Scarcity Exchanges
University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1
All talks start at 6.30pm at 5LS

Hosted by our friends in Architecture, a series of exchanges on and around the topic of scarcity, bringing together some of the leading thinkers in the field to expound on one of the most pressing, but often avoided, issues of the day. That resources are diminishing is a commonplace, but scarcity is about much more than the destruction of our natural resource base: it is a socially and economically constructed condition that affects us all, and will increasingly do so. If the 2000s was the decade of false abundance, then the 2010s will likely be defined through scarcity. This series of exchanges will open up the discussion as to what scarcity might mean, and its social, economic, and environmental implications.

11 May: Economies of Scarcity
Dougald Hine and Andrew Simms

18 May: Cities of Scarcity
Alfredo Brillembourg and David Satterthwaite

25 May: Scarcity and Consumption
Ed Van Hinte and Steve Broome

1 June: Concepts of Scarcity
Iain Boal and Lyla Mehta

13 June: Fabricating Scarcities
Saskia Sassen

Tickets are free but please register at http://scibe.eventbrite.com/  

The research project, Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment, is led by Jeremy Till at the University of Westminster, with partners at the Oslo School of Architecture and TU Vienna. The project is funded by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area). For further details visit http://scibe.eu

Wednesday 11th May 2011, 6:30-8:30 p.m
309 Regent Street Gallery, University of Westminster, London

You are invited to the Private View of:
‘Poster Power: Images from Mao’s China, Then and Now’

Exhibition continues 12th May – 14th July

Invitation to the Private View attached. Further information here.

Posters from Mao’s China exercise an enduring appeal to audiences across the globe, more than sixty years after the events that produced them. They are revisited in modern and contemporary Chinese art and commercial design, and curated in exhibitions in China, the US and Europe.

So why does imagery produced to support a revolutionary ideology half a century ago continue to resonate with current Chinese and Western audiences? What is the China we see between posters of the Mao years and their contemporary consumerist reinventions? How do we explain the diverse responses such imagery evokes? And what does the appeal of the posters of Mao’s China tell us about the country’s ‘red legacy’?

Poster Power explores some of these questions through setting up a visual dialogue between posters produced during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and their echoes in recent years. With posters from the University of Westminster’s Chinese Poster Collection, Chinese video art, documentary film, photographs, and contemporary items such as playing cards, nightclub advertising and tourist travel publicity, the exhibition invites viewers to explore the posters’ ambiguities of appeal to their audiences. As visual reminders of both autocratic rule and exuberant youthful idealism, they evoke diverse responses, challenging the idea that Cultural Revolution poster propaganda transmitted a single, transparent meaning. These posters’ capacity to inspire ambiguous responses opens up new narratives of what remains a complex period of China’s recent past, and sheds light on its changing significance in contemporary China.

Please do come along. And bring a friend. Or two.

Last week the ‘Visual Culture in Europe Network’ held its second annual conference, programmed marvelously by Joachin Barriendos and Anna-Maria Guasch, members of the ‘Global Visual Cultures’ project based in Barcelona.

The conference, entitled ‘Visualizing Europe: The Geopolitical and Intercultural Boundaries of Visual Culture’ was hosted by University of Barcelona and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (MACBA).

An incredible couple of days, over 20 conference participants hailed from Vienna, Rome, Vilnius, Trondheim, Lisbon, Berlin, Lund, Skopje, London, Bergen, Zagreb, and Barcelona. Each and every one of them delivered fascinating and at times provocative presentations that led to a great deal of productive, meaningful, and at times even fractious debate. It was a timely reminder that there’s nothing tidy about what we as academics, scholars, educators, curators, and practitioners care about, why we care about it, and how that care is articulated as a politics, an ethics, as a praxis.

Following the conference, the Visual Culture in Europe Network held its second annual meeting. (For details of the Network please see: http://culturasvisualesglobales.net/vcine/). For your information, the Network’s 2012 conference will be held in Trondheim, Norway, hosted by Nina Lager Vestberg (NTNU) and Øyvind Vågnes (Bergen). The 2013 conference will take place in Croatia, hosted by Kresimir Purgar, Centre for Visual Studies, Zagreb.

Watch this space for further details of the conference themes, calls for papers, etc.

Tuesday 3rd May, 6.00 pm
Hogg Lecture Theatre, University of Westminster, Marylebone site

Our friends in the Department of Architecture at Westminster are hosting a screening of the Utopia London, a documentary film by young director Tom Cordell, which explores London’s recent architectural history through the eyes of those who helped create it and those whose lives were shaped by it. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Tom as well as a panel of architects who are interviewed in the film.

