Research
Prof. Neil Cummings
Professor of Critical Practice
Research Interests
Political economy of creativity, collaborative creative practice, the re-animation of the public domain.Biography
Neil Cummings is Professor of Critical Practice at Chelsea. He was born in Wales, and lives in London.
Current Research
I have evolved a multidisciplinary art practice that often requires an intense period of research within the specific contexts in which art is produced, distributed and encounters its audiences. Principally this has meant working directly with Museums, Galleries (both public and commercial) Archives and Art Schools.
I often work collaboratively with other artists, curators, academics researchers or producers, to create artworks, exhibitions and events from existing collections or contexts. Each artwork or event finds the appropriate form, and these are as varied as creating exhibitions - 'Enthusiasm' at the Whitechapel Gallery, curating film programmes - 'Social Cinema' at several temporary locations in central London, writing and editing films - 'Museum Futures; Distributed', books - 'The Value of Things', and convening participatory conferences - Open Congress at Tate.
Currently I am interested in the political economy of creativity, and how art is instituted. While at Chelsea I contribute to the research cluster Critical Practice (http://www.criticalpracticechelsea.org/).
For further information please see http://www.neilcummings.com/
Selected Outputs and Achievements
Selected Exhibitions and Projects
2010 'Parade' (with Critical Practice), Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground, Chelsea, London.
2010 'ArchivalProcess', ongoing since February 2009, a research project with Intermediae, in Madrid.
2009 'Lapdogs', installed at the Arnolfini in Bristol as part of Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie.
2008 'Lapdogs', screened at the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, Egypt.
2008 'Post production', a special programme curated from The Enthusiasts Archive (http://www.enthusiastsarchive.net/) for Manifesta 7, installed in the ex-Alumix factory in Bolzano, Italy.
2008 'Museum Futures: live recorded distributed', project commissioned by Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, as part of their Jubilee celebrations.
2007 'Parade', commissioned for the Contour Film Biennial, exhibited in Mechelen, Belgium, and ArtLife a simultaneous project for Transit Gallery, Belgium.
2006 'Generosity' as part of Protections, Kunsthaus Graz, Austria.
2006 Launch of 'The Enthusiasts Archive' (http://www.enthusiastsarchive.net/), an on-line extension of Enthusiasm.
2005-06 'Industrialtownfurturism: 100 years of Wolfsburg and Nowa Huta', opened at the Kunstverein Wolfsburg in December 2005 and closed in Nowa Huta, Cracow in November 2006, commissioned by the London Architecture Biennale.
2005-06 'Screen Test 1/4', exhibited as part of The British Art Show Six, touring exhibition with catalogue.
2005 'Enthusiasm', major exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London and touring to Kunst Werke, Berlin and the Tapies Foundation, Barcelona, accompanying trilingual publication.
2004 'Enthusiasts', The Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland, bi-lingual publication.
2004 'The Commons', a distributed artwork at key sites in Liverpool, commissioned as part of the International section of The Liverpool Biennial.
2003 'Free Trade', Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, UK.
Selected Texts
2008 Selection of texts, The History Book: On Moderna Museet 1958-2008, Moderna Museet and Steidl Verlag, Germany.
2007 'From Capital to Enthusiasm'. in Macdonald, S. and Basu, P. (eds) Exhibition Experiments, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford.
2006 'A shadow of Marx', in Jones, A. (ed.) A Companion to Art Since 1945, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford.
2005 'Relations Audiences, Institutions and Values', in British Art Show Six catalogue, Hayward Gallery Publishing, London.
2004 'An Economy of Love', in Cox, G., Krysa, J. and Lewin, A. (eds) Economising Culture: on the Digital Culture Industry, Autonomedia, New York.
2004 'From Things to Flows', in Stahel, U., Seelig, T. (eds) The Ecstacy of Things, Steidl Verlag, Gottingen.
2004 'Collision', in Preziosi, D. and Fargo, C. (eds) Grasping the World: the Idea of the Museum, Ashgate, London.
2003 'Reprise', published as part of Independence, South London Gallery, London.
Selected Presentations and Conference Papers
2009 'Social Cinema', the Hinterland Symposium at Broadway, Nottingham.
2009 Presentation for The Economics of the Art System, Wysing Cambridge.
2007 'From Capital to Enthusiasm', York University, Torronto Canada.
2007 Participated in Hang the Commission!, Serpentine Gallery, London.
2007 In conversation as part of the Ice Trade, Goethe Institute, London.
2006 Keynote presentation of Screen Tests, at CIMAM Annual Conference, Tate Modern, London.
2006 'Virtual Communities versus Physical Realities', at Future of Community Festival, London.
2006 Presentation at Anticipating the Past: Artist: Archive: Film, Tate Modern, London.
2005 Co-organiser as part of Critical Practice, Open Congress, Tate Britain, London.
2005 'Introduction of Enthusiast: archive' at Remix Culture: Creative Commons and Creativity, University of Sussex.
2004 Keynote presentation 'A Joy Forever (and its place in the market)' at 30th Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians, Nottingham.
2004 'New Paradigms of Contemporary Art', at CaixaForum, Barcelona, Spain.
2003 Presentation at Fieldworks; dialogues between Art and Anthropology, conference organized by Tate Modern and the University of London, in association with Goldsmiths College and University College London. Tate Modern, London.
Places on committees and selection panels
2009 Peer review college member, AHRC.
2007 Trustee, Nottingham Contemporary.
2006 Member of Editorial Board, Documents in Contemporary Art.
Visiting Fellowships
2005 Visiting Scholar, University of the Arts in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
2004 Visiting Professor, Grinnell College, Iowa, USA.
Current Research Students
Daniel Baker - Technologies of Encounter: The Travel Narrative and the Materiality of Museum Display
Michael Ricketts - (Post-)Conceptualism / Urbanism
Marsha Bradfield - Verbal Utterance and Audience Response in Web-based Installations
Andy Hewitt - Socially Engaged Art Practices and funding agencies in Culture led Regeneration
Corrado Morgana - Ludic interventions in dialogic space; socialised activity, Play and 'the game'
Completed Research Students
Wayne Clements - Instruction Art: Rule Making and Rule Following in Visual Art.
Andrew Chesher - Towards a Dialogical Practice: Investigating the 'dialogical document' as an aesthetic strategy for working with enunciative context.
Isobel Bowditch - What does it mean to make a decision? a project in writing.
