Narratives of Suburbia

Friday 15^th June 2012, 9.15am – 5.15pm
Room 354, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London

Programme: Narratives of Suburbia Programme[1]

The Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the University of Westminster is delighted to host the 17^th Westminster Colloquium  entitled ‘Narratives of Suburbia’ on Friday 15^th June 2012. The colloquium aims to assess contemporary representations of suburbia in British and North American fiction, with a particular focus on the exponential growth of suburbia since the Second World War and the fictional offshoots it has produced. By exploring the work of Anglo-American authors, the objective is to identify thematic and stylistic areas of convergence and  divergence.

Speakers:
John Beck (Newcastle)
Christine Berberich (Portsmouth)
Professor Neil Campbell (Derby)
Mark Clapson (Westminster)
Martyn Colebrook (Hull)
Martin Dines (Kingston )
Nick Hubble (Brunel)
Rupa Huq (Kingston)

Entrance is FREE but space is limited so please book your place in advance by contacting the organisers, Christopher Daley (daleyc@westminster.ac.uk) and Aisling McKeown (A.Mckeown@westminster.ac.uk). Full programme to follow. 

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Sports and the City
April 24-25 2012
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent St, London W1B

Organised by our friends in the Department of Social and Historical Studies at Westminster, the University is staging a two-day conference on sport and the city. The conference will also include a reception to launch Mark Clapson’s book An Education in Sport: Competition, Communities and Identities at the University of Westminster Since 1864, which constitutes the second part of the University’s ‘History Project’.

The conference costs £60 for both days, including lunch and drinks reception. A student rate of £30 is also available.

To register please contact Anna McNally at archive@westminster.ac.uk and details will be given for credit card payment.

David Cunningham will be speaking in the series of ‘Big Ideas’ pub philosophy talks held at the Wheatsheaf in London on Tuesday 27^th March, 8pm. The topic is: ‘Are Cities Important to Philosophy?’ And here’s the blurb:

Socrates in Athens; Kant in Konigsberg; Hegel in Jena; Russell in Oxford; Carnap in Vienna; Sartre in Paris. Cities, of course, attract cultural production of all kinds to themselves, and the great cities act as magnets for philosophers just as they do for artists, entrepreneurs and chancers. But is there something more to the relationship between philosophy and the city? Has the course of Western philosophy been influenced by its overwhelmingly urban setting?

Further details at: http://bigi.org.uk/events/cities-philosophy/

A quick plug for the London Reading Club, a new blog for the book group attached to the MA Writing the City at the University of Westminster, which is run by our own Monica Germana. Check out posts that discuss London writings ranging from Virginia Woolf to Monica Ali here: http://thelondonreadingclub.wordpress.com/

Friday, 17^th February 2012, 10.00am to 18.00pm, with drinks afterwards
Landscape and Critical Agency
University College London , Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT

What agency does landscape possess, as a means of territorial organisation and creative production, to engage critically with the conditions that define the collective aspects of our environment?

SPEAKERS:
Jill Desimini, Harvard Graduate School of Design; Professor Murray Fraser, UCL; Professor Matthew Gandy, UCL; Dr Jon Goodbun, University of Westminster; Professor Jonathan Hill, UCL; Jane Hutton, Harvard Graduate School of Design; Douglas Spencer, Architectural Association; Lisa Tilder, Ohio State University; Ed Wall, Kingston University; Tim Waterman, Writtle School of Design; Jane Wolff, University of Toronto; Dr Daniel Zarza, University of Alcala/Daniel Zarza Architects

REGISTRATION:  Attendance is free but spaces must be reserved in advance at
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2325977060

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.

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

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

We are pleased to report that the winner of the first Blip Prize for Creative Technologies was announced last night. The prize is awarded, courtesy of Blip Creative, to the best student project design for the IMCC’s new public display screen at Wells Street. The 2011 winner was Sophie Meter for her beautiful butterfly animation. Runners up were Kristian Agustin, Eleni Tziourtzia, David Itzcovitz and Yen Ooi. The winning videos can be seen (when opened in firefox) at http://www.blipcreative.com/blog.html Or, of course, you can check them out live on the corner of Wells Street and Booths Place.