“I’ve always been drawn to the excitement of London’s post-war landscape; concrete and brick textures, unadorned clean lines, neon glow and dark shadows. … Yet all our lives we have been told that the same urban spaces are ugly – symbols of a failed, arrogant technocracy. … I began to contact the people who tried to change the city, and my narrative thread continued to shift around as the filming went on. And what I found was that the power of the buildings came from the vision they were meant to serve – and that it’s this vision that so polarises opinion. They symbolise an attempt to build a fair, open society, and their existence frightens people who have rejected these values.” Tom Cordell

The University of Westminster is seeking a Writer-in-Residence in the University Archive for one academic year starting September 2011.

The award seeks to:

• Develop research activity in relation to Creative Writing and the Westminster Archive;
• Develop student interest and involvement with the archive; and
• Publicise the Westminster Archive and its holdings.

Remuneration: £1,000 for residency during one academic year.

Proposals should highlight how you would use the Westminster archive in your own creative writing, and ways in which you would generate Creative Writing activity in the university related to the archive. Given the range of materials available, we are looking for stimulating approaches to some of the possibilities afforded by the university archive. As part of the residency, you would be expected to lead one workshop with Creative Writing students and present a talk to staff and students on your own work related to the archive towards the end of the academic year.

Applicants should be authors of proven merit. Experience of working in archives would be beneficial but not essential, you will be given a full introduction to the archive. There will be research space available in the archive office, and you will have access to various university facilities including the library. High quality copies of materials in the archive can be provided.

Applications should include:

• Detail of published/performed writing and work in progress;
• Outline of writing project(s) to be undertaken during the period of appointment, up to a maximum of 500 words;
• Confirmation of EU citizenship/residence status.

The deadline for submission is Monday 9 May 2011.  Applications may be sent in hard copy to Dr. Andrew Caink, Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, 32-8 Wells Street, London W1T 3UW or on attachment to A.Caink@westminster.ac.uk

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to interview in late May/early June.

The Archive includes records from the University’s predecessor bodies, the Polytechnic of Central London, the Regent Street Polytechnic, and the Royal Polytechnic founded in 1838. The collections consist of an enormous range of materials, engravings and illustrations of scientific experiments, books and pamphlets, events programmes and posters, legal agreements, photographs, magazines and periodicals, and World War One rolls of honour and service records. Details of the archive’s holdings can be found at www.westminster.ac.uk/about/archive-services/archive-holdings and exploratory enquiries can be directed to Elaine Penn (E.S.Penn@westminster.ac.uk)

It was the Institute’s pleasure to collaborate this last weekend with Fitzrovia Noir, an arts group based in central London, on their fascinating ‘Intervention Art Trail’. Around 350 people thoughout the day came on the working tours around our neighbourhood and to the book event, which was followed by a networking buffet for gallerists, artists, organizers, and community groups. All in a day’s work for the energetic crew at Fitzrovia Noir. A resounding success!

For visuals, please see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fenoswin/5584625877/in/photostream/

We look forward to collaborating with Fitzrovia Noir again in the not too distant future.

For more on Fitzrovia Noir see: http://www.fitzrovianoir.com/

Visualizing Europe
The Geopolitical and Intercultural Boundaries of Visual Culture
Second Conference of Visual Culture in Europe
University of Barcelona, April 11-12 2011

Following its successful launch at the Institute, with a conference at Westminster in February last year, the 2nd Conference of Visual Culture in Europe will be hosted by our partners at the University of Barcelona, Spain on April 11-12, 2011. The conference elaborates on the interplay between the geopolitical designs of the European Union and transnational visual cultures in the region. Taking as a point of departure the strategic expansion and uneven porosity of Europe’s political and cultural boundaries, this conference will explore the role that visuality has played in the process of reinvention and postcolonial relocation of the cultural image of the EU.
 
Further details and programme here.

Dr Amy Jane Barnes
‘Representing Communism: exhibitions of revolutionary Chinese art in 1970s Britain’
Tuesday 5th April, 2011, 4.00–6.00 pm
Westminster Forum, University of Westminster, 5th Floor, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T

In 1972, President Richard Nixon visited China, facilitating a period of rapprochement between East and West, which corresponded with a discernable shift in popular attitudes towards the People’s Republic and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in both North America and Western Europe. This presentation looks at the development and reception of two exhibitions of Chinese revolutionary art held in Britain as a direct result of the renewal of Sino-British diplomatic relations in 1971-1972: a small display of woodblock prints held at the Gulbenkian Museum of Oriental Art, Durham, in the summer of 1974 and Peasant Paintings from Hu County (Arts Council), which toured Britain in 1976-1977. The presentation will focus on how utopian visions of the People’s Republic were translated into, and consolidated by exhibitionary practice.

