Posts from October 2015

Andrew Benjamin: A Colloquium on Art’s Philosophical Work

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Wednesday 4th November 2015, 5pm
Westminster Forum, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T 3UW.

Professor Andrew Benjamin (Kingston) will be with us at the Institute to discuss his new book Art’s Philosophical Work. The book offers an argument for how art ‘works’, using examples from Nicholas Poussin, Albrecht Dürer, Georg Baselitz, El Lissitsky and Karel Appel. Andrew’s talk will be followed by responses from Kaja Marczewska on ‘iteration’, David Cunningham on ‘relationality’ and Matthew Charles on ‘colour’.

The event is free and open to the public (guests will need to sign-in at reception).
Followed by drinks in The Green Man, Riding House Street.

Andrew Benjamin is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and the Humanities at Kingston University, UK, and Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Thought at Monash University, Australia. His many publications include Working with Walter Benjamin (2012), Of Jews and Animals (2010), Place, Commonality and Judgment (2010) and Style and Time: Essays on the Politics of Appearance (2006).

Mnemoscape #3 out now

Written by on Wednesday, posted in News (No comments yet)

A quick plug for the third issue of Mnemoscape, edited by two of our former MA Art and Visual Culture students, Elisa Adami and Alessandra Ferrini, as well as the launch of their new website at: http://www.mnemoscape.org/

Devoted to the theme of ‘Set in Stone’, the new issue also contains a fine article by another of our ex-students, Mirna Pedalo, ‘Memory Rupture’.

Tottenham: The People’s Perspective seminar, Thurs 22 October

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A note that the University of Westminster’s SSH Faculty Seminars for this year begin on Thursday 22nd October, 5.00-6:30pm. These will be held every Thursday in room 2.11 in the University’s Little Titchfield Street building.

The first seminar will be led by Lea Sitkin and Dorrie Chetty from the Department of History, Sociology and Criminology, who will be giving a paper on “Tottenham: The People’s Perspective”, with a response by Nitasha Kaul from the Department of Politics and International Relation. Wine and soft drinks will be provided…

Future seminars include Elisabetta Brighi on New Architectures of Security, with a response from the IMCC’s David Cunningham (November 5th); Victoria Brooks from Westminster’s Law School on ‘Entanglements and Folds of Pleasure’ (November 12th), with a response by Adam Eldridge; Simon Avery and Kate Graham on Queer London (November 19th); Derek Hird on Chinese Men in London, with a response from our own Anne Witchard (December 10th); and, rounding things up, our old friends Ben Pitcher (Sociology) and Andreas Philippopolous-Mihalopolous (December 17th).

Set the Controls … Nick Mason and Artists’ Contracts

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October 27th 2015, 6pm
University of Westminster, Little Titchfield Street, London W1W 7BY

The Artist Contract in the Digital World

Organised by our colleagues in the Law School at Westminster: a conversation between Nick Mason (Pink Floyd), Chris Ancliff (Warner Music Group) and Paul Pacifico (Featured Artists Coalition) on the evolution of the artist/record company contract.

Chris Ancliff is the General Counsel (International) at the Warner Music Group and was previously General Counsel at EMI Group plc. Paul is the first full time CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition. Nick Mason is a renowned composer, musician and producer, who in some ways will be ‘coming home’ for the event – along with fellow architecture student Roger Waters, he held rehearsals for their band Sigma 6 in the student common room in what is now the Law School building. As part of Pink Floyd he later returned to play in the building’s grand art deco Portland Hall, where this event takes place. It is now almost 50 years since Pink Floyd signed their first contract with EMI, and the evolution of this relationship will be discussed, along with consideration of various current issues.

Attendance is free, please register online.

Generational Politics in Feminist History, Oct 14 2015

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A final reminder that this year’s series of English Literature and Cultural Studies research seminars will kick off at 5pm on Wednesday 14th October with Victoria Browne from Oxford Brooks speaking on ‘Generational Politics in Feminist History’. Sanna Melin Schyllert, a doctoral researcher at Westminster, working on feminism and modernism, will respond to Victoria’s talk.

