Submitted by Vanessa Bismuth on Wed, 29/09/2021 - 12:25
Moving image artist Logan Ryland Dandridge has been appointed to the first Cavendish Arts Science Fellowship at Girton College, Cambridge from October 2021.
I’m thinking about how physics can be used to reckon with the continuum of Black experience in the interest of more disruptive scientific and artistic interventions.Logan Dandridge
Cavendish Arts Science is a pioneering new venture that supports collaborative and creative processes that examine the world and our place within it through the creation of new artistic work.
The fellowship, supported by Una Ryan, is an opportunity for artists who are new to science to develop ideas in dialogue and community with Cavendish physicists in order to explore new ways of thinking about the world.
Dandridge is an Assistant Professor of Film at Syracuse University, New York (USA). In recent years his practice has centred around the creation of multi-channel installation video art projects.
His filmmaking interrogates many concepts, including ideas of spirituality, Gothicism and science fiction, Blackness and the American South and his own familial bonds through the poetics and aesthetics of experimental cinema. Dandridge draws on a range of processes including assemblage, superimposition, multi-channel orientation as well as jazz, hip hop, spoken word poetry and other experimentations with sound and lists influences John Akomfrah and Arthur Jafa as well as Audre Lorde and Octavia Butler. The contrapuntal and probing nature of Dandridge’s research and interests provide a unique catalyst for raising questions about our world.
Starting this October, Dandridge will undertake a year-long fellowship hosted by Girton College and the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge (UK). The artist will engage with physicists at the Cavendish to create work that grapples with questions of memory, and potential re-imagined futures, in the context of physics concepts such as non-linear time, in which the past and the future are no longer distinct. Dandridge said: “I’m thinking about how physics can be used to reckon with the continuum of Black experience in the interest of more disruptive scientific and artistic interventions. The research project will channel an experimental storytelling practice through an afrofuturist lens.”
Suchitra Sebastian, Director of Cavendish Arts Science said:
Our programme looks to challenge the imagination, and to ask big questions of life, the universe, and our place in it from a plurality of viewpoints. We are thrilled to welcome Logan as our first fellow, and look forward to engaging with him on a journey that explores race, memory, and time through sound and the moving image."
Dandridge will be fully supported to produce and exhibit new work in diverse contexts, including the opening of the Ray Dolby Centre at the Cavendish Laboratory in 2023 and those created through national and international partnerships. Susan Smith, Mistress of Girton College, said: “Creativity is at the heart of residential academic life at Cambridge. We are delighted to support this visionary scheme to produce great art through encounter with great science.”
The fellowship open call received almost 400 submissions from artists in more than 60 countries, and was judged by a selection panel including Haroon Mirza (Artist and Collaborator), Ariane Koek (Independent Curator and Creative Partner) and representatives from the Cavendish Laboratory, Girton College, and Cavendish Arts Science.
Haroon Mirza said:
The possibility of having unique encounters lies at the heart of the Cavendish Arts Science Fellowship. A conversation or a curiosity in the other's work can quickly snowball into unexpected and fruitful collaborations."
The Cavendish Arts Science Fellowship at Girton College is facilitated by a partnership between Cavendish Arts Science and Girton College. Cavendish Arts Science is an initiative of the University of Cambridge, Cavendish Laboratory for Physics. The programme is made possible by a generous donation from Una Ryan.
For more information please visit: cavendish-artscience.org.uk
About Logan Ryland Dandridge
Logan Ryland Dandridge is a filmmaker and Assistant Professor of film at Syracuse University College of Visual & Performing Arts. His films interpret the nuances of African American culture through the poetics and aesthetics of experimental cinema. His research interrogates various histories through a combination of assemblage, superimposition, and multi-channel orientation. As a filmmaker, cultural referencing, nostalgia, and religion are themes explored in his work.
About Cavendish Arts Science
Founded by Suchitra Sebastian in 2016, the Cavendish Arts Science programme has been conceived to question and explore material and immaterial universes through a dialogue between the arts and sciences. The programme’s first exhibition Into boundless space I leap marked the inauguration of the new Maxwell Centre in Cambridge. The exhibition was curated by Guy Haywood of Kettle’s Yard and showcased newly-commissioned work created through conversation between artists and scientists. Works included a performance by choreographer Wayne McGregor and artist Haroon Mirza, new text-based work by Mark Titchner, and origami sculptures by Rana Begum. The next phase of the programme, for three years in the first instance, including the annual fellowship in partnership with Girton College, is generously supported by Una Ryan, a world-leading biologist and also an artist, an alumna of Girton College and the University of Cambridge, and committed supporter of the arts.
About the Fellowship Open Call & Selection Panel
The selection panel consisted of Suchitra Sebastian (Director, Cavendish Arts Science and Professor of Physics, Cavendish Laboratory), Susan Smith (Mistress, Girton College), Haroon Mirza (Artist), Ariane Koek (Independent Curator and Creative Partner), Mete Atature (Professor of Physics, Cavendish Laboratory) and Rob Bowman (Producer, Cavendish Arts Science). The open call received almost 400 submissions from artists in more than 60 countries.
Image: Self-portrait, Logan Ryland Dandridge