Amy Jane Barnes completed her PhD in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester in 2010. She is currently working as an independent researcher, undertaking projects on behalf of the Eunamus project (http://www.eunamus.eu/), and New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester. She recently co-edited National Museums: New Studies from Around the World (2011), and the forthcoming volume The Thing about Museums: Objects and Experience, Representation and Contestation.

Hosted by ur friends in the Contemporary China Centre. All welcome. Participants from outside the University of Westminster please register in advance with Dr Derek Hird at d.hird@westminster.ac.uk

On the evening of Wednesday 30th March, our colleagues in the Group for War and Culture Studies at University of Westminster are organizing the following event, and you’re invited:

Home and Away
Wednesday 30^th March 2011, 6pm – 8pm, Room 412
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Dr Marian Malet: “Refugees’ Influence on Visual Culture in 1930s Britain”
Called ‘Hitler’s gift to Britain’, artist refugees who came to Britain in the 1930s contributed enormously to British culture over the years – whenever they were permitted to do so. This talk will look at a few instances of their artworks and artefacts, drawn from photography, magazines, book design, pottery and architecture. First appearing to be a part of the ‘British’ fabric of life, these had their origins with refugees who found a temporary or new life here.

Marian Malet works at the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, School of Advanced Study.

Htein Lin on ‘Constrained Art’
Htein Lin will talk about his artistic practice and life experience. Having been a comedian and actor, Htein Lin is a Burmese artist who works with painting, installation, and performance.  From 1998 to 2004, he was in jail for political reasons. There he developed his artistic practice: in the absence of traditional art material, he used items available to him like bowls and cigarette to make paintings and mono-prints on the cotton prison uniform.

Htein Lin has been living in London since 2006. He regularly participates in exhibitions and performance art festivals internationally.  He is a founding member of the Burmese Language Arts website www.kaungkin.com to which he contributes literature and artistic criticism. In 2010, he curated the first Burmese Arts Festival in London.

Dr Kay Chadwick: “Impact and Environment: Philippe Henriot’s Radio Propaganda in 1944”
Philippe Henriot was one of the most powerful personalities in WWII France. Appointed as Vichy’s Secretary of State for Information and Propaganda in January 1944, his subsequent broadcasting endeavours substantially changed the nature of the “battle of the airwaves” with the Free French abroad. This paper explores the ways in which Henriot’s propaganda fed off the environment of endgame Vichy, and considers its impact on public opinion in the final, fraught months of the Occupation.

Kay Chadwick is Senior Lecturer in French in the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Liverpool. She is currently working on a project funded by the AHRC and the British Academy to produce the first critical edition of Philippe Henriot’s radio broadcasts in 1944.

Entrance free. R.S.V.P. Caroline Perret, tel. 020-7911-5000 ext 2307, or e-mail C.Perret@westminster.ac.uk

Art group ‘Fitzrovia Noir’ are organizing the Fitzrovia Intervention Art Trail.

It is Fitzrovia Noir’s wish to bring contemporary independent art practice to a wider audience in Fitzrovia, and they will be placing original artwork in 20-25 local shops and businesses for a period of 3 weeks in Spring 2011. We at the Institute are thrilled that our Wells Street location is on the trail.

Please see http://www.fitzrovianoir.com/page23.htm for further details of the trail, dates of artist-led guided tours, etc. Further details on Fitzrovia Noir here.

Following the success of the ‘Rorschach Audio’ talk at The University of Westminster, and sound installation at Usurp Gallery, a quick notification of two more forthcoming events on Disinformation’s travels…

Wednesday 30^th March 2011: Joe Banks is providing a ‘Rorschach Audio’ soundtrack for painter Makiko Nagaya’s drawing performance at the Superhybrid Dada event organised by curator Peter Lewis in Leeds.

Wednesday 13^th April 2011: a ‘Rorschach Audio’ lecture features in the Living Room festival organised by University of Auckland, Gus Fisher Art Gallery curator Andrew Clifford in New Zealand, to accompany the National Grid sound installation that will be exhibited there.

Wednesday 23rd March 2011, 1.15-2.30pm
Room 106, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T 3UW

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

Further details on the English Literature and Culture research seminar series here.

