Walter Benjamin, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Youth
Friday 31st May – Saturday 1st June 2013
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Co-hosted by the Institute for Modern & Contemporary Culture (IMCC) and the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP).

Participants:
Antonia Birnbaum (Paris 8)
Howard Caygill (CRMEP)
Matthew Charles (Westminster)
Élise Derroitte (Université catholique de Louvain)
Howard Eiland (MIT)
Milan Jaros (Newcastle)
Mike Neary (Lincoln)
Peter Osborne (CRMEP)

The conference is free and open to all. There is no pre-registration and attendance on the day will be allocated on a “first-come, first-served” basis.

Further Information: http://benjaminpedagogy.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/conference-announcement/

Exhibiting Performance Conference

Date: 1-3 March 2013
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London, W1B 2UW

The Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) of the University of Westminster is pleased to announce Exhibiting Performance, a three-day event considering contemporary issues central to the display of performance art. Following on from the Exhibiting Photography (2011) and Exhibiting Video (2012) International Conferences, this event will bring together notable artists, curators and writers, and provide a forum for a number of inter-related questions:

• On what terms has the rise of Performance in contemporary arts taken place?
• How do our museums and galleries disseminate and exhibit Performance?
• How does the live act of Performance inform questions around the body and the audience?
• How is Performance documented, archived and transacted?
• How does technology contribute to the development of Performance?

The conference will be framed by Indeterminacy, a John Cage performance by Stewart Lee, Tania Chen and Steve Beresford in the Old Lumiere Cinema, Regent Street and the exhibition of work by artists and writers responding to a live performance by Philip Lee and Cally Trench Do you remember it – or weren’t you there? at London Gallery West.

There will be four half-day themes:

Curating:
With Tate Modern opening the Tanks for performance events and Marina Abramovic’s major exhibition at New York’s MoMA in 2010, is performance art now mainstream, and on what terms? How do museums and galleries understand performance art?

Dissemination and Documentation:
How is performance documented ? If you missed the performance is that it? What value does an art work in a different medium which gives a memory of a performance have?

The Body and Audiences:
What is the role of the body in performance today ? Why do so many performance artists perform naked ? Is the naked body a sign of authenticity or does the taboo distract from meaning ? How is the relationship between artist and audience different from or similar to other areas of art?

Performance and Media:
How does technology mediate performance ? What are the ontologies of networked, mediated and recorded performance practices ? How is videoperformance ‘live’? How do different technologies of camera (webcam, surveillance, etc) and screens (CRT, flat, projection, mobile phone, computer, etc) change our concept of performance?

Confirmed Participants:
Franko B, artist; Steve Beresford, Performer and Musician, University of Westminster; Rocio Boliver, artist, Mel Brimfield, artist; Dr Gavin Butt, Goldsmith College; Jon Cairns, Central St Martins; Dr Maria Chatzichristodoulou, curator and performer, University of Hull; Tania Chen, Musician; Dr Rob la Frenais, Curator The Arts Catalyst; Professor Joram ten Brink, University of Westminster, Lois Keidan, founder, director Live Art Development Agency; Richard Layzell, artist, Middlesex University; Stewart Lee, writer and performer; Kira O’Reilly, artist University of Hull; Dr Lucy Reynolds, University of the Arts; Dr Marquard Smith, University of Westminster; Dr Margherita Sprio, University of Westminster; Gary Stevens, artist; Dr Tracey Warr, writer and curator, Oxford Brookes University; Catherine Wood, Curator, Contemporary Art & Performance at Tate; Silvia Ziranek, artist.

