Transmission

Transmission is an ongoing collaborative project led by Professor Michael Corris, Dr Jaspar Joseph-Lester and Dr Sharon Kivland.

Transmission is the passing of information via a channel, and this has been the intention of the Transmission project to date. It has encompassed a lecture programme, an annual symposium, a print portfolio, an on-going series of books (The Rules of Engagement), and this year, a series of chapbooks, published by Artwords, London. The lecture series – and the five publications that accompanied it from 2000-6 – changed its format in October 2007, largely in order to involve more staff from Fine Art, and to emphasise its integration into both pedagogy and practice/research.

The title of the lecture series – and the corresponding chapbooks - is ‘Host’. The series has three parts: hospitality (2007-8), the stranger/foreigner (2008-9), and the friend (2009-10). Through this series we aim to consider how the dialogue that takes place between host and guest opens up contemporary art practice to a live audience; how this relation constitutes an ethics of hospitality; and how the agreement between host and guest becomes a code, a duty, a virtue, and a law. These questions provide a stable foundation for the Transmission Annual, the Chapbook series, and our participation in the continuing, collaborative panel, Venice Agendas; the aim being to develop new research into the how and why of the dialogic process that is the transmission and reception of art.

From the broader theme of hospitality, we plan to move our discussions to the particularity – political and philosophical – of the stranger and the friend. This three-part discussion has already generated much interest and material, which calls for a wider dissemination. To this end, we seek to broaden the field of enquiry through a new publication, and at the same time to consolidate the work already produced under Transmission.

Links:

- Transmission on SHU's Art and Design Research Centre site

- Site Gallery Talks and Events - Programme and archive of Transmission talks

- Cornerhouse Books - distibutors of the Transmission book series

- Axis hosts a discussion of the Transmission project