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Showing 9 Projects from The Octagon:
Exhibition graphic showing a pattern of textured shapes in earth tones on white
Objects of the Misanthropocene
This speculative exhibition inspired by fictional accounts of the Anthropocene aims to generate a sense of responsibility for caring for our planet now.Objects of the Misanthropocene: Unearthing futures is the latest output of the ‘Objects of the Misanthropocene’ project, which was initiated in 2019 and continues to evolve through a series of co-produced events hosted by the Illegal Museum of Beyond.The exhibition in the Octagon Gallery was centred on the premise of a future museum that has sent objects back in time. These ‘time-travelling’ objects were made by wide-ranging project participants across UCL and beyond. Many objects were produced specifically for this exhibition. These sat alongside objects from UCL Collections and loans from the Museum of Beyond.Objects of the Misanthropocene: Unearthing futures, curated by Dean Sully and Jo Volley in collaboration with UCL Museums and Cultural Programmes, would like to thank all project participants, contributors, artists, makers and curators of UCL Museums for their creative input.Find out more about the origins, inspiration, and contributors behind the making of this exhibition below.Origins and processProject backgroundRecent global environmental changes suggest we have entered a new human-dominated geological epoch. Having left the Holocene, we have now entered the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene describes the most recent period in Earth’s history in which human activity has generated irreversible planetary transformations at multiple levels (climate change, biodiversity, composition of the atmosphere, oceans and living organisms).Currently, researchers across UCL are working together to respond to this geological phenomenon. Through the virtual school ‘UCL Anthropocene’, projects from across the social sciences, arts, humanities and natural sciences have been assem¬bled to explore what the Anthropocene means for our collective futures.Among these projects is Objects of the Misanthropocene, conceived as a transdisciplinary experiment in speculative practice by Dean Sully during his time as Scientist in Residence at the Slade School of Fine Art between 2019 and 2021. The ‘Misanthropocene’ is characterised by the rapid and irreversible alterations to the climate and global depletion of resources caused by humans. The concept signals a cautionary tale about the catastrophic implications for all life on Earth of our present inaction.At the core of the project are the inevitable misinterpretations involved in attempts to understand other worlds. The reality of the time travelling exhibits relies on the credibility of the proposed futures, and the believability of the exhibits to a contemporary audience. This maintains a suspension of disbelief about the objects in presenting the histories of futures already long passed but which have not yet existed. Speculative methods of embracing both fact and fiction are critical tools to shape more hopeful futures.This project manifests as an online exhibition that opened in August 2020 and has been developed into a temporary exhibition at the Slade School of Fine Art at UCL (January – June 2022), UCL Institute of Archaeology (currently on display), and as an exhibition in the Octagon Gallery, Wilkins Building (September 2022 – February 2023).What’s next?The Illegal Museum of Beyond continues to host events that challenge the authority of narratives of past and future worlds. Using participatory speculation, the Museum develops heritage projects through online workshops on fabulation and fabrication. New venues for the Objects of the Misanthropocene exhibition will be announced soon.Inspiration"The point of creating futures is to get people to imagine what they want and don’t want to happen down the road — and maybe do something about it.” -    Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time (1976)“...I'll use these verses to pry them loose from the rotting past, and maybe push them into saving themselves and building a future that makes sense." -    Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)" We must expect our present beliefs will seem equally ridiculous in the future."-    Tim Mulgan, Ethics for a Broken World, Imagining Philosophy after Catastrophe (2011) Further readingA range of literary fictional worlds have provided inspiration for the Objects of the Misanthropocene project. Here are some key texts:Butler, Octavia, 1993. 'Parable of the Sower'. London: Headline Publishing.Lewis, S.L., and Maslin, M.A. 2015. “Defining the Anthropocene.” Nature 519: 171–180.Mulgan, Tim. 2011. 'Ethics for a broken world, imagining philosophy after catastrophe'. Durham: Acumen.Macaulay, David. 1979. 'Motel of the Mysteries'. Boston: Houghton Mifflin CompanyOreskes, Naomi, and Conway, Erik, M. 2014. 'The Collapse of Western Civilization. A View from the Future'. New York: Columbia University PressPiercy, Marge. 1976 (2019). 'Woman on the Edge of Time'. London: Delray.Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. 'The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins'. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press.Yusoff, Kathryn. 2018. 'A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None'. