Alchemy

Professor Dr. Robert Williams is an artist and academic. Williams’ practice includes a number of projects in the UK and USA with close collaborators such as artists Mark Dion and Bryan McGovern Wilson; conceptual writers Dr. Simon Morris and Nick Thurston; German cultural sociologist Dr. Hilmar Schäfer, and with his son, Jack Aylward-Williams. Notable projects with Dion include The Tasting Garden at Lancaster (1998), The Tate Thames Dig (1999), Theatrum Mundi: Armarium at Jesus College, Cambridge (2001) and the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2011). A recent major Arts Council England funded project with American artist Bryan McGovern Wilson explores the confluence of nuclear energy, mineral extraction industries, archaeology and folklore in the North-west of England. Cumbrian Alchemy (2011-2017) was shown in the UK and France, Umeå in Sweden in September 2016 as part of The Arts Catalyst Nuclear Cultures project, led by Dr. Ele Carpenter, and is now at Z33 in Hasselt, Belgium.

Kate Briggs is a writer and translator based in Rotterdam, where she is a core tutor on the MFA in Fine Art at the Piet Zwart Institute. She is the translator of two volumes of lecture and seminar notes by Roland Barthes (Columbia University Press, 2011 and 2013). Further publications include: Exercise in Pathetic Criticism (Information as Material, 2011), On Reading as an Alternation of Flights and Perchings (NO Press, 2013) and The Nabokov Paper (Information as Material, 2013) ‘Small Hand (A Paper-Size Poem)’ (Convolution, 2014) and ‘Story the Story in It’ (Amodern 6, 2016). This Little Art, a long narrative essay on the practice of translation, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in September 2017: https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/this-little-art

Jane Topping graduated from Glasgow School of Art and then served time on the Transmission committee. Recent exhibitions and screenings include The Fifth Annual Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival, New York (2017),  Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kerala, India (with Lux Scotland, 2017), solo show Screen Used, Patricia Fleming Projects, Glasgow, Glasgow Short Film Festival (2016), Transit #3 and everything crooked will become straight, Glasgow (2016), among many others. Her film Peter won Best PKD Short at The Fifth Annual Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival, New York, 2017. She was a recipient of the summer residency (2017) at Hospitalfield, Arbroath and was on the jury of the No Budget Competition at the 32nd Hamburg International Short Film Festival (2016). She is currently Programme Leader of Fine Art BA (Hons) at the University of Cumbria Institute of the Arts.