A great article on the BBC website about Alexa Wright’s A View for Inside. Here’s a snippet: `A View From Inside’ is an exploration of some alternative perspectives on reality. Her thought provoking portraits offer a window into the unique realities experienced by Theresa and nine other people who have been affected by a psychotic `disorder’ such as bipolar or schizophrenia. Alexa Wright’s aim is two fold. “One is bringing issues of mental health into the public domain, she said. ‘But the other is to look at our notion of reality. What is reality, we all operate in society on the basis that what we consider real is the same as what someone else might. But it’s interesting to look at a reality that only one person is privy to but for them is absolutely real when they are experiencing it.’

Read the full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17618459

Thursday 5 April 2012, 7pm
Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1
Price: £7.00 / £5.00 concessions (includes free glass of wine).

This season’s Whitechapel Salon organised by the IMCC in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery is on ‘Cultures of Capitalism’.  The fifth salon turns to that social and economic form at the very heart of capitalist cultures: Money. In the light of contemporary crises in financial capitalism, Professor Peter Osborne, Director of the Centre for Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, and author of books including The Politics of Time, Philosophy in Cultural Theory, and Conceptual Art, will be in discussion with David Cunningham about money, cultural form, and the nature of the ‘real’ today.

Book your ticket at:
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/index.php/fuseaction/shop.product/product_id/1160

We are delighted to announce the publication of Alexa Wright’s book A View From Inside from White-Card. Including essays from Graham Thornicroft and Jeanne Randolph, A View From Inside challenges our preconceptions about what constitutes reality. The ten portrait photos in the book draw on the principles of eighteenth-century portrait painting to give form to the unique realities encountered by different people during psychotic episodes.

The book is published to accompany a series of ten framed photographic portraits (76 x 100 cm / 30 x 40 inches) designed for gallery exhibition.
RRP £22.00
ISBN: 978-0-9571558-0-0

For more information visit: www.alexawright.com

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

Thomson & Craighead are part of the inaugural exhibition ‘Being Social’ in the new Furtherfield Gallery slap bang in the middle of Finsbury Park, North London where they are showing a version of ‘London Wall’.  The exhibition is on already and runs until 28th April. Details here.

T&C are also showing a new projected version of ‘Flipped Clock’ and the short documentary artwork, ‘Several Interruptions’ as part of the exhibition ‘Mirror Neurons’ at the National Glass Centre in Sunderland,  on until 20th May. Details here.

They’ve also completely revamped their 2001 online artwork ‘e-poltergeist’ for the Canadian journal ‘BleuOrange’, and this goes live on 20th March at 0300hrs GMT. And finally, a new artwork, ‘A live portrait of Sir Tim Berners Lee (an early warning system)’ will be part of the major new exhibition, ‘Life Online’ launching in the National Media Museum on 29th March. Further details here.

Thursday 5 April 2012, 7pm
Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1
Price: £7.00 / £5.00 concessions (includes free glass of wine).

This season’s Whitechapel Salon organised by the IMCC in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery is on ‘Cultures of Capitalism’.  The fifth salon turns to that social and economic form at the very heart of capitalist cultures: Money. In the light of contemporary crises in financial capitalism, Professor Peter Osborne, Director of the Centre for Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, and author of books including The Politics of Time, Philosophy in Cultural Theory, and Conceptual Art, will be in discussion with David Cunningham about money, cultural form, and the nature of the ‘real’ today.

Book your ticket at:

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/index.php/fuseaction/shop.product/product_id/1160?

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.

AV London
Through the Lens: Embodying the City
12th December 2011 to 12^th January
309 Regent Street Gallery, University of Westminster, London W1B 2UW

A very successful opening party for two exhibitions, ‘AV London’ and ‘Through the Lens: Embodying the City’, curated by students on our Masters programmes in Cultural and Critical Studies, Museums, Galleries & Contemporary Culture, and Visual Culture. Thanks to Kristian Agustin for the photos. Both shows are on until January 12^th at 309 Regent Street, so do go and check them out.

‘Through the Lens’ explores the relationship between the body and the urban environment. The collection of photographs explores the contrasts of corporeal dynamism and the solid urban canvas. The exhibition features contributions from four London based artists who each have an individual interpretation of the relationship between the people and the city: Michael Frank, Christina Lange, Peter Tweedie and Konstantinos Vasileiou. Further details on the exhibition website at: http://embodyingthecity.blogspot.com/

Curated by Eleni Tziourtzia, Angelica Sada, Xiaosong Liu, Ciara Fitzpatrick (curatorial); Alice Gibbs, Elena Griva, Katrina Macapagal (texts); Fliss Hooton, Nadia Little (production); Kristian Jeff Agustin, Alessandra Ferrini (design).

