Telephone: 020 7911 5000 ext 2348
Email: szczels@wmin.ac.uk
Postal: University of Westminster, Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies,
32-38 Wells Street,
London, W1T 3UW
Section: Visual Culture

Stefan Szczelkun currently works on the MA in Visual Culture at the University of Westminster. He completed a PhD at the Royal College of Art in 2002 on the legitimation of collective sites of cultural production and their value within a democratic culture. The particular focus of this research was Exploding Cinema, an underground film and video showing collective that has been active in South London since 1991.

Stefan is an artist with a particular interest in publishing both in traditional book format and more recently in multimedia and digital video. In the Eighties he organised two groups relating to identity issues. The first was ‘Bigos, artists of Polish origin’ which was a open group which was interested in putting on made-to-measure shows. The second, ‘Working Press, books by and about working class artists’, supported artists to publish offset-litho books under a collective imprint. Working Press published a trilogy about his experience as a working class artist - 'Collaborations' which was raw documentation, 'Class Myths and Culture", a book of polemical essays and 'Conspiracy of Good Taste', a history and theory review which led to academic teaching and research.

In the Seventies Stefan had his three Survival Scrapbooks published by Unicorn Bookshop and Schocken Books after an architectural training at Portsmouth Polytechnic. He then 'dropped out' and lived in a van whilst playing with The Scratch Orchestra - the British version of Fluxus. On returning to London he took new dance and bodywork classes and did extensive research into the elements of human ability. Recently published as the Sense-Think-Act mediawiki.

Last year Stefan published the third in a series of DVDs concerned with London people-power and the counter culture of the Nineties. The DVD title is 'Creating a movement: the struggle for Inclusive Education'. Another collaborative project to be found on AgitDisco.com is in preparation to be published as a book later in 2011. Currently also working on a large scale activation of the archives of Brixton Artists Collective that ran Brixton Art Gallery 1981 – 1986. As part of this he is running an oral history project and working with a group of artists from London Underground called ‘Out of Uniform’. This is in partnership with 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, supported by Arts Council and Heritage Lottery grants.

Pedagogic research interests include the use of video in teaching. Recently completed a module using phone cameras and a You Tube channel as part of the students tools for data gathering and critique. Has supervised two students to complete their doctoral studies and is an external examiner of MA Cultural Industry at Goldsmiths College.

Finally he is preparing a large scale realisation of John Cage’s magnum opus ‘Song Books’ to be performed early in 2012 by ex-Scratch orchestra people along with a younger generation of experimental artists and musicians.

Stefan Szczelkun's multi-faceted deconstructions, reclamations, celebrations and exhortations to sociable human imagination represent a thorough-going and effective corrective to the inhuman consequences of class elitism and state prescription... [H]ighly original and thought provoking"

Tom Jennings, Freedom, June 2006

 

“These videos do have a style of their own which I like: made with a curious and informed eye that moves through events recording significant details and signs of intelligent, trouble-making life. It's about making an engaged, non-dogmatic record - and very much about visual culture too."

Mathew Fuller, The Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. 2005