Following on from the pleasures of the 2010 Visual Culture Studies conference organized by the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture and hosted at University of Westminster, London, the International Association for Visual Culture’s first biennial conference will be taking place at New York University from May 31st – June 2nd.

Contributors include:

Dena Al-Abeeb, Safet Ahmeti, Katherine Behar, Wafaa Bilal, Maxime Boidy, Shane Brennan, Giuliana Bruno, Lisa Cartwright, Jill Casid, Dean Chan, Alexandra Chang, Patty Chang, Hazel Clark, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Beth Coleman, David Darts, Craig Dietrich, Ellen Esrock, Jessica Freedman, GB Tran, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan, Jennifer Gonzalez, Jaleen Grove, Elizabeth Guffey, Raiford Guins, Gary Hall, Natalie Jeremijenko, Alexandra Juhasz, Elizabeth Koslov, Max Liljefors, Mark Little, Kevin Matz, Meerkat Media Collective, Keith Miller, Nicholas Mirzoeff, W.J.T. Mitchell, Naeem Mohaiemen, Stephen Monteiro, Tara McPherson, Sina Najafi, Lisa Nakamura, Amy Ogata, the OWS Student Debt Campaign, Trevor Paglen, Amanda du Preez, Martha Rosler, Joan A. Saab, Marquard Smith, Landon van Soest, Marita Sturken, Francesca Martinez Tagliavia, Thomas Tsang, Magda Szczensniak, Diana Taylor, Oyvind Vagnes, Carlin Wing, Jason Wing, McKenzie Walk, and Joanna Zylinska.

So it should be pretty decent.

You can find out more information on the conference here:

http://www.visualculturenow.org/

The Institute’s friends and colleagues in the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) at University of Westminster are organizing a three-day international conference this coming weekend on ‘exhibiting video’, please see below for full details:

Exhibiting Video – International Conference
Date: 23, 24 and 25 March, 2012
Venue: University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London, W1B 2UW

To coincide with the new David Hall Ambika P3 commission ‘1001 TV Sets (End Piece)’ 1972-2012 the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) of the University of Westminster is convening Exhibiting Video, a three-day event considering issues central to the display of video art. Bringing together notable artists, curators and writers the event will provide a forum for a number of related questions:

· On what terms has the rise of video in contemporary arts taken place?
· How do notions of medium specificity and site specificity shape video art work made for exhibition?
· What is the legacy of analogue video technology in the digital age?
· How do our museums and galleries understand video art?

Confirmed participants include:
Mark Bartlett, Irit Batsry, Amanda Beech, Steven Ball, Steven Bode, Margarida Brito Alves, David Campany, Stuart Comer, Sean Cubitt, Shezad Dawood, Catherine Elwes, Solange Oliveira Farkas, Terry Flaxton, David Hall, Adam Kossof, Anya Lewin, Adam Lockhart, Chris Meigh-Andrews, Stuart Moore, Marquard Smith, Kayla Parker, Margherita Sprio, Minou Norouzi, Stephen Partridge, Ken Wilder and Lori Zippay

To register please go to:

http://www.westminster.ac.uk/research/a-z/cream/events/exhibiting-video-conference

‘Now! Visual Culture’ at NYU from May 31-June 2, 2012

Featuring:
*One Dozen Lightning Talks on the future of the field
*Workshops on multi-media software and film
*Open discussions on debt, academic publishing and interdisciplinarity
*Graduate student forum and a general assembly
*Practice, performance and diasporic art

Participants include: Safet Ahmeti, Giuliana Bruno, Wafaa Bilal, Jill Casid, Patsy Chang, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Beth Coleman, Jennifer Gonzalez, Raiford Guins, Gary Hall, Max Liljefors, Mark Little, Tara McPherson, Nicholas Mirzoeff, W.J.T. Mitchell, Lisa Nakamura, Paul Pfeiffer, Amanda du Preez, Martha Rosler, Joan Saab, Marquard Smith, Sina Najafi, Øyvind Vågnes, McKenzie Wark, Jason Wing, Joanna Zylinska, and many more

Full event details are at http://www.visualculturenow.org

As you may know, at the 2010 Visual Culture Studies Conference hosted by the Institute and held at University of Westminster in London, a decision was taken by those in attendance to constitute an International Association for Visual Culture. In 2011, at a follow-up meeting at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown MA, a group delegated from that conference set the process of forming the Association in motion and decided to hold a participatory conference in New York in 2012. The goal of the 2012 conference is to showcase as broad and diverse a range of visual culture practice as possible, consistent with the goal of a low-registration, high-participation event.

