The IMCC-affiliated MA in Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture at Westminster, in association with The Johns Hopkins Masters Program in Museum Studies, presents:

Teaching with Collections: A Discussion Forum
Tuesday 20 March 2012, 6.30 – 8.30
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Keynote Speaker: Henry Kim, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Henry Kim is the Director of the University Engagement Programme, a three-year project sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, aimed at expanding the use of the museum’s collections in teaching across the University, as well as a specialist on archaic and classical Greek coins and European medals.  He has been a curator at the Ashmolean Museum and university lecturer in Greek numismatics at the University of Oxford since 1994, and was the Project Director for the Ashmolean Redevelopment Project, completed in November 2009 and the redevelopment of the Egypt Galleries, completed in November 2011.

Open and free to all. No booking required, but RSVP appreciated. Further information and RSVP: Helena Scott, scotth@westminster.ac.uk

Wednesday 22^nd February, 1.15pm – 2.30pm
Room 359, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street

Anthony Paraskeva (University of Dundee)
‘Wyndham Lewis, Cinema Hypnotism and the Frankfurt School’

Wednesday 22 February at 3pm
2.05A School of Law, 4 Little Titchfield Street, London W1W 7UW

Cory Doctorow
‘There is a war coming: the future regulation of general purpose computation’

Organised by our friends in The Centre for Law, Society and Popular Culture
ALL WELCOME. RSVP Danilo Mandic: danilo.mandic@my.westminster.ac.uk

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing (boingboing.net) and the author of Tor Teens/HarperCollins UK novels like FOR THE WIN and the bestselling LITTLE BROTHER. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. He is the author of Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future, (2008). Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London. See further, http://craphound.com/bio.php

WESTMINSTER.AC.UK/LAW

Thursday 16 February 2012, 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 fourth discussion focuses on future of education under contemporary capitalism, with guest participants Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism, Andrew McGettigan, author of the arts and humanities blog Critical Education, and Andrea Phillips, Reader in Fine Art Practice and Director of Research Studies, Goldsmiths. Chaired by Marquard Smith.

Book your ticket at: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/22/product_id/1120?session_id=1325609439457568b84811bd9f97bb2cb619476b46

UPDATE: Unfortunately Mark Fisher is unable to participate on this occasion because of illness. Hopefully we’ll be able to get him down again for a future event in the Salon series.

TheBeautifulGame_E-Invite_RSVPTOWESTMINSTER

Thursday 1st March 2012
Reception: 6-7; Screening: 7-9

The Old Cinema, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street
RSVP to: Katrina Fender (k.fender@westminster.ac.uk)

Our friends in The Centre for Law, Society and Popular Culture at the School of Law, University of Westminster in association with Africa10 are delighted to invite you to a special preview screening of The Beautiful Game, a new documentary from director Victor Buhler. The film celebrates the work of The Right to Dream Academy, and is generously supported by Alisa Swidler and Leke Adebayo.

http://www.visualculturenow.org/itinerary/

“Now! Visual Culture” is a participation event, to be held at New York University, May 31-June 2 2012. The goal is to showcase as broad and diverse a range of visual culture practice as possible in order to create a snapshot of the field of visual culture as it is currently practiced from Cape Town to California.

At the 2010 Visual Culture Studies Conference in London, hosted by the Institute at University of Westminster, a decision was taken to constitute an International Association for Visual Culture. A key principle was that the Association should ask as little as possible financially from its members while involving as many people as possible in decision making. This is the first event organized under this platform. By the end of the event, delegates will have both experienced and created the transformation of the field from an interaction of cinema studies and art history (as it was in the 1990s) to the present intersection of Web 2.0, iconology, contemporary art practice, and critical visuality studies.

The event is structured so that all delegates will attend a single stream of sessions to create a strongly interactive conference experience. The event begins with 15×5 minute lightning talks on the state of the field by people ranging from postdocs to professor emeritus. There are eight sessions following, organized by people in a variety of locations, including the Visual and Cultural Studies Program at the University of Rochester, the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture and the Diasporic Asian Art Research group. Each session will be independently organized in keeping with the horizontal ethics of the Association.