PROGRAMME AND REGISTRATION
http://www.westminster.ac.uk/research/a-z/cream/events/exhibiting-performance-conference

This conference will take place from 4.00pm on Friday 1 March to Sunday 3 March 2013. The fee for registration will be:
Full conference: Standard rate £85. One day rate £50
Full conference: Student rate £40. One day rate £30.
Performance only: £10 – Student Rate £5

PERFORMANCE
Indeterminacy, a John Cage performance
Sunday 3 March 2013, 6.30pm
Stewart Lee, Tania Chen and Steve Beresford
Regent Street Cinema
University of Westminster
309 Regent Street
London W1R 8AL

EXHIBITION:
Do you remember it – or weren’t you there?
Philip Lee and Cally Trench
31 January 2013 – 3 March 2013
London Gallery West, School of Media, Art and Design
University of Westminster, Watford Road, Harrow
Middlesex HA1 3TP

Wednesday 20th February, 4pm – 5.15pm
Wells Street, room 106

Fran Bigman (University of Cambridge)
‘A Bit of Himself: British Male-authored Abortion Narratives from Waste (1907) to Alfie (1966)’

Thursday 7 March, 7pm
Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1
Price: £7.00 / £5.00 concessions (includes free glass of wine).

Does progress always have to mean expansion? Is culture dependent on increasing space, numbers and activity? The final Salon in the IMCC series on Cultures of Capitalism at the Whitechapel debates our cultural and political obsessions with growth. Speakers include Sarah Chaplin, Stephen Escritt and Allan Stoekl.

Sarah Chaplin is an architect, academic and urbanist. Formerly head of architecture at Kingston University and a professor specialising in Japan working in the field of visual and spatial culture, she now divides her time between writing and consultancy, and is currently working on the placemaking strategy for Battersea Power Station.

Stephen Escritt is a Director at Counterculture Partners. He has worked at the British Museum and the Whitechapel Gallery, where he was Director of Strategic Development. He is the author of two books on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century architecture and design, published by Phaidon Press. He has recently worked with Art on the Underground and Kent Architecture Centre.

Allan Stoekl is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University. Allan’s 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). Allan is currently working on a new book provisionally entitled Avatars of the Postsustainable City.

Book your ticket at: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/22/product_id/1538?session_id=13608477991e2790ead5092a4e07ee56485172feaf

The Political Unconscious of Architecture
February 28 2013, 6.30pm

UCL Urban Laboratory @ Bartlett School of Architecture
UCL Royal Ear Hospital, Ground Floor, Capper Street, London WC1E 6AP

An evening of presentation and discussion to celebrate the publication of a new paperback edition of The Political Unconscious of Architecture, edited by Nadir Lahiji. Contributors David Cunningham (IMCC, Westminster), Donald Kunze (Penn State), Nadir Lahiji (Pennsylvania), Jane Rendell (Bartlett), and Robin Wilson (Bartlett), along with respondents Camillo Boalo (DPU, UCL) and Douglas Spencer (AA), take up Fredric Jameson’s radical critique at the juncture of aesthetics and politics. All welcome!

Law and the Senses
School of Law, University of Westminster, April 18-19, 2013

What is Law’s relationship to senses? In a sense, Law, the anaesthetic par excellence, is constantly engaged in numbing the senses into commonsense; manipulating, channelling and controlling the sensible; inserting properties and forbidding contacts; dissimulating violence, regulating sounds and defining taste. However, senses are not static. Rather, they are shifting and elusive qualities, constantly reshuffled by socio-cultural and technological changes, always dislocating Law’s normativity towards new potentialities. In this other sense, Law emerges from the senses, and whereas senses are a constant arena of legal machinations, they are also Law’s constant blind spot and inescapable excess.

The conference ‘Law and the Senses’ proposes to reflect critically on how law deals with senses, how law senses, how law makes sense. We invite contributors to think, discuss and question the sound of law, the tactile encounter with its forms, its bitter/sweet taste, its pungent smell, its perspectival gaze. We encourage investigations of the sensing of law, the capacity for law to (make) sense, and the possibility for Law to sense differently. We welcome trans-disciplinary contributions, from legal, geographical, sociological, psychological, philosophical, political and cultural areas, as well as from the arts (exhibition and performance space is provided).

