A plug for the Higher Education & Theory Reading Group that’s just been set up by and for staff and postgraduate students at Westminster. The first Organizing Meeting  will take place on Wednesday October 2, 2013, from 1:00pm to 2:00pm , in room 359 in 309 Regent Street

This is a cross-faculty reading group on the theory of education, open to all staff and research students at the University of Westminster. The intention is to foster an increased awareness of the contributions of major critical thinkers to pedagogic debate and practice, supplementing the sociological, psychological, and empirical focus of current educational discourse with a broader transdisciplinary emphasis on the importance of philosophical and historical contributions to educational theory. The idea is that a productive critical perspective will be opened up on contemporary pedagogical practice through such theoretical and historical viewpoints, one that will also allow researchers to make connections between their research and their own practice as teachers by re-reading theoretical texts pedagogically.  There will be a minimum of 3 reading groups per year. The group will initially meet once a term, with the possibility of meeting more frequently if time and interest permit.

The starting text for the autumn term will be Jean-Francois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Future texts will be decided by the group. The first 5 chapters of the Lyotard text are online here. The full scanned version is here.  Pages 47-53 in particular look at higher education.

See also the HERC Community blog webpage: http://hercwestminster.wordpress.com/

To RSVP or register your interest, please email: Steven Cranfield, cranfis@westminster.ac.uk or Matthew Charles, M.Charles1@westminster.ac.uk

Whitechapel Gallery Salon: The Future of Theory
Thursday 26 September, 7pm – 9pm

Join Curator Kirsty Ogg, artist Uriel Orlow and Head of Central Saint Martins Jeremy Till for the first in a series of debates on the future of ‘theory’ in art and design education.

Organised with the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, Westminster and University for the Creative Arts.

For more details, click here.

A new issue of the journal New Formations is out co-edited by the IMCC’s Sas Mays. Entitled ‘Materialities of Text: From the Codex to the Net’, the collection came out of an online conference hosted by the Institute’s ‘Archiving Cultures’ affiliate. Further information on the issue is available here. You can also download a copy of Sas’s introduction to the issue, co-authored with Nick Thoburn, for free at: http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/newformations/pdfs/nf78 intro.pdf

See: http://www.lanfrancoaceti.com/2013/09/visions-of-contemporary-cuts/

A new article by David Cunningham and Alex Warwick has just appeared in the most excellent journal CITY, vol. 13, no. 4: ‘Unnoticed Apocalypse: The Science Fiction Politics of Urban Crisis’. The essay ranges over a number of contemporary texts from The Coming Insurrection to Rem Koolhaas’ Junkspace to the film District 9.

The nice people at Taylor & Francis Press are offering the first 50 people to make use of it free access to an eprint version from the following link: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/AqbgvrWCkCSXg8XZEwgd/full

Four super current and recent MA Visual Culture students have established a new curatorial collective, 4fold , and their first public event is taking place tonight: a film screening beginning at 8pm. The programme will include a selection of artists’ films, documentaries, and archival material that explores social housing, public interaction and surveillance. It’ll takes place at Princess River, Cody Dock (11c South Crescent, London E16 4TL – map here), which is only five minutes walk from Star Lane Station (new DLR branch).

Both 4fold and Cody Dock really need your support, please feel free to attend. In this weather, it’ll be a fantastic evening for sure!

Alexa Wright’s series A View from the Inside is the featured portfolio on Photo Monitor this month: http://www.photomonitor.co.uk/ – click on the image to get to the portfolio template.

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
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.

The past two decades have witnessed a large increase in academic interest in all visual phenomena, including those strictly visual – from painting and film to experimental video and multimedia installations – as well as all the forms of applied arts: graphic and industrial design, fashion and advertising. In many countries, this interest in visual practice is accompanied by the interest in visual theories, primarily in the new discipline of visual studies that keep acquiring academic legitimacy at universities worldwide.

Visual studies have emerged as a result of parallel expansion that occurred respectively in the fields of art history and film studies, whose radical members have converged particular theories of still and moving images, towards an integral science of images. After W.J.T. Mitchell and Gottfried Boehm have sanctioned the pictorial turn as the basic interest of hyper-mediatized society, it became clear that various visual phenomena demand a much wider theoretical platform, one which would take into consideration the definitive erasure of borders between high and low art, between elite and popular culture, as well as between creators and consumers of visual messages.

