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"Folk Art * Sex Fantasy * Kosova Myths * London diaries"
is a solo exhibition and video film. The exhibition was held in London GX gallery in March 2015 that is based on a performance and video art research piece that was originally performed at the Borderlines: conference, De Montfort University, Leicester in June 2014 and is now a video art piece being considered for the video festivals. A catalogue has been produced of the same title. "Folk Art * Sex Fantasy * Kosova Myths * ‏ Artist Statement Normally people hide their contradictions. In this exhibition I wish to show mine in work made over the past three decades. I want to unify all the elements of myself in my art work. It is like a jigsaw puzzle for the viewer to piece together....

First in a series of 4 online exhibitions by collective And Or. Command Plus with Molly Morin and Nia Davies was the first online exhibition by collective And Or, running from February-June 2014. For this inaugural show, And Or brought together art, text, poetry and design by a web of collaborators including Molly Morin, Nia Davies, Nora O Murchú and Alice Poulalion to create a cycle of interactive work and response that confounds the distinction between text and image.

This special issue of the journal Photography & Culture (volume 14, issue 3) calls for the development of research into the various local and global political circumstances that have influenced the absorption of historical photographs into the realm of digital heritage, alongside the study of the digital photographic heritagization practices triggered by this very process. Presenting case studies from Australia, Britain, Israel, Palestine, Russia and South Africa, it analyses how historical photographs, digital heritage, and cultural conflicts have become interlocked in multiple countries around the globe since the post-Cold War rising prevalence of digital technology, global interconnectedness, and liberal democracy. These related conditions, it is suggested, have informed the growing digital heritagization of historical photographs and the methods used for their digitization, safeguarding and dissemination. Therefore, as a whole, the special issue argues that the confluence of historical photographs and digital heritage must not be understood as a mere response to technological progress but as an articulation of politically-charged aspirations to capitalize on the common association of photographs with the past, to administer approaches to differing cultural values in a time of imposing liberal-democratic politics of consensus.

De Montfort University (DMU) is host to the International Centre for Sports History and Culture (ICSHC). The Road to Rio is a project devised to innovate an international network of experts on the cultural history of Brazilian football and the globalisation of the World Cup. For instance, DMU has recently signed a memorandum of agreement with ICSHC alumni, Andre Megale, who has established the first Brazilian Institute on the History of Sports. The ‘The Road to Rio’ involves the ICSHC as a hub of historical and cultural analysis on the upcoming Brazil 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic and Paralympics Games. The ICSHC is uniquely placed to provide historical context for contemporary Brazilian mega events. This is a catalogue for an exhibitions at the National Football Museum, Manchester (NFM). In addition, an academic conference at the BL and a public lecture series at the NFM will maximise the public impact of our research to national and international audiences. The focus of the world’s gaze on Brazil as a sporting innovator is not new. The first three Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Championships were relatively small affairs hosted in 1930 by Uruguay; Italy in 1934 and France in 1938. The 1950 Brazil World Cup showcased the global reach of modern football as a media spectacle more extensively than at any previous point in history, also in a context of economic growth, cultural modernity and political challenges. The idea for a football world cup grew out of the popularity of Olympic football tournaments; an increasing number of international competitions and improved communications networks in global sport. This booklet uses twenty four key items in the collections at the National Football Museum to tell the history of the competition as it has grown and moved across the world. We hope that you enjoy this approach but recognise that this selection of items is idiosyncratic and you may well have made other choices. This booklet and the related exhibition is not intended as a definitive history of the World Cup from 1930-2014 but designed to raise awareness of the social and cultural reach of the tournament as it has evolved into a mega event. At the first Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Championship in 1930 played in Montevideo, Uruguay the only European teams were Belgium, France, Romania and Yugoslavia. The second World Championship was hosted by Italy in 1934 and the third was held in France in 1938. The first three FIFA World Championships were therefore relatively small affairs but immediately popular with the public and the media. The first post-war World Cup held in Brazil in 1950 therefore showcased the global reach of football more extensively than at any previous point in history. Subsequent World Cups show strong modernistic designs influenced by space and satellite technologies, increased technological specialisation and more intense commercialisation. Items like the Vuvuzela, the sound of the 2010 South Africa World Cup, reflect a national public image on a world stage.

Two versions of an original artwork, one commissioned for Resonate '15, one represented as experimental cabaret. In this work, Streffen problematises the history of technology and ideas of accelerationism by performing a live media archaeology of the GIF format. #unicornthings is a media archaeology of the GIF as performance to camera and as experimental cabaret.

