There will be a broadcast on Resonance Radio, 104.4 fm London and online, on Boxing Day, the 26th December, of Stefan Szczelkun’s arrangement and direction of a performance of John Cage’s magnum opus ‘Song Books’ that took place at Toynbee Theatre in Aldgate earlier this year. The programme will start at 5pm, with ‘Song Books’ broadcast between 5.30 and 6.32pm. The programme will end with Stefan reading a selection of rites from ‘Nature Study Notes’, 1969. This little publication, hand-written by Cornelius Cardew, was given to everyone who joined the Scratch Orchestra and was the main common literary reference for concert performances. This leads into the next stage of the research which will go on from Cage to explore the working methods of The Scratch Orchestra. There is also a review of the performance coming out in the February edition of The Wire.

Death and Trauma

December 20^th 2012, 6.15pm
The Swedenborg Hall, 20 Bloomsbury Way, London, WC1A 2TH

Speakers: Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Dr Jennifer Pollard and Professor Robert Eaglestone

‘Death and Trauma’ is the second in the series of events ‘Death and the Contemporary’, hosted by Georgina Colby and Anthony Luvera. The twenty-first century has witnessed a proliferation of work in the area of trauma, and it is widely acknowledged that our contemporary culture is a post-traumatic culture. How has trauma impacted the philosophical issues surrounding death? A panel discussion with four speakers from across the disciplines of literature, the visual arts, and philosophy will provide an exciting forum in which to explore the issues surrounding death and trauma in contemporary culture.

Tickets: £5 full price; £3 reductions
Book here: http://www.theculturecapitalexchange.co.uk/2012/11/29/death-and-the-contemporary-death-and-trauma/

China in Britain: Myths and Realities
Aesthetics: Visual and Literary Cultures

December 8^th 2012, 9:30am – 4:00pm
The Cayley Room, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

You are warmly invited to the fourth in this University of Westminster/AHRC funded series. The day will present an eclectic programme with presentations on modernist architecture, fashion and literature, chinoiserie, and both literature and photography ‘then and now’. Speakers in the morning are Sarah Cheang (Royal College of Art), Edward Denision (Bartlett, UCL), Patricia Laurence (City University of New York), and David Porter (Michigan). The afternoon sessions will include a presentation by photographer Grace Lau and conversations with Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking (Penguin 2012) and novelist Xiaolu Guo. The day will end with a drinks reception.

The full programme along with abstracts and biogs can be found at: www.translatingchina.info

UPDATE: You can find an excellent account of the day’s event on Rachel Marsden’s blog at: http://rachelmarsdenwords.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/china-in-britain-4/

If there is a modern invention that is apocalyptical, it is not the atomic bomb. It is the automobile…

A quick notice that Vol 1, no. 4 of ARCHITECTURE_MEDIA_POLITICS_SOCIETY is now available on-line. This month’s issue, ‘A Critical Architecture: Comments on Politics and Society’, is a fascinating interview-article with Kenneth Frampton.

Read it at: http://architecturemps.com/full-text/