The Blip Prize is the latest stage in the IMCC’s development of exciting content for the extraordinary state-of-the-art wall-hanging LED installation that is our contribution to The International Distributed Display Initiative, and which is part of the Institute’s New Media Theory research project, coordinated by Peter Cornwell at Blip with Alison Craighead and David Cunningham at the IMCC. Using an interface that has been designed such that no prior programming skills are assumed, staff and students will be making work for this experimental new media laboratory that will allow them to explore in hands-on fashion what it means to translate, phenomenalize, or even perform media-theoretical issues as, and in, new media.

Watch this space!

UPDATE: Video of the awards ceremony courtesy of David Itzcovitz:

David Cunningham’s 2005 essay ‘The Concept of Metropolis: Philosophy and Urban Form’, originally published in Radical Philosophy, has been translated into Portuguese by Luciana Rocha for the Brazilian journal Revista Periferia.

Any Portuguese readers can see it here: http://www.febf.uerj.br/periferia/index.html

Any local flâneurs passing recently by the IMCC’s Wells Street base may have noticed the legend ‘All That Is Solid Melts Into Air’ beaming out of our side window. We can no longer keep it a secret! The IMCC is delighted to announce the installation of the Institute’s very own public display screen, provided courtesy of our friends and collaborators at Blip Creative, which will, once fully operational, be streaming a changing array of staff and student work at our site.

The state-of-the-art wall-hanging LED installation is our contribution to The International Distributed Display Initiative, which currently links together screens at Westminster, Central Saint Martins and Princeton, and is part of the Institute’s New Media Theory research project, coordinated by Peter Cornwell at Blip with Alison Craighead and David Cunningham at the IMCC. Using an interface that has been designed such that no prior programming skills are assumed, staff and students will be making work for this experimental new media laboratory that will allow them to explore in hands-on fashion what it means to translate, phenomenalize, or even perform media-theoretical issues as, and in, new media. When fully operational, the screen will then be part of a permanent internet link between installations at various international sites, allowing each collaborating institution to load and display and, using a webcam, observe content at the sites of the other organizations.

We will be staging an official launch soon, as well as announcing further details of staff and student artworks and curated exhibitions for the screen. Long live the Democratic Billboard! Watch this space …

Scarcity Exchanges
University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1
All talks start at 6.30pm at 5LS

Hosted by our friends in Architecture, a series of exchanges on and around the topic of scarcity, bringing together some of the leading thinkers in the field to expound on one of the most pressing, but often avoided, issues of the day. That resources are diminishing is a commonplace, but scarcity is about much more than the destruction of our natural resource base: it is a socially and economically constructed condition that affects us all, and will increasingly do so. If the 2000s was the decade of false abundance, then the 2010s will likely be defined through scarcity. This series of exchanges will open up the discussion as to what scarcity might mean, and its social, economic, and environmental implications.

11 May: Economies of Scarcity
Dougald Hine and Andrew Simms

18 May: Cities of Scarcity
Alfredo Brillembourg and David Satterthwaite

25 May: Scarcity and Consumption
Ed Van Hinte and Steve Broome

1 June: Concepts of Scarcity
Iain Boal and Lyla Mehta

13 June: Fabricating Scarcities
Saskia Sassen

Tickets are free but please register at http://scibe.eventbrite.com/  

The research project, Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment, is led by Jeremy Till at the University of Westminster, with partners at the Oslo School of Architecture and TU Vienna. The project is funded by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area). For further details visit http://scibe.eu

Tuesday 3rd May, 6.00 pm
Hogg Lecture Theatre, University of Westminster, Marylebone site

Our friends in the Department of Architecture at Westminster are hosting a screening of the Utopia London, a documentary film by young director Tom Cordell, which explores London’s recent architectural history through the eyes of those who helped create it and those whose lives were shaped by it. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Tom as well as a panel of architects who are interviewed in the film.

“I’ve always been drawn to the excitement of London’s post-war landscape; concrete and brick textures, unadorned clean lines, neon glow and dark shadows. … Yet all our lives we have been told that the same urban spaces are ugly – symbols of a failed, arrogant technocracy. … I began to contact the people who tried to change the city, and my narrative thread continued to shift around as the filming went on. And what I found was that the power of the buildings came from the vision they were meant to serve – and that it’s this vision that so polarises opinion. They symbolise an attempt to build a fair, open society, and their existence frightens people who have rejected these values.” Tom Cordell

No Room to Move: Radical Art and the Regenerate City
Tuesday 15th March, 2 – 4pm
Westminster Forum, 5th Floor, 32 Wells Street, London W1T

As part of the ‘Interpreting Space’ module on our MA programmes, members of the Mute team, Josephine Berry Slater and Anthony Iles, will be visiting Westminster to talk about their co-edited collection No Room to Move: Radical art and the Regenerate City (Mute 2011), and the kinds of issues they were attempting to address. This will be followed by questions from students on the module.

