Not strictly a tour around the Institute, but we thought we should flag up the fact that Westminster is taking part in Open House London, the capital’s largest architectural showcase, on September 18. Visitors can take a tour of the site of the original Polytechnic opened in 1838, visit the Sports Hall and the site of one of the first public swimming pools in London, and learn the importance in cinematic history of the Old Cinema.

Times: Tours at 10am, 11.30am, 2pm and 3.30pm. Pre-book only, maximum 25 per tour.
Admission: Free.

More information here.

Our friends at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, now safely relocated at Kingston University, have announced their list of seminars for the coming term.

7 October 2010             
Hegel, Kierkegaard and Mediation
Jon Stewart (Kierkegaard Research Centre, Copenhagen University)
Venue: Swedenborg Hall, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way WC1A

21 October 2010           
Philosophy, Capitalism and the Novel
David Cunningham (IMCC, Westminster)
Venue: Ramsay Lecture Theatre, UCL, 20 Gordon Street WC1H

26 October 2010           
Title TBA
Catherine Malabou (University of Paris, Ouest-Nanterre)
Venue: TBA

11 November 2010        
Between Sharing and Antagonism: The Invention of Communism in Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts
Antonia Birnbaum (Philosophy, University of Paris
Venue: Swedenborg Hall

18 or 25 November        
Title TBA
Paul Rabinow (Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley)
Venue: TBA

Theatre for a Young Audience in the UK

Karian Schuitema, a PhD student at Westminster, has organised a one-day conference to be held at the University on Friday 16th July. 

Keynote Speakers:
Wolfgang Schneider (University of Hildesheim, Germany. ASSITEJ President)
Matthew Reason (York St John University)
Jeanne Pigeon and Roger Deldime (Université Libre De Bruxelles. Founder of Centre de sociologie du théâtre and founders of Théâtre La Montagne Magique)

 Further details, including full programme on Karian’s website here.

Fragments, Openness and Contradiction in Painting and Photography
Saturday November 27 2010, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

The restitution of the tableau form (to which the art of the 1960s and 1970s, it will be recalled, was largely opposed) has the primary aim of restoring the distance to the object-image necessary for the confrontational experience, but implies no nostalgia for painting and no specifically “reactionary” impulse. The frontality of the picture hung on or affixed to the wall and its autonomy as an object are not sufficient as finalities. It is not a matter of elevating the photographic image to the place and rank of painting. It is about using the tableau form to reactivate a thinking based on fragments, openness and contradiction, not the utopia of a comprehensive systematic order.
Jean-François Chevrier

In preparation for a two day international conference, Tableau/dispositif/apparatus, at Tate Modern in October 2011, our friends at Central Saint Martins are staging a symposium on Saturday November 27 in collaboration with the London Consortium to hear papers which address the nature of pictorial forms in contemporary practice; ‘fragmented, open and contradictory’ which Jean-Francois Chevrier opposes to the ‘utopia of a comprehensive systematic order’. This symposium is in preparation for the second day of the Tate conference which will be dedicated to the presentation of research papers.

500 word abstracts should be submitted by 1 October 2010 to Mick Finch: m.finch@csm.arts.ac.uk

The Whitechapel Salon: Matter Matters II: Performance Matters
Thursday 1^st July, 7pm
Study Studio, Whitechapel Gallery, London E1 7QX

Spanning art, architecture, performance and sustainability, this year’s series of four Salon discussions focus on the matter of ‘matter’ – its nature, substance and the productive forces that govern it. For July Gavin Butt (Goldsmiths College, London), Adrian Heathfield (Roehampton University), and Lois Keidan (Director, Live Art Development Agency) consider Performance Matters.

Co-organised by the IMCC and Whitechapel Gallery. Book now to avoid disappointment!

Tickets: £8/£6 (includes free glass of wine)

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org

Emerging Landscapes
Date: 25-27 June 2010
Venue: University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

The past thirty years have witnessed social, geopolitical, technological and economic change on a global scale. Alongside these shifts, landscape has also changed its nature. Focusing primarily, but not exclusively on the synergies between the disciplines of photography and architecture, this international and interdisciplinary conference, organised by our colleagues in Architecture and Art & Design, will examine and critically reassess the interface between production and representation in the creation of contemporary landscapes. Emerging Landscapes asks practitioners, writers, critics, artists, and others working in the broad fields of the built environment and the represented environment to reconsider the idea of landscape by interrogating the relationship between space and image; to explore the synergies that exist between landscape representation – the imaginary and symbolic shaping of the human environment – and landscape production – the physical and material changes wrought on the land.