The exhibition toured to four venues: the Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland (2014), Chawton House Library, Alton (2014), John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2014), People’s History Museum, Manchester (2015-2016) The exhibition was co-curated by Isabella Streffen and Alistair Robinson, with Peter Knight, Paul Crossthwaite and Nicky Marsh. It was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Arts Council England, the University of Manchester, the University of Southampton, the University of Edinburgh. Show Me The Money was the first exhibition to propose a broad historical overview of how the image of finance has changed over the last three centuries, and how it might be imagined in the future. It frames finance as a problem of knowledge, analysing the cultural, emotional, libidinal and even mystical factors that animate financial markets to demonstrate how they are shaped, mediated and made by visual and verbal rhetorics, and protocols of representation, genre narrative and iconography. It explored the origins and continuing dominance of the myth of the rational market, revealing in material terms the idea that markets are not governed by immutable economic laws but are socially, culturally and historically constructed. The exhibition comprised 72 art works (including new commissions) and 35 artefacts from the period 1698 to 2014.

'Conjunctively Evolving', was an international exhibition in Shanghai, China, curated by Jian Zhou, Liu Li, and Zhang Yicheng. The exhibition was developed as an extension and progression from the exhibition, "Intersecting Practices: Contemporary Printmaking in the UK", including works by artists based in China and the UK. Exhibiting artists: Victoria Ahrens, Hadas Auerbach, Trevor Banthorpe, Ian Brown, Jane Bustin, Stephen Chambers RA, Paul Coldwell, Nicky Coutts, Deng Yuejun, Julia Farrer, Hans Fonk, Oona Grimes, Gu Tingting, Gu Renming, Brian D Hodgson, Ji Wenyu, Jiao Yang, Jin Sheng, Ann-Marie Lequesne, Liu Yincong, Mao Weixin, Charlie Masson, Bob Matthews, Heather Meyerratken, Ni Weihua, Peng Bo, Meg Rahaim, Shen Fan, Hal Stennett, Emma Stibbon RA, Jo Stockham, Finlay Taylor, Wang Ming, Wei Guangqing, Joby Williamson, Wu Xiaoning, Xiao Jianhun, Xie Rong, Xuan Chenhao, Zhou Binlang, Zhou Jian, Zhu Weibing

Blood Memory, shown in the National Gallery of Kosova in March 2015, consisted of 40 images from a body of work I carried out in the politically turbulent years of 1990-91. At that time Yugoslavia, where I was born, was on the brink of civil war, threatening the fragile process begun in Kosova of miraculously transforming centuries of bloodshed into a promise of peace and reconciliation. Since the 15th century, families in the region have lived by the grim edict “spilled blood must be met by spilled blood”. In 1990, sickened by the slaughter and destruction as Yugoslavia imploded, the people of Kosova took the future into their own hands. With no formal organisers or leaders, men and women, young and old, all over the country left their homes and trekked all day or hitchhiked on tractors or vans to witness their elders and victims’ families publicly announce forgiveness. They forgave the unforgivable: the destruction of homes and the destruction of lives. Blood Memory shows the crowds assembling with bodies clinging to every incline, mounted on telephone poles, rooftops and trees. At the heart of the group elders ceremonially embrace, arm in arm, hand in hand. Robbed of so many sons and brothers, the grieving crowds give their assent. This exhibition captures the tension of the moment, the solemnity of this life-changing transformation, and the exuberance as the reality of reconciliation strikes home. A dove is released, a white horse is ridden into the crowd, a couple and a drummer clear a space for an impromptu dance. Landscape and figures coalesce in scenes of powerful emotional beauty. How often does a community turn its back on hatred for the good of individuals and society? In a unique re-enactment of the original moment, Erzen Shkololli, Director of the National Gallery, asked to exhibit this work in 2015, a year marked by both European consolidation and growing instability. Working together with Karen McQuaid, of the Photographers’ Gallery, we installed the work, large and small, to encourage the audience to remember, and to move them to relive the moment of 1990-91. My images document the dignity, courage and compassion of ordinary people in an extraordinary time, and serve to inspire future generations to similar acts of altruism. It is about much more than one point in history and one place in Europe. The event it brings to life has powerful implications for other times and other places. That is why the exhibition attracted extensive media attention and was visited by the Presidents of Kosova and of Bulgaria, distinguished representatives of the EU, OSCE, foreign ministers and ambassadors. However, for me the highlight was when it was visited by the people who took part in the movement, their sons and daughters, their grandsons and grand daughters all remembering in front of these photographs. It brought the community together to remember solidarity over hatred. From Kosova in 2015 a message of hope resonates through the world.

poem about the past and present of Leicester