Bunker Talk #165: Benedict Phillips

Talk #165: Benedict Phillips

An A-Z of neurodivergent ideas

Benedict Phillips is an established artist, curator, and consultant. His practice is eclectic, encompassing a broad range of methodologies, generating work as diverse as public art, performance, sculpture, photography, and media art. He is particularly concerned with the ongoing interrelationship and shifting hierarchy between photography, sculpture and performance within his practice, and the aesthetics of each approach. Exploiting historical production processes as well as more recent digitally driven approaches informs the making of much of his work.

Benedict has been making neuro-affirmative art projects for 35 years and recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of his manifesto and artwork The Agenda of the Agresiv Dislecksick, published in Disability Arts in London (DAIL), 1995.

Benedict is currently developing a project that encompasses and reflects on the past, present, and possible futures of neurodivergent creative practice. He has recently rescued the Art Dyslexic Trust Archive, which encompasses the period 1992 to 2012, from destruction.

Benedict is Director and founding member of several arts groups and organisations, including: Field Study (est. 1993, book art and mail group); Digital Media Labs (est. 2010, professional development residencies for artists); Lens Lab Project (est. 2020, a not-for-profit socially engaged photographic community-focused organisation). Benedict has been a regular guest lecturer at universities in the UK and the USA over the past 25 years, delivering professional development and artist talks, and he is a member of the expert panel at Manchester School of Architecture.

Photo credit: Jonathan Turner.

Bunker Talks

This event is part of Bunker Talks. Bunker Talks invite artists and researchers to talk about who they are and what they do. Curated by the Performance Research Group at Manchester School of Art and the School of English, Bunker Talks explore geopolitical, ecological or economic concerns. The talks create space for critical encounters, presentations, provocation and dialogue as part of a civic conversation.

Originally conceived in the pandemic to explore how artists, writers, curators and researchers continued to make and share their work, live Bunker Talks now take place at The Salutation every month. Since 2020, over 160 talks have been hosted by Performance Researchers and colleagues from across the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. All talks are recorded, edited, captioned and then archived to create an online catalogue, capturing how artists, makers and curators think about the world today. Find previous talks here: https://www.art.mmu.ac.uk/bunkertalks/

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