Posts tagged image

Thomas Y Levin seminar at the IMCC, Weds 6 June

Written by on Friday, posted in Event, News (No comments yet)
Tagged as , , ,

Wednesday 6th June 2012, 4pm
Room 358, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Professor Thomas Y. Levin
Princeton University / IKKM Bauhaus University, Weimar

“Ghostly Surveillance: Some Stabs in the Ciné-Narratological Dark”

Simultaneous with the increasingly widespread use of surveillance as a narrative device in contemporary cinema – its most obvious manifestation being the rise of so-called “real-time” transmission characteristic of CCTV systems in films such as The Truman Show — we are also witnessing a curious proliferation of ghosts within the surveillant machinery, from disturbing videocasettes desposited mysteriously on doorsteps (Lost Highway, Caché) to the re-appearance of people who are supposedly dead on the screens of corporate security systems (Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet [2000]) and the documentation of the presence of demons by means of home surveillance cameras (Paranormal Activity).  While it could be argued that at least since Bentham, there has always been a ghostly dimension to surveillance (the panoptic tower functions despite the complete inability to determine whether anyone is actually really inside), what might these ghostly apparitions reveal about the assumptions we make about surveillance images, indeed about cinema as such?

Thomas Y. Levin teaches media theory and history, cultural theory, intellectual history, and aesthetics. His essays have appeared in October, Grey Room, New German Critique, Screen, The Yale Journal of Criticism, and Texte zur Kunst. He translated and edited the critical edition of Siegfried Kracauer’s The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (1995). He was part of the curatorial collective responsible for the first exhibition on the Situationist International at the Centre Pompidou, ICA London and the ICA Boston in 1989. Levin also conceived and curated the exhibition CTRL [SPACE], Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother which opened at at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe in October 2001 and edited the catalogue under the same title (with Ursula Frohne and Peter Weibel). His more recent curatorial activities include Anxious Omniscience: Surveillance and Contemporary Cultural Practice (Princeton University Art Museum, 2002), 911+1: The Perplexities of Security (Watson Institute, Brown University, 2002) and The Arts of the Future will be Radical Transformations of Situations, or They will be Nothing’: Guy Debord Cineaste (Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, 2006).

Blank Identification seminar, Bergen, Norway, April 28th

Written by on Friday, posted in Event (No comments yet)
Tagged as ,

April 28th 2012, 1-5pm
Hardaland art Centre, Klosteret 17, PB 1745 Nordnes, 5816 Bergen, Norway

In conjunction with the exhibition A neutral, flexible structure by Martin Torgersrud, Hardaland Art Centre is staging a seminar, Blank Identification, touching on the themes of photography, abstraction and economy. The seminar comprises four lectures, and an open discussion with the audience of the ideas put forward by our guests, with all the digressions and associations that come with it. 

Speakers:
Morten Torgersrud, artist, Kirkenes, Norway/Stockholm, Sweden
Matt Packer, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork
Arne Skaug Olsen, art critic, Bergen
David Cunningham, Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, London

The seminar will be held in English. Participation is free, but due to limited avaliable seats we encourage everyone interested to notify us before April 25th to hks [at] kunstsenter.no.
The seminar is supported by Bergen Academy of Art and Design.

Further details at: http://www.kunstsenter.no/en/seminar-tom-identifisering

Register now for New Ways of Working with Image, Sept 14 2011

Written by on Tuesday, posted in Conference, Event (No comments yet)
Tagged as , , ,

‘New Ways of Working with Image’ Seminar and Workshop
Wednesday 14 September 2011, 11.00am – 4.30pm
Room 257, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B

Update: Schedule Announced:
11.00 welcome and introductions (RS257)
11.15 opening panel (Jesse Ash, Andrew Fisher, Elena Gualtieri, Nigel Mapp)
12.30 lunch
13.30 workgroups (chairs)
Image and Performance (Marquard Smith)
Imagescapes (David Cunningham)
Imaginary Image (Jarkko Toikkanen)
Remediating Image (Lise Mortensen)
15.00 coffee
15.30 closing discussion 

How do we understand ‘image’ today, and how has our notion of the image changed over time? What is the status of the image in current theory, and how does the study of image translate into visual culture? In which ways do words and verbal communication relate to or conflict with images? Do we work differently with images today, compared to the practices of previous generations? And if we do, why? Questions such as these underlie the Institute’s autumn Workshop which focuses on a practical, hands-on angle approach to working with image today.

