trust; The Eaton Fund for Artists, Nurses and Gentlewomen; Kyoto City University of the Arts, Japan; LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore; Royal College of Art, London; and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). I have also received three teaching and research awards from Oxford University: the Ruskin School of Art, (Teaching Award), the Higher Education Innovation Funding Award and the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH).
AGREED PARTNERS
Science Lead for ‘A Map of Moving Stars’, Associate Professor Amaia Salazar
Professor Salazar’s work explores the fragile boundary between the visible and the invisible: between body and mind, science and myth, perception and belief. Through photography and interdisciplinary research, she investigates how symbolic and emotional experiences reveal the complexity of human cognition, and how culture and neurophysiology shape the way we see, feel, and remember. She has given more than 55 lectures, seminars, workshops, and talks in international congresses at the University of Oxford, the University of Bologna, the Complutense University of Madrid, the Manchester School of Visual Arts, Cervantes Institute, the MediaLab Prado, and the Fundación BilbaoArte of Bilbao, among others.
I met Professor Salazar when she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Ruskin and she invited me to present my work at two Oxford conferences she convened. We have since worked together in Oxford and at the universities where she teaches in Madrid. We are developing a new series of artworks and student workshops together. These explore the Jungian concept of personal and interpersonal ‘constellations’. We would particularly like to engage her expertise in the fields of neuroscience, neuroaesthetics and mythology. She will be the first point of contact in reaching out to the scientists we have shortlisted as potential partners, and will chair at least one panel discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94gagBj_AUg
Curator (with Dr Coombes) for ‘A Map of Moving Stars’: Professor Maaz Bin Bilal
Professor Bilal is an Anglophone poet, translator, cultural critic, writer and word artist. He has published widely in journals, magazines, and newspapers across genres. He is the author of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar-shortlisted Ghazalnama: Poems from Delhi, Belfast, and Urdu and the translator of Fikr Tausvi’s Urdu diary, The Sixth River: A Journal from the Partition of India and Mirza Ghalib’s Persian long poem Temple Lamp: Verses on Banaras. His work has been widely reviewed in India, the UK and the US. Excerpts from his translation of The Sixth River are also prescribed in the University of Delhi BA English (Hons.) syllabus. His poems have been translated into Irish Gaelic, Bangla, Urdu, German, and Hindi. He has also exhibited his word art in Germany.
Professor Bilal earned his PhD for the dissertation on “From Hellenism to Orientalism: Friendship in E. M. Forster, with Reference to Forrest Reid,” which he is now revising into a monograph, Heterodoxies of Friendship in E. M. Forster’s work. He continues to research and write on ideas of the politics of friendship, plurality, and multiculturalism, particularly in the South Asian context. He is also deeply interested in Urdu-Hindi poetry, and continues to research and translate it.
I met Professor Bilal through my recent work as a guest lecturer in India. We have critiqued one another’s work, have given a public reading of our poetry, and we are planning more readings together. For the purposes of this project, I would particularly appreciate his lived and academic knowledge of contemporary Indian culture, and his expertise in literature, translation, linguistics and poetics, and his knowledge of the Mehfil-e-Mushaira tradition. Although our events will be conducted in English, we hope to infuse them with something of open, celebratory spirit that marks the Mehfil-e-Mushaira, which focus on the recitation of Urdu poetry.
https://jgu.edu.in/jslh/faculty/dr-maaz-bin-bilal
PROPOSED PARTNERS
Following further research, we intend to invite partners selected from this longlist to present their research, contribute to the projected films and/or exhibition, and/or contribute to panel discussions. The list covers art, AI, new media, astronomy, biochemistry, neuroaesthetics, moral philosophy, psychology, Eco poetry, multiculturalism, and friendship:
- https://marshmallowlaserfeast.com/information/
- https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/research/group/breakthrough-listen
- https://ouspaceastronomy.github.io/
- https://www.neuroscience.ox.ac.uk/publications/1004899
- https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/moral-philosophy-seminar
- https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/research/themes/intelligent_minds
- https://www.wythamwoods.ox.ac.uk/article/the-wytham-ecosystem-and-climate-change-poetry
- https://torch.ox.ac.uk/environmental-humanities-research-hub
- Largest Human Family Tree project, at Oxford’s Big Data Institute, including Dr. Yan Wong: the largest-ever human evolutionary family tree, compiled from thousands of modern and ancient genome sequences, which could help in separating genetic associations with diseases from shared ancestral history.
- Synthetic Human Genome project, led by Professor Jason Chin from the Ellison Institute of Technology and the University of Oxford: a UK-based effort to take the first steps towards creating a synthetic human chromosome, a project that could transform the understanding of genome biology and biotechnology.
From outside of Oxford, we would also seek the assistance (and potential sponsorship) of:
LEGACY
Further information on the two partner universities:
https://worldofstudents.org/en/study-abroad/Spanien-Universidad-Francisco-de-Vitoria-Madrid