This conference seeks to interfere with the standard conference format. We wish to shake such an often taken-for-granted scaffolding, not to propose ‘better’ models, but rather to produce interferences, noise and turbulence, out of which we hope creative encounters would emerge. This does not mean getting rid of the rules and internal regulations of conferencing altogether, but instead opening a fuzzier space for the conference to unfold, by making such constraints less rigid. There will be given no time for presentations, though the duty to prevent them from becoming infinite will remain with the moderator. We invite presentations conceived as a tool for stimulating a debate, rather than unilateral talks addressed to a passive audience. Therefore we kindly ask to refrain from merely reading out papers and rather trying to perform them through your voice and body, handing out material, using powerpoint, notes, other sensory stimulations and any other format you prefer.

Please send your abstracts by the 15th of March 2013 to: nonliquetlaw@gmail.com

The conference inaugurates Non Liquet [The Westminster Online Working Papers], a new series of papers on law and the senses, aiming to critically reflect on law and the senses. The series encompasses five issues dedicated to each sense: taste, smell, hearing, touch and vision.

Organising team: Danilo Mandic, Caterina Nirta and Andrea Pavoni with The Westminster International Law & Theory Centre

As we have had a very impressive response from staff and students across the two departments, Wednesday’s joint seminar with the School of Law has been moved over the road to Little Titchfield Street. There’s plenty of space now so please feel free to come along. Full details below:

Wednesday 6th February, 4pm – 5.15pm
LITTLE TITCHFIELD STREET, ROOM 2.05c
Danny Nicol (Westminster School of Law)
Legitimacy and Globalised Law in Doctor Who

1. 6th February 2013, 4pm – 5.15pm, Room 106, 32-38 Wells Street, W1T 3UW.

Professor Danny Nicol, School of Law, University of Westminster
‘Legitimacy and Globalised Law in Dr Who’ (Joint seminar, with English Literature and Culture)

All Welcome. RSVP Chris Daley.

2. 12th February, 2013, 4pm – 5.30pm, Room 2.05a, 4 Little Titchfield Street

Dave Griffiths, C.E.O King CNUT Clothing
‘I fought the (fashion) law: F.C.U.K vs C.N.U.T’

3. 26th February 2013, 10am-12.00pm, Room 2.04 Riding House Street. NB Enter through 4 Little Titchfield Street W1W 7UW.

Professor Christian Armbruester, Freie Universität Berlin
‘Celebrity Rights to their Own Image – a Civil Law Perspective’

All Welcome: RSVP Chris Ellins (C.J.Ellins@westminster.ac.uk)

4. 5th March 2013, 5pm – 6.30pm, Room 2.05a, 4 Little Titchfield Street, W1W 7UW

Daniel Geey, Solicitor Field Fisher Waterhouse, Editor ‘On the Ball’
‘Contemporary Issues in Sports Broadcasting’

Any queries or for more information on the Series please contact Guy Osborn (G.Osborn@westminster.ac.uk). If you are not a member of staff or student at the University you are welcome to attend but please contact Guy Osborn to confirm.

Confirmed Participants:
Franko B, artist; Steve Beresford, Performer and Musician, University of Westminster; Mel Brimfield, artist; Gavin Butt, Goldsmith College; Jon Cairns, Central St Martins; Maria Chatzichristodoulou, curator and performer, University of Hull; Tania Chen, Musician; Rob la Frenais, Curator The Arts Catalyst; Richard Layzell, artist, Middlesex University; Stewart Lee, writer and performer; Kira O’Reilly, artist, University of Hull; Marquard Smith, University of Westminster; Margherita Sprio, University of Westminster; Gary Stevens, artist; Tracey Warr, writer and curator, Oxford Brookes University; Silvia Ziranek, artist.

Exhibiting Performance Conference, 1-3 March 2013
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London, W1B 2UW

The Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) is convening Exhibiting Performance, a three-day event considering contemporary issues central to the display of performanceart. Following on from the Exhibiting Photography (2011) and Exhibiting Video (2012) International Conferences, this event will bring together notable artists, curators and writers, and provide a forum for a number of inter-related questions: On what terms has the rise of Performance in contemporary arts taken place? How do our museums and galleries disseminate and exhibit Performance? How does the live act of Performance inform questions around the body and the audience? How is Performance documented, archived and transacted? How does technology contribute to the development of Performance?