There can only be a relatively limited number of delegates both for space reasons (only certain spaces can be used cost-free at NYU) and to create a strongly interactive conference experience. These sessions will take place at 20 Cooper Square, New York, 10003 in the Humanities Initiative space, a beautifully designed space overlooking the architectural drama of the Bowery.

On the website you will find a registration form: please consider registering!

Why does the event have a registration fee of $50 for faculty and $25 for students?
1) we have no supporting body so all costs have had to be covered
2) Much of the amount will be ‘given back’ in the coffee, lunch and receptions
3) Given the limited space, a small registration seemed appropriate as a means of committing

From Nicholas Mirzoeff, organizer of the 2012 International Association for Visual Culture conference

Wednesday 22 February at 3pm
2.05A School of Law, 4 Little Titchfield Street, London W1W 7UW

Cory Doctorow
‘There is a war coming: the future regulation of general purpose computation’

Organised by our friends in The Centre for Law, Society and Popular Culture
ALL WELCOME. RSVP Danilo Mandic: danilo.mandic@my.westminster.ac.uk

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing (boingboing.net) and the author of Tor Teens/HarperCollins UK novels like FOR THE WIN and the bestselling LITTLE BROTHER. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. He is the author of Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future, (2008). Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London. See further, http://craphound.com/bio.php

WESTMINSTER.AC.UK/LAW

TheBeautifulGame_E-Invite_RSVPTOWESTMINSTER

Thursday 1st March 2012
Reception: 6-7; Screening: 7-9

The Old Cinema, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street
RSVP to: Katrina Fender (k.fender@westminster.ac.uk)

Our friends in The Centre for Law, Society and Popular Culture at the School of Law, University of Westminster in association with Africa10 are delighted to invite you to a special preview screening of The Beautiful Game, a new documentary from director Victor Buhler. The film celebrates the work of The Right to Dream Academy, and is generously supported by Alisa Swidler and Leke Adebayo.

http://www.visualculturenow.org/itinerary/

“Now! Visual Culture” is a participation event, to be held at New York University, May 31-June 2 2012. The goal is to showcase as broad and diverse a range of visual culture practice as possible in order to create a snapshot of the field of visual culture as it is currently practiced from Cape Town to California.

At the 2010 Visual Culture Studies Conference in London, hosted by the Institute at University of Westminster, a decision was taken to constitute an International Association for Visual Culture. A key principle was that the Association should ask as little as possible financially from its members while involving as many people as possible in decision making. This is the first event organized under this platform. By the end of the event, delegates will have both experienced and created the transformation of the field from an interaction of cinema studies and art history (as it was in the 1990s) to the present intersection of Web 2.0, iconology, contemporary art practice, and critical visuality studies.

The event is structured so that all delegates will attend a single stream of sessions to create a strongly interactive conference experience. The event begins with 15×5 minute lightning talks on the state of the field by people ranging from postdocs to professor emeritus. There are eight sessions following, organized by people in a variety of locations, including the Visual and Cultural Studies Program at the University of Rochester, the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture and the Diasporic Asian Art Research group. Each session will be independently organized in keeping with the horizontal ethics of the Association.

Particular time slots have a hands-on workshop, film screenings, panel discussions or a combination of the above.

Current session themes include:

a workshop with Scalar, a born-digital multi-media authoring platform
the role of design in globalization
new media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement
Asian diaspora art practices
practice in and as visual culture
a graduate student forum
the general assembly of the International Association for Visual Culture
keynote ‘listeners’ and talkback
Lots of time for networking and enjoying New York, with receptions every night, a gallery exhibition of online and material work, and maybe a late-night shenanigan or two!

http://www.westminster.ac.uk/research/a-z/cream/events/exhibiting-video-conference

CALL FOR PAPERS – EXTENDED CALL
DEADLINE 15 February 2012

Exhibiting Video – International Conference
Date: 23 – 25 March, 2012
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London, W1B 2UW

In March and April 2012 Ambika P3, the flagship exhibition space at the University of Westminster, will present a major solo exhibition of the influential pioneer of video art, David Hall in association with REWIND. To mark the occasion the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) of the University of Westminster is convening Exhibiting Video, a three-day event considering issues central to the display of video art.