‘AV London’ is an exhibition of Stereoscopic (3D Photography) and Binaural recordings made the artist Gary Welch, which capture a cornucopia of sights, sounds and voices of the diverse metropolis of London. Welch’s installations transform the basic viewer into viewer-listener, who then becomes the ears and eyes of the ‘anyperson’ interacting with seven unique moments in London.

Curated by Elisa Adami, Miguel Corte Real, Leonardo Couto, Nihan Gumrukcuoglu, Silvia Morena, Menming Ran, Z Amber Richter, Kalliopi Tsipini-Kolaza, Simone van Eijk, Laura Vichick.

This Saturday 10^th December, our Visiting Fellow, Victoria Walsh, will be taking part in a panel discussion for Modernism, a Sentimental Myth, part of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011 at the ICA. Other panellists include our former colleague, and member of the IMCC Advisory Board, Murray Fraser.

The panel is at 5pm, preceded by a walking tour around the back streets of the ICA, and followed by a Club Night. For more details visit www.ica.org.uk

‘Rorschach Audio: Mysterious-devil-tale, Devil-bewitched-by-Death’
Wednesday 7 December 2011, 1.15pm – 2.45pm
Room 359, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Following on from the “Rorschach Audio” lecture demonstration presented to the IMCC in March 2011, and, in particular, that lecture’s discussions of Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, EH Gombrich, Primo Levi and Leonardo da Vinci, visual and sound artist Joe Banks presents further explorations of the influence of “Rorschach Audio” phenomena on contemporary literature and creative art. This presentation directly extends the material discussed in the previous lecture, so any guests not familiar with the earlier talk are encouraged to read the “Rorschach Audio” research publications available here…

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lmj/summary/v011/11.1banks.html
http://www.slashseconds.org/issues/002/004/articles/jbanks/index.php

Non-Westminster staff and students should RSVP Joe Banks at: j.banks@wmin.ac.uk

Tuesday 22nd November, 4-6pm
Westminster Forum, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T 
 
Pascal Gielen (Groningen University, The Netherlands)  
‘Mapping the Community Arts: Artistic Autonomy, Repressive Tolerance and Pastoral Power’

In recent years there has been increased attention to so-called ‘socially engaged art practices’. Equipped with a sense of urgency and intent, artists and curators develop work with the support of communities or groups to tackle political and social issues. While the success of these projects are not easily measurable, they often reiterate the role of artist/curator as protagonists of specific forms of social change, which posits a direct contrast to recent activism which carefully distances itself from any leader-based political organizational categories.

Pascal Gielen, co-editor of the recently published volume Community Art, will draw out a critical cartography of community art and will speak about the power and impotencies of this phenomenon. Since modernity, art and community, artist and social work have had an ambivalent relationship, can art have a role in building communities? What is the political potency of forms of art that strive to integrate individuals and social groups? Pascal Gielen is Professor of Sociology of the Arts and Director of the research centre Arts in Society at Groningen University. His publications include The Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude: Global Art, Memory and Post-Fordism (Valiz, 2009) and the co-edited Being an Artist in Post-Fordist Times (NAi Publishers, 2009).

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

Thursday 8 December 2011, 7pm
Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1
Price: £7.00 / £5.00 concessions (includes free glass of wine).

This season’s Whitechapel Salon organised by the IMCC in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery is on ‘Cultures of Capitalism’. Our third discussion focuses on imagining the Spaces of Capital. How can art and politics image, represent or map the spaces of contemporary capitalism? And, in the light of current spaces of occupation, what critical and political possibilities for resistance or opposition might such imaginings contain? Participants include Alberto Toscano, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths and author of The Idea of Fanaticism, and Andy Merrifield, author of Metromarxism and Dialectical Urbanism, along with a representative from the Haircut Before the Party collective. Chaired by David Cunningham.

Book your ticket at: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/22/product_id/1027?session_id=1320678264848dfa9cc85be835a3493e662f207489

Another fine video from the Institute’s AHRC Research Fellow Joe Banks (Disinformation):

Film copyright © Joe Banks & Poulomi Desai 31 Oct 2011
Headphones or external loudspeakers essential

