Join the Michaelis Galleries and Dr. Lucy Steeds for the opening of the exhibition Exhibition Histories and Afrofictions. Eight films are brought together by ‘Exhibition Histories and Afrofictions’ at the Michaelis Galleries. Together they invite reflection on how different public contexts have shaped, or sought to shape, understandings of African art historically and around the world. They further give pause to consider what cultural practice in the present and future might learn from these histories, or how we might challenge them. Particular artistic, cultural, anthropological, documentary and museological practices are brought to the fore – with colonialism, decolonization, postcolonialism and globalisation as inescapable themes, whether explicitly addressed or strongly implicated. Films dating back to the 1950s, 60s and 80s are historical anchors for the show but these are cast adrift by more recent works that re-envisage the histories and futures at stake. Part 1 of the show starts out with an early film attempting an experimental take on museological and exhibitionary practices in Europe relating to cultural objects pillaged from Africa and Oceania. George Hoellering’s Shapes and Forms aims to offer a nondidactic approach to work assembled for a temporary exhibition at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1949, which carried the striking title ‘40,000 Years of Modern Art’ – although the unity promised here is betrayed by its subtitle, ‘A Comparison of the Primitive and Modern’. Paired with this historical contribution is Elizabeth Price’s User Group Disco (2009) subtitled The Hall of Sculptures, which names a room in her fantasy New Ruined Institute. This recent work maintains a somewhat Surrealist filtering of the traditional museum, while projecting it into an uncertain future. Part 2 of the exhibition looks askance at the Parisian exhibition of 1989 that problematically proclaimed itself ‘the first worldwide exhibition of contemporary art’: ‘Magiciens de la Terre’ [‘Magicians of the Earth’]. Two films are paired that convey the working practices of two contribtutors to ‘Magiciens’. One shows land-artist Richard Long, from England but at work in the Sahara, as filmed by Philip Haas in 1988; and the other presents sculptor Seni Camara, from Senegal, in dialogue with filmmaker Fatou Kandé Senghor in 2015. The troubling European notion of art being created by a lone pioneering hero – largely perpetuated by the 1989 exhibition – is here exposed (unacknowledged, by Haas) and subverted (implicitly, by Kandé Senghor). Part 3 of the exhibition juxtaposes a historical trio of documentaries concerning two distinct cultural festivals of the 1960s, in Dakar and Algiers respectively, while contextualising these with a recent essay-film by The Otolith Group, which reconsiders the same era, and its visualisation, with a focus on Ghanaian independence from British colonial rule. We might ask who is addressing whom in the cultural objects and activities represented in these films – and who is addressing whom in these filmic narrations of these cultural objects and activities. It seems important, for instance, that the William Greaves film from 1966 is commissioned and funded by the United States Information Agency – for circulation in Africa, while banned in the US – and that the Soviet film of the same festival is reportage for the USSR. The US-Algerian film from 1969, by contrast, seeks to speak to revolutionary struggles around the world, as did the event that it documents. And the Otolith Group addresses some of this complex history tto us, their globally dispersed contemporaries in the present. ‘Exhibition Histories and Afrofictions’ is co-curated by Nkule Mabaso, of the Michaels Galleries, with Lucy Steeds, who is Senior Research Fellow in Art Theory and Exhibition Histories at Afterall Art Research Centre, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Through books in its Exhibition Histories series, Afterall investigates critical public moments for contemporary art, and how these have changed the way art is made, experienced and discussed. This exhibition at the Michaelis Galleries develops from this research context, while initiating new lines of enquiry.

Associate Professor Candace Kuby from the University of Missouri, will present the School of Education seminar entitled, "(Re)presentation and Theories:  Post Qualitative Ways of Inquiring"> In this session, I share my own struggles and hopeful possibilities of (re)presentation when doing post qualitative inquiry. Specifically, I share from an article that puts to work ‘more than human ontologies’ drawing on poststructural (rhizomatic) and posthumanist (intra-active) theories by plugging-in concepts with data produced in a second grade Writers’ Studio. The first aim of the article is to illustrate why a paradigm shift of ‘more than human ontologies’ is needed, specifically, how ways of doing/being/knowing (ethico-onto-epistemology) literacies are produced through intra-actions of humans and nonhumans. A second aim is to demonstrate how theory(ies) shape inquiry, how we write up transcripts and do analysis. To access article: Kuby, C.R. (2017, online first version). Why a Paradigm Shift of ‘More than Human Ontologies’ is Needed: Putting to Work Poststructural and Posthuman Theories in Writers’ Studio. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2017.1336803. Candace R. Kuby, PhD, is an associate professor of early childhood education at the University of Missouri. She received her PhD in literacy, culture, and language education from Indiana University. Candace previously taught primary grades in public U.S. schools and preschoolers in Japan. Her research interests are twofold: 1) the ethico-onto-epistemologies of literacy desiring(s) when young children work with materials to create multimodal, digital, and hybrid texts and 2) approaches to qualitative inquiry drawing upon poststructural and posthumanist theories and the teaching of qualitative inquiry. Candace is the co-author of Go Be a Writer!: Expanding the Curricular Boundaries of Literacy Learning (2016, Teachers College Press); author of Critical Literacy in the Early Childhood Classroom: Unpacking Histories, Unlearning Privilege (2013, Teachers College Press); and co-editor of Disrupting Qualitative Inquiry: Possibilities and Tensions in Educational Research (2014, Peter Lang). Journals in which her scholarship appears include Qualitative Inquiry; International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education; Journal of Early Childhood Literacy; Education, Citizenship, and Social Justice; Language Arts; Talking Points; and Young Children. Candace chairs the faculty committee that oversees Mizzou Ed’s graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research. Candace teaches courses on early childhood literacy and qualitative inquiry.

Associate Professor Huw Williams (Exeter University, UK) will present the Department of Psychology seminar with a talk entitled, "Traumatic Brain Injury and Crime: A focus for intervention to reduce violence?" Huw Williams is Associate Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology and Co-Director of the Centre for Clinical Neuropsychology Research (CCNR) at Exeter University. He gained his PhD and his Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Wales, Bangor. He was on the founding staff team of the Oliver Zangwill Centre (OZC) for Neuropsychological Rehabilitation in Ely and Visiting Scientist at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. In 2006 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Rehabilitation Studies Unit, University of Sydney, Australia. He has honorary positions with the OZC and the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital’s Emergency Department. He has published papers and books and held grants in a range of areas of Clinical Neuropsychology – particularly on neuro-rehabilitation, and, recently in relation to crime.