Exhibitions

Shifting Horizons @ Digital Window Gallery

27 March - 31 March 2024

PLATFORM: ISSUE 6

26 March 2024

Events

Saturday Town: Launch Event

10 April 2024

Exhibitions

Coming Soon: Saturday Town

11 April - 18 May 2024

Past Events

PLATFORM: ZINE LAUNCH EVENT

21 March 2024

Home. Ukrainian Photography, UK Words: Tour

4 March - 28 February 2025

Exhibitions

Home: Ukrainian Photography, UK Words @ New Adelphi

4 March - 8 March 2024

Past Events

CREATIVE SOCIAL: IN THE ABSENCE OF FORMAL GROUND

2 March 2024

Exhibitions

We Feed The UK @ Exterior Walls

8 February - 31 March 2024

Past Events

Contrail Cirrus: the impact of aviation on climate change

7 March 2024

Exhibitions

Tree Story @ Liverpool ONE

16 February - 1 May 2024

Open Source #27: Saffron Lily – In The Absence of Formal Ground @ Digital Window Gallery

6 February - 31 March 2024

Past Events

Contemporary Photography from Ukraine: Symposium @University of Salford

4 March - 5 March 2024

Past Events

Is Anybody Listening? Symposium: Commissioning and Collecting Socially Engaged Photography

29 February 2024

Past Events

Different approaches: Artists working with scientists

15 February 2024

Events

LOOK Climate Lab 2024: All Events

18 January 2024

Exhibitions

Diesel & Dust @ Digital Window Gallery

18 January - 31 March 2024

Events

Tree Walks Of Sefton Park with Andrea Ku

21 January 2024

Past Events

Artists Remake the World by Vid Simoniti: Book Launch

31 January 2024

Past Events

Shift Liverpool Open Meeting

6 February 2024

Past Events

We Feed The UK Launch and LOOK Climate Lab 2024 Celebration

8 February 2024

Past Events

Cyanotype workshop with Melanie King

17 February 2024

Past Events

End of Empire: artist talk and discussion

22 February 2024

Past Events

Book Launch: What The Mine Gives, The Mine Takes

24 February 2024

Past Events

Local ecology in the post-industrial era: open discussion

14 March 2024

Past Events

Waterlands: creative writing workshop

23 March 2024

Past Events

Plant a seed. Seed sow and in conversation with Plot2Plate

16 March 2024

Past Events

Erosion: panel discussion

9 March 2024

Past Events

Waterlands: an evening of poetry and photographs

23 March 2024

Events

Force For Nature Exhibition

27 March - 28 March 2024

Voices of Nature: Interactive Performances

28 March 2024

Past Events

Sum of All Parts: Symposium

27 February 2024

Exhibitions Main Exhibition

LOOK Climate Lab 2024

18 January - 31 March 2024

Past Events

MA Socially engaged photography Open Day event

1 February 2023

Past Events

Tish: Special screening and Q&A

13 December 2023

Past Events

Book Launch: A Look At A New Perspective

23 November 2023

Events

Community workshops @ Ellesmere Port Library

6 November - 5 February 2024

Past Events

Book Launch: ‘544m’ By Kevin Crooks

30 November 2023

Past Exhibitions

Bernice Mulenga @ Open Eye Gallery Atrium Space

17 November - 17 December 2023

Past Events

Bernice Mulenga: Artist Talk

18 November 2023

Past Exhibitions

Local Roots @ The Atkinson

14 October 2023

Exhibitions

Community @ Ellesmere Port Library

26 October - 11 April 2024

Past Events

Critique Surgery for Socially Engaged Photographers

6 November 2023

Past Events

Deeds Not Words: panel discussion

12 October 2023

Past Exhibitions

Deeds Not Words @ Atrium Space

3 October - 22 October 2023

Ode To Our Space @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

A Look At A New Perspective @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

Past Events

Book Launch: Crow Dark Dawn

19 October 2023

Past Events

Exhibition Launch: A Place of Our Own

28 September 2023

Reflections

12 September - 22 December 2023

Close
Close

Writer-in-Residence: Getting Started

In his talk at Open Eye Gallery at the end of July Michael James O’Brien, in a slightly altered version of Walker Evans, enjoined us to “Spy, eavesdrop, listen. Die knowing something.” It’s a phrase that came back to me hearing John Le Carré read his memoirs on the radio, as he commented on the closeness of spying and writing. I am learning to be a kind of spy in the world of photography, listening as hard as I can, trying to look at the world in a new way, trying to understand what it might be to write the world through light.

Our first event linked to my writing residency at The Open Eye was a Poetry and Protest workshop involving American ‘Occupy’ poet Juliana Spahr, radical poet Sean Bonney and poet Ruby Robinson who were sponsored by the University of Liverpool’s Centre for New and International Writing. (The Centre has also enabled me, as a PhD student, to work with the Open Eye as a writer.)

Poetry and Protest asked participants to engage and respond to Koki Tanaka’s Biennial exhibition which, inspired by Dave Sinclair’s original photographs, revisited the Liverpool school-childrens’ strike (1985).

Participants took about 30-40 minutes to have a good look around at the exhibition and talk to each other in the process. Some listened to the interviews, some also spent time considering the exhibition by Iranian artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian. This includes work that documents the daily lives of three submersibles (Anti-Catty, Princess Rambo and Space-Sheep), works smuggled from Dubai to Liverpool.

Shared responses to the exhibition varied from the doubtful, to the curious to the questioning. What is the value of re-enactment? How do we have a voice? Who decides what was really happening? ‘How stylized the strike became when it became art.’

Juliana Spahr chose not to read from her own work but from African Dawn, the words of Keita Fodeba, the African poet and politician, killed in prison in the Republic of Guinea in 1965. Juliana shared her thoughts on how Fodeba developed a tradition of writing a good poem:

  • It must define accurately the historic moment of the struggle
  • Mark off the field – be clear about the terrain
  • The poem must understand its history, recognize one’s advances and open up the past to the future.

Ruby Robinson, born in 1985 (the same year as the Childrens’ Strike’) talked about the idea of physical protest seeming radical to her, asking Am I a poet? Am I a radical? She also discussed what can happen when we’re “powered over” ~ one response is to comply with the wishes of the powerful, to protect ourselves. What does this do to our identity? Ruby’s interest in trauma is explored in her first collection Every Little Sound, from which she read her astonishing, long poem Apology.

Sean Bonney read work from his recent book, Letters Against the Firmament. He writes in rage against the forces of the establishment, and in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed.

We did more on that afternoon than I can share here but it felt unusual and challenging, sharing poetry and ideas with friends, students, arts professionals and practitioners, poets, mental health campaigners, other interested folk. I’m looking forward to the next time.

Further reading:
Sean Bonney Letters Against the Firmament (Enitharmon Press, 2015)
For Sean’s blog: http://abandonedbuildings.blogspot.co.uk
Ruby Robinson Every Little Sound (University of Liverpool Press, 2016)
Juliana Spahr That Winter the Wolf Came (ak press, Commune Editions, 2015)

Written by Pauline Rowe, Writer in Residence

Get involved:
Volunteering

Find out more
Join our newsletter