Posts from January 2011

Ai Weiwei in conversation

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A video of Katie Hill’s conversation with Ai Weiwei at Tate Modern last October has now been posted on the Tate’s website. You can view it here. Enjoy!

Special Guest Lecture: Allan Stoekl on French Film Noir

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Professor Allan Stoekl, ‘The Noir Auteur and De-Facement’
Friday 11th February 2011, 2-4pm
The Westminster Forum, University of Westminster, 5th Floor, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T

Allan Stoekl is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University. His many publications include the books Politics, Writing, Mutilation: The Cases of Bataille, Blanchot, Roussel, Leiris and Ponge (University of Minnesota Press, 1985); Agonies of the Intellectual: Commitment, Subjectivity, and the Performative in the Twentieth-Century French Tradition (University of Nebraska Press, 1992); and Bataille’s Peak: Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability (University of Minnesota Press, 2007). He was editor of a seminal special issue of Yale French Studies, ‘On Bataille’ (1990), and is translator of several texts by Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, as well as Paul Fournel’s Need for the Bike (2003). He is currently completing a book entitled Externalities, Retrofitting, Gleaning.

In this paper, Allan will provide a reading of the films Pépé le Moko (Duvivier, 1936) and Journal d’un curé de campagne (Bresson, 1950) from the perspective of film noir, reading the noir problematic via Paul de Man’s take on prosopopeia and offering a close reading of several scenes from the movies.

Thomson and Craighead shortlisted for Tiger Award

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Thomson and Craighead’s A short film about War has been nominated for the Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films 2011 at the Rotterdam Film Festival.  Screenings take place on Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th January, with the award ceremony happening at 10pm on Monday 31st at the VPRO Late Night Talk Show. More info on the festival here

In other news: Thomson and Craighead will be showing their recent work, The Time Machine in alphabetical order, from 2nd – 13th February as part of Several Interruptions, a sequence of exhibitions celebrating 15 Years of the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art to be held at the North Lodge, Gower Street. They’ll also be contributing to Cloud Sounds at the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam, where they will be re-staging their installation, Unprepared Piano, 19th February – 29th April 2011.

Saul Frampton on Montaigne

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There is a great article in The Guardian this weekend by IMCC affiliate, and Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at Westminster, Saul Frampton. The piece accompanies the publication of Saul’s first book, When I Am Playing With My Cat, How Do I Know She Is Not Playing With Me? Montaigne and Being in Touch With Life, published by Faber. You can read more about it here.

Book Launch: A.S. Byatt: Critical Storytelling

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Thursday 20 January 2011, 6-8pm
Main Foyer, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster, London W1B 2UW

One we should have posted earlier, but if anyone is around this evening you are warmly invited to join Dame Antonia Byatt to celebrate the publication of a new monograph on A S Byatt’s work by Westminster’s Alexa Alfer with Amy Edwards de Campos.

This stimulating and comprehensive study of A S Byatt’s work spans virtually her entire career and offers insightful readings of all of Byatt’s works of fiction up to and including her Man-Booker-shortlisted novel The Children’s Book. The authors combine a clear and accessible overview of Byatt’s oeuvre to date with close critical analysis of all her major works. Uniquely, the book also points beyond the immediate context of Byatt’s fiction by considering her critical writings and journalism alongside her novels and short stories.

To book your place, please visit westminster.ac.uk/criticalstorytelling

The IMCC welcomes Dr Jarkko Toikkanen as new Visiting Research Fellow

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The Institute is very pleased to welcome Dr Jarkko Toikkanen as a Visiting Research Fellow at the IMCC in 2011. Jarkko’s post-doctoral research centres around a monograph titled Suspended Failures: The Intermedial Experience of Horror, an investigation into the phenomenon of horror from the viewpoint of words and images in literature from Romanticism to Modernism. His theoretical background is in deconstruction, and the work of Paul de Man in particular, and his aim is to combine this expertise with the study of experience and affectivity in a new way.

His time as a Visiting Research Fellow at the IMCC is generously supported by a full-year stipend from the Alfred Kordelin Foundation in Finland, granted through the Foundations’ Post Doc Pool scheme.

