Usurp + Disinformation – सूर्य किरण – [Promo]*

Another fine video from the Institute’s AHRC Research Fellow Joe Banks (Disinformation):

Film copyright © Joe Banks & Poulomi Desai 31 Oct 2011
Headphones or external loudspeakers essential

The Canadian psychologist Albert Bregman’s theory of Auditory Scene Analysis describes how the human mind is able to identify, focus on, isolate and extract streams of actually or potentially meaningful sound information, which it recognises as emanating from discreet sources, using analysis of what amounts to the musical content of specific “melodic streams” within environmental noise. In terms of evolutionary biology, the theory suggests that our capacity for appreciating music may have evolved at least in part as a by-product of the mechanism that enables us to identify sound-streams that come from, say, a distant river, particular types of bird-song, or the call of a potentially hostile predator etc; and in human communications this faculty is most obviously in evidence as a contributory factor in enabling us to perceive individual speakers in crowded social environments (the Cocktail Party Effect). In terms of everyday experience, the isolation of such streams may seem deceptively simple, but in information theoretic and signal processing terms, the level of computational power required to extract such invariants* from the distorting influences of complex and rapidly-changing real-world sound environments still challenges engineers and computer scientists. Problems associated with extracting invariants from noisy environments are of particular relevance to air traffic control, military fighter and helicopter communications and battle management systems. Generalities aside, the soundtrack used in the Disinformation + Usurp “Sun Rays” film is a direct recording of the real sound-ambience of the film’s location, “composed” using sharp graphic-equalisation only, to reproduce the subjective experience of the melodic streams that were perceived in the extraordinarily atmospheric ambience of that underground space (and, totally coincidentally, the title of this film, which is taken from the footage itself, is also the name of the Indian Air Force military aerobatics demonstration team).

Filmed in New Delhi, Oct 2011. (J. Banks, IMCC Westminster, 1st Nov 2011).

*The term “invariant” was coined by the American psychologist JJ Gibson

At the Workface: A Talk by Fred Lonidier, Tues 13 December

At the Workface: A Talk by Fred Lonidier
Tuesday 13 December 2011, 3.30-5.30pm
Fifth Floor, 32-38 Wells Street, University of Westminster, London W1T

Seminar: new arts and trade unions partnerships
Proposals for a national documentation project and AHRC research network focused on promoting new creative synergies and campaign strategies connecting the unions, social networking groups, NGOs, and arts sectors.

Fred Lonidier is one of the leading pioneers from the late 1960s onwards, of the arts and trade union movement in the USA. He studied at Yuba College and San Francisco State (graduate work in sociology and photography), and later joined the University of California at San Diego Faculty in 1972.  His work continues to deal with the possibilities of photography applied to trade union campaigns for social justice, labor history, and social change. He has also been the guiding energy behind the pioneer US Trade Union sponsored Labor Link TV which cablecasts on three channels in San Diego County. His work has recently focused on workers rights and cross-border labor struggles and solidarity between U.S. and Mexican workers.

Admission is free, but please book a place in advance from Dr Stefan Szczelkun: szczels@wmin.ac.uk

Coordinated by Littoral Arts Trust in association with Critical Network, Strategies for Free Education, and the IMCC, University of Westminster.

Usurp + Disinformation – Neurogenesis + सूकिर+ Jean Genet

SCREAM HOWL SPEAK!
Kusum Normoyle, Alan Tomlinson, Steve Beresford + Disinformation
Live at Usurp, Tues 8 Nov 2011, 7pm sharp
Usurp Gallery, 140 Vaughan Road, London HA1 4EB

What is the connection between the works of French burglar and prostitute Jean Genet and of the 19th century Swiss crystallographer Louis Albert Necker? As an articulation of Jean Paul Sartre’s discourse on Genet’s embodiment of “the negative”, Disinformation remixes audio samples from the final interview with one of modern France’s most notorious writers, exploring perceptual ambiguities which link experiences of auditory and visual illusions.

Alan Tomlinson is a trombonist “who manages to be simultaneously the best & the funniest you have ever seen”. Alan was a long time member of Barry Guy’s London Jazz Composers Orchestra, has his own trio with Dave Tucker and Phil Marks, a trio in Berlin, and a duo with Romanian poet Virgil Mihaiu. Recent solos have been with a glass trombone, accompanying a fish & chip van and in the River Seven.