The conference will be framed by the exhibition of work by artists and writers responding to a live performance by Philip Lee and Cally Trench, Do you remember it – or weren’t you there? at London Gallery West, and Indeterminacy, a John Cage performance by Stewart Lee, Tania Chen and Steve Beresford.

There will be four half-day themes:

Curating: With Tate Modern opening the Tanks for performance events and Marina Abramovic’s major exhibition at New York’s MoMA in 2010, is performance art now mainstream, and on what terms? How do museums and galleries understand performance art?

Dissemination and Documentation: How is performance documented ? If you missed the performance is that it? What value does an art work in a different medium which gives a memory of a performance have?

The Body and Audiences: What is the role of the body in performance today ? Why do so many performance artists perform naked ? Is the naked body a sign of authenticity or does the taboo distract from meaning ? How is the relationship between artist and audience different from or similar to other areas of art?

Performance and Technology: How does technology mediate performance ? What are the ontologies of networked, mediated and recorded performance practices ? How is videoperformance ‘live’? How do different technologies of camera (webcam, surveillance, etc) and screens (CRT, flat, projection, mobile phone, computer, etc) change our concept of performance?

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION
Please send a 200-word abstract by 11 February, 2013. Successful applicants will be notified by 15 February, 2013. They must include the presenter’s name, affiliation, email and postal address, together with the paper’s title. Please send abstracts to Amanda Wheeler A.Wheeler@westminster.ac.uk

PROGRAMME AND REGISTRATION
This conference will take place from 4.00pm on Friday 1 March to Sunday 3 March 2013. The fee for registration will be:
Full conference: Standard rate £85. One day rate £50
Full conference: Student rate £40. One day rate £30.
Performance only: £10
This covers all conference documentation, refreshments, receptions and administration costs. Registration will open at the begining of February 2013.

EXHIBITION:
Do you remember it – or weren’t you there?
Philip Lee and Cally Trench
31 January 2013 – 3 March 2013
London Gallery West, School of Media, Art and Design
University of Westminster, Watford Road, Harrow
Middlesex HA1 3TP

PERFORMANCE
Indeterminacy, a John Cage performance
Sunday 3 March 2013, 6.30pm
Stewart Lee, Tania Chen and Steve Beresford
University of Westminster
309 Regent Street
London W1R 8AL

Here is the list of the next series of English Literature and Culture research seminars taking place this semester. All welcome.

Seminars are fortnightly on Wednesday afternoons, from 4pm to around 5.30pm, and will be held in room 106 in the University’s Wells Street building.

Wednesday 6th February, 4.00pm – 5.15pm (Joint seminar with Westminster School of Law)
Danny Nicol (Westminster School of Law)
‘Legitimacy and Globalised Law in Doctor Who’

Wednesday 20th February, 4.00pm – 5.15pm
Fran Bigman (University of Cambridge)
‘A Bit of Himself: British Male-authored Abortion Narratives from Waste (1907) to Alfie (1966)’

Wednesday 6th March, 4.00pm – 5.15pm
Allan Stoekl (Penn State University / IMCC)
‘Le Corbusier and the Challenge of a Pascalian Technocracy’

Wednesday 20th March, 4.00pm – 5.15pm
Matthew Charles (University of Westminster)
‘Brecht as Educator’

Our friends in the Art, Globalization, and Interculturality research group in the Department of Art History, University of Barcelona, are pleased to announce a ‘call for papers’ for their upcoming international conference entitled ‘Critical Cartography of Art and Visuality in the Global Age’. Please see further details below.

1st INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Critical Cartography of Art and Visuality in the Global Age.