Our neighbours over at Birkbeck are staging their second batch of Night Shift Seminars, and, following Anne Witchard’s talk on Limehouse and ‘London’s Dark Half’ last year, our own Alex Warwick will be responding to a paper by Susanne Scholz of Frankfurt University on Jack the Ripper. The seminar takes place on Thursday 3^rd March at 7.30pm, in Room B03, 43 Gordon Square.

Other seminars in the series include Matthew Beaumont, co-editor of Restless Cities, on Nightwalking (Friday 21st January, 6pm), and a roundtable with Fiona Candlin, Luisa Cale and Roger Luckhurst on ‘Nights at the Museum’ (Thursday 5^th May, 6pm, Council Room, Birkbeck College, Malet Street). Further details on the series here.

Boundaries and Communities
Friday 26 November 2010, 6.30pm
The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, London NW8

David Cunningham will be one of the participants in a discussion at The Showroom gallery in North West London organised as part of the exhibition The Church Street Partners’ Gazette curated by Turkish artist Can Altay. Boundaries and Communities focuses on visible and invisible boundaries, how they are negotiated, neglected, transgressed, or forcefully maintained, in the contemporary metropolis. Other contributors include: Neil Bennett (Terry Farrell and Partners), Janna Graham (Serpentine Gallery), Chloe McCarthy (My City Too), Jonathan Mosley (architect) and a representative of the Migrants Resource Centre.

The Showroom is a short walk from Edgware Road underground station, which is served by the Hammersmith and City, Circle and Bakerloo lines.

We are delighted to announce the publication of London Gothic, a new collection of essays from Continuum Books edited by our own Anne Witchard in conjunction with Lawrence Phillips at the University of Northampton. London has taken a central role in urban Gothic, from key canonic texts like Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula through modern Gothic texts to the ‘tourist gothic’ of rebranded gastropubs and ghost tours. Featuring contributions from Fred Botting, Roger Luckhurst, Catherine Spooner, Julian Wolfreys and Westminster’s Emma McEvoy, among others, this is the first book to focus on Gothic representations of London as it is manifested in a variety of media and through diverse critical approaches.

Update: Anne will be speaking, alongside Mpalive Msiska, on Limehouse and ‘London’s Dark Half’ as part of Birkbeck’s Night Shift seminar series at 6pm on Friday 26 November 2010, 43 Gordon Square, room B03. Further details on the series here.

Spatial Justice: Radical Spatial Foundations
Friday 19 November 2010, 10am-6pm
The Pavilion, University of Westminster, 115 New Cavendish Street, London W1W

Our colleagues in the Centre for the Study of Democracy and the Westminster International Law & Theory Centre – and members of the IMCC’s executive advisory board – Chantal Mouffe and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos have organised a fabulous one-day workshop on spatial justice on November 19th.

Keynote Addresses: David Harvey and Doreen Massey

Roundtable with Mustafa Dikec, Engin Isin, Ruth Levitas, David Slater and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos

Admission free but places limited.
Please contact Andrea Pavoni at a.pavoni@my.westminster.ac.uk to reserve a place.

You can now listen to the talks at the Royal Academy Ballardian Architecture symposium last month, including those of IMCC Deputy Director David Cunningham, John Gray, Nigel Coates and Nic Clear.

Audio files are up on the RA site here.

Last Friday 14th May saw the launch of the Architectural Association’s City Cultures project, to which the IMCC’s David Cunningham has been a contributor. The texts from the project, including David’s ‘Nine Theses on the Metropolis’, can be read or downloaded here.

The AA have also posted a video recording of the launch event on their website, with brief talks from David, Doug Spencer, Peter Carl, and others, at: http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=1230

For those interested, an earlier talk on Metropolitics by David at the AA, as part of their Landscape Urbanism Public Lectures series, is also up on their website. Watch it here.