For the first time in history, the users of images became the producers of images, within an unrestrained circular process, wherein images yield new insights, while insights demand their instantaneous pictorial foundation. The development and expansion of telecommunication technologies have transformed the traditionally understood technical images into a new communication code that is accessible to everyone. However, does this accessibility simultaneously presume that the new communication code is intelligible to everyone using it? Do we really know what are the images telling us, what do they want from us or what is it that we want from them? Do we know in which manner the most recent researches in technosciences prove, by the way of visualization, their radical tenets on biocybernetic complex systems, and how is the notion of image inscribed into the performative bodies of art and fashion today?

The International Scientific Conference Visual Studies as Academic Discipline aims to gather a wide circle of university oriented theorists, so that they can jointly consider the ways in which they deliberate and teach about images, primarily about their overlapping meanings, that arise through the intermedia networking of various visual practices, as well as through the transdisciplinary analyses of contemporary theories. This symposium wishes to examine the theoretical legitimacy of a wide field of visual representations: art, film, photography, design, fashion and performance. It also wishes to consider the disciplinary status of actual visual studies as an (established) scientific paradigm.

We invite all the concerned colleagues to submit their presentations on one of the proposed subjects:

1. The theoretical and disciplinary status of visual studies – two decades after the pictorial turn
2. Visual studies as a “radical” version of art history or a critical detour?
3. The epistemological aspects of visual studies in university curricula
4. The potentials of the applied science of images: interactions between art, film, design, fashion and performance
5. “Non-disciplinarity” as an approach to the multimedia image of the world
6. Fashion studies today: from the theory of fashion to the design of body

Presentations are limited to 20 minutes. In order to participate at the Conference, please send abstract of your paper (150 words) together with short CV to email: purgar@vizualni-studiji.com and zarko.paic@zg.t-com.hr until 21st of July 2013. The scientific board will notify you of the status of your proposal until 25th of July 2013.

Keynote speaker:

W.J.T. Mitchell, University of Chicago, USA

Plenary speakers:

Michele Cometa, University of Palermo, Italy
Marquard Smith, University of Westminster, London, GB

Members of the workgroup Visual Culture in Europe:

Nina Lager Vestberg, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
Øyvind Vågnes, The Bergen Center for Visual Culture, Norway
Joaquín Barriendos, Columbia University, New York, USA
Ana Maria Guasch, University of Barcelona, Spain
Safet Ahmeti, Center for Visual Studies, Skopje, Macedonia
Max Liljefors, Lund University, Sweden
Almira Ousmanova, European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania

Scientific and organisational board:

Žarko Paić, PhD, Associate Professor, Faculty of Textile Technology, University of Zagreb
Krešimir Purgar, PhD, Center for Visual Studies, Zagreb
Sandra Bischof, PhD, Dean of Faculty of Textile Technology, University of Zagreb
Katarina Nina Simončič, PhD, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Textile Technology, University of Zagreb
Nikola Petković, PhD, Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka
Leonida Kovač, PhD, Assistant Professor, Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb
Suzana Marjanić, PhD, Senior Research Associate, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore, Zagreb
Goran Sergej Pristaš, Associate Professor, Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb
Silva Kalčić, Lecturer, Faculty of Textile Technology, University of Zagreb
Petra Krpan, MSc, Faculty of Textile Technology, University of Zagreb
Laura Potrović, MSc, Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb
Nikola Devčić, Director of the Association “White Wave”, Zagreb

Organizers:

Center for Visual Studies, Zagreb; Tvrđa – Magazine for theory, culture and visual arts; Croatian Writers’ Society; Faculty of Textile Technology, University of Zagreb; Association “White Wave”, Zagreb

The Conference will take place at the Faculty of Textile Technology in Zagreb, from 7th to 9th November 2013. Details will be regularly updated on the web site www.visual-studies.com.

The Conference is organized within the activities of the workgroup Visual Culture in Europe, and is the fourth such event, following previous ones held in London (2010), Barcelona (2011) and Trondheim (2012).

The Conference Visual Studies as Academic Discipline is endorsed by The International Association for Visual Culture.

