Marsha Bradfield
Course Leader, MA Intecultural Practices • Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London • she/her
Marsha Bradfield rides the hyphen as an archivist-artist-curator-educator-researcher-writer-and, and, and. . . . Marsha works thematically and recent practice has explored authorship, value systems, organisational (infra)structures and the economies/ecologies of cultural production. Marsha is a promiscuous collaborator and works with C3, RadBots, Critical Practice, Precarious Workers Brigade, REBEL (Recognising Experience-Based Education and Learning) and the Incidental Unit (formerly the Artist Placement Group and O+I). Between 2013 - 2015 she co-directed Pangaea Sculptors' Centre and today sits on the board.
These collaborations often result in understanding that Marsha re-presents in publications, exhibitions, performative lectures and other mongrel outputs.
Marsha's teaching spans art/design/performance and their curation and education. She has recently left her role leading MA Computational Arts at Camberwell College of Arts to lead MA Intercultural Practices at Central Saint Martins. This low-residency, interdisciplinary programme is aligned with UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals and part of Shared Campus, a platform for international education formats and research networks launched by seven higher arts education institutions. Close cooperation is imperative to tackling issues of global significance. https://www.arts.ac.uk/subjects/performance-and-design-for-theatre-and-screen/postgraduate/ma-intercultural-practices-csm
Inspired by her ongoing work with BA, MA and PhD students as well as collaborators in tech art, geography, and the build environment, Marsha is committed to nurturing an international community of critical contemporary art engaged in global complexity.
Marsha was born in South Africa, grew up in Canada and has been based in the UK since 2006.
London, UK 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
What are my current interests? I'm preoccupied with the 'work' of art - the labour it entails. I'm developing a body of practice-based research about artworks as simultaneously useful/useless. I'm also trying to think through what it means to be an international artist - to work internationally - after globalisation and in the face of COVID and the climate crisis.
Affiliations
BeFantastic
Projects
Radbot - NFT Bot
RadBots are an NFT collection of conversational videobots created by leading global artists. The project combines 2022’s most advanced artificial intelligence, authored screenplays and Dara.network’s async video-chat platform to bring fascinating AI characters to life on anyone’s phone. RadBots is a radical experiment in modern collectivism and responsible crypto.
NFT Bot is the RadBot that I worked on as part of this project. The IPCC has recently warned it's "now or never" to tackle the climate crisis. What does this mean for the future of non-fungible tokens, their owners and everyone and everything that calls Planet Earth home? Wrestling with this question is giving NFT Bot an existential crisis. Her usually smooth complexion is pixelated with melancholy as she quotes from industry discourse to discuss life on the blockchain.
Click the link below to chat with NFT Bot -
Radbot - MSwann
RadBots are an NFT collection of conversational videobots created by leading global artists. The project combines 2022’s most advanced artificial intelligence, authored screenplays and Dara.network’s async video-chat platform to bring fascinating AI characters to life on anyone’s phone. RadBots is a radical experiment in modern collectivism and responsible crypto.
MSwann is the RadBot that I worked on as part of this project. She carries the creative DNA of other lives. These include Mary Swann, an unknown poet in rural Ontario and Marilyn Swann, an unknown painter in urban Gloucestershire. She is a bit eccentric and a bit cheeky. As a feline - a pussy, she is the spirit animal of these and other females who die unrecognised, taking with them so much: their bruisings and blessings, their revelations big and small, what surprised and bewildered them.
Click the link below to chat with MSwann -
Tate Exchange: Producing Future Homes and Communities: Utopias, Dystopias, Heterotopias and Other Spaces
At the centre of Producing Future Homes and Communities was a large-scale experimental build at roughly 1:200. Using recycled materials from Tate Modern and beyond, this model imagines architectures and infrastructures of tomorrow, asking: What social, economic, technological and other systems be required to meet our collective needs? How will these be integrated? What structures and other resources will we need to support the changes in education, ageing, waste management, and other factors?
At Producing Future Homes and Communities, we designed and built, demoed and workshoped, walked and talked and transacted alternative futures through a non-commercial community market. It showcased creative practices from disparate points of view to propose utopic, dystopic and a medley of other scenarios.
