Posts from June 2013

Launch of new book: Monstrosity: The Human Monster in Visual Culture

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We are delighted to announce the publication of a new book by the IMCC’s Alexa Wright, Monstrosity: The Human Monster in Visual Culture, from I.B. Tauris.

From the ‘Monster of Ravenna’ to the ‘Elephant Man’, Myra Hindley and Ted Bundy, the visualization of ‘real’, human monsters has always played a part in how society sees itself. But what is the function of a monster? Why do we need to embody and represent what is monstrous? This book investigates the appearance of the human monster in Western culture, both historically and in our contemporary society. It argues that images of real (rather than fictional) human monsters help us both to identify and to interrogate what constitutes normality; we construct what is acceptable in humanity by depicting what is not quite acceptable.

There will be a drinks reception to celebrate the launch of Monstrosity on Wednesday 26 June, from 6.30-8.30, in the café at Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Street, London E16AB. RSVP to Naomi French at: nfrench@ibtauris.com

Alexa Monstrosity Book Launch Invitation

Alex has also written a new piece for the IB Tauris blog. Read it here: http://theibtaurisblog.com/2013/06/25/facing-evil/

Iron Books: Poems of the Posthuman exhibition, Bethnal Green

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Iron Books: Poems of the Posthuman
Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos

Exhibition from July 5 – 31, 2013
The Gasoline Rooms, 300 Clare Street, London E2 9HD

Thirty metal poems that trace, photographically and textually, the posthuman condition. The works originate in instagram, shot and written instantly without editing. They are here transported onto metal books that oscillate between the monumental and the fleeting.

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos is Professor of Law and Theory at the University of Westminster and a member of the Advisory Board of the IMCC.

Carroll / Fletcher reading group: The Price of Sex, July 11

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Thursday 11 July, 7:00-9:00pm
Carroll / Fletcher, 56-57 Eastcastle Street, London W1W 8EQ

Our friends at Carroll / Fletcher, round the corner from our IMCC base, have announced their next reading group, Chapter 4: The Price of Sex, led by artist Lora Hristova on Thursday 11 July.

Chapter 4 leads on from Chapter 3: The Dialectics of Sex, that took radical feminist Shulasmith Firestone’s pioneering 1970’s text as it’s starting point, generating a lively debate led by Stella Sandford. With a focus on what twenty-first century suffragettes would fight for now, Chapter 4 explores the sex industry and sexual politics.

The reading for Chapter 4: The Price of Sex is on Hristova’s Tumblr – www.lorahri-priceofsex.tumblr.com where she asks What is the price of sex? What (and who) are we willing to sacrifice in the name of pleasure? How often is the need for physical release actually a desire for control and is having sex a human right? The discussion aims to navigate the territory of the sex industry; from its everyday reflections in heterosexual life to the heated debate around the legalisation of prostitution and the dark corners of human trafficking.

Lora Hristova’s mixed media practice engages with gendered themes of identity and sexuality, exploring issues of gender inequality and representations of women in contemporary culture in reference to universal experiences of desire and shame, intimacy and anxiety and insecurities surrounding the body. Her recent work has investigated the sex industry, and the cultural, psychological and social impact of pornography. She recently discussed her research in an Artists’ Presentation for the Zabludowicz Invites exhibition.

Tickets £5.00 including refreshments.
To book go to carrollfletcher.eventbrite.com

Thomson & Craighead exhibition extended until July 13th

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Thomson & Craighead’s Never Odd Or Even has been chosen as Show of the Week in Time Out, which, in a review awarding the exhibition five stars, remarks that this ‘mini-survey makes a strong case for the duo being two of our most forward-looking and underrated artists’. The show itself has been extended until Saturday 13 July, so there’s still a chance to visit before the gallery takes an extended summer break until the next exhibition in September.