Speakers include: Gabriele Basilico, Stephen Daniels, Christopher Girot, Jonathan Hill

Full programme and details at: http://emerginglandscapes.org.uk/
Registration from Helen Cohen: h.cohen02@westminster.ac.uk

Date: Tuesday 8^th June, 6:30-8:30pm
Location: University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1 2UW

You are invited to the opening and private view of:

‘HOW WE BECAME METADATA’

With:
Martin John Callanan
Corby & Baily
Eunju Han
Eduardo Kac
susan pui san lok
Ruth Maclennan and Uriel Orlow
Thomson & Craighead
Curated by Marquard Smith

Westminster English Colloquium #15
“No Hawkers: No Models”: The Vicissitudes of the Modernist Muse
Saturday 19th June 2010, The Pavilion, University of Westminster, 115 New Cavendish Street, London W1W

10.00  Coffee
10.15  Introduction

10.30 – 11.30  Becky Bowler (Sheffield), ‘The strange poses of an untrained dancer’: performance and visual identity in Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage

11.30 -12.30  Hana Leaper (Liverpool), ‘Caught and tangled in a woman’s body?’: The dualities of the artist’s body in self-portraits by Vanessa Bell, Gwen John and Laura Knight

12.30 – 2.00  Lunch

2.00 – 3.00  Emma West (Independent Scholar), This is My Life: Kay Boyle and Modernist Women’s Autobiographics

3.00 – 4.00 Lucy Howarth (Plymouth), ‘Dress address name’: Fashioning the Modernist Self

4.15 – 5.15   Jane Goldman (Glasgow), Laughing Torso: Muse, Model, Creatrix (The Vicissitudes of Nina Hamnett, Modernist Bohemian, Artist and Writer)

5.15 – 5.30  Roundtable discussion

See the Call for Papers here.

Limited places still available! To book email info@instituteformodern.co.uk or download the booking form here

The IMCC’s resident activist artist, and ex-member of the Scratch Orchestra, Stefan Szczelkun, will be taking part in a performance, with Keith Rowe and Carole Finer, as part of Cornelius Cardew and the Freedom of Listening, curated by Dean Inkster, at the Culturgest, Porto on Saturday 15th May. Later on the same evening Stefan will also be in conversation and showing a selection of excerpts from his Active Archives video project.

The Porto exhibition traces the career of the English avant-garde composer Cornelius Cardew, and includes scores and vast archival material of the experimental performances developed by Cardew and the members of the Scratch Orchestra, which he co-founded in 1969, along with posters from the period following Cardew’s decision in the mid-1970s to renounce his work as an avant-garde composer and devote his energy to politics.

Activating Brixton Art Gallery, 1983-86: Archives and Memories
Saturday 5^th June 2010, 11am-4pm
Westminster Forum, University of Westminster, 32 Wells street, London W1T 3UW

A collaboration between BACA (Brixton Artists Collective Archives) group, and the 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, the project 50 Reasons to Celebrate, Brixton Art Gallery – 1983-86, Archiving Brixton Art Gallery & Artists Collective (2010-2012) will be officially launched in Autumn 2010.  BACA consists of five individual and original members of the Brixton Artists Collective: Teri Bullen, Guy Burch, Françoise Dupré, Rita Keegan, and the IMCC’s Stefan Szczelkun.  They were part of a significant group of artists, the Brixton Artists Collective, and were instrumental in the foundation, development and running of the Brixton Art Gallery.

The ‘Activating Brixton Art Gallery, 1983-86: Archives and Memories’ symposium at Westminster is the first of two university-based symposia that will contribute to the Project’s research and development in relation to content, context, process and dissemination.  An invited group will discuss the Brixton Art Gallery & Artists Collective’s socio-political and artistic concerns and contemporary relevance.

Speakers include: Paul Dash, Department of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths; Adrian Glew, Tate Archive; Althea Greenan, curator Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths; Ajamu, artist; Sally Mould, Brixton Art Gallery exhibiting artist and Copyart.