Kusum Normoyle works with extended vocal technique and noise for both performance and installation. Central to her practice is the idea of public space, intervention, and the displacement of normal expectations of the female body and voice, performing brief high-intensity vocal incursions which are extremely physical, dragging the audience into a hard, fast displays of screaming, amplification and feedback.

Internationally known as a superb free improviser on piano and electronics, Steve Beresford also composes scores for feature films and numerous TV shows and commercials. Steve has worked with hundreds of musicians, including Christian Marclay, Derek Bailey, Han Bennink, Ivor Cutler, Ray Davies, Najma Akhtar, Evan Parker, Adrian Sherwood, Otomo Yoshihide and John Zorn.

Further info at: http://www.usurp.org.uk/events/scream_howl_speak/

See: https://instituteformodern.co.uk/2011/neurogenesis-by-disinformation-usurp-signature-version

First Blip Prize for Creative Technologies

We are pleased to report that the winner of the first Blip Prize for Creative Technologies was announced last night. The prize is awarded, courtesy of Blip Creative, to the best student project design for the IMCC’s new public display screen at Wells Street. The 2011 winner was Sophie Meter for her beautiful butterfly animation. Runners up were Kristian Agustin, Eleni Tziourtzia, David Itzcovitz and Yen Ooi. The winning videos can be seen (when opened in firefox) at http://www.blipcreative.com/blog.html Or, of course, you can check them out live on the corner of Wells Street and Booths Place.

The Blip Prize is the latest stage in the IMCC’s development of exciting content for the extraordinary state-of-the-art wall-hanging LED installation that is our contribution to The International Distributed Display Initiative, and which is part of the Institute’s New Media Theory research project, coordinated by Peter Cornwell at Blip with Alison Craighead and David Cunningham at the IMCC. Using an interface that has been designed such that no prior programming skills are assumed, staff and students will be making work for this experimental new media laboratory that will allow them to explore in hands-on fashion what it means to translate, phenomenalize, or even perform media-theoretical issues as, and in, new media.

Watch this space!

UPDATE: Video of the awards ceremony courtesy of David Itzcovitz:

Fictions of the Not Yet

Wednesday 9 November, 1.15pm – 2.30pm
Room 359, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster

Caroline Edwards (University of Lincoln)
‘Fictions of the Not Yet’

As the first decade of the twenty-first century comes to a close, there is a growing critical awareness of the current fascination with alternative and future worlds in contemporary British fiction. In addition to the continuing popularity of – and growing scholarly interest in – speculative and genre works, an emerging body of “literary” fictions is revealing a wide-ranging preoccupation with narratives of apocalypse, transmigration and haunting. Writers like David Mitchell, Jeanette Winterson, Jim Crace, John Burnside, Marina Warner, Maggie Gee, Jon McGregor and Sam Taylor are thus shifting the parameters of realist literary fiction and its generic borrowings, and in the process articulating a shared concern with the question of temporality. We need to develop a new strategy of reading such fictions in order to examine the formal innovations executed by these visions of temporal alterity and futurity. This paper will outline a refunctioning of Ernst Bloch’s category of the “Not Yet” (Noch Nicht) in order to provide a methodological framework that can draw out the distinctly utopian implications that are prevalent in the contemporary British novel. This refunctioning not only reconsiders the relationship between philosophical discourse and narrative imaginaries, but also helps us outline the distinctive structural, thematic and stylistic characteristics shaping an emerging caucus of fictions.

Ranciere review

David Cunningham’s review of Jacques Ranciere’s The Politics of Literature, published in the latest issue of Radical Philosophy, is currently up as a freebie on the website. You can read it here: http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/uncategorized/flaubert%e2%80%99s-parrot

Paul Khera, Adventures in Nightlife, Thursday 3rd November at P3

ADVENTURES IN NIGHTLIFE: PAUL KHERA
Thursday 3 November 2011, 19.00 – 23.00
AMBIKA P3

EXHIBITION-FILM SCREENING-MUSIC
Presenting the work of Paul Khera in an evening of film, music and photography on the theme of London nightlife.