Over five days, members of the public explored the production of future communities. Our shared sustainability depends on cultural and other forms of heterogeneity. Communities are not something we can take for granted. They must be produced and reproduced in response to diverse conditions and considerations. Producing Future Homes and Communities convened a community-of-communities to consider the significance of museums and other cultural institutions while grappling with the materiality of community and how it is shaped through structures, systems, networks and other relations.
Co-curated by Marsha Bradfield and Shibboleth Shechted with participation from students of Interior and Spatial Design from Chelsea College of Arts and civic and community groups (see below)
Tate + Chelsea College of Arts
Tate Modern
NASRA ABDULLAHI | ROBAB AHMADI | GABRIELA ALEKSANDROVA | EVAN BALAMPANIDIS | ANNA BILLINGTON | MARSHA BRADFIELD | COLIN BURNS | PHILIP CHIMES | PAULINE O’CONNOR | AMPARO COIDURAS | COMMONWORKS |MILES COOTE | TARA COROVIC | ILDIKO CZAPAR AFFIONG DAY | ALICE DODDS | CLEMENTINE DOUMENC | MAX EFFANTIN | ZEYAD FARAAG |LUCY FIELD | YUE GU | ZHINAN GU | JULIA GUENTHER | NOEMI GUNEA | TIAN GUO | TAKAKO HASEGAWA | CHRISTINE HAWTHORNE | ANGELA HODGSON-TEALL | CLAIRE M. HOLDSWORTH | SUSIE HU | CINTIA HUANG | YIHANG HUANG | EMMA HUNTER | SUAAD JAMA |SADHNA JAIN | INCI JAOUDA | WILSON AGUIRRE JARAMILLO | MEIYU JIANG | YUQI JIANG | MILES JOHNSON | JINA LEE | HONGXI LI | SIJIA LI | ZHAOFENG LI | RONGZAN LIN | FANG LING | YUJUN LIU | ROMAIN LOUBRADOU | YINLIN LU | ZHIQI LUO | PAKTING MA | EUGENE MACKI | PETER MALONEY | MALAK MARRAKCHI | CRISCITTA MASCARENHAS | GABRIELLE D'MELLO | GRETA MELICHER | ELLE ORVOKKI MIKKOLA | SAMIRA OSMAN | SE JIN
PARK | ALINA PAWLOWSKA | SOPHIA POHL | PENSIERO UTOPICO / UTOPIAN THINKING / UTOPISCHES DENKEN | LIYING QIU | PIERRE-LOUIS RACE | ROBYN REID | WILFRIED RIMENSBERGER | LOIS ROBB | LUCY ROBINSON | LUISA RODRIGUEZ | MATTHEW SCHWAB | FELIX SECCOMBE | VALERIA SERNA SHIBBOLETH SHECHTER | YATAO SHI XINYI SONG | SHAN SONG | RATCHANON SONGTHAMMAKUL | NATALIE STRACHAN | ANTHEA SUFFELL | SHUKRI SULTAN | PENGFEI TAN | GUGULETHU THAKA | MERCEDES URIBE-GUTIERREZ | GIGI MANASSIYA VASURATNA | FANG WANG | HAORAN WANG | XINBEI WANG | SIMON WATT-MILNE | YUJIE WENG | CARON WINT |MILLBANK CREATIVE WORKS | KYLE WORSLEY | HADWAY NORTH-LONDON WRITERS | JIAYUE WU | JIE XIAO | SHUANG XIAO | JOOD YAGHMOUR | HAJIN YOO | TONGSEN YUE |MAHNOOR ZAHIR | ANDREA ZANETTI | NING ZHANG | SHIJIE ZHANG | WEI ZHANG |
Cultures of Resilience
The goal of this experiment has been to build a ‘multiple vision’ on the cultural side of resilience by putting together a set of narratives, values, ideas and projects that, directly or indirectly, collaborate in improving the resilience of the socio-technical systems which they refer to (led by Ezio Manzini).