We welcome proposals for papers of a maximum of 30 minutes. Send abstracts of no more than 250 words. They must include the presenter’s name, affiliation, email and postal address, together with the title of the paper and a 150-word biographical note on the presenter. Abstracts should be sent to Helen Cohen at photography@westminster.ac.uk and arrive no later than Wednesday 15 February 2012.

Wednesday 1 February 2012, 6 pm – 8 pm,
Room 152, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

True Lies of War
Group for War and Culture Studies Seminar

Hongping Annie Nie, University of Oxford
“China’s War with Japan (1937-1945): A Study of Chinese History Textbooks”

Dr. Hongping Annie Nie (MA in Education, Calvin College, USA; Ph. D. in Cross-cultural Education, Biola University, USA) is currently Faculty Tutor of Chinese Politics at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. She is also a core member of the Leverhulme funded China’s War with Japan Project, History Faculty, University of Oxford. Her research interests include moral/ideological education, mass communication, patriotism, and national memory. Among her publications are The Dilemma of Moral Education Curriculum in a Chinese Secondary School (University Press of America, 2007) and “On-line Gaming, Ideological Work, and Nationalism in China” (Journal of Contemporary China, forthcoming).

Celine Righi, London School of Economics
“Memory in post-Civil War Lebanon under artistic scrutiny: a space for individual and social autonomy in the public debate?”

Celine Righi completed a Master in Political Sciences at Science Po Lyon in 2000 and a Master in Social Psychology at Paris IX Dauphine University in 2001. After working for a think tank in Paris and Lyon in the field of social and economic development, Celine embarked in her PhD in 2008 at the Institute of Social Psychology at London School of Economics.

Entrance free. To reserve a place, please R.S.V.P. Dr Caroline Perret: C.Perret@westminster.ac.uk

Call for papers: Ecologies of the Visual

The Third Visual Culture in Europe Meeting, Trondheim, 6-7 September 2012

Contributions are invited which address the relationship between ecology and visuality in the broadest sense. On the one hand several discourses have come to revolve around what Susan Sontag described in On Photography as an ecology of images, a perspective which raises both epistemological and ethical questions concerning our interactions with the image. On the other hand there are presently several indications of a pressing need for the field of visual culture studies to address what we might call the visualities of ecology, or the place of environmental issues in contemporary visual culture. Topics may include but are by no means limited to:

Images and Ethics // “Ecology” as a Metaphorical Nexus in Visual Studies // Visual Culture within and without the Ecology of Disciplines // Consumerism and Visual Culture/The Visual Culture of Consumerism // Climate Change in/and Visual Culture // The Rhetorics of Environmentalism in Media and/or Art // Apocalyptic Narratives in Visual Culture

To submit a proposal for a paper presentation, please email an abstract of approximately 200 words to the conference organisers, Nina Lager Vestberg (nina.vestberg@ntnu.no) and Øyvind Vågnes (ov@nomadikon.net), by 7 March 2012.

You are invited to the Private View of two exhibitions (including drinks reception):

AND

Monday 12th December 2011, 18:30 onwards
309 Regent Street Gallery, University of Westminster, London W1B 2UW

‘AV London’ and ‘Through the Lens: Embodying the City’ are curated by students on MA Cultural and Critical Studies, MA Museums, Galleries & Contemporary Culture, and MA Visual Culture, University of Westminster

Back in July, IMCC Visiting Fellow Dr Young-Paik Chun from Hongik University in Seoul programmed an event on Korean contemporary art on British soil at London’s Korean Cultural Centre. Details here.

Following the event, a report entitled ‘Situating Korean Fine Art Practice in a Western Context’ written by Dr John Cussans came to our attention. It is attached here, many thanks to John for making it available, and our apologies for the delay in posting it:

SITUATING KOREAN FINE ART

It is a pleasure to announce Dr Victoria Walsh as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster, for 2011-12.