Memory and Restitution
July 5-6 2013, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B

Conference website at: http://www.memoryandrestitution.co.uk/

Keynotes:
Professor Stef Craps, University of Ghent
Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge, University of East Anglia
Professor Anna Reading, King’s College London

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. Having conceptualised memorative processes thus, we seek to investigate the complex relationship between memory and restitution in the aftermath of both human and natural destruction.

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. We ask how memorial discourses contribute to official and unofficial forms of justice through their imbrication with the diverse institutions of the public sphere.  We analyse the ways in which memory may be shaped by the medium of representation and redress, asking whether different types of disaster (environmental, genocidal, terrorist) demand disparate modes of restitution and/or commemoration and articulation.

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

Co-sponsored by the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture

For more info, please contact: memoryandrestitution@gmail.com

ARCHIVING CHINA IN BRITAIN: MYTHS AND REALITIES #6
DIASPORIC TRANSLATIONS

Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, University of Westminster
Co-hosted with the Contemporary China Centre

Friday 24 May 9.30am–5.30pm, The Cayley Room, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Entrance is free but strictly limited so it is essential to book your place by emailing Anne Witchard: anne@translatingchina.info

9.30AM – Coffee served in Room UG05

10.00AM – ‘The work of Ming-Ai (London) Institute 院 徽 涵 意 and their historical project on British Chinese history’

Chungwen Li and Aubrey Ko will be talking about Ming-Ai, set up in 1993 to promote social, cultural, educational and economic exchanges among the peoples of Hong Kong, China and Britain, http://www.ming-ai.org.uk

10.30AM – ‘On Not Speaking Chinese – The Hidden Lives of the Chinese in the Caribbean’

Chrys Chijiutomi, Associate Research Assistant for ‘China in Britain: Myths and Realities’ # 6, currently taking the MA, Culture Diaspora Ethnicity at Birkbeck College, University of London.

This paper will examine the historical and contemporary presence of Chinese communities in the Caribbean and consider what ‘Chineseness’ means in an age of globalisation and diaspora, looking at the socio-cultural impact and influences of Chinese Caribbean communities on artforms such as music (e.g. reggae), literature, theatre, dance, food cultures and visual art.

11.00AM – Morning Coffee served in Room UG05

11.15AM – ‘China in Britain: China in the Caribbean’

Dr. Judith Misrahi-Barak (Paul-Valéry University Montpellier III, France).

11.45AM – Diasporic Migrations panel chaired by Dr. Diana Yeh

12.00PM – ‘How Jim was Shanghaied: 1930s Shanghai and its lasting influence on the writing of JG Ballard’

Duncan Hewitt (New York University in Shanghai)

The unique environment of the Shanghai of the 1930s and ‘40s has exerted a lasting influence on the world of English literature through its impact on the distinctive vision of the writer JG Ballard. This paper looks at how Shanghai’s rampant consumerism, highly developed media culture and constant threat of violence influenced not only those of Ballard’s works which deal explicitly with his Shanghai childhood, but also the author’s writing and worldview throughout his career. It’s something Ballard initially denied, but came to acknowledge in his later years – though it’s a connection which has yet to be embraced by the Shanghai authorities.

12:45PM – ‘East West Connectivities in Two Dances: Red Detachment of Women (1964) and The Nightingale (1981)’

Dr. Geraldine Morris (Roehampton University)

The paper examines the notion of identity by reference to two dance works created in contrasting nations, the Peoples Republic of China and the United Kingdom, and considers the extent to which an aesthetic object can be a representation of a country’s culture. Using a multidisciplinary approach, Morris will examine the ways in which opposing ideologies merge in these works producing an East/West fusion. Red Detachment of Women (1964), created by a collaborative team of three, Li Chengxiang, Jiang Zuhui and Wang Xixian, was made in the years leading up to the Cultural Revolution. It was conceived as a patriotic, anti-bourgeois work, derived entirely from Chinese values, and yet is suffused with Western ideals and imagery. The Nightingale (1981) choreographed by Frederick Ashton, the founder choreographer of the Royal Ballet, is a hybrid work, comprising dance and song mixing East and West but perceived as Western. Dances are identified mainly through their choreography, so a dance that embodies a Western style of movement can only ever be partially Eastern, whatever the narrative content. In Red Detachment of Women, while the story, sets and costume are evidently Chinese, the movement and form is balletic and embraces a Western aesthetic. In contrast, The Nightingale borrows from Chinese regional dance but is framed by British balletic culture. The paper demonstrates that by teasing out the complexities of a dance work, the perception of its cultural identity can be both disturbed and challenged.