Participants in this experiment are invited to discuss what they understand by the notion of ‘image’ and which methods they have chosen to work with it. Instead of discussing general themes and motifs without knowledge of each other’s premises, talking about what one does, and how one does it, reduces the chance of conceptual miscommunication and provides the opportunity for learning from new viewpoints. Interested academics, scholars and postgraduate students in particular are all invited to attend!

The format of the day will be an interactive opening panel of invited speakers from art history, photographic theory, visual culture, philosophy and literary studies reflecting on their own approaches to the image in both disciplinary and transdisciplinary terms, followed by smaller group workshop sessions open to signed-up members of the audience, and concluding with general discussion. Individual workshop themes will include: (1) Image and Performance: on the nature and role of images in and as performance; (2) Imagescapes: what kinds of scenes and spaces images form and come to interact in; (3) Imaginary Image: how images condition and affect the reading experience; (4) Remediating Image: the slide and change of images between different semiotic modes.

Confirmed panel participants and workshop chairs include: David Cunningham (IMCC, Westminster), Andrew Fisher (Visual Culture, Goldsmiths College), Elena Gualtieri (Centre for Visual Fields, Sussex), Nigel Mapp (English Literature, Westminster), Lise Majgaard Mortensen (Aarhus University/IMCC), Marquard Smith (IMCC, Westminster), Jarkko Toikkanen (University of Tampere/IMCC).

This workshop is free and convened by our Visiting Research Fellows in the Institute, Lise Majgaard Mortensen and Jarkko Toikkanen. For further information or to reserve a place (numbers are strictly limited!), please email Jarkko at: Jarkko.Toikkanen@uta.fi

New Ways of Working with Image workshop, September 2011

Written by on Thursday, posted in Conference, Event, News (No comments yet)
Tagged as , , ,

‘New Ways of Working with Image’ Seminar and Workshop
Wednesday 14 September 2011
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London

How do we understand ‘image’ today, and how has our notion of the image changed over time? What is the status of the image in current theory, and how does the study of image translate into visual culture? In which ways do words and verbal communication relate to or conflict with images? Do we work differently with images today, compared to the practices of previous generations? And if we do, why? Questions such as these underlie the Institute’s autumn Workshop which focuses on a practical, hands-on angle approach to working with image today.

Participants in this experiment are invited to discuss what they understand by the notion of ‘image’ and which methods they have chosen to work with it. Instead of discussing general themes and motifs without knowledge of each other’s premises, talking about what one does, and how one does it, reduces the chance of conceptual miscommunication and provides the opportunity for learning from new viewpoints. Interested academics, scholars and postgraduate students are all invited to attend.

The format of the day will be an interactive opening panel of invited speakers from art history, photographic theory, visual culture, philosophy and literary studies reflecting on their own approaches to the image in both disciplinary and transdisciplinary terms, followed by smaller group workshop sessions open to signed-up members of the audience, and concluding with general discussion. Individual workshop themes will include: (1) Image and Performance: on the nature and role of images in and as performance; (2) Imagescapes: what kinds of scenes and spaces images form and come to interact in; (3) Imaginary Image: how images condition and affect the reading experience; (4) Remediating Image: the slide and change of images between different semiotic modes.

Confirmed panel participants and workshop chairs include: David Cunningham (IMCC, Westminster), Mick Finch (Fine Art, Central Saint Martins), Andrew Fisher (Visual Culture, Goldsmiths College), Elena Gualtieri (Centre for Visual Fields, Sussex), Nigel Mapp (English Literature, Westminster), Lise Majgaard Mortensen (Aarhus University/IMCC), Luke Skrebowski (History of Art, Cambridge), Marquard Smith (IMCC, Westminster), Jarkko Toikanen (Tampere University/IMCC)

This workshop is convened by our Visiting Research Fellows in the Institute, Lise Majgaard Mortensen and Jarkko Toikkanen. For further information or to reserve a place (numbers are strictly limited!), please email Jarkko at: Jarkko.Toikkanen@uta.fi