The 50 Reasons to Celebrate, Brixton Art Gallery – 1983-86 project promotes and celebrates the achievement and legacy of the Brixton Art Gallery & Artists Collective and provides contexts and opportunities for the re-opening of existing archives and for future archiving of the Gallery and its Collective. The project incorporates public events and participation including a postcard project, an oral history project, a community archiving project, community-based workshops, gallery talks, symposia, a publication and a major archiving exhibition at the 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning (winter 2011). At the end of the Project, Brixton Art Gallery & Artists Collective’s old and new archives will be transferred and donated to Tate Archive for safekeeping and for broader public access (Spring 2012). Lambeth Archives, Tate Archive, Young People’s Programmes, Tate Britain and the Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths, University of London have confirmed their support.  Artist Studio Company, Autograph ABP, Birmingham City University, London School of Economics, Hall Carpenter Archive and the University of Westminster are also confirmed partners.  

For further details about the syposium, please contact Stefan Szczelkun at: S.Szczelkun@westminster.ac.uk

For more information about the Brixton Art Gallery and its Collective and first 50 exhibitions please visit the website set up and developed by Brixton Art Gallery & Artists Collective co-founder Andrew Hurman: http://brixton50.co.uk

David Cunningham, Deputy Director of the IMCC, is, along with John Gray and Nic Clear, one of the participants in the symposium Ballardian Architecture: Inner and Outer Space to be held at the Royal Academy of Arts on Saturday 15th May, 2-5pm. The event will trace several themes in Ballard’s literary analysis of the contemporary built environment, including the concept of spectacle and role of the media in contemporary society, and how Ballard’s fascination with so-called “invisible literatures”, such as scientific journals, technical manuals and advertising copy, can be seen as a literary counterpart to pop art and the “brutalist” aesthetic of modernity.

Tickets: £25/£16 reductions* (includes a drink)

Further details here.

The Hole in Time: German-Jewish Political Philosophy and the Archive
Date: Wednesday 23rd June – Thursday 24th June 2010, 9.30-6.00 

Venue: Portland Hall, University of Westminster, 4-16 Little Titchfield Street, London W1W 7UW

Admission is free, but, since places are limited, please contact the organisers to book a place by the 17^th of June at theholeintime@live.com

Wednesday 23^rd of June

9.30 – 10.00 Introduction: Sas Mays (Westminster), Leena Petersen (Sussex)

10.00 – 12.00 Panel 1: Modern Crisis and the History of the Present – Part 1

Nicholas Lambrianou (Birkbeck): ‘Figures of Interruption: Philosophical Dramas of Temporality and History in Benjamin and Rosenzweig’
Sami Khatib (FU Berlin): ‘The Messianic and the Archive: Walter Benjamin’s “Politics of Time”’
Leena Petersen (Sussex): ‘Messianic Libertarianism and Linguistic Philosophies of History in Benjamin and Related Writings of His Time’
Chair: Christian Wiese (Sussex)

1.00 – 3.00 Panel 2: Poetics of Temporality

Howard Caygill (Goldsmiths): ‘Paul Celan’s Visual Archive’
Nitzan Lebovic (Tel Aviv / Sussex): ‘Paul Celan: Language of Loss at the Heart of Time’
Shela Sheikh (Goldsmiths): ‘The Wounded Archive: Derrida Reading Celan’
Chair: Keston Sutherland (Sussex)

3.30 – 5.30 Panel 3: The Temporality of Archives – Part 1

Elina Staikou (Goldsmiths): ‘Vigil of the Archive: On Derrida Dreaming Benjamin’
Rebecca Dolgoy (Montreal / FU Berlin): ‘The Work of Art as Archive: Examining Adorno’s Zeitkern as Time Capsule’
Tommaso Speccher (FU Berlin): ‘The Hole in Space: Fragmenting and Re-piecing the Archive between Walter Benjamin and Daniel Libeskind’
Chair:  John Roberts (Wolverhampton)

Thursday 24^th of June

10.00 – 12.00 Panel 4: Modern Crisis and the History of the Present – Part 2

Reut Paz (Humboldt University Berlin): ‘The Legal Transcendentalism of Hans Kelsen as a Hole in Time’
Birte Loeschenkohl (Frankfurt): ‘Kairos: The Right and Opportune Moment as a Caesura in and of Time’
Veronika Koever (Queen Mary): ‘Reversing the Irreversible: Jean Améry’s “ressentiments” and the Moralisation of Time’
Chair: Leena Petersen (Sussex)