Particular time slots have a hands-on workshop, film screenings, panel discussions or a combination of the above.

Current session themes include:

a workshop with Scalar, a born-digital multi-media authoring platform
the role of design in globalization
new media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement
Asian diaspora art practices
practice in and as visual culture
a graduate student forum
the general assembly of the International Association for Visual Culture
keynote ‘listeners’ and talkback
Lots of time for networking and enjoying New York, with receptions every night, a gallery exhibition of online and material work, and maybe a late-night shenanigan or two!

http://www.westminster.ac.uk/research/a-z/cream/events/exhibiting-video-conference

CALL FOR PAPERS – EXTENDED CALL
DEADLINE 15 February 2012

Exhibiting Video – International Conference
Date: 23 – 25 March, 2012
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London, W1B 2UW

In March and April 2012 Ambika P3, the flagship exhibition space at the University of Westminster, will present a major solo exhibition of the influential pioneer of video art, David Hall in association with REWIND. To mark the occasion the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) of the University of Westminster is convening Exhibiting Video, a three-day event considering issues central to the display of video art.

We welcome proposals for papers of a maximum of 30 minutes. Send abstracts of no more than 250 words. They must include the presenter’s name, affiliation, email and postal address, together with the title of the paper and a 150-word biographical note on the presenter. Abstracts should be sent to Helen Cohen at photography@westminster.ac.uk and arrive no later than Wednesday 15 February 2012.

Wednesday 8^th February, 1.15pm – 2.30pm
Room 359, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street

Morgan Daniels (Queen Mary, University of London)
‘Satire and Childishness’

This paper examines the effects of broadcast satire in Britain c.1939-73, and a curious yet clear theme to be found in correspondence to the BBC, namely the condemnation of satire, comedy and other irreverent programming as childish, juvenile, and so on.  What I want to ask is Why?  Why is it that, as the psychologist James Hillman observed, ‘[t]he worst insult is to be called “childish,” “infantile,” “immature”’? In order to obfuscate no less than to attempt to answer this question, this paper presents three short ‘test cases’ from BBC programming between 1951 and 1973: The Goon Show, Spike Milligan’s radio sitcom, of sorts, which revelled in the pantomimic; BBC-3, a televised revue programme made by the That Was The Week That Was team; and Yesterday’s Men, a fairly sober 1971 documentary about the recently-departed Labour government, often decried as ‘satirical’.  Each of these (hugely different) productions came to be attacked as childish.  To ask Why? is to question not just satire and its role in meaning-making, but childhood, too – which, after all, is but a fairly recent invention.

Wednesday 8th February, 4 – 6pm
Westminster Forum, University of Westminster, 5^th Floor, Wells Street, London W1T 3UW

PROPAGANDA ON THE SOCIALIST PERIPHERY
Power, reform and identity in Soviet Uzbek posters
Dr Elizabeth Waters, University of Westminster

Recent work on Soviet propaganda has looked both at the techniques used to convey political messages and the extent to which the USSR succeeded in controlling information and public opinion. Scholarship on Central Asia has examined the power of peripheral elites to influence centrally generated plans and of populations to resist communist change. Disagreement continues over whether the ‘Soviet project’ in the region was one of affirmative action or of colonial intent. This seminar looks at these issues in relation to Uzbekistan in the early decades of Soviet power and assesses the evidence on the character and impact of social, economic and political reforms that is provided by posters used in campaigns to promote women’s emancipation, cotton production and Uzbek identity.

Elizabeth Waters is Principal Lecturer in the Department of Modern and Applied Languages at the University of Westminster. Most of her previous research has been on Soviet social history in the 1920s. Recently she participated in a study of alcohol consumption in Kazakhstan. This seminar represents work-in-progress on her new project on Uzbek Soviet propaganda.