April 26-27, 2013, Barcelona, SPAIN

AULA MAGNA. Department of Art History, University of Barcelona (UB)
AUDITORIUM. Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA)

The First International Conference Critical Cartography of Art and Visuality in the Global Age aims to engage with the complexities of the new status of art and visuality in contemporary art practice in the context of “globalization”. Focusing on the paradigms of identity, alterity, memory, locality and interculturality, as well as on new ways of understanding the political, ecological, technological, economical and scientific dimensions of the current age, the conference seeks to locate the topos from which each of these paradigms forges links between theoretical concepts and innovative work methodologies.

Scholars, artists, and research students working in the field of global art are invited to submit proposals for one of the following panel themes:

1. Media Art Documentation. New Tools for the Humanities.
Convenor: Carles Guerra, Keynote: Oliver Grau

2. The Utopian Globalists
Convenor: Anna Maria Guasch, Keynote: Jonathan Harris

3. Labor, Woman and Politics
Convenor: Juan Vicente Aliaga, Keynote: Angela Dimitrakaki

4. Art and the Post-Natural Condition
Convenor: Joaquín Barriendos Rodríguez, Keynote: T.J. Demos

Each panel will be comprised of four speakers, each allocated 20 minutes for their presentation, with the convenor encouraging debate among the presenters.

All abstract submissions (even if not selected for a panel presentation) will be considered for the publication Critical Cartography of Art and Visuality in the Global Age. New Methodologies, Concepts, and Analytic Scopes, an edited collection resulting from the conference to be published by the University of Barcelona.

A completed application form including a 300 word abstract and a brief CV should be submitted to Nasheli Jiménez del Val at artglobalage@gmail.com by February 18, 2013. Authors will be notified of acceptance for the panel, the publication, or both, by March 8, 2013.

http://artglobalizationinterculturality.com/activities/conferences/conference-2013/

30 January 2013 in room MG14 Marylebone Campus, Marylebone Road

Our friends in Westminster’s School of Architecture and the Built Environment are hosting an event next week entitled ‘What is the role of culture in the regeneration of the areas around the Olympic Park?’ The event draws together practitioners and academics from a variety of professional backgrounds who will share their experiences and perspectives of cultural projects in the areas around the Olympic Park.

6.10 Introduction – Chair: Marion Roberts – Professor of Urban Design – University of Westminster

6.20 Dr Nancy Stevenson – Programme Leader: Tourism and Events – The Cultural Olympiad and cultural legacy

6.35 Ceryl Evans – Head of Museums and Culture, London Borough of Hackney – Mapping the Change

6.50 Dr Isaac Marrero Guillamón – Post Doctoral Researcher, Birkbeck – Critical art and the Olympic State of Exception

7.05 Adriana Marques – Principal Advisor for Arts and Culture, London Legacy Development Corporation – Culture at the heart of the Olympic Legacy

7.20 Liza Fior – Partner, Muf Architecture/Art – Future project and proposals

7.35 Questions and Discussion

Contact Details: For further details and to book please follow this link
http://culturalolympicpark.eventbrite.com

Eyal Weizman, The Roundabout Revolution

January 29th 2013, 7pm
Department of Architecture, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

Eyal Weizman, architect, curator and author of The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza will speak at the first of a 6 part lecture series: ‘Critical Humanitarianism’.  Eyal Weizman is Professor of Visual Cultures and director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. Since 2011 he also directs the European Research Council funded project, Forensic Architecture, on the place of architecture in international humanitarian law. He is a founding member of the architectural collective DAAR in Beit Sahour/Palestine.

Religious tension, diminishing resources, city dwelling and environmental catastrophes continue to create vulnerable regions throughout the world.  The necessity for architects to address humanitarian and environmental issues in their practice is increasing.  Do architects have the means to address these issues through their work?  Or are we powerless to act?  Through a series of 6 talks addressing ‘Critical Humanitarianism’ by Architects volunteering for Charities or working with NGOs in the Development Sector we aim to raise some of the difficult ethical and political questions about Humanitarian work and it’s relation to power.