The hypothesis of Cultures of Resilience is that art and design communities can bring an original blend of creativity and reflection to the quest for more resilient societies.
University of the Arts London
London, UK
Collaborators included HENA ALI, TRICIA AUSTIN, NICK BELL, SANDY BLACK, MARSHA BRADFIELD, CAROLE COLLET, DAVID CROSS, NEIL CUMMINGS, MELANIE DODD, REBECCA EARLEY, ANNE EGGEBURT, KATE FLETCHER, LORRAINE GAMMAN, SILVIA GRIMALDI, LISA HALL, ANNA HART, MONICA HUNDAL, MATT MALPASS, EZIO MANZINI, JANE PENTY, ALISON PRENDIVILLE, NICK RHODES, TORSTEN SCHROEDER, MARK SIMPKINS, IDA TELALBASIC, SARAH TEMPLE, JEREMY TILL, ADAM THORPE, KIM TROGAL, LUISE VORMITTAG, MARCUS WILLCOCKS, DILYS WILLIAMS, AMANDA WINDLE
#TransActing: A Market of Values
A bustling pop-up market that featured 60+ artists, designers, economists, civil-society groups, academics, ecologists, activists and others who creatively explore existing structures of evaluation and actively produce new ones.
#TransActing: A Market of Values culminated five years of collaborative research on value beyond econometrics while also marking the tenth anniversary of Critical Practice, an international cluster of artists, designers, curators, theorists and others committed to creating public good. #TransActing: A Market of Values used open-source design inspired by the work of Enzo Mari to upcycle the degree show at Chelsea College of Arts (University of the Arts London). The resulting market challenged the value systems that organise our education, healthcare, consumption, cultural production and so much more.
The project’s peer-reviewed publication Transacting as Art, Design and Architecture will be out in March 2022. https://www.intellectbooks.com/transacting-as-art-design-and-architecture
#TransActing: A Market of Values was the capstone project of Marsha Bradfield's post-doctoral fellowship at Chelsea College of Arts. It was made possible with generous support from Research at Camberwell, Chelsea, Wimbledon Colleges of Art and Arts Council England.
Critical Practice
London, UK
Read the interview with Furtherfield - https://www.furtherfield.org/transacting-a-market-of-values-an-interview-with-marsha-bradfield/
Critical Practice is composed of METOD BLEJEC, MARSHA BRADFIELD, CINZIA CREMONA, NEIL CUMMINGS, NEIL FARNAN, ANGELA HODGSON-TEAL, KAREM IBRAHIM, CATHERINE LONG, AMY MCDONNELL, CLAIRE MOKRAUER-MADDEN, MOHAMMAD NAMAZI, EVA SAJOVIC, KUBA SZREDER AND SISSU TARKA.
Look here for a list of 60+ stalls that featured in #TransActing: A Market of Values - http://www.criticalpracticechelsea.org/wiki/index.php/TransActing:_Programme_/_Map
http://www.criticalpracticechelsea.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
SHOCK CITY: Resilience and the Anthropocene
A three-day international gathering to survey and share interdisciplinary research and best practice related to: EMPATHY AND PROXIMITY, MAKING AND REPAIRING and COMMUNITY AND PLACES.
SHOCK CITY was faciliated by Marsha Bradfield with generous support from Research at Camberwell, Chelsea, Wimbledon Colleges of Art.
Camberwell, Chelsea, Wimbeldon Colleges of Art, Unviersity of the Arts London
London, UK and its environs
Collaborators included AARON MCPEAKE, ANDREW GRAVES-JOHNSON, CHARLOTTE WEBB, DAVID CROSS, EDWINA FITZPATRICK, EZIO MANZINI, GERAINT EVANS, HANNAH ENTWISTLE, KEN WILDER, MALCOLM QUINN, MARSHA BRADFIELD, NATALIA ROMIK, PATRICIA ELLIS and ROBIN JENKINS
https://www.artfieldprojects.com/2018/01/19/shock-city-conference/
Attended Events
Marsha Bradfield on the Web
http://www.criticalpracticechelsea.org/wiki/index.php/CoLab
Report/Flag