#A Quiet Afternoon In Cloud Cuckoo Land

[briannas-casebook]

ANIMATION CONTEXT: MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY

For November 9th's Animation Context class, I visited the Museum of Science + Industry. This space is home to many early technological innovations and inventions of the 19th and early/mid-20th centuries. Many were invented and used in the city of Manchester.

The first major exhibition section that caught my interest was the section on early radio programmes in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Long before the invention and proliferation of television, radio was an accessible form of entertainment in peoples homes. Radios content was diverse and went far beyond just music, with regular programmes including children's shows, national/international news, quiz shows, serialise dramas, comedy shows, poetry recitals and literary readings. It was also an important vehicle for political addresses to the nation. Radio acted as an audio centric pre-curser to the programmess we later saw made for television.

In some ways, I can't help but feel the spirit of these early serialized radio programs still lives on in the medium of modern podcasts.

The next section of the museum was a large exhibition showcasing the many inventions used in the production of cotton fibres and textiles.

Walking around this section and reading each of the informational plaques, something about the information presented just felt lacking to me. The story of textile production in Manchester was not being told in full, with huge omissions or some information being presented in an understated and downplayed way.

The story told, it seems to me, is one of huge innovations that transformed the working lives and living patterns of millions of people across the textile industry, brought wealth into the Northern regions and ushered in the industrial revolution. The information given tells of the machinery and what it could do - how tasks that had been performed on a small scale, using time-consuming processes, could now be done in a faster, higher producing factory setting giving much higher yields in shorter times. However it downplays, or even completely failed to mention at all, the working conditions in these factories, the low pay, long working day, poor living conditions, lack of workers rights, dangerous uncovered machinery, use of child labour or the many deaths that where all part of the industrial revolution and prevalent in the mills. One of the most egregious, and shocking examples of this by far, is this plaque (below) which talks about where the cotton fiber came from:

Whilst it's true that this photo was taken 24 years after slavery was abolished in the US (in 1865), cotton workers were still all black in America and their working conditions were not much improved from the days prior to their emancipation. US slaves were not given reparations for their years of slavery. They were paid for their work now but their pay was miserly, their workers rights were non-existent, cotton picking was viciously hard work and their living conditions were dreadful. Black Americans were still segregated and viewed as second class citizens. I looked up the life expectancy for black males versus white males in the US and although I couldn't find the figures for 1889, when this photo was taken, I was able to find figures for 1900 (11 years later). These showed that the life expectancy for white males was 46.6 and 32.5 for black males. This is a difference of over 14 years. The fact that this information is not even briefly addressed in this plaque showing black workers picking cotton gives it a very uncomfortable feeling to read.

To the Museums credit, these social issues regarding the more exploitative side of the textiles industry in the 1900s are addressed to some degree in a film made in collaboration with Global Threads and The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery. I do think a more accurate history should be given on their informational plaques though.

However, this film was the only acknowledgment of the darker colonial past of Britain's industry that I could see and was located in another room off to the side.

Given how the other two galleries I visited, Manchester Art Gallery and The Whitworth Museum, have handled the darker legacies of their fields in an upfront and natural way by including the information prominently, it's disappointing to see a museum like the Science and Industry Museum not weave this perspective organically into the informational plaques of their exhibits, downplaying it or hiding it away in parts of the museum that could be easily overlooked.

The purpose of a museum is to inform, educate and send a message about the world we live in. And what message does this handling of British industry's colonial past in the exhibition convey? What does their focus on the machines themselves and the prosperity they brought Britain and the world, while either omitting or downplaying the hardships and exploitation of the workers who were casualties of the squalid working conditions in these industries say? That the industrial revolution should be purely celebrated and romanticized as a beacon of progress and profit for Britain? And even if countless lower-class British people and people of color both in Britain and overseas suffered, it wasn't that big of a deal because things improved later? Are these the kinds of lessons a museum or educational institution should be teaching and perpetuating to those that visit them? Especially the younger and most impressionable?

On a lighter note, In the same room as the informational film screen, was the statue A Quiet Afternoon In Cloud Cuckoo Land by Rowland Emmet.

This machine stood out considerably from other machines displayed in the museum. Unlike most of them, this machine did not serve the practical purpose of creating something in a factory or a similar industrial function, this kinetic sculpture was created with the express purpose of making people happy. For some reason, I feel there is something inspiring about a machine sculpture made to make people happy and to be a novel piece of art featured in the Museum of Science and Industry alongside the automobile, the radio, and the computer. I feel this is deserved, as not only does the machine serve such a unique and important yet overlooked purpose, but it is also a marvel of engineering and art. With so much detail in both its art style and sculptures and the mechanisms that bring them to life.

[williamemcknight]

Birmingham brings back sixth Gold from Chelsea

Birmingham City Council has scooped Gold at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show for the sixth year running, in the floral category, with a display that celebrates the work of Rowland Emett OBE.

Darren Share MBE, who led the team for Birmingham City Council, said: “I’m delighted that we have achieved our sixth Chelsea Gold for Birmingham but it was with mixed feelings that I received it this morning as everyone was waking up to hear about the Manchester attack. The mood here is reflective and sombre today.

“I would like to thank the Rowland Emett Society for helping us to celebrate the achievements of another wonderfully creative artist taught in Birmingham.

“I would also like to thank my team who have worked so hard to bring Emett’s work to life with the power of plants.  And of course our sponsors who have paid for the display and all the plants and moving features within it.”

The 10m x 10m island display in the Floral Marquee – GPG214 – is called A Quiet Afternoon in the Cloud Cuckoo Valley. It has been sponsored by Greenspace Leisure, Rowland Emett Society, Veolia, Akamba Heritage Centre, Pentland Plants, Certis, and individuals who have bought panels.

Background – Rowland Emett OBE, was born in North London, 22 October 1906 and moved to Small Heath, Birmingham at the start of WW1. He went to Waverley Grammar School in Small Heath and studied at Birmingham School of Art, then known as Central School of Arts and Crafts. He later worked at Siviter Smith as a process engraver in Birmingham before becoming a cartoonist and inventor. Emett created mechanical machines to amuse and excite the people who saw them. The display incorporates elements of Emett’s work into a floral display and depicts a quiet afternoon in Cloud Cuckoo Valley.

Two pieces of work have been allocated to the display – the first is a bather taking a dive into a pool from a bathing hut and the second is the locomotive ‘Wild Goose’. This is a working train and carriages.

The Display – The train moves above the display on a track three metres off the floor. The track starts at the edge of the display and sits on top of a floral tunnel running through the display. The entrance to the tunnel is planted to look like a rail tunnel and displays pictures of Birmingham.

One side of the display is an ivy wall of metal and wicker moving cogs and gears. In the middle of the wall there is a water feature moving water buckets up to a river. The river continues in a waterfall, landing on the perspex roof of the tunnel. Water is then taken through planted valleys to a beach area with a diver and bathing hut.

The valleys are at one end of the display, over the tunnel and down to the beach. Wicker animals will be used to add movement and will be situated in the bedding scheme.