The Soft Rebellions.

The publication 'Topographies of the Obsolete: Phase Two: Rhizomatic Trajectories' includes the chapter 'The Soft Rebellions' by Chloë Brown and Grace Higgins Brown. This acts as a reflective text on a specific body of Brown's art work and the accompanying research, which grew out of her interest in the post-industrial city of Detroit in the USA. This followed on from that made in relation to the abandoned Spode Factory in Stoke-on-Trent from 2012-2014. Topographies of the Obsolete is an artistic research project conceived in 2012 by University of Bergen Professors Neil Brownsword and Anne Helen Mydland, in collaboration with six European HEI’s1 and the British Ceramics Biennial. Emerging through two phases (2012-15; 2015-2020) it has to date engaged ninety-seven interdisciplinary artists, scholars, cultural commentators and students from thirteen countries. Through action/reflection strategies, interconnected research strands have evolved to examine the socio-economic impact of globalisation upon community and place, the contemporary ruin and the artist as post-industrial archivist/archaeologist. Numerous questions have emerged through these topics surrounding the role of the artist in a non-art space, and how to address a post-industrial site artistically and ethically. Phase two has extended rhizomatic connections between individual lines of enquiry and the project’s overarching research strands to facilitate new trajectories where each partner institution has furthered discourse through an active and evolving process of investigation. This publication, the fifth in the series, draws together reflections nurtured through Topographies’ contextualising platform from both invited scholars and artists who remain connected to the project. It comprises of a range of descriptive, narrative and poetic texts which elucidate questions, contexts and methods that offer an alternative historiography of post- industrial sites and situations.