EXHIBITION
One off prints featuring intimate moments of London nightlife

FILM SCREENING – 8.00 pm
‘Being Continued’, 37mins
Part film-noir, part meditation, a cinematic discourse on the journey of wisdom, there’s greed, violence, kidnapping; love, tranquility and revelation. This is a film that follows the cycle of human comprehension, gathering knowledge, being perplexed by it, testing wisdom with experience, suffering at the hands of greed, expanding and condensing knowledge, and finding peace. The story is part of the folklore of the himalya, it can be applied to society as a whole, or in the case of this film to an individual.

MUSIC:
Late Night tunes by Maxology

Paul Khera has worked across the full spectrum of the visual arts. He started his career taking stills at Channel 4, playing in a band, and designing sleeves for another. Through a chance meeting at college, he started working for the ICA in London, designing posters and catalogues, for amongst others Jake & Dinos Chapman, Lawrence Weiner, William Wegman and Damien Hirst. After the Arts came fashion, a short stint at Elle, and then Vogue. Following that was a period at corporate design heavyweights Ideo, on large-scale projects for P&G in Geneve and Vodaphone in Lisbon. Interspersed were a few projects for the British Council, which took him from Tokyo (an interactive project, describing Britain to the Japanese) to Damascus to Kano (an attempt to foster Muslim Christian tolerance through typography). Lately the projects have mainly been self-motivated, he designed a Hospital in rural India, using only local know-how and vernacular and is currently working on a six year scheme, a hand built retreat in the Himalayas; in which he designed everything from the building to the interior and the furniture… in the meantime he found time to write a book on philosophy and folklore, and a suite of music to go with it. Khera has also been commissioned to follow around the rock band Suede for a year, taking photographs at various gigs from the 100 club to the Royal Albert Hall documenting their return to fame, as well as build up a riveting portfolio of portraits from the nightlife of London.

AMBIKA P3, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS
Entrance free.
http://www.p3exhibitions.com/
http://www.paulkhera.com/

Neurogenesis by Disinformation + Usurp (Signature Version)

For the latest video from the Institute’s AHRC Research Fellow Joe Banks, please go to:

Neurogenesis by Disinformation + Usurp (Signature Version)
Copyright © Joe Banks & Poulomi Desai 24 Oct 2011
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Chtcheglov

Forthcoming highlights in Journal of Visual Culture…

Contributions to forthcoming open issues include:

Emmanuel Alloa on Visual Studies in Byzantium, David Cunningham on the Metropolis; Willem Flusser on the gesture of photographing, Tom Holert on Bildwissenschaft, Esther Leslie on liquid crystals, Lev Manovich on visualization, Lynda Nead on boxing, Jacques Ranciere on cinema, Nicole Starosielski on transoceanic cables, Janet Wolff on the power of images, Winnie Wong on appropriation in Chinese visual culture.

Forthcoming themed issues include:

In 2012

Ways of Seeing: 40 Years On, with contributors including: Mieke Bal, Jon Bird, Lisa Cartwright, Jill H. Casid, Hazel Clark, Laurie-Beth Clark, Mike Dibb, Jennifer Gonzalez, Dick Hebdige, Richard Hollis, Elizabeth Guffey, S. Heller, Ben Highmore, Martin Jay, Guy Julier, Louis Kaplan, Peter Lunenfeld, Tara McPherson, Marita Sturken, Griselda Pollock, Adrian Rifkin, Vanessa Schwartz, and Ming Wong.

In 2013:

The Archives R Us issue, with contributors including: Raiford Guins, Gary Hall, Chris Horrocks, Tom Holert, Juliette Kristenesen, susan pui san lok, Joanne Morra, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Vivian Rehberg, Marquard Smith, and Nina Lager Vestberg

Thomson & Craighead in Brussels

A new solo exhibition of the work of Thomson and Craighead has just opened in South East of Brussels (Watermael/Boisfort), where they are showing six artworks/installations at the same time across two sites, Watermael Station and Vénerie Stables, from 26th October to 18th December 2011. Alison and John will also be giving gallery talks at each site on Saturday 19th November from 15.30pm. Further info at: http://thomson-craighead.blogspot.com/

Brixton Calling! exhibition

Brixton Calling!
28 October-21 December 2011, weekdays 10am-5pm
198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, Brixton

This exhibition is the final stage of Brixton Calling! archiving and community project that connects contemporary Brixton to its past through the history of the late Brixton Art Gallery & Artists Collective in the 1980s. Exhibition opening: Thursday 27 October 2011, 6.30-10pm.

