Morgan Black - artist, film-maker and performer. BA (Hons.), MFAAH, DJCAD Dundee, and currently pursuing PhD research in gendered aesthetics at the same institution. Awarded the Sandra McNeilance Memorial Prize for drawing & painting in June 2020. Work centres around character and narrative derived from alternate personae - which also question binary norms, societal and social constructs - and looks forward to a less dichotomous future world.
Work is informed by underground and alternative culture, history, mythology, obscure literature, esotericism, Jungian psychoanalysis and philosophy. Growing research into performance art embraces both the cinematic narrative, live spoken word works, and the abstract performative.
Previous essays and academic papers On Academia.edu Current PhD research work on the non-binary body and physiognomy is regularly updated here. Researcher ORCID ID
NEWS
April 13/4/24
New solo show 'Vamps, Tramps and Streetlamps'. Dundee.
January 2024
Tentative digital downloadables now available on Bandcamp. Including the 'definitive' audio edition of 'Fragments of a Punk Opera'...
September 18/19
Two nights at Dundee Fringe Festival with solo one-hour show, 'Of Punk and Other Social Subversions'. Read the 'Binge Fringe' press review.
August
Performed two monologues, 'Stevie Nicks' and '0rigin' at Scottish Trans Pride, Dundee, 19/8/23.
July 2023
Presented full reading of 'Stevie Nicks' plus other shorter works at Prism: Gender and Mental Health spoken word event, Dundee. (22/7/23)
June 2023
Wrapped short film sequel to 'Hardwired', entitled 'Palingenesis':
April 2023
Prose-poem Stevie Nicks published in Metachrosis Issue 1.
March 2023
Prose-poem Ravensong published in Making Kin anthology by the Institute for Postnatural Studies.
Competed in the Scottish National Poetry Slam finals at the Glasgow Panopticon music hall:
October 2022
Presented screening and discussion session of film 'Hardwired' at DJCAD, Dundee.
July 2022
Delivered paper entitled ''Pornographics as Queer Method' as part of the Prospectives 2022 Digital Art and Activism Online Symposium.
June 2022
'Welcome!' - presented printed comix work as part of the BRAW bursary award for LGBTQ+ artists in Dundee, thanks to ShaperCaper. The talk and presentation are here.
May 2022
'Fragments, Intermediaries' - a talk given to the 2021-2022 MFAAH class at DJCAD, Dundee, on the development of my own work for the same course last year.
February 2022
Completed the no-budget short cyberpunk film 'Hardwired', as a means to further explore themes of mythology, the gaze and duality in a new, sci-fi context:
November 20201
I spoke (online) as part of 'Doing Things with Old Norse Myth', A Research & Cultural Symposium on Mythological Processes, Reykjavík, on 26th of November, 2021.
Here's my recording of the paper I delivered, 'In Name Only? A Critical Analysis of the Wælcyrge‘s Presence in Old English Texts', complete with Q&A:
My MFAAH Graduation Showcase 2021
My most recent strand of research in the Humanities investigates the cultural exchange between Old English and Old Norse, and their similarities (and differences) in society and literature; not only from a historical research perspective but also as a basis for exploring 21st Century (re)constructions of history, cultures, language and beings - both in reality and the imagination, and perhaps most interestingly, in the liminal spaces between. Indeed, here be dragons, but also trollwives, witches and valkyries...we stand in the borderlands, in the Otherlands where hunted deer would never dare venture.
See more here: The 'Gyldland Saga', fragments and Intermediaries: Documenting a Master's Exhibition Work
SELECTED SHORT FILMS
'The Wanderer & the Wish-Maid': Director's final cut (2021) - a filmed interpretation of Robert Donington's psychoanalytical account of Wagner's 'Ring' Cycle - amongst other things. It was a centrepiece of my proposed 2020 Bachelor's degree show:
'The Medusa Chronicles': (2021) - my tribute to a misunderstood and misrepresented goddess
Narc Magazine 'Solstice' film commission news - March 2021
'The Crack' magazine press for 'Solstice'
'Solstice: a Film for Winter': (2021)
'Either/Or': Collaboration with of Queerativity: (2020)
'No Dancing' (2019)