1.15PM – Buffet Lunch in Room UG05

2:15PM – ‘Only Connect: New Media and Chinese Overseas from the Age of the Telegraph to that of the Internet’

Jeffrey Wasserstrom (Chancellor’s Professor of History at University of California, Irvine)

This presentation will look at comparisons and contrasts between the ways that different technologies of communication have fascinated and been used by Chinese to keep in touch with one another and learn about the world from the 1870s through the present. Points of departure will include globetrotter Li Gui’s accounts of telegraphy in his book about his 1876 trips around the world; the role that circular telegraphs played in political struggles of the late 1800s and early 1900s; the significance of the then-very-new form of email in spreading word of the Tian’anmen rising among Chinese studying in the West; and the growing importance of blogs, microblogs, online only journals, and other digital forms in connecting people within and beyond China.  

3:00PM – ‘Cosmopolitans Four Ways: Artists of Hong Kong’s Visual Diaspora’.

Pamela Kember is an Independent Art Historian, Curator, and a Director on the Board of the Asia Art Archive Hong Kong.

The ‘cosmopolitan nomad’ articulates the state of existence of a number of migrant Chinese artists originally from Hong Kong who seem to inhabit a transnational existence, in the sense of constantly crossing borders, cultures and communities, internationally. This paper will examine the creativity of four such émigré Hong Kong artists, John Young (AUS) Paul Chan (USA) Suki Chan, (UK) and Simon Leung (USA) and focuses on specific diasporic subjectivites that inform their respective practices to date. The paper will examine the relationship between the diversity of their practices whilst dealing with specific frames of reference: concepts of memory, belonging and displacement.

3:30PM – ‘Transcultural Curating – Global perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Art’

Rachel Marsden is Research Curator (part-time) for Chinese Arts Centre (Manchester, UK) and Coordinator (part-time) for the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) (Birmingham, UK and China).

4:00PM – Afternoon Tea in Room UG05

4.15PM – ‘The Fu Manchu Complex’

Daniel York will discuss his work as a founding member of the British East Asian Artists’ group who have pressured the UK theatre industry to offer more opportunities to East Asian theatre artists. As a result of this, the Arts Council, Equity & SOLT/TMA recently sponsored an event at the Young Vic Theatre attended by 200 people to raise awareness of East Asian theatre practitioners, which Daniel helped organise as a member of the event steering committee.

The Museum of Contemporary Cuts (MoCC) is developing a research project, under the directorship of Lanfranco Aceti, to assess and map the impact of the arts funding reductions in several European Countries and North America, and would like to invite individuals and funded organizations to contribute their data.

This is a form that will provide us with the data regarding art organizations that have closed as a consequence of the current economic crisis or that have had their funding cut.

The research project will analyze the impact of the current economic crisis on the arts throughout the following countries (Austria, Canada, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom and United States) comparing official data with data provided on each specific territory.
The project aims to create a repository of data that can be accessed and poured through to gain a clear impression of the affected organizations and the current state of the arts from 2007 to present.

MoCC will create, using the information gathered, a series of data visualizations, as well as art commissions, curatorial projects, exhibitions, research analyses and publications. It will promote initiatives that will be showcased and presented at international events and biennials.

At the end of 2012, one such organization effected, was the NIMk. The activities of the Netherlands Media Art Institute ceased as of 31 December, 2012.

To assist us with this task, we are asking individuals and arts organizations to send us the following information on the art organizations that have closed or have received funding cuts in the period 2007 – present.

You can provide this information by using our online web form available at this link: http://museumofcontemporarycuts.org/deadly-cuts-form/

Also, we would like to display, online, the Letter of Funding Cuts that art institutions received during the period 2007 – present.

These Letter of Funding Cuts can be scanned at 300dpi resolution and emailed to: museumofcontemporarycuts@gmail.com or posted, as a physical copy to be archived by MoCC.