UPDATE: Further details on the 198 website here: http://198.org.uk/pages/currentexhibition.htm

Brixton Calling! events at 198 

Saturday 19 November, 2-4pm,  Curators/artists talk
Friday 25 November, 7-9pm, Brixton Fairy Night
Saturday 26 November, 1-5pm, Radical Printing
Saturday 10 December, 2-5pm, Black Art

Other Brixton Calling! events:

’80s Women Lens Based Media Event
Brixton Village, Thursday10 & Friday11 November, 7-12pm, Saturday12 November, 10am–9pm
For more information contact: info@198.org.uk

Women Artists Feminism in the 80s and Now
Goldsmiths, University of London 3rd December, 10am-5pm, in collaboration with the Women’s Art Library
For more information contact: a.greenan@gold.ac.uk

Archive installation by Stefan Szczelkun and Oral History documentary on show continuously along with many other sub-projects!

Havelock Ellis and the Literary Imagination

Wednesday 26^th October, 1.15pm – 2.30pm
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street building, room 359

Anna Katharina Schaffner (University of Kent)
‘Havelock Ellis and the Literary Imagination: On Sexology and Fiction’

Many important nineteenth- and early twentieth-century pioneers of the scientific study of sex make extensive use of literary sources in their works. Not only do they adopt terms and concepts from fictional sources, but literary representations and their authors frequently serve as case studies which are deemed as valid as empirical observations. Surprisingly, this blending of discourses, which has substantially shaped the nosologies of the early sexologists, has received little critical attention. This paper analyzes the epistemological status and functions that are assigned to fictional representations in the works of the British sexologist Havelock Ellis, as well as the wider theoretical ramifications of factualizing fictions. The way in which literary sources are used in Ellis’ and other sexological texts not only sheds light on the production of sexual knowledge and processes of discourse formation, but also brings to the fore the enmeshment of fantasy, language and desire, as well as the dependence of an entire scientific discipline upon narratives – both fictional and factual in nature.

The second biennial International Association for Visual Culture conference, NYC, May 31-June 2, 2012. See flyer attached

Flyer NVC1-2

Modern in Miniature

For anyone interested in architectural models, design education, and photography, the Institute’s Dr Davide Deriu, a colleague from the Department of Architecture here at University of Westminster, has curated a fascinating exhibition entitled ‘Modernism in Miniature’ at The Canadian Centre for Architecture. If you happen to be in Montreal, why not swing by, it’s on until January 2012:

http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/exhibitions/1487-modernism-in-miniature

Events at The Indian Media Centre, University of Westminster

Our friends in the India Media Centre at University of Westminster are organizing a series of fascinating events, please see details below:

Thursday 13th October, 6.30pm

BHOPALI, a film
Bhopali, (dir. Max Carlson, 2011, 89 mins) is a multi-award-winning documentary about the survivors of the world’s worst industrial disaster, the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal, India. After the screening Mick Brown (journalist, writer and broadcaster) will chair a panel discussion with filmmaker Pawas Bisht (University of Loughborough), author, Meaghan Delahunt, (University of St Andrews) and Tim Edwards (International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal).
Venue: The Old Cinema, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Friday 14th October, 6.30pm

FORGOTTEN ERA: PARSI THEATRE AND EARLY INDIAN CINEMA
Kathryn Hansen, (University of Texas at Austin), a cultural historian with a special interest in Indian theatre, will present material from her new book Stages of Life: Indian Theatre Autobiographies (Anthem Press). This will be followed by a round-table discussion with Francesca Orsini, Reader in the Literatures of North India, SOAS; Rosie Thomas, Reader in Film and Director of CREAM and Co-director of India Media Centre at the University of Westminster; and Ravi Vasudevan, Professor of Film, Director of the Sarai Centre, Delhi