The Stafford Beer Archive is always one of our most popular collections but this summer has been exceptional: the documents and artefacts have inspired new art works for the Liverpool Biennial, featured in the inaugural London Design Biennale and formed the centrepiece of our Light Night theme.
Initial enquiries and visits started over a year ago when Irish artist Dennis McNulty spent time in the archive researching his installation Homo Gestalt for the Liverpool Biennal. Vicki and I attended an ‘In Conversation’ event with Dennis and novelist Matthew de Abaitua where Dennis spoke about how archival research can feel like a recreation of lost time. He also touched on the importance of materiality and handling Stafford Beer’s original documents and artefacts, which provide such a strong connection to the original creator. Dennis’s work explores the theories of collective decision-making via networked technologies and regulatory systems described by Stafford Beer over forty years ago, which are more relevant than ever in the Internet age. His Biennial installation is in the Bluecoat until 16th October.
We were extremely intrigued when FabLab Santiago contacted us to say that they were planning a recreation of Stafford Beer’s Operations Room from Project Cybersyn in London this year and wished to use some images from the archive. The installation was the Chilean entry in the inaugural London Design Biennale at Somerset House. I was able to visit in early September and see how the archival images had been incorporated into the wall screens. Some images were also included in a film about Stafford Beer’s work in Chile and the making of the Ops Room installation. The photographs I took are available here.
In May, the theme of this Year’s Liverpool Light Night was ‘Experiment’, an ideal opportunity for us to showcase the archive in an in-house exhibition and put on a programme of talks and activities. Our own LJMU FabLab rose to the occasion magnificently with a Cybernetics-inspired method of creating a personalised laser-cut souvenir of the evening. We had over 700 visitors who, like everyone who comes into contact with the archive, were initially mystified, then intrigued, and finally very appreciative of one of Britain’s most original thinkers. The full gallery of Light Night photographs is available here.
The summer of Stafford Beer is not quite over yet, as Leeds Beckett University is hosting the Metaphorum Conference in early October, bringing together an international community of scholars to discuss the development of Stafford Beer’s Viability Theory to support organisational governance. His research into Viable Systems has been revisited and gained momentum over the last ten years and we look forward to welcoming more visitors to the archive in the autumn. We are also hosting our own Project Cybersyn event in Liverpool Central Library as part of the Being Human Festival of the Humanities in November.
Valerie Stevenson
LJMU Special Collections & Archives 