No Room to Move: Radical Art and the Regenerate City
Tuesday 15th March, 2 – 4pm
Westminster Forum, 5th Floor, 32 Wells Street, London W1T

As part of the ‘Interpreting Space’ module on our MA programmes, members of the Mute team, Josephine Berry Slater and Anthony Iles, will be visiting Westminster to talk about their co-edited collection No Room to Move: Radical art and the Regenerate City (Mute 2011), and the kinds of issues they were attempting to address. This will be followed by questions from students on the module.

Wednesday 9^th March 2011, 1.15-2.45pm
Room 106, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T 3UW

Joe Banks (AHRC Research Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts)
Rorschach Audio: Art and Illusion for Sound – Lecture & demonstration

Visual and sound and artist Joe Banks, based as an AHRC Research Fellow in the Institute, discusses the Spiritualistic phenomena explored by his “Rorschach Audio” research project, exploring Jean Cocteau’s Orphée and Art and Illusion by EH Gombrich in relation to Electronic Voice Phenomena (ghost voice) recording. The presentation focuses on perceptual psychology aspects of its subject matter – including live demonstrations of audio illusions and of related psychoacoustic phenomena – with a second presentation focusing on related literary themes to follow this Autumn.

“It is the story of the signaller who misheard the urgent message ‘Send reinforcements, am going to advance’ as ‘Send three and four pence, am going to a dance’.” E.H. Gombrich

“Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish; A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon’t, that nod unto the world, And mock our eyes with air.” Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

[Please note that this replaces the previously advertised Samuel Thomas paper on Pynchon, which has unfortunately had to be cancelled due to illness]

Wednesday 23rd February 2011, 1.15-2.30pm
Room 106, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T 3UW

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

Further details on the English Literature and Culture research seminar series here.

Our friends at Usurp Art Gallery in north London present a series of live musical accompaniments to ‘The Origin of Painting’ and ‘Rorschach Audio’ sound installations currently showing at Usurp Gallery…

1. KillaVolts (electronics and video) + Strange Attractor vs Disinformation (live high-voltage electro-medical appliances). Thurs 24 Feb 2011, 7.30pm to 11pm.

2. Steve Beresford (small objects) + Angharad Davies (violin), The Stargazers Assistant (percussion) and Disinformation (electronics). Sunday 13 March 2011, 3pm to 7pm.

Reynir Hutber (KillaVolts) is a video and performance artist and the most recent winner of the Catlin Art Prize. Ben Sassen (KillaVolts) is Junior Professor of Experimental Television at The Bauhaus University in Weimar. Steve Beresford is an internationally renown improvising musician and Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Westminster. David J Smith (The Stargazers Assistant) is an installation artist and musician well-known for his work with the rock group Guapo. Angharad Davies is a classically trained violinist and active performer in contemporary, improvised and experimental music. Joe Banks (Disinformation) is an installation artist and AHRC sponsored Research Fellow at the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster. Mark Pilkington is the founder of Strange Attractor Journal and author of the new book Mirage Men.

Usurp Art Gallery & Studios
140 Vaughan Road
London HA1 4EB
http://www.usurp.org.uk
Admission Free

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.

Heather Ewing (The Smithsonian), ‘The Increase and Diffusion of Knowledge’
Smithsonian-Westminster Colloquium
Wednesday 23 February 2011, 6.30–8.00 pm
The Boardroom, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B

Heather Ewing is a graduate of Yale University and the Courtauld Institute of Art. An architectural historian, she is a research associate at the Smithsonian Archives and has worked for the Ringling Museum of Art. She is the author of The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution and the Birth of the Smithsonian (Bloomsbury 2007); and co-author with Amy Ballard of Smithsonian Architecture (Random House 2009). She organised a successful campaign for the placing of a blue plaque at 9 Bentinck St, London W1, the address at which James Smithson wrote his famous will bequeathing his fortune to the United States to found in Washington ‘an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men’. Join Heather for a discussion on the historical and contemporary role of museums, galleries and universities.

The Smithsonian-Westminster colloquium is a scholarly collaboration examining issues of educational, social and cultural policy and practice, and includes, in association with Johns Hopkins University, a major research project on environmental sustainability.

Entrance is free but is by invitation. If you would like to attend please email the coordinator of the Smithsonian-Westminster colloquium, Alan Morrison: morrisa1@westminster.ac.uk

The IMCC in association with the Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies invites applications for our new MA programmes, starting in September 2011: MA Museums, Galleries and Cultural Institutions and MA Creative Writing: Writing the City.

These join our very successful existing Masters in Cultural & Critical Studies, English Literature, and Visual Culture – which are also open for applications for September 2011 – and are taught by a course team that for each programme is composed of leading scholars, critics, curators, creative writers and fine art practitioners.

