In the interests of Open Access, we are very pleased to attach Visual Culture Studies: Interviews with Key Thinkers (Sage, 2008), a PDF of the IMCC Director Marq Smith’s book of interviews with Mieke Bal, Giuliana Bruno, Mark Cheetham, Michael Ann Holly and Keith Moxey, Susan Buck-Morss, Lisa Cartwright, Lennard J. Davis, Hal Foster, Paul Gilroy, Martin Jay, Nicholas Mirzoeff, W.J.T. Mitchell, Peggy Phelan, and Vivian Sobchack. Enjoy, and feel free to circulate.

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

FREE content: Entire Obama Issue of ‘Journal of Visual Culture’, including contributions by Dora Apel, Lauren Berlant, Lisa Cartwright, Anna Everett, Raimi Gbadamosi, Curtis Marez, Nicholas Mirzoeff, W.J.T. Mitchell, Shawn Michelle Smith, Gayatri Spivak, Julian Stallabrass, Marita Sturken, and many, many more.

To access go to:
http://vcu.sagepub.com/current.dtl

Click on link by each article marked ‘PDF’.

Download, read, enjoy, circulate.

To book email info@instituteformodern.co.uk or download the booking form
Date: Thursday 27th May 2010 – Saturday 29th May 2010

Venue: The Old Cinema, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London


Cost: £50/25 concessions, booking essential 

Thursday 27th May 2010

12:00 Registration

1:00-2:15 Session 1

W.J.T. Mitchell (English and Art History, University of Chicago)

2:15-4:15 Session 2 Roundtable: Education

Mark Dunhill (School of Art, Central Saint Martins College)

William Cobbing (Wimbledon College of Art)

Joanne Morra (School of Art, Central Saint Martins College)

Adrian Rifkin (Art Writing, Goldsmiths, University of London)

Joy Sleeman (History and Theory of Art, Slade School of Fine Art)

Victoria Walsh (Education and Interpretation, Tate Britain)

4:45-6:30 Session 3

Gary Hall (Media and Performing Arts, Coventry University)

Joanna Zylinska (Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London)

6:30-8:30: Reception

Friday 28th May 2010

10:00-11:15 Session 4

Keith Moxey (Art History and Archaeology, Columbia)

11:15-1:00 Session 5

Divya P. Tolia-Kelly (Geography, Durham University)

David Cunningham (Cultural & Critical Studies, University of Westminster);

1:00-2:00 Lunch (Not provided)

2:00-4:00 Session 6 Roundtable: Design Studies – Visual Studies – Cultural Studies

Glen Adamson (Design/Craft, RCA/V&A)

Sarah Chaplin (Architectural Humanities, Greenwich University)
Elizabeth Guffey (Design, SUNY, Purchase)

Raiford Guins (Digital Cultural Studies, SUNY, Stony Brook)

Guy Julier (Design, Leeds Metropolitan University)

Penny Sparke (Design History, Kingston University)

4:30-5:45 Session 7

Lisa Cartwright (Communication, UC, San Diego) 

Saturday 29th May 2010

10:30-11:45 Session 8

Nicholas Mirzoeff (Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University)

11:45-1:30 Session 9


Esther Leslie (Political Aesthetics, Birkbeck, University of London)
Esther Gabara (Romance Studies, and Art, Art History, & Visual Studies, Duke University)

1:30-2:30 Lunch (Not provided)

2:30-4:30 Session 10 Roundtable: The Future Institution: An International Association for Visual Culture Studies?

Michael Ann Holly (The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown)

Jeremy Gilbert (University of East London) 
Stephen Melville (Art/Aesthetics/Philosophy, Ohio State University)

Griselda Pollock (Art Histories/Cultural Studies, University of Leeds)

Marquard Smith (Visual Culture Studies, University of Westminster)

4:30 Conference Ends

Organizers: Nicholas Mirzoeff (New York University), Joanne Morra (University of the Arts London), Marquard Smith (University of Westminster, London)

Wednesday 24th February, 4.15pm
Room 106, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, W1T 3UW

Joe Bray (University of Sheffield)
‘Conceptual Metaphor and the Language of the Early Nineteenth-Century Portrait’

Hosted by our colleagues in Westminster’s English Language and Linguistics section, Joe Bray examines the meanings generated by frequent references, both literal and metaphorical, to the portrait in the early nineteenth-century novel. As critics have noted, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century novel drew on a well-developed cultural understanding of the portrait-novel connection, and this is particularly true of the novels analysed in this paper: Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda (1801) and Jane Austen’s Emma (1816). Each novel is extensively permeated by a metaphor of the countenance, or in some cases the whole body, as a painted portrait. The mapping involved would seem to create a ‘blended space’ which suggests that the emotions on the face can be easily read and understood, and thus that the body serves as a reliable index to ‘character’. Yet the implications of transparency and legibility that the metaphor of the painted countenance evokes are challenged in various ways in each novel.

