Eye Magazine

There was a ‘Ziggy Stardust’ moment right at the end of last week’s ‘Critical Tensions’ conference at St Bride Library in London, writes Eye editor John L. Walters, when co-organiser Rob Banham announced that this tenth annual conference was also the final one. There will be more talks and one-day events, but no more two-day ones.

So it was good to go out on (what seemed like) a high. For a brief overview of the conference, read Neil McGuire’s ‘Tense’ on the GSA Visual Communication blog. For more about the ‘Good for nothing’ presentation, see ‘Take a deep breath’ on the Eye blog.

And if you have pictures from the two days, please feel free to add them to the Eye Flickr group http://eyem.ag/sbfcritical.

As a co-curator, I was particularly glad to see how well the plenary sessions went, thanks to skilful chairing by Emily King (day one) and Phil Baines (day two, top). But there are many more unanswered questions that we’ll be happy to field on this blog and via Twitter, using the hashtag #sbfcritical.

Below, left to right: Marina Willer (Wolff Olins), Steven Watson (Stack), Zoé Bather (Studio8), Amelia Gregory, Derek Yates (Camberwell School of Arts) at the final plenary of ‘Critical Tensions’, 11 Nov 2011.

For the moment, I’d like to repeat my very warm thank-you to everyone who participated in ‘Critical Tensions’. It’s given us [Eye] the appetite to get involved in more events, in London and elsewhere.

10 & 11 November 2011
Critical Tensions
St Bride Library
London
www.stbride.org

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