Hosted by the Contemporary China Centre. All welcome, but non-University of Westminster attendees please register at: d.hird@westminster.ac.uk

Wednesday 1 February 2012, 6 pm – 8 pm,
Room 152, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

True Lies of War
Group for War and Culture Studies Seminar

Hongping Annie Nie, University of Oxford
“China’s War with Japan (1937-1945): A Study of Chinese History Textbooks”

Dr. Hongping Annie Nie (MA in Education, Calvin College, USA; Ph. D. in Cross-cultural Education, Biola University, USA) is currently Faculty Tutor of Chinese Politics at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. She is also a core member of the Leverhulme funded China’s War with Japan Project, History Faculty, University of Oxford. Her research interests include moral/ideological education, mass communication, patriotism, and national memory. Among her publications are The Dilemma of Moral Education Curriculum in a Chinese Secondary School (University Press of America, 2007) and “On-line Gaming, Ideological Work, and Nationalism in China” (Journal of Contemporary China, forthcoming).

Celine Righi, London School of Economics
“Memory in post-Civil War Lebanon under artistic scrutiny: a space for individual and social autonomy in the public debate?”

Celine Righi completed a Master in Political Sciences at Science Po Lyon in 2000 and a Master in Social Psychology at Paris IX Dauphine University in 2001. After working for a think tank in Paris and Lyon in the field of social and economic development, Celine embarked in her PhD in 2008 at the Institute of Social Psychology at London School of Economics.

Entrance free. To reserve a place, please R.S.V.P. Dr Caroline Perret: C.Perret@westminster.ac.uk

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/

An Ecology of Mind: A Film by Nora Bateson
Monday 27 February 2012, 18:30-22:00 pm
Old Cinema, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Tickets: £9.50; £3.50 (student/unwaged/Westminster staff)
Book your ticket from: http://anecologyofmindlondon.eventbrite.co.uk/

The Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture (IMCC) at the University of Westminster is proud to host the London premier of Nora Bateson’s An Ecology of Mind: A Daughter’s Portrait of Gregory Bateson. The screening will be followed by an interdisciplinary panel and audience discussion with Nora Bateson, and will end with a wine reception in the Regent Street foyer.

Panel with Nora Bateson; Iain Boal (Birkbeck College); Jody Boehnert (Brighton University); Ranulph Glanville (American Society for Cybernetics); Peter Reason (Action Research); and Wendy Wheeler (London Metropolitan University). Chaired by Jon Goodbun (IMCC and Architecture, Westminster)

“Tell me a story” … of life, art and science, of systems and survival. Gregory Bateson’s way of thinking – seeing the world as relationships, connections and patterns – continues to influence and provoke new thinking about human social life, about ecology, technology, art, design and health. Nora Bateson, Gregory’s youngest daughter, introduces Bateson’s ideas to new audiences in her film An Ecology of Mind, using the metaphor of a relationship between father and daughter, and footage of Bateson’s talks.

Each screening, too, hosts a discussion between Nora and a wide range of people working in depth with Bateson’s ideas: artists, architects, action researchers, ecological activists, mental health practitioners, scientists, urban designers, cyberneticians. These screenings and discussions intend to show a way of thinking that crosses fields of knowledge and experience, one that can lead out of the ecological crisis and towards a more sound way of living.
 
Awards for the film:
Gold for Best Documentary, Spokane International Film Festival, 2011
Audience Award Winner, Best Documentary, Santa Cruz Film Festival, 2011
Winner, Media Ecology Association, John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis, 2011 

Event organised by Jon Goodbun (Westminster), Wallace Heim, Kevin Power (Centre for Action Research, Ashridge Business School) and Eva Bakkeslett

To book a ticket go to: http://anecologyofmindlondon.eventbrite.co.uk/

Call for papers: Ecologies of the Visual

The Third Visual Culture in Europe Meeting, Trondheim, 6-7 September 2012

Contributions are invited which address the relationship between ecology and visuality in the broadest sense. On the one hand several discourses have come to revolve around what Susan Sontag described in On Photography as an ecology of images, a perspective which raises both epistemological and ethical questions concerning our interactions with the image. On the other hand there are presently several indications of a pressing need for the field of visual culture studies to address what we might call the visualities of ecology, or the place of environmental issues in contemporary visual culture. Topics may include but are by no means limited to:

