Senior Lecturer Rose Butler

About

I am an artist, researcher and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, I use adapted technology and custom built software alongside early cameras and analogue technique to make interactive installations, single and multi-screen videos or large-scale photographs. My research brings together photographic and filmic documentation, archival material, political commentary and fiction. I am currently writing up doctoral research that considers the ethics and politics of looking through surveillance and arts practice. As part of this I selected sabotaged surveillance footage and training material from hidden cameras at the Stasi Records Agency, Berlin and completed a long observation in the Houses of Parliament of the Investigatory Powers Bill aka The Snoopers Charter in 2016.

In 2019 I presented research at:

• NAFAE Living Research: The Urgency of the Arts, Royal College of Art, (March) Free and Open Source Technologies, Arts and Commoning Practices: An Unconference about Art, Design, Technology, Making, Cities and their Communities, University of Nicosia Research Foundation, Cyprus, (May) Uncertainty, Turbulence and Moving Image Archives, University College London (June) Creative Interruptions: A Festival of Arts and Activism, British Film Institute (June).
• I exhibited work in a solo show at Decad, Berlin October – January (2020) curated by Mareike Spendel and I will exhibit new work at NeMe, Cyprus, 2021. Come & Go an interactive dance installation was exhibited at the Museums of Sheffield (2017) curated by Jeanine Griffin, and I received an award for this work a part of the Surveillance Studies Art Prize 2018, Aarhus. The Fairs was exhibited as part of Abandon Normal Devices in Castleton (2017), and work was presented and screened at Kabinet Muz; Brno, Czech Republic.
• I screen works internationally over the year in venues such as the Filmwinter Festival; Stuttgart, Home Artists Film Weekender; Manchester, The London Art Fair, Golden Cinema; Sydney, Hull City of Culture, Visual Container TV; International Video Art Channel; France, The Swedenburg Society; London, The Nunnery Gallery; London, and BOX; Video Art Project Space, Milan.

Surveillance and Resistance

Teaching

Department of Art and Design

Social Sciences and Arts

Department of Art and Design
Science, Technology and Arts
PhD Study
Fine Art: BA / MA / MFA, Extended Degree
Moving Image, Installation, Photography
Fine Art Employability Lead, partnership projects, strategic arts partnerships, Artist’s Journey Conference, graduate opportunities.

Subject Area

Fine Art

Courses

• BA Fine Art
• MFA Fine Art
• Extended Degree

Modules

• Transmission Lecture Series
• Art Practice 1, 2 and 3.
• Art Context 1 and 3.

Research

• Art and Design Research Centre
• Culture and Creativity Research Institute

My research centres on borders, bordering, definition and freedoms, it crosses paths with civil liberties, self determinism, the politics of big tech and surveillance. I was invited by NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol to build upon previous research on borders and surveillance, and complete a project in the UN buffer zone in Cyprus. I invited Kypros Kyprianou (Newcastle University) and Jeremy Lee (SHU) to collaborate.

Cyprus has been referred to as an ‘island of space’ in a US congress bill, as a de facto US special intelligence colony. Both visible and invisible technologies permeate the territorial island - from fighter jets and bombers setting off to Syria, to key Five Eyes listening stations. Layers of historic colonisation accrete with layers of technological colonisation and with this hierarchies of knowledge and power are serviced.

The buffer zone in Cyprus, administered by the United Nations, is demarcated by two meandering, expanding and contracting edges. This dividing corridor extends the length of the island, but the width of the unoccupied zone can span from just three meters to over 27km at its widest point.

This was the collaborative starting point for a multimedia project in partnership with NeMe Arts Centre, Cyprus alongside a series of events, artworks and a publication with Torque Publications. Methods of arts practice are supporting an iterative research process that is responsive and contextually sensitive. We have had to make sure that it is possibile to change tack as we respond to the global health pandemic and a rapidly changing political climate, but also retain this as a method to enable response as we encounter points of interest, barriers or possibilities.

Selected examples of research

Come & Go an interactive video installation was enabled by Arts Council England (ACE) and the Art and Design Research Council (ADRC), and exhibited at The Lowry, Salford Quays (2016) as a prototype. This prepared the work for exhibition at Millennium Galleries, Sheffield (Everything Flows, June - August 2017) alongside a published catalogue. The work formed the basis of a collaborative artists’ bookwork Above and Beyond with artist-writer Emma Cocker (NTU). Come & Go was reviewed in Art Monthly (July 2017) and received an award at the Surveillance Studies Network Art Prize (June 2018). An interview was published on the Surveillance and Society blog site (April 2018). Public presentations were made at The Lowry; Museums Sheffield; and the Surveillance Studies Network Biennale 2018 alongside published paper in Surveillance and Society (March 2020). A paper was also accepted for the Surveillance Studies Network Biennale, June 2020 (rescheduled for 2021).

In 2019 I presented work and doctoral research at the following conferences: The Urgency of the Arts, RCA (March) Free and Open Source Technologies, University of Nicosia Research Foundation, Cyprus (May) Uncertainty, Turbulence and Moving Image Archives, UCL (June) and Creative Interruptions, BFI (June).

Papers were published in:

Surveillance and Society (March 2020)

Free/Libre Technologies, Arts and the Commons, Unconference Proceedings, Phygital Project (April 2020)

The Fair

One Lime Street

Platform

Lines of resistance

Featured Projects

https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/c3riimpact/rose-butler-investigatory-power-2/?doing_wp_cron=1619128798.9755640029907226562500

https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/c3riimpact/maw2019-butler-atherton/

https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/c3riimpact/rose-butler-unconference/

https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/c3riimpact/rose-butler-creative-interruptions-festival/

https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/c3riimpact/rose-butler-lines-of-resistance-filmwinter-stuttgarter/?doing_wp_cron=1619128938.1610739231109619140625

https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/c3riimpact/rose-butler-ssnaf-honourable-mention/

Relevant Projects

I founded the annual Artist's Journey conference in collaboration with Adrian Friedli (YVAN) and with support from Arts Council England.

Alongside colleagues Sharon Kivland, Michelle Atherton and Yuen Fong Ling I manage the Transmission Lecture Series founded by Sharon Kivland.

Collaborators and Sponsors

- Arts Council England
- NeMe, Limassol
- Emma Cocker
- Kypros Kyprianou
- Jeremy Lee
- Mathew Jarvis

Publications

Other activities

I am a board member of Bloc Projects and a steering committee member of NAFAE (The National Association of Fine Art Educators). Before I came to Sheffield I lived and worked in London where I co-founded the educational charity Zoom In Photography and worked at Chisenhale Studios as Education Co-ordinator.

I lead projects, conferences and symposia to support graduate career pathways and support students with work placements, interships and graduation opportunities, working with local partnerships. I founded the annual Artist's Journey conference in collaboration with Adrian Friedli (YVAN) and with support from Arts Council England.

I am very pleased to be External Examiner to the BA Fine Art and MA Fine Art for Arts University Bournemouth.