Their first ever survey show, featuring seminal works such as ‘More Songs of Innocence and of Experience’ (2012), and ‘Time Machine in alphabetical order’ (2011), Never Odd or Even also includes a new work that grows day by day: ‘London Wall W1W’ (2013) is the artists’ physical manifestation of Tweets drawn from within a one-mile radius of Carroll / Fletcher, which are then turned into propaganda-style posters and adhered to the gallery wall. Keep up to date with the latest tweets from W1W on @CarrollFletcher and tclondonwall.tumblr.com.

From 7pm on Wednesday 10 July, the artists are repeating the popular tour of the show they gave in June. Bookings can be made at carrollfletcher.eventbrite.com.

Memory and Restitution, July 5-6: Programme Announced

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Memory and Restitution
Friday 5 July, 9.30-6.30 and Saturday 6 July, 9.30-1.30, 2013,
The Boardroom, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B

Full programme at: www.memoryandrestitution.co.uk/programme/

Keynotes: Stef Craps (Ghent), Lyndsey Stonebridge (UEA) and Anna Reading (King’s College London)

Panels on: Restitution and Resistance; Landscapes of American Memory; The Natural History of Memory; Transcultural Memory After 9/11; Rethinking Restitution

Following recent attention to the “cosmopolitan” or “multidirectional” dimensions of memory, this colloquium foregrounds commemorative practices as global positioning systems that enable individuals and collectives to situate themselves (temporally and spatially, emotionally and intellectually, politically, and ethically) in relation to others. Interrogating the implicit hierarchies of life encoded in disparate forms of historical reckoning, the colloquium considers whether it is possible to imagine a universal model of restitution, or whether processes of redress are necessarily a product of the cultural and historical context in which they arise.

Organised by: Lucy Bond (Westminster), Rick Crownshaw (Goldsmiths) and Jessica Rapson (Goldsmiths)

Co-sponsored by the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture and Goldsmiths

Admission is free, but please reserve a place: info@memoryandrestitution.co.uk

Foreclosure conference, June 17-18 2013

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FORECLOSURE
Brunel University & University of Westminster
1st Joint Researching the Arts/Social Sciences Conference for Research Students

The Pavilion, University of Westminster, 115 New Cavendish Street, London
June 17 & 18, 2013, 10:30-5pm

Keynote: Oren Ben-Dor, University of Southampton
‘Placial [in]justice: reflections on the wounded origin of political affectation’

Please join us at this two-day interdisciplinary conference Foreclosure that aims to bring together law, art and politics.  We understand foreclosure as the art of ordering and securing a common ground for the unfolding of a common experience; the exchange of affects and perspectives; and the performance of bodies and spaces. Art, Law and Politics habitually build walls around their concepts and practices. Foreclosure aims to encourage the exploration of practices and performances of law, art and politics through the prism of their shared operation; the investigation of the juncture between their disciplinary fences; and the unfolding of the fragility of their mechanisms. This is our aim: to dissect, dismantle and improve the operations of art, law and politics in order to locate cracks, produce apertures, and ride the lines of flight where new potentialities are generated.  The conference programme is attached.

Admission is free but places are limited. RSVP at foreclosuresconference@gmail.com

Call for Papers: The Mediated City

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The Mediated City
Two multidisciplinary conferences examining “the city”… a virtual, filmic, social, political and physical construct.

The Mediated City examines the metropolis as a contested concept. It offers a platform for multiple and diverse examinations of the city. It aims to bring together people from diverse backgrounds to fragment, multiply and reconfigure our readings of the city; to offer multiple and conflicting discipline perspectives. The intention is to share views of the city as physical entity, online community, film set, photographic backdrop, geographical map, sociological case study, political metaphor, digital or video game etc.. – to examine it as a mediated and shared phenomenon.

London Conference
April 1-3 2014, Ravensbourne College

Los Angeles Conference
October 2014 (tbc), Woodbury University

London Conference deadlines
15 September 2013: abstracts / initial proposals

Possible Formats:
20 minute presentations
60 minute panel discussions on selected themes
Workshop collaborative sessions
Screenings / Q&As

For full details visit: http://architecturemps.com