Postal address: Ref. Letter of Funding Cuts To: Lanfranco Aceti, MoCC Director, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University, Orhanli/Tuzla, 34956 Istanbul, Turkey

Letters should be sent ideally by December 31, 2013 – but we will continue to accept them throughout the life of the Museum of Contemporary Cuts.

Enquires about this particular project, collaborations for exhibitions and research with MoCC should be sent to: info@museumofcontemporarycuts.org

To stay informed please subscribe to our newsletters: http://www.lanfrancoaceti.com/newsletters

Follow MoCC on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MuseumOfContemporaryCuts

Follow MoCC on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MoCC_2012

We acknowledge the support of Operational and Curatorial Research (OCR), International Association for Visual Culture, Kasa Gallery, Sabanci University, Chelsea College, Westminster University and Goldsmiths College.

Image credit: Jonathan Munro, Vacant, 2013. Digital image.

Our Visiting Professor Allan Stoekl’s review of Adrian Parr’s book The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics is currently up as a freebie on the Radical Philosophy site. Check it out here: http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/web/a-differing-shade-of-green

We Have Come to Shack Up with You is a new art project by Lanfranco Aceti.

Lanfranco Aceti Inc. sponsors 10 return train trips from London to Wendover, to the country home of the current Prime Minister. In the spirit of sacrifice and in order to share the costs of the current debt, perhaps the Prime Minister may consider providing accommodation in the extra number of rooms of his country home.

This rambling performance that sees an idyllic journey in the English countryside as well as a walk up to the country house of the PM will provide an artistic and aesthetic moment to reflect on the philosophical implications of a growing divide between the haves and have nots, between petty crimes by the lower classes heavily punished and global criminal activities by the higher classes that go unpunished.

On the 1st April, 2013 (as a bad April Fools’ joke) a set of new stringent changes have been made to the United Kingdom’s welfare system. One of the most controversial changes by the current government is to penalize those living in social housing; the disadvantaged and out of work. Find out more about the bedroom tax.

When: 13th April 2013
Time: 10am – 5pm
Where: Leaving from London Marylebone to Wendover

To apply for this trip and be one of the lucky 10 to participate in the artwork please get in touch with the Museum of Contemporary Cuts by accessing the link to the form and provide your name, email, telephone number and a short text explaining the reason why you should join the trip.

Additional to the cost of train travel the 10 attendees will receive lunch and a pint in one of the local pubs.
If you have any queries about this event, please contact Jonathan Munro and Ozden Sahin:
info@museumofcontemporarycuts.org

About Chequers the residency of the current Prime Minister

Chequers is the official country home of the Prime Minister of the UK. It is an Elizabethan mansion in the Chiltern hills near Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire, and was given to the nation by Lord Lee of Fareham under the Chequers Estate Act 1917, which came into effect in 1921. Its estate contains about 500 ha/1235 acres of farmlands and woods.

We Have Come to Shack Up with You is realized by Lanfranco Aceti Inc. with the collaboration of MoCC (Museum of Contemporary Cuts).

Artworks by Lanfranco Aceti.
Senior Curators: Joasia Krysa and Marquard Smith.
Curators: Jonathan Munro and Ozden Sahin

The International Association for Visual Culture is thrilled to be collaborating with the Museum of Contemporary Cuts (http://museumofcontemporarycuts.org/) and Lanfranco Aceti (http://www.lanfrancoaceti.com/) on ‘The Cost of Living’. The event will be taking place at the Royal College of Art, London, on 11th April at 6, and contributors include Lanfranco Aceti, Johnny Golding, Marquard Smith, Julian Stallabrass, and Tom Corby (in absentia).

The latest in a series of interviews with major figures in contemporary architecture and architectural theory, to be found in Vol 2, no. 4 of ARCHITECTURE_MEDIA_POLITICS_SOCIETY, is now available on-line.

Michael Sorkin, ‘Driving on the Left: A View of the Street, the City and Architecture’

Sardonic, cutting, insightful, provocative: Michael Sorkin is one of today’s most radical architectural commentators with a staunch leaning to the political left and a literary bent for framing painful truths in ironic, and sometimes hilarious, verse. He is a Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the City College of New York. He is also Chair of Terreform, Center for Advanced Urban Research. He was the architecture critic of the Village Voice for ten years and has recently been appointed as a Visiting Professor in Architecture at Westminster.

Read it at: http://architecturemps.com/