Posts from December 2013

Call for Papers: Football, Fiction, and Culture, June 2014

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Call for Papers: Football, Fiction, and Culture
Kingston University, June 19-20 2014

The aim of this event is to examine the culture that develops around football, with particular focus upon the influence of the sport on other cultural media. Football is a prominent part of contemporary culture, and the strong influence that it has on social and political identities is often reflected in wider cultural production. Despite this, it is sometimes argued that football is an example of low or “mass” culture, removed from “high” cultural forms. This event will interrogate this viewpoint and attempt to demonstrate the sport’s influence upon a wide variety of cultural forms. We welcome abstracts examining any aspect of the role that football plays in cultural production.

Conference fees are yet to be decided, but our aim is make this an affordable event. We also hope that presenters will join us afterwards to watch a World Cup match or two.

Please send abstracts to the event organisers, Dr Anthony May (Kingston University) and Dr Christopher Daley (University of Westminster) at: footballfictionandculture@gmail.com.

The deadline for abstracts is 28th February 2014. Papers should be the standard 20 minutes and panel proposals should consist of three speakers.

Materialisms Old and New: London Reading Group

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Materialisms Old and New: London Reading Group
Westminster Forum, 5th Floor, 32-38 Wells Street, London, W1T 3UW

The ‘Materialisms Old and New’ reading group organise regular meetings to discuss both old and new materialist understandings of markets, rationalities, agency, contingency, power and governance. This is not a lecture course so we will be mixing up the texts and approaching key or interesting readings in an informal and flexible way, with a brief introduction by one of the group. The next two meetings are:

Thursday 30 January 2014, 6.30-8.00 pm
Michael Callon et al., Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy
Introduced by Michele Ledda (University of Westminster).

Wednesday 19 March 2014, 6.30-8.00 pm
William Connolly, The Fragility of Things: Self-Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism
Introduced by David Chandler (University of Westminster).

Meetings are open to all. If you would like to be added to the working group mailing list, please contact David Chandler at d.chandler@wmin.ac.uk.

Sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster and the Centre for Media & Culture Research, London South Bank University.

Dr Who’s The War Games, January 22 2014

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Wednesday 22 January 2014, 2.30-4.30 pm (please note change of time)
Room 2.01, School of Law, Little Titchfield Street

“A turning point for Dr Who: the War Games Revisited”

The seminar will comprise an introduction from Danny Nicol, a screening of the pivotal episode 10 of Dr Who’s The War Games (1969) and will be followed by a discussion.

Kreider + O’Leary, Ways to Cut the Earth Open, Jan 17

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Kreider + O’Leary, ‘Ways to Cut the Earth Open’

Friday 17 January, 7pm
The Old Cinema, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street

‘Ways to Cut the Earth Open’ is a cross-platform survey that examines a number of sites recently explored by Kreider + O’Leary in their nomadic practice. Using the sectional cut and the filmic splice as starting points they explore strands from their recent site-based works to thread together narratives of place and displacement. Predicated on an aesthetics of response while engaging with the complexity inherent in a given site, their work is both a form and act of communication: therefore, and necessarily, clouded by ambiguity. This prompts a critical investigation into the role of ambiguity for creative practices that relate to site, including writing and the moving image.

Kreider + O’Leary are a poet and architect who collaborate to make performance, installation and time-based media work in relation to sites of architectural and cultural interest. Since 2003, they have worked collaboratively to construct work in prisons, churches, military sites, film locations and desert environments, as well as in more traditional gallery venues across the UK, Europe, the US, Australia, and Japan. Their work ‘Light Vessel Automatic’ was exhibited at Performing Architecture at Tate Britain in February 2013. They are currently exhibiting a new work entitled ‘Edge City’ at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

Visit: http://www.kreider-oleary.net/

All welcome

Final Reminder: The Historical Novel of the Contemporary

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The Historical Novel of the Contemporary: A Symposium
Tuesday 3rd December, 2-6pm
Carroll / Fletcher Gallery, 56 – 57 Eastcastle Street, London W1W 8EQ

Speakers: Emmanuel Bouju (Rennes), David Cunningham (Westminster), John Kraniauskas (Birkbeck), Fiona Price (Chichester), Leigh Wilson (Westminster)

The subject of a revival in recent decades, in both its ‘literary’ and ‘popular’ forms, for Georg Lukács the historical novel was, above all, that which narrated the ‘pre-history of the present’. Discussing authors ranging from Roberto Bolano to David Peace, Hilary Mantel to Wu Ming, this afternoon symposium considers the historiographic and political forms of the historical novel today as it might narrate the pre-history of our own contemporary.

All welcome and no need to register.