1.00 – 3.00 Panel 5: The External Archive

Andy Fisher (Goldsmiths): ‘”Quiet Life”: History, Pathos and the Archive in Ernst Friedrich’s Kriege dem Krieg’
Manu Luksch (London): ‘Moonwalking in Real Time’
Chair: Esther Leslie (Birkbeck)

3.30 – 5.30 Panel 6: The Temporality of Archives – Part 2

David Cunningham (Westminster): ‘Abstract Times: Benjamin, Kafka and the Modernism of Tradition’
Matthew Charles (Middlesex): ‘The Snow Line of the Archive: Walter Benjamin On the Trail of Old Letters’
Andrew McGettigan (Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London): ‘The Archive and the Idea: Walter Benjamin’s Experiences of Time’
Chair: Nitzan Lebovic (Tel Aviv/Sussex)

Organised by Sas Mays (Westminster), and Leena Petersen and Nitzan Leibovic (Sussex), as part of the research project ‘Archiving Cultures’ at the IMCC.

Old Media / New Work: Obsolete Technologies & Contemporary Art
Saturday 1st May 2010, 9am-6pm
Portland  Hall, University of Westminster, 4-16 Little Titchfield St, London W1W 7UW

Contemporary art shows renewed interest in ‘lost’, ‘obsolete’, and ‘archaic’ visual media forms and the illusion-producing processes of the past—for example: the camera obscura, the magic lantern, stereoscopy, Victorian stage illusion, shadowgraphy, optical toys, the panorama and stylised period representations such as the imagery of spiritualism, automatic writing and early photographic techniques. A platform for engagement with such ‘old media’ has been provided by the Magic Lantern Society’s popular public lecture series, Professor Pepper’s Ghost, at the University of Westminster this year. As a further development, the conference ‘Old Media / New Work’ will concentrate on art and artists working with or around such ‘lost’ practices, in order to show, discuss, and explore such work in context of contemporary relevance and future possibilities.

Speakers:
Madi Boyd (Independent): ‘Pepper’s Ghost for the 21^st Century’
Ignaz Cassar (Leeds / Nottingham Trent): ‘The Image of, or in, Sublation’
Mark Ferelli (Independent): ‘Michael Reeves Directs’
Mark Jackson (IMT Gallery): ‘Audiobooks of the Dead: William Burroughs & Konstantīns Raudive’
Ben Judd (Independent): ‘Magic, Belief, and Immersion’
Naomi Kashiwagi (Independent): ‘Reinventing the Reel: Reclaiming the Everyday’
Wiebke Leister (LCC): ‘Towards an Iconography of the White Face’
Olivia Plender (Independent): ‘A Stellar Key to the Summerland’
Peter Ride (Westminster): ‘When Everything Old is New Again’
Aura Satz (London Consortium): ‘Sound Seam: Gramophone Grooves & Primal Sound’
Dan Smith (Chelsea): ‘October Outmoded: Utopian Failure & Technological Possibility’
Simon Warner (Independent): ‘Isolating V5: Towards a Human Zoetrope’

Entrance is free but, as places are numbered, please contact the organisers, Sas Mays (IMCC) and Mervyn Heard (Magic Lantern Society), for a place: oldmedianewwork@live.com

The Hole in Time: German-Jewish Political Philosophy and the Archive
Date: Wednesday 23rd June – Thursday 24th June 2010, 9.30-6.00 

Venue: Portland Hall, University of Westminster, 4-16 Little Titchfield Street, London W1W 7UW

Left discussions of politics and history owe much to German-Jewish theories of temporality that emerged in response to the political crises of twentieth-century Europe; such theories helped to problematize both the life of the individual and how the state perceived it. The workshop ‘German-Jewish Political Philosophy and the Archive’ brings together interested parties to engage with the data collection and archival dimensions of German-Jewish conceptions of temporality, history and crisis, as well as the German-French dialogue in critical philosophy.