“Sisterhood” is the familial metaphor most often associated with feminism; yet in fact, metaphors of “feminist foremothers”, “mothers” and “daughters” are employed just as frequently to convey relationships between feminists of different ages and eras. This kind of generational symbolism has been subject to serious criticism in feminist theory in recent years – for giving rise to “Oedipal” anxieties, and portraying the history of feminist theory and activism in terms of a struggle between “overbearing mothers” and “undutiful daughters”. This talk will examine critiques of the generational model of feminism, thinking through various significations of the generational metaphor, and its relation not only to feminist history but historical time more generally.

This first seminar will be followed by a drinks reception to celebrate the start of the new series and to welcome the new members of our research community. The seminar will take place in Room 105, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T 3UW (nearest tube stations: Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road, Goodge Street).

Directions here: http://www.westminster.ac.uk/about-us/visit-us/directions/wells-street

Diaspora in the Field of Vision: HOMELandS seminar

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A plug for an event organised by our colleagues in HOMELandS, the Hub for Migration, Exiles, Languages and Spaces, based at the University of Westminster.

Wednesday 28th October 2015, 4-6 pm
Westminster Forum, University of Westminster, Wells Street London W1T 3UW

“Diaspora in the Field of Vision”
Margherita Sprio, Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media

Contemporary art practices that have emerged out of the existing art school structure in Britain have enabled a multitude of emerging practices to be given the current status that they hold in debates about visual culture. Diasporic artists since post war education expansion in Britain have become visible in small but significant numbers – in part supported by those sympathetic to the politics of educational equality. But also, supported by those for whom education and Diasporic experience were the life line that enabled both the art practices that now constitute contemporary art and also the critical debates that are now common place within contemporary art education. This paper will address some of the key issues that have been made apparent in the work of some contemporary Diasporic artists who live, work and have studied/study in London in relation to ideas of displacement migration, power and ethics.

Dr Margherita Sprio is a Senior Lecturer in Film History and Theory at University of Westminster and works on film practice and theory as well as the relationship of film theory to photography, contemporary art and philosophy. She is the author of Migrant Memories: Cinema and the Italian Post War Diaspora in Britain (Peter Lang, 2013).

The event is free and open to the public. Non-University of Westminster attendees please register with Cangbai Wang atc.wang6@westminster.ac.uk

Research Seminar Series 2015

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EL&CS Research Seminars 2015 Poster

This year’s series of English Literature and Cultural Studies research seminars will kick off at 5pm next Wednesday (14th October 2015) with Victoria Browne on ‘Generational Politics in Feminist History’. Sanna Melin Schyllert, a doctoral researcher in the department working on feminism and modernism, will respond to Victoria’s talk. This first seminar will be followed by a drinks reception to celebrate the start of the new series and to welcome the new members of our research community. The seminar will take place in Room 105, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T 3UW (nearest tube stations: Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road, Goodge Street).

Please note that our next event will take place three weeks later, on 4th November: a colloquium on Andrew Benjamin’s new book, Art’s Philosophical Work, with contributions from Andrew Benjamin (Kingston/Monash), David Cunningham, Kaja Marczewska and Matthew Charles (Westminster).

All research seminars are free and open to the public (attendees who are not members of the University of Westminster will need to sign-in at reception). MA students, Doctoral and Postdoctoral researchers are especially encouraged to attend. Please contact either Lucy Bond or Matthew Charles for more details.

Form and Poetry: an exploration of Russian Formalism, Oct 23rd, Senate House

Written by on Wednesday, posted in Event, News (No comments yet)

Following on nicely from the IMCC’s event on Marx-Form-Isms held at Westminster in June this year, our colleague Charles Denroche is speaking at an Institute for English Studies colloquium entitled Form and Poetry: An Exploration of Russian Formalism – ostranenie, city poetics, metaphor, metonymy – at Senate House on October 23rd, 10.00-5.30. Further details here.