Westminster Literature Seminars Feb-March 2011

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There is now a complete list of dates and paper titles for this semester’s series of English Literature and Culture seminars. All will take place from 1.15-2.30pm on Wednesday lunchtimes in room 106 in the University’s Wells Street building:

9th February 2011
Jarkko Toikkanen (Visiting Research Fellow, IMCC)
“Suspended Failures: The Intermedial Experience of Horror”

23rd February 2011
Nick Barnett (Liverpool John Moores)
“No Defence against the H-bomb: Popular reactions to the Thermonuclear Era”

9th March 2011
Samuel Thomas (Durham University)
“The Gaucho Sells Out: Thomas Pynchon, Nation Building & Argentina”

23rd March 2011
Paul Crosthwaite (Cardiff University)
“Like a Flood or an Earthquake: Trauma and the Representation of Financial Crises’”

Further details at: http://seminarserieswmin.wordpress.com/

Group for War and Culture Studies Seminar on 26th January…

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‘Autopsy of War’
Speakers: Dr Jac Saorsa and Michael Lisle-Taylor

Group for War and Culture Studies Seminar
Wednesday 26 January 2011, 6-8 pm, Room 352
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Dr Jac Saorsa is a visual artist and writer. She holds an MPhil in Philosophy from Glasgow University, and a PhD in Contemporary Drawing Practice from Loughborough University. She is a studio and research advisor for the Transart Institute, and is a member of the advisory board for several contemporary art journals. She is currently completing a philosophical and visual study of the nature of the creative drawing process, due to be published in 2011 by Intellect.

After serving 13 years in the Royal Navy, Michael Lisle-Taylor studied art at Chelsea College of Art and Design, then went on to specialise in sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London.

Entrance FREE but RSVP Dr Caroline Perret: C.Perret@westminster.ac.uk or tel. 020 7911 5000 ext. 2307.

The Nightshift Seminars

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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 3rd 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 5th May, 6pm, Council Room, Birkbeck College, Malet Street). Further details on the series here.

4th February – Judith Butler at University of Westminster, London

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An Encounter with Judith Butler
Friday 4th of February
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B

Organised by our friends in the Centre for the Study of Democracy, Judith Butler will be visiting Westminster in early February. Programme as follows.

10.20am – 1pm: Judith Butler’s contribution to contemporary ethical and political issues
with Isabell Lorey, Vikki Bell, Stewart Motha, Elena Loizidou
chaired by Chantal Mouffe

2pm – 4.30pm: Judith Butler’s contribution to gender theory
with Henrietta Moore, Mandy Merck, Leticia Sabsay, Terrell Carver
chaired by Harriet Evans

5pm: Public lecture by Judith Butler
“The Right to Appear. Towards an Arendtian Politics of the Street”

The event is free but places are limited. To reserve a place contact: Jessica.Schmidt@my.westminster.ac.uk

Disinformation ‘The Origin of Painting’, ‘Fire in the Eye’ and ‘Rorschach Audio’, Launch 14th January

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“The Origin of Painting”, “Fire in the Eye” and “Rorschach Audio” by Disinformation
Launch Friday 14 January 6.30pm
Exhibition 15 January to 13 March 2011
Usurp Art Gallery & Studios, 140 Vaughan Road, London HA1 4EB

“People are fascinated by this work – it brings a shiver, a sudden recognition of death, as though we have seen or heard our own ghost” – Jeff Noon, The Independent on Sunday

“Inspired by thee (Love), the soft Corinthian maid
Her graceful lover’s sleeping form portray’d:
Her boding heart his near departure knew,
Yet long’d to keep his image in her view:
Pleas’d she beheld the steady shadow fall,
By the clear lamp upon the even wall:
The line she trac’d with fond precision true,
And, drawing, doated on the form she drew.”
William Hayley “An Essay on Painting” 1778

http://www.usurp.org.uk

Usurp Gallery is 2 mins walk turning right out of West Harrow tube, West Harrow is 20 mins from Baker Street by Met Line towards Uxbridge