Speakers: Howard Caygill (Goldsmiths, London); Matthew Charles (Middlesex); David Cunningham (IMCC, Westminster); Rebecca Dolgoy (Montreal/ FU Berlin); Andrew Fisher (Goldsmiths, London); Sami Khatib (FU Berlin); Veronika Koever (Queen Mary, London); Nicholas Lambrianou (Birkbeck, London); Nitzan Lebovic (Tel Aviv/Sussex); Birte Loeschenkohl (Frankfurt); Manu Luksch (London); Andrew McGettigan (University of the Arts, London); Reut Yael Paz (RishonLeZion); Silvia Richter (Heidelberg); Shela Sheikh (Goldsmiths, London); Tommaso Speccher (FU Berlin); Elina Staikou (Goldsmiths, London)
Chairs: Paul Betts, Christian Wiese, Esther Leslie, Sas Mays, Leena Petersen, Keston Sutherland

Co-organised by the IMCC and Centre for German-Jewish Studies, University of Sussex

The Whitechapel Salon: Matter Matters I: Popular Matters
Thursday 13^th May, 7pm
Study Studio, Whitechapel Gallery, London E1 7QX

The Whitechapel Salon is back! Spanning art, architecture, performance and sustainability, the forthcoming year-long series of four Salon discussions focus on the matter of ‘matter’ – its nature, substance and the productive forces that govern it. Chris Horrocks, Principal Lecturer, Kingston University and Julian Stallabrass, Reader, Courtauld Institute of Art consider Popular Matters including mass culture, vernacular photography, Web 2.0 and user-generated content.

Book now to avoid disappointment! Book your ticket here.

Tickets: £8/£6 (includes free glass of wine)

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org

Wednesday 14th April, 1.15-2.30pm
Room 106, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, W1T 3UW

Nick Hubble (Brunel University)
‘Naomi Mitchison: From Intermodernism to Science Fiction (via Mass-Observation)’

From her 1920s novels, influenced by Lawrence but aimed at the audience of Wells, to her subsequent deployment of modernist techniques for political ends, Naomi Mitchison may be considered a key intermodern writer. Her literary output during the 1930s – The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931), Beyond This Limit (1934; a feminist fantasy illustrated by Wyndham Lewis), We Have Been Warned (1935), The Moral Basis of Politics (1938) and The Blood of the Martyrs (1939) – is comparable with Orwell’s. Her relentless pursuit of the ‘just society’, free from gender-based and sexual repression, made her a controversial figure even in that controversial decade. And her close literary associates of that decade – including Auden, Aldous Huxley, Olaf Stapledon, Stevie Smith, Wyndham Lewis and Walter Greenwood – suggest different ways of thinking about literary networks and cultural history in general. She was also a friend and supporter of Tom Harrisson and Mass-Observation, for whom she kept a wartime diary. Nick Hubble’s paper analyses this intermodern work and investigates how it relates to Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962), a forerunner of the 1970s feminist utopian science fiction of writers such as Ursula Le Guin, Marge Piercy and Joanna Russ.

Free to all.

Thursday 22nd April, 6pm
The Boardroom, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, W1B 2UW

In the final event in the 21st Century London series of talks at Westminster Rachel Lichtenstein, author of Brick Lane and (with Iain Sinclair) Rodinsky’s Room, and Visiting Fellow at the IMCC, will be speaking at Regent Street.  

For more information, please email Monica Germana at m.germana@westminster.ac.uk. Events are free of charge, but booking is essential: please email Sharon Sinclair at sinclas@wmin.ac.uk to book a place.

Thursday 11th March, 6pm
The Boardroom, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, W1B 2UW

Following a successful first event with urban visionary Iain Sinclair, in the second of a new series of talks at Westminster entitled 21st Century London, exploring the challenges and opportunities the city offers to the contemporary writer, Toby Litt will be speaking at Regent Street.  Toby was winner of the 2009 Manchester Fiction Prize, and his many novels include Corpsing (2000), Ghost Story (2004) and Hospital (2007). Future speakers will be Diran Adebayo (March 18) and visiting research fellow at the Institute Rachel Lichtenstein (April 22).

For more information, please email Monica Germana at m.germana@westminster.ac.uk. Events are free of charge, but booking is essential: please email Sharon Sinclair at sinclas@wmin.ac.uk to book a place.

Wednesday 10th March, 1.15-2.30pm
Room 106, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, W1T 3UW

Andrew Smith (University of Glamorgan)
‘Haunted Houses and History: Locating the Anglo-American in Henry James’

Free to all.