The Canadian psychologist Albert Bregman’s theory of Auditory Scene Analysis describes how the human mind is able to identify, focus on, isolate and extract streams of actually or potentially meaningful sound information, which it recognises as emanating from discreet sources, using analysis of what amounts to the musical content of specific “melodic streams” within environmental noise. In terms of evolutionary biology, the theory suggests that our capacity for appreciating music may have evolved at least in part as a by-product of the mechanism that enables us to identify sound-streams that come from, say, a distant river, particular types of bird-song, or the call of a potentially hostile predator etc; and in human communications this faculty is most obviously in evidence as a contributory factor in enabling us to perceive individual speakers in crowded social environments (the Cocktail Party Effect). In terms of everyday experience, the isolation of such streams may seem deceptively simple, but in information theoretic and signal processing terms, the level of computational power required to extract such invariants* from the distorting influences of complex and rapidly-changing real-world sound environments still challenges engineers and computer scientists. Problems associated with extracting invariants from noisy environments are of particular relevance to air traffic control, military fighter and helicopter communications and battle management systems. Generalities aside, the soundtrack used in the Disinformation + Usurp “Sun Rays” film is a direct recording of the real sound-ambience of the film’s location, “composed” using sharp graphic-equalisation only, to reproduce the subjective experience of the melodic streams that were perceived in the extraordinarily atmospheric ambience of that underground space (and, totally coincidentally, the title of this film, which is taken from the footage itself, is also the name of the Indian Air Force military aerobatics demonstration team).

Filmed in New Delhi, Oct 2011. (J. Banks, IMCC Westminster, 1st Nov 2011).

*The term “invariant” was coined by the American psychologist JJ Gibson

At the Workface: A Talk by Fred Lonidier
Tuesday 13 December 2011, 3.30-5.30pm
Fifth Floor, 32-38 Wells Street, University of Westminster, London W1T

Seminar: new arts and trade unions partnerships
Proposals for a national documentation project and AHRC research network focused on promoting new creative synergies and campaign strategies connecting the unions, social networking groups, NGOs, and arts sectors.

Fred Lonidier is one of the leading pioneers from the late 1960s onwards, of the arts and trade union movement in the USA. He studied at Yuba College and San Francisco State (graduate work in sociology and photography), and later joined the University of California at San Diego Faculty in 1972.  His work continues to deal with the possibilities of photography applied to trade union campaigns for social justice, labor history, and social change. He has also been the guiding energy behind the pioneer US Trade Union sponsored Labor Link TV which cablecasts on three channels in San Diego County. His work has recently focused on workers rights and cross-border labor struggles and solidarity between U.S. and Mexican workers.

Admission is free, but please book a place in advance from Dr Stefan Szczelkun: szczels@wmin.ac.uk

Coordinated by Littoral Arts Trust in association with Critical Network, Strategies for Free Education, and the IMCC, University of Westminster.

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/

A new solo exhibition of the work of Thomson and Craighead has just opened in South East of Brussels (Watermael/Boisfort), where they are showing six artworks/installations at the same time across two sites, Watermael Station and Vénerie Stables, from 26th October to 18th December 2011. Alison and John will also be giving gallery talks at each site on Saturday 19th November from 15.30pm. Further info at: http://thomson-craighead.blogspot.com/

Brixton Calling!
28 October-21 December 2011, weekdays 10am-5pm
198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, Brixton

This exhibition is the final stage of Brixton Calling! archiving and community project that connects contemporary Brixton to its past through the history of the late Brixton Art Gallery & Artists Collective in the 1980s. Exhibition opening: Thursday 27 October 2011, 6.30-10pm.

UPDATE: Further details on the 198 website here: http://198.org.uk/pages/currentexhibition.htm

Brixton Calling! events at 198 

Saturday 19 November, 2-4pm,  Curators/artists talk
Friday 25 November, 7-9pm, Brixton Fairy Night
Saturday 26 November, 1-5pm, Radical Printing
Saturday 10 December, 2-5pm, Black Art

Other Brixton Calling! events:

’80s Women Lens Based Media Event
Brixton Village, Thursday10 & Friday11 November, 7-12pm, Saturday12 November, 10am–9pm
For more information contact: info@198.org.uk

Women Artists Feminism in the 80s and Now
Goldsmiths, University of London 3rd December, 10am-5pm, in collaboration with the Women’s Art Library
For more information contact: a.greenan@gold.ac.uk

Archive installation by Stefan Szczelkun and Oral History documentary on show continuously along with many other sub-projects!

‘Rorschach Audio: Mysterious-devil-tale, Devil-bewitched-by-Death’
Wednesday 7 December 2011, 1.15pm – 2.45pm
Room 359, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B

Following on from the “Rorschach Audio” lecture demonstration presented to the IMCC in March 2011, and, in particular, that lecture’s discussions of Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, EH Gombrich, Primo Levi and Leonardo da Vinci, visual and sound artist Joe Banks presents further explorations of the influence of “Rorschach Audio” phenomena on contemporary literature and creative art. This presentation directly extends the material discussed in the previous lecture, so any guests not familiar with the earlier talk are encouraged to read the “Rorschach Audio” research publications available here…

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lmj/summary/v011/11.1banks.html
http://www.slashseconds.org/issues/002/004/articles/jbanks/index.php