Images and Ethics // “Ecology” as a Metaphorical Nexus in Visual Studies // Visual Culture within and without the Ecology of Disciplines // Consumerism and Visual Culture/The Visual Culture of Consumerism // Climate Change in/and Visual Culture // The Rhetorics of Environmentalism in Media and/or Art // Apocalyptic Narratives in Visual Culture

To submit a proposal for a paper presentation, please email an abstract of approximately 200 words to the conference organisers, Nina Lager Vestberg (nina.vestberg@ntnu.no) and Øyvind Vågnes (ov@nomadikon.net), by 7 March 2012.

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

Thursday 16 February 2012, 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 fourth discussion focuses on future of education under contemporary capitalism, with guest participants Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism, Andrew McGettigan, author of the arts and humanities blog Critical Education, and Andrea Phillips, Reader in Fine Art Practice and Director of Research Studies, Goldsmiths. Chaired by Marquard Smith.

Book your ticket at: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/22/product_id/1120?session_id=1325609439457568b84811bd9f97bb2cb619476b46

A heads up on the line up of speakers and list of dates for this semester’s series of English Literature and Culture seminars. All will take place from 1.15-2.30pm on Wednesday lunchtimes in the University’s Regent Street building (room 359).

8th February 2012
Morgan Daniels (Queen Mary, London)
‘Satire and Childishness’

22nd February 2012
Anthony Paraskeva (University of Dundee)
”Wyndham Lewis, Cinema Hypnotism and the Frankfurt School’

7th March 2012
Matthew Taunton (Queen Mary, London)
‘Socialism, Literature and the Radiant Future: Before and After 1917’

21st March 2012
Aisling McKeown (Westminster)
‘Once Upon a Time in the West: Rural Idyll in Contemporary Irish Fiction and Film’

Further details at: http://seminarserieswmin.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/semester-two-seminars-unveiled/

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.

Agit Disco
Conceived & compiled by Stefan Szczelkun,
edited by Anthony Iles

We’re very pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of Stefan Szczelkun’s new book Agit Disco, which collects the playlists of its 23 writers to tell the story of how music has politically influenced and inspired them. The book provides a multi-genre survey of political musics, from a wide range of viewpoints, that goes beyond protest songs into the darker hinterlands of musical meaning. Each playlist is annotated and illustrated. The collection grew organically with an exchange of homemade CDs and images. These images, with their DIY graphics, are used to give the playlists a visual materiality.

Almost everyone makes selections of music to play to themselves and friends. Agit Disco intends to show the importance of this creative activity and its place in our formation as political beings. This activity is at odds with to the usual process of selection by the mainstream media – in which the most potent musical agents of change are, whenever possible, erased from the public airwaves.

Agit Disco Selectors: Sian Addicott, Louise Carolin, Peter Conlin, Mel Croucher, Martin Dixon, John Eden, Sarah Falloon, Simon Ford, Peter Haining, Stewart Home, Tom Jennings, DJ Krautpleaser, Roger McKinley, Micheline Mason, Tracey Moberly, Luca Paci, Room 13 – Lochyside Scotland, Howard Slater, Johnny Spencer, Stefan Szczelkun, Andy T, Neil Transpontine, Tom Vague

Publication Date: January 2012. RRP: £11.99. ISBN: 978-1-906496-51-7

Mute books, 46 lexington st, london, w1f 0lp. www.metamute.org
Contact: Caroline Heron, caroline@metamute.org, 020 3297 9005

This Saturday 10^th December, our Visiting Fellow, Victoria Walsh, will be taking part in a panel discussion for Modernism, a Sentimental Myth, part of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011 at the ICA. Other panellists include our former colleague, and member of the IMCC Advisory Board, Murray Fraser.

The panel is at 5pm, preceded by a walking tour around the back streets of the ICA, and followed by a Club Night. For more details visit www.ica.org.uk

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