Free to all.

THE 2010 VISUAL CULTURE STUDIES CONFERENCE
To book email info@instituteformodern.co.uk or download the booking form here 

Thursday 27 May – Saturday 29 May, 2010
Venue: The Old Cinema, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster, London
£50/25 concessions, booking essential 

Confirmed contributors: Glen Adamson (RCA/V&A); Lisa Cartwright (UC, San Diego); Sarah Chaplin (Greenwich); Will Cobbing (Wimbledon College of Art); David Cunningham (Westminster); Mark Dunhill (Central Saint Martins); Esther Gabara (Duke); Elizabeth Guffey (SUNY, Purchase); Raiford Guins (SUNY, Stony Brook); ); Gary Hall (Coventry); Michael Ann Holly (The Clark Institute); Guy Julier (Leeds Met); Esther Leslie (Birkbeck); Stephen Melville (Ohio State); Nicholas Mirzoeff (NYU); W.J.T. Mitchell (Chicago); Joanne Morra (Central Saint Martins); Keith Moxey (Columbia); Laura Mulvey (Birkbeck); Griselda Pollock (Leeds); Adrian Rifkin (Goldsmiths); Joy Sleeman (Slade); Marquard Smith (Westminster); Penny Spark (Kingston); Marita Sturken (NYU); Divya P. Tolia-Kelly (Durham); Victoria Walsh (Tate Britain); Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths)

Visual Culture Studies in Europe

Friday’s international conference entitled ‘Visual Culture Studies in Europe’, hosted by the Institute, was a huge success. A stella cast of leading academics, curators, and editors from Austria, Spain, Croatia, Norway, Belarus, Italy, England, and France including Iain Chambers, Oliver Grau, and Adrian Rifkin came together to discuss the study of visual culture within the context of European universities, art colleagues, and cultural institutions. The audience, a talkative mix of staff and students from Westminster as well as welcome guests from elsewhere in London, Brighton, and as far away as Lithuania, had a day to remember. The conference speakers, members of the Visual Culture Studies in Europe Network, plan to meet again next year, this time in Barca!

Friday 5 February 2010

Room 2.05c, 4-12 Little Titchfield Street, University of Westminster, London W1W 7UW

Cost: £20/£10 concs.
Download a booking form here

10:00 Introduction

10:15-12:30 Session 1: Cartographies of Power
Iain Chambers, University of Naples, Italy
Joachin Barriendos, Curator, Santa Monica Art Centre, Barcelona, and Professor Anna Maria Guasch, University of Barcelona, Spain
Dr Almira Ousmanova, European Humanities University, Belarus/Lithuania

12:30-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:45: Session 2: Education, Education, Education
Dr Joanne Morra, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, England
Lorraine Audric and Professor Andre Gunthert, Laboratoire d’histoire visuelle contemporaine, L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
Dr Nina Lager Vestberg, Norwegian, University of Science and Technology Trondheim, Norway

3:45-4:15 Break

4:15-6:30: Session 3: Projects
Dr Oyvind Vagnes, University of Bergen, Norway
Kresimir Purgar, Center for Visual Studies Zagreb, Croatia
Professor Oliver Grau, Danube University, Krems, Austria

Wednesday January 13th 2010, 5.00pm
Cayley Room (room 152), University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street

Professor Toby Miller (University of California, Riverside)
“Cultural Policy Redux”

Toby Miller is editor of the journal Television & New Media, and author of many books including Spyscreen (Oxford University Press), Television (Routledge), Television Studies (BFI), Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Sage), Technologies of Truth (University of Minnesota Press), The Avengers (BFI), and The Well Tempered Citizen (The Johns Hopkins University Press).

For our Dutch friends: Director of the IMCC, Marq Smith, is contributing to Epistemic Encounters, on the future of the Graduate Art School, at MaHKU (The Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design) this Friday 11 December, as part of an ongoing research project exploring the specificity of artistic knowledge production in the context of exhibition making, art in public space projects, and the significance of research-based practices for the (reformulation of the) curriculum in the current art academy. Why not join him…

Further details here.

Journal of Visual Culture has launched its new WordPress site. Please go to http://www.journalofvisualculture.org/ for details of recent/forthcoming issues such as its current ‘Questionnaire on Barack Obama’, free content, and information on related projects, conferences, and events. Join jvc on Facebook, etc.