MA Museums, Galleries and Cultural Institutions

This new Masters course looks at the changing roles of cultural institutions in the 21st Century. It has been designed for students wishing to work as curators, arts organisers, museum professional and other contemporary cultural managers, and has been developed through the University’s close relationships with museums and galleries in London. You will examine key issues and themes in the museums and gallery sector, and explores how these are dealt with not just in theory, but also on a day-to-day basis by leading institutions. You will learn about the challenges faced by museums and galleries, how they confront them and how they are developing innovative practices in relation to their collections, exhibitions and audiences. Much of the teaching takes place in collaboration with the partner institutions, on site and working with curators and professionals from the sector.

MA Creative Writing: Writing the City

The new MA Creative Writing: Writing the City is the first to focus entirely on the city of London. The course will allow you to explore the city as subject matter from a range of perspectives and across all genres. Taught by professional writers and researchers, the course will also offer plenty of opportunities to network with other writers, agents, TV producers and performance poets. The course aims to provide a theoretical and practical platform to enable you to develop your understanding and become part of the London writing scene. The course is based in the University of Westminster’s flagship building at 309 Regent Street, which means you will be writing about the city in the heart of London with ready access to the capital’s excellent academic, social and cultural opportunities, including the vibrant West End theatre scene.

Applications can be made through UKPass

For further details on these MAs, and on our other Masters programmes in Cultural & Critical Studies, English Literature, and Visual Culture: see our website here, email course-enquiries@westminster.ac.uk, or call +44 (0)20915 5511.

The Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at University of Westminster, London, welcomes Lise Majgaard Mortensen as a Visiting Junior Research Fellow.

Lise is completing a PhD in the Institute of Language, Literature, and Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark, entitled Ekphrasis in Flux: A Reconsideration of the Ekphrastic Object in an Age of Remediation. Her project proceeds from the conjecture that, as a product of contemporary culture, literature is bound to reflect our increased visual literacy, as mass media and new media are recasting the structure of human experience. Through a focused study of the contemporary novel, she trace an increased urgency in the lesser visual medium of literature to explore the inherent differences between the visual and the textual. Her research is concerned with the ways in which – and the reasons why – contemporary authors take on the challenge of representing moving images, film and digital media through the medium of text.

Here’s to your time in London, Lise!

Hosted by the Institute, Tom Mitchell will be at the University of Westminster on the afternoon of 13th June, with a number of shiny interlocutors, to discuss his new book Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present. Watch this space for further details.

From The University of Chicago Press website: The  phrase “War on Terror” has quietly been retired from official usage, but it persists in the American psyche, and our understanding of it is hardly complete. Nor will it be, W. J. T Mitchell argues, without a grasp of the images that it spawned, and that spawned it. Exploring the role of verbal and visual images in the War on Terror, Mitchell finds a conflict whose shaky metaphoric and imaginary conception has created its own reality. At the same time, Mitchell locates in the concept of clones and cloning an anxiety about new forms of image-making that has amplified the political effects of the War on Terror. Cloning and terror, he argues, share an uncanny structural resemblance, shuttling back and forth between imaginary and real, metaphoric and literal manifestations. In Mitchell’s startling analysis, cloning terror emerges as the inevitable metaphor for the way in which the War on Terror has not only helped recruit more fighters to the jihadist cause but undermined the American constitution with “faith-based” foreign and domestic policies.

Bringing together the hooded prisoners of Abu Ghraib with the cloned stormtroopers of the Star Wars saga, Mitchell draws attention to the figures of faceless anonymity that stalk the ever-shifting and unlocatable “fronts” of the War on Terror. A striking new investigation of the role of images from our foremost scholar of iconology, Cloning Terror will expand our understanding of the visual legacy of a new kind of war and reframe our understanding of contemporary biopower and biopolitics.

W. J. T. Mitchell is Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. He is editor of the interdisciplinary journal Critical Inquiry, a quarterly devoted to critical theory in the arts and human sciences. A scholar and theorist of media, visual art, and literature, Mitchell is associated with the emergent fields of visual culture and iconology (the study of images across the media). He is known especially for his work on the relations of visual and verbal representations in the context of social and political issues. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Morey Prize in art history given by the College Art Association of America. His publications include: “The Pictorial Turn,” Artforum, March 1992; “What Do Pictures Want?” October, Summer 1996; What Do Pictures Want? (2005); The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon (1998); Picture Theory (1994); Art and the Public Sphere (1993); Landscape and Power (1992); Iconology (1987); The Language of Images (1980); On Narrative(1981); and The Politics of Interpretation (1984).