Barbara Maria Stafford – Bartlett International Lecture Series

This event is free and open to all. No booking is required, but please arrive early to guarantee your place.

Weighty Shadows/Stained Screens

Lecturer's Abstract

Barbara Maria Stafford seeks to disrupt the effects of digital technologies, by making the case for material, perceptual and ethical weightiness. Consisting of three episodes intended to provoke reflection, she considers the raw matter and the solidity of shadow, as well as existential stains, asking what differentiates the cumulative marks of character from the contemporary micronisation of branded identity.

Biography

Barbara Maria Stafford is an independent writer, curator and speaker. Her work explores the intersections between the visual arts and the physical and biological sciences from the early modern to the contemporary era. 

Barbara has taught at the University of Chicago for twenty years, where she has held a University Chair for the past decade. Previously, she was a Distinguished University Visiting Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Her most recent publications include Ribbon of Darkness: Inferencing from the Shadowy Arts and Sciences (2019), and A Field Guide to a New Meta Field (2011). Find out more about Barbara’s books on her website.

Access

All our event spaces are accessible. For any additional support or information, please email or call 020 3108 7337.

Image: Icarian 1, Incline (1992), Daniel Goldstein. One of a series of sculptures made from the leather work-out bench covers collected by the artist during the AIDS epidemic. Both particular and universal, each piece carries the dark stains, deep cicatrices, and oozing flesh wounds of San Francisco’s HIV sufferers.