Start date: 27 May 2010 12.00pm
End date: 29 May 2010 4.00pm  
Hosts: University of Westminster
(organised by NYU, University of the Arts London, and University of Westminster)
Cost: £50/£25 concs.
Download a booking form here 

Confirmed contributors: Glen Adamson (RCA/V&A); Dipti Bhagat (London Met); Lisa Cartwright (UC, San Diego); Sarah Chaplin (Greenwich); Will Cobbing (Wimbledon College of Art); David Cunningham (Westminster); Mark Dunhill (Central Saint Martins); Esther Gabara (Duke); Elizabeth Guffey (SUNY, Purchase); Raiford Guins (SUNY, Stony Brook); Gary Hall (Coventry); Michael Ann Holly (The Clark Institute); Guy Julier (Leeds Met); Esther Leslie (Birkbeck); Stephen Melville (Ohio State); Nicholas Mirzoeff (NYU); W.J.T. Mitchell (Chicago); Joanne Morra (Central Saint Martins); Keith Moxey (Columbia); Laura Mulvey (Birkbeck); Griselda Pollock (Leeds); Adrian Rifkin (Goldsmiths); Joy Sleeman (Slade); Marquard Smith (Westminster); Penny Spark (Kingston); Marita Sturken (NYU); Divya P. Tolia-Kelly (Durham); Victoria Walsh (Tate Britain); Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths) 

Friday 5 February 2010, 10am
Room 2.05c, 4-12 Little Titchfield Street, University of Westminster, London W1W 7UW
Cost: £20/£10 concs.
Download a booking form here

Featuring Joachin Barriendos (Curator, Santa Monica Art Centre, Barcelona, Spain), Jose Luis Brea (Editor of Estudios Visuales, Madrid, Spain), Iain Chambers (University of Naples, Italy), Anna Maria Guasch (University of Barcelona, Spain), Oliver Grau (Danube University Krems, Austria), Joanne Morra (Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, England), Almira Ousmanova (European Humanities University Belarus/Lithuania), Kresimir Purgar (Center for Visual Studies Zagreb, Croatia), Vivian Rehberg (Parsons Paris School of Art + Design, France), Marquard Smith (University of Westminster, England), Oyvind Varges (University of Bergen, Norway), and Nina Lager Vestberg (Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim, Norway). 

This conference is a collaboration between established and emerging scholars, curators, educators, and editors from across a number of European universities and cultural institutions with a commitment to Visual Culture Studies in Europe, and the study of visual culture. The event aims to:

•  Track the ongoing, uneven emergence in Europe of Visual Culture Studies as a field of inquiry across the Arts and Humanities.

•  Explore the ways in which these diverse trajectories in the emergence of the study of visual culture are historically and theoretically distinctive because of the unique characteristics of a specific country, location, language, peoples, their histories of migration, governmental policies, and the contexts within which universities function as sites for interdisciplinary learning.

• Interrogate some of the hazards of this distinctiveness – around, for instance, the hegemony of the Anglo-American, English as the lingua franca of the academic humanities, and questions of publishing and dissemination.

• Discuss how the advent of Visual Culture Studies, with its new ways of seeing, knowing, understanding, and participating might (1) extend our studies beyond the university (2) generate particular kinds of cultural practices, and (3) be itself responding to activities in anything from art and curating to policy making and industry initiatives.

For our Catalan friends: David Cunningham will be representing the IMCC in Barcelona this week at the Catalan Association of Art Critics’ Fifth International Symposium on Art Criticism in a Global World. His opening address to the conference, entitled ‘Global Art/Global Modernities’, will be at 4.30pm on Friday 20 November at the MACBA Auditorium.

Further details here.

Another Thursday night and another discussion of the Future at the David Roberts Art Foundation, with Sally O’Reilly, Uriel Orlow, Jon Cairns and, a late special guest passing through London from Yale, David Joselit. The next session takes place on a Saturday afternoon, on November 21st from 2pm, when the discussants will be academic Chris Horrocks, poet and music critic Ben Watson, and, from Chicago, Visiting Professor at the IMCC, Lennard J. Davis. See you there.

Professor Pepper’s Ghost: Six Evenings of Visual Magic
The Old Cinema, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street

A collaboration between the IMCC and the Magic Lantern Society, following on from a successful series of events in 2008, the old Polytechnic cinema at the University of Westminster’s Regent Street building, where the first ever motion picture was shown in the UK, will be hosting a series of six Thursday night lectures on pre-cinematic technologies of the visual.

All the talks start at 7pm, with doors open from 6pm, and are free of charge.

Thursday 12 November 2009
‘Professor’ Mervyn Heard, ‘Phantasmagoria-mania’

Thursday 26 November 2009
Simon Warner, ‘Lavater – The Shadow of History’

Thursday 10 December 2009
Dr Frank Gray, ‘Visualising the Marvellous: G.A. Smith and his film Santa Claus’

Thursday 28 January 2010
Paul Kieve, ‘Grappling with Ghosts: Staging Ghost Effects in the Modern Theatre’

Thursday 11 February 2010
Mark Butterworth, ‘Geared to the Stars: Victorian Astronomy through the Magic Lantern’

Thursday 25 February 2010
Stephen Herbert, ‘From Anorthoscope to Zoopraxiscope: An A-Z of Victorian Animated Cartoons’

Download the programme here.

Watch the Old Cinema slideshow on the BBC News website here.