As a Visiting Research Fellow and Co-investigator of the Tate research project ‘Art School Educated: Curriculum Development and Institutional Change in UK Art Schools 1960-present’, Victoria will be developing her work on the emergence and impact of practice-led research within the Institute. This position and partnership builds on Westminster’s longstanding collaboration with the Tate across research and programming including the current collaboration on the MA Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture and the Johns Hopkins Summer School programme.

Victoria is also Visiting Research Fellow in the Arts and Media Department at London South Bank University which builds on her role as Co-investigator of the AHRC funded-project ‘Tate Encounters: Britishness and Visual Culture’ (2007-10) which was led by LSBU, and includes the completion of the project’s publication Post-critical Museology: Theory and Practice in the Art Museum (Routledge 2012).

Prior to this, Victoria was Head of Adult Programmes at Tate Britain (2005-11) where her work spanned both the Research and Learning departments. Previously, she worked as a freelance curator, project manager and research consultant in the fields of visual arts and architecture including the project-management of the competition to select an architect for Tate Modern, the relaunch of the Fourth Plinth Project in Trafalgar Square for the Mayor’s Cultural Office, and as Curatorial Consultant the exhibition ‘Open Systems: Rethinking art since 1970′ (Tate Modern, 2005). She holds an MA in Art History (Courtauld), in Curating (RCA 1995) and a doctorate on the artist Whistler (Oxford Brookes 1996) and has published on post-war British artists Nigel Henderson, Francis Bacon, Gilbert & George and architects Alison and Peter Smithson. As Programme Consultant on the 5th Year Diploma Course ‘History and Theory’ at the Architectural Association she is currently teaching the ‘The Independent Group: Tracing the Parallels in Visual and Urban Culture’.

We really do look forward to working with Victoria in the forthcoming year.

Our friends in the Africa Media Centre at University of Westminster, in conjunction with London African Film Festival, are organizing a conference entitled: ‘Women and Film in Africa Conference: Overcoming Social Barriers’

Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 November 2011
University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

Jihan El-Tahri is an Egyptian-French writer, Director and Producer of Documentary films. Her award-winning films include documentaries filmed in the Congo, Angola, Zambia, Tunisia and other parts of the world, including Saudi Arabia. Her latest film Behind the Rainbow deals with the transition of the ANC from a liberation organization into South Africa’s ruling party.

Yaba Badoe is a Ghanaian-British documentary maker, journalist and novelist; she is a visiting scholar at the University of Ghana. Her directing and producing credits include the award-winning documentary The Witches of Gambaga the story of a community of women condemned to live as witches in Northern Ghana.

“Women and film in Africa: Overcoming Social Barriers” is the exciting topic of the University of Westminster’s Africa Media Centre’s next event to be held at 35 Marylebone Road, London from 19-20 November 2011. It will deal with the contemporary and historical role played by women in the film, television and video industries in Africa. From Arab North Africa, West Africa, Central and East Africa, through to Southern Africa, women have emerged from the double oppression of patriarchy and colonialism to become the unsung heroines of the moving image as producers, directors, actresses, script writers, financiers, promoters, marketers and distributors of film, television and video in postcolonial Africa. Sadly, such immense contributions by women are underrepresented, both in industry debates and academic research. There are now many cases in which African women in front of and behind the camera have overcome social barriers, yet this is often sidelined. This conference delegates will include students, practitioners, academics and researchers to debate how women have contributed to film, television and video markets in Africa from the pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial eras. It is expected that the event will help focus existing industry and academic work on the ways female audiences in Africa have engaged with film, television and video texts. The conference will include a session with leading female filmmakers.

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN

Full conference: Standard rate £135. One day rate £95
Full conference: Student rate £55. One day rate £40.
Fees cover: conference pack, lunch, coffee/tea, a wine reception and administration fees.

Please follow the link: http://www.westminster.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/2011/women-and-film-in-africa-conference-overcoming-social-barriers

ADVENTURES IN NIGHTLIFE: PAUL KHERA
Thursday 3 November 2011, 19.00 – 23.00
AMBIKA P3

EXHIBITION-FILM SCREENING-MUSIC
Presenting the work of Paul Khera in an evening of film, music and photography on the theme of London nightlife.