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.ContributorsThe process of conceiving, fabricating, translating, and presenting the exhibits was first developed through transdisciplinary online exchanges during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. Participants from UCL, the Architectural Association School of Architecture and Goldsmith’s Department of Design contributed to the fabulation and fabrication of the exhibits. The approach reflects the methodologies of the environmental humanities and ecocriticism, in allowing audiences to experience a physical interpretation of future worlds.This online workshop format was replicated for the fabrication of the new objects on display in the UCL Octagon Gallery exhibition, Objects of the Misanthropocene: Unearthing futures. Below is a list of contributors to the Octagon Gallery exhibition.Artists and makersAlitza Nichole Cardona CollazoAntonia Calcedo HolguínChristine ChuaDean SullyFuna YeHannah UzorJimmy LoizeauJohann AustadJo VolleyKasia Depta-GarapichKexin JiangKimberly SelvaggiKorallia StergidesLi Xiaozhou (Ariel) Lisa RandisiLucy WaittMadeleine TreneerMerry ChowRobert MeadRosie PhillipsYu Hsuan Chang (Jocelyne)Yuhan XiaoThe Museum of BeyondSeveral of the objects in Objects of the Misanthropocene: Unearthing Futures are on loan from The Museum of Beyond.The Museum of Beyond imagines a future beyond oil... it's a life without plastics, and yet plastic fragments of our Oil Age lives continue to wash up on the shores of our oceans. Curated by artist Fran Crowe, the museum sees the present through future eyes, imagining what future generations might make of these plastic objects collected from our shoreline - and what they might think about us. Fran hopes that by thinking about the way we live now; we can begin to imagine how we might create a better future for all life on our planet. You can explore the museum’s full collection at www.museumofbeyond.org.More of Fran’s work can be found at www.flyintheface.com.UCL MuseumsObjects of the Misanthropocene: Unearthing Futures also includes contributions from UCL Collections: the Grant Museum of Zoology, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology, and UCL Science Collections. With thanks to Lisa Randisi, Anna Garnett, Hannah Cornish and Tannis Davidson.Exhibition curatorsJo Volley and Dean Sully in collaboration with UCL Museums and Cultural Programmes team.Exhibition graphic designRose NordinIllegal Museum of Beyond website designKatherine BeckwithLi Xiaozhou (Ariel)With thanks toAparna DholeCamilo Parra PedrozaClare MelhuishClemency GibbsLi YiwenLingyi KongMarceline Graham Michele FarmerNicole ZhouPun Sam YeeSu YinEventsThe Objects of the Misanthropocene events programme ran until February 2023. 
magic fruit garden
The Magic Fruit Garden (2018)
A prologue to UCL's Disrupters and Innovators exhibition in the Octagon GalleryThis installation focused on an illustrated book wirtten in 1899 by Marion Wallace-Dunlop (1864-1942) who studied at UCL and whose story is featured in the Disrupters and Innovators exhibition that followed.This project was part of UCL Art Museum's family of projects Curating Equality and Vote 100 at UCL in 2018.Quotes featured in the exhibition are from Marion Wallace-Dunlop, The Magic Fruit Garden (London: Ernest Nister, 1889).About Marion Wallace-Dunlop and The Magic Fruit GardenWallace-Dunlop was an artist, writer and lifelong campaigner for women’s rights. In 1909, she became the first suffragette to go on hunger strike, having been imprisoned for stencilling political graffiti on a wall in the House of Commons. Two decades earlier, she created a fairy tale about a girl struggling to write an essay on ‘Perseverance’.  In her quest for wisdom, Doc finds a magic fruit garden where knowledge-fruit grows on bushes and trees. Here she picks ‘geography-plums and history-apples and grammar-pears and all the time her knowledge of everything kept growing bigger and bigger’. In a glass conservatory, Doc encounters piles of sweets ‘made from mixtures of the various fruits in the garden boiled in a syrup called Research. There was botany-sugar, zoology-candy, geology-toffee, and sugar-plums of every kind and colour’. When she gets home, her brother tells Doc it was only a dream and remarks that it’s ‘just like a girl to think that a dream is real.’ However, he then embarks on an adventure of his own which forces him to admit the magic garden is real.The history of women at UCLThis exhibition is part of UCL's year-long Vote 100 programme, which marks the centenary of the Representation of the People Act that granted the vote to some women over the age of 30 in the UK.Beginning in the 1860s, UCL experimented with providing classes for women. From 1878, women could study alongside men and receive University of London degrees: the first time this had happened in the UK. It was not until 1918 that new legislation allowed the first women to vote in the UK. This was part of wider electoral reforms accelerated by World War I. Ten years later, women received equal voting rights with men. This process was a backdrop to the lives of female students and researchers at UCL and beyond in the early 20th century. However, co-education was not adopted in all subjects and female students and staff continued to face many obstacles.The UCL Vote 100 programme revealed the impact of the pioneering women who built the university, and imaginatively explore the battles still to be won. Find out more about UCL Vote 100 here.Collaboration across UCLThis UCL Culture exhibition was curated by Dr Nina Pearlman, Head of UCL Art Collections, who also managed the design concept.It was produced in association with:Angela Scott, UCL Digital Media - Design realisationDarren Stevens and Sam Wilkinson, UCL Culture - Production 
Bentham's ring
What Does It Mean To Be Human?