Reading Group at Carroll / Fletcher Gallery
Chapter 2 | Theory from the South

February 13^th 2013,7.30pm
Carroll / Fletcher, 56-57 Eastcastle Street, London W1W 8EQ

Chapter 2 continues Carroll / Fletcher’s series of participatory discussions that use relevant, accessible texts to consider pertinent issues of our times. In this session, the starting point will be the first chapter of Theory From The South. Or, How Euro-America Is Evolving Toward Africa by Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, with particular attention on pages one through nineteen. With this text, the Camaroff’s attempt to recontextualize global relations, and challenge our perceptions about ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ nations.

The discussion will be initiated by Lara Pawson and David Dibosa. Lara Pawson is a writer and journalist who has just completed her first book, a work of literary non-fiction about Angola’s recent history. She has held writing fellowships at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and Wolfson College, Cambridge, and worked for the BBC World Service in London and as a correspondent in Mali, Ivory Coast and Angola. Dr. David Dibosa is co-author of Post-Critical Museology: Theory and Practice in the Art Museum (Routledge, 2012). He is Joint Course Director for MA Art Theory and MA Curating at Chelsea College of Art and Design. The conversation will be open to the audience and their contributions welcome.

Download Theory from the South here

Further suggested reading includes, the text in its entirety (pages one through forty-nine); Ato Quayson’s ‘Coevalness, Recursivity and the Feet of Lionel Messi’ (found here); and Achille Mbembe’s ‘Theory from the Antipodes. Notes on Jeans & John Comaroff’s Theory from the South‘ (found here).

Booking essential as places are limited: carrollfletcher.eventbrite.co.uk

Refreshments will be provided

t +44 (0)20 7323 6111
e info@carrollfletcher.com
www.carrollfletcher.com

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/

Listen this Saturday 1^st December at 3.30pm to our own Anne Witchard on the Lucky Cat show on Resonance FM, hosted by Zoe Baxter. Anne will be talking about her latest book Lao She in London (Hong Kong University Press 2012) which details the time Chinese writer Lao She spent in London in the 1920s. The book reveals Lao She’s encounter with British high modernism and literature from Dickens to Conrad to Joyce as well as his tiem spent in the notorious and much sensationalised East End Chinatown of Limehouse.

If you don’t happen to be in central London, you can listen online at: Resonance 104.4FM.

Classifying Films: The British Board of Film Classification in 2012

December 5^th 2012, 3.00pm
Room 3.07, University of Westminster, Little Titchfield Street, London

Our friends and colleagues in the Centre for the Study of Law, Society and Popular Culture are pleased to announce the next instalment of the Entertainment Law: Theory Meets Practice series, which will be a guest lecture given by Lucy Brett, Head of Education and an Examiner at the British Board of Film Classification. The talk will involve the viewing of clips from key films from the BBFC’s archive! All are welcome.

The BBFC celebrates its centenary this year, and you might also be interested in the current film series and exhibition at the British Film Institute, Uncut, and also the new book Behind the Scenes at the BBFC, to which two members of the Law School at Westminster have contributed.

Wednesday 28^th November, 4.00pm – 5.30pm
Room 106, Wells Street, University of Westminster, London W1T

Martin Eve (University of Sussex)
‘Opening children’s eyes’: Overloaded Forms and the Didactic Function

Since Pynchon, the postmodern encyclopaedic form has been recognised as possessing an ethical core. Indeed, Gravity’s Rainbow was only briefly treated solely as a structure of interminable play and quickly found its place, especially in light of Pynchon’s other novels, as a politicised work focusing on the military-industrial complex and contemporary America. It can equally be asserted, though, that the “ethical turn” in literary studies is sited at a specific, historicized moment and is not without its own problems: when we say “ethical”, rather than “moralising”, are we, in fact, merely refusing to recognise the relativity and transitivity of our own moral strictures? To begin to formulate a less innocent, more experienced, new terminology for this mode, this paper will look at two overloaded works, Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. Through an analysis of these immense, torrential novels, the paper will unearth their inherent didactic function, examine the way in which they conscript our intellectual capital to pre-dispose us towards their ethics and draw out the place of teaching and learning, through the representation of the university and academia.