EXHIBITION
One off prints featuring intimate moments of London nightlife

FILM SCREENING – 8.00 pm
‘Being Continued’, 37mins
Part film-noir, part meditation, a cinematic discourse on the journey of wisdom, there’s greed, violence, kidnapping; love, tranquility and revelation. This is a film that follows the cycle of human comprehension, gathering knowledge, being perplexed by it, testing wisdom with experience, suffering at the hands of greed, expanding and condensing knowledge, and finding peace. The story is part of the folklore of the himalya, it can be applied to society as a whole, or in the case of this film to an individual.

MUSIC:
Late Night tunes by Maxology

Paul Khera has worked across the full spectrum of the visual arts. He started his career taking stills at Channel 4, playing in a band, and designing sleeves for another. Through a chance meeting at college, he started working for the ICA in London, designing posters and catalogues, for amongst others Jake & Dinos Chapman, Lawrence Weiner, William Wegman and Damien Hirst. After the Arts came fashion, a short stint at Elle, and then Vogue. Following that was a period at corporate design heavyweights Ideo, on large-scale projects for P&G in Geneve and Vodaphone in Lisbon. Interspersed were a few projects for the British Council, which took him from Tokyo (an interactive project, describing Britain to the Japanese) to Damascus to Kano (an attempt to foster Muslim Christian tolerance through typography). Lately the projects have mainly been self-motivated, he designed a Hospital in rural India, using only local know-how and vernacular and is currently working on a six year scheme, a hand built retreat in the Himalayas; in which he designed everything from the building to the interior and the furniture… in the meantime he found time to write a book on philosophy and folklore, and a suite of music to go with it. Khera has also been commissioned to follow around the rock band Suede for a year, taking photographs at various gigs from the 100 club to the Royal Albert Hall documenting their return to fame, as well as build up a riveting portfolio of portraits from the nightlife of London.

AMBIKA P3, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS
Entrance free.

http://www.p3exhibitions.com/

http://www.paulkhera.com/

For the latest video from the Institute’s AHRC Research Fellow Joe Banks, please go to:

Neurogenesis by Disinformation + Usurp (Signature Version)
Copyright © Joe Banks & Poulomi Desai 24 Oct 2011

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Chtcheglov

Contributions to forthcoming open issues include:

Emmanuel Alloa on Visual Studies in Byzantium, David Cunningham on the Metropolis; Willem Flusser on the gesture of photographing, Tom Holert on Bildwissenschaft, Esther Leslie on liquid crystals, Lev Manovich on visualization, Lynda Nead on boxing, Jacques Ranciere on cinema, Nicole Starosielski on transoceanic cables, Janet Wolff on the power of images, Winnie Wong on appropriation in Chinese visual culture.

Forthcoming themed issues include:

In 2012

Ways of Seeing: 40 Years On, with contributors including: Mieke Bal, Jon Bird, Lisa Cartwright, Jill H. Casid, Hazel Clark, Laurie-Beth Clark, Mike Dibb, Jennifer Gonzalez, Dick Hebdige, Richard Hollis, Elizabeth Guffey, S. Heller, Ben Highmore, Martin Jay, Guy Julier, Louis Kaplan, Peter Lunenfeld, Tara McPherson, Marita Sturken, Griselda Pollock, Adrian Rifkin, Vanessa Schwartz, and Ming Wong.

In 2013:

The Archives R Us issue, with contributors including: Raiford Guins, Gary Hall, Chris Horrocks, Tom Holert, Juliette Kristenesen, susan pui san lok, Joanne Morra, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Vivian Rehberg, Marquard Smith, and Nina Lager Vestberg

Flyer NVC1-2

For anyone interested in architectural models, design education, and photography, the Institute’s Dr Davide Deriu, a colleague from the Department of Architecture here at University of Westminster, has curated a fascinating exhibition entitled ‘Modernism in Miniature’ at The Canadian Centre for Architecture. If you happen to be in Montreal, why not swing by, it’s on until January 2012:

http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/exhibitions/1487-modernism-in-miniature

Our friends in the India Media Centre at University of Westminster are organizing a series of fascinating events, please see details below:

Thursday 13th October, 6.30pm

BHOPALI, a film
Bhopali, (dir. Max Carlson, 2011, 89 mins) is a multi-award-winning documentary about the survivors of the world’s worst industrial disaster, the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal, India. After the screening Mick Brown (journalist, writer and broadcaster) will chair a panel discussion with filmmaker Pawas Bisht (University of Loughborough), author, Meaghan Delahunt, (University of St Andrews) and Tim Edwards (International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal).
Venue: The Old Cinema, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Friday 14th October, 6.30pm

FORGOTTEN ERA: PARSI THEATRE AND EARLY INDIAN CINEMA
Kathryn Hansen, (University of Texas at Austin), a cultural historian with a special interest in Indian theatre, will present material from her new book Stages of Life: Indian Theatre Autobiographies (Anthem Press). This will be followed by a round-table discussion with Francesca Orsini, Reader in the Literatures of North India, SOAS; Rosie Thomas, Reader in Film and Director of CREAM and Co-director of India Media Centre at the University of Westminster; and Ravi Vasudevan, Professor of Film, Director of the Sarai Centre, Delhi, and Smuts Fellow at University of Cambridge.
Venue: Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Monday 17th October, 6.30pm

THE MAKING OF A MODERN INDIAN ARTIST-CRAFTSMAN: DEVI PRASAD
Devi Prasad was India’s pioneering artist-potter, visionary educationist and pacifist. This event looks at how his story exemplifies the importance of the Arts and Crafts Movement in shaping the nature of Modernism in India, and the role of pottery and the community of potters that Prasad set up. Naman P. Ahuja, (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), will speak about the themes of his new book, The Making of a Modern Indian Artist-Craftsman: Devi Prasad, followed by a conversation with architect Sunand Prasad, Devi Prasad’s son, and with potter and writer, Julian Stair, Visiting Lecturer in Ceramics at the University of Westminster.
Venue: The Boardroom, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Friday 2nd November, 5pm – 9pm

INDIAN ARTS ON FILM: Charles Correa, Bhupen Kakar, Nalini Malani and Vivan Sundaram
What makes a successful documentary about art? What specific issues arise when translating the visual arts onto film? How far do different cultural contexts require different approaches? Award-winning arts filmmakers and scholars, Arun Khopkar and John Wyver (Iluuminations and University of Westminster), together with art historian Partha Mitter (University of Sussex), discuss these questions, followed by a screening of two of Khopkar’s films: Figures of Thought (1990, 33 mins), on Bhupen Kakar, Nalini Malani and Vivan Sundaram, and Volume Zero: The Work of Charles Correa (2008, 59 mins) on India’s most eminent architect.
Venue: P3 Gallery (5pm) and Cayley Lecture Theatre (7pm), University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

These events have been organised in association with our partners, DSC-South Asia Literature Festival and Magic Lantern Persistence Resistance Festival. As spaces are limited, BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL (follow web-links for each event). For full details visit http://www.westminster.ac.uk/schools/media/cream

Money, Time, Representation: Literary Explorations (CFP)

In his Philosophy of Money, Georg Simmel notes that “we invest economic objects with a quantity of value as if it were an inherent quality” but “the question as to what value really is, like the question as to what being is, is unanswerable”. The element of unaccountability in money can also be seen in Marx, although he articulated the nature of money quite differently as an expression of social relations. Literature has always been very sensitive to the contingent, hence fictional, aspect of money.

A proposed session is planned on the topic for the IAPL (International Association for Philosophy and Literature) 2012 conference Archaeologies of the Future: tracing memories/imaging spaces to be held in Tallinn, Estonia next spring. We are looking for papers where the nature of money is explored in literature, and papers that ask how and if money in literature is the same as money in philosophy. The issues can include, but are not limited to, the nature of money as representation of value, or as representation of authority, or the role of money as an expression of a temporal pact that affects our sense of time. If you are interested in the topics of money in literature and/or money in philosophy, or parallels between writing and money, please send in your abstract ASAP (max. 1000 words) to the email address below. The session can include four to five speakers. Please note that all speakers must be IAPL members by the end of September 2011. For more details, see: www.iapl.info

Dr Tiina Käkelä-Puumala, University of Helsinki, Finland
email: tkakela@mappi.helsinki.fi