The severed heads of two famous scholars have spent the last few decades hidden from public view. Both were men strongly associated with UCL that consented to have their remains preserved for future generations to display, research and discuss. Here we exhibit the head of philosopher Jeremy Bentham for the first time in decades, alongside cutting-edge scientific techniques to extract and sequence his DNA. We also consider why the archaeologist Flinders Petrie left his head to science, and explore how the actions and work of both men have influenced our modern attitudes to death and what it means to be human.By looking at Flinders Petrie’s and Jeremy Bentham’s heads in the context of their own scholarship, alongside current scientific advances and other human remains from UCL's collections, 'What does it mean to be human?'  Examines the power of human remains to generate debate and critical reflection. Come and explore these issues in archaeology, history and philosophy of science, evolutionary science and ancient DNA research in this exhibition and accompanying events series.EventsWhat does it mean to be human? Through talks, workshops and a late opening discover how we use science to understand the dilemma of death. The Head of Flinders Petrie?Wednesday 6 September, 1.15-1.45pmTalkPetrie Museum of Egyptian ArchaeologyFind out more about the so-called head of Flinders Petrie that is stored in a jar in the Royal College of Surgeons. Elizabeth Jones (UCL STS) explains why it is there and the questions to science that it poses.  Death DrawingFriday 27 October 6-8pmWorkshopGrant Museum of ZoologyBe inspired by the heads and art works depicting heads on display in our exhibition, A Study of What it means to be Human?, as well as objects in the Grant Museum of Zoology to draw from death with artist Lucy Lyons. Includes an afterhours visit to the exhibition.Fake News: The Heads of Jeremy Bentham and Flinders PetrieWednesday 22 November 1.10 – 1.50pmTalkOctagon Gallery Everyone knows that the philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s head was used as a football. We all know that the widow of the Egyptian archaeologist Flinders Petrie brought Petrie’s head to England in her hatbox. Yet neither of these stories is true! Find out more about how such myths are made and how this exhibition is debunking these and other ‘fake news’. Unexpected Utility: Sequencing the Genome of Jeremy BenthamWednesday 11 October 1.15-1.45pmTalkOctagonThis talk explores what ancient DNA is and how an attempt was made to sequence the genome of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Lucy van Dorp will explain why we bother to analyse ancient DNA and present examples of how such analysis has had an impact on modern understanding of diseases and human activity. Lost Skills: Will WritingTuesday 21 November 1.10 – 1.50pmWorkshopPetrie Museum of Egyptian ArchaeologyHow do you write a will? How do you make it legally binding? Be inspired by a 3,000-year-old example preserved on papyrus from Ancient Egypt to write your own will. Discover how philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s will had an impact on modern ideas about death. Find out more about these historic examples and get advice on will writing.Curating Heads: Museum Studies Round TableWednesday 22 November 4-5.30pmDiscussionInstitute of ArchaeologyChaired by Dr Alice Stevenson (UCl IoA) a panel of museum professionals who’ve curated human remains and material culture around death and dying give provocations for discussion. A Wake for Jeremy Bentham: What Jeremy did for Death and the Living15 February 6-9pmLate openingSouth Cloisters, Wilkins Building Join us to celebrate Jeremy Bentham’s 270th birthday while his head is on display in the Octagon gallery and to bid adieu to his auto-icon as it goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. At this long-table style event a series of speakers will make a 5-10 minute ‘toast’ to Jeremy Bentham that explores how his decision for his body to become an auto-icon had an impact on how death and the dead body is perceived as well as people living. [[{"fid":"5863","view_mode":"small","fields":{"format":"small","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Star shaped logo for UCL Grand Challenges","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][format]":"limited_html","field_float_left_right[und]":"left","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"small","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Star shaped logo for UCL Grand Challenges","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][format]":"limited_html","field_float_left_right[und]":"left","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"height":"1943","width":"2244","class":"media-element file-small"}}]]UCL Grand Challenges funded the extraction and genome sequencing of DNA from the remains of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) with a view to a wider programme of research on the history, legacy, ethics and practices of researching, exhibiting and curating human remains. The plan was also to extract DNA from the head thought to be of the UCL archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) in the Royal College of Surgeons but due to issues with family consent, we have not been able to do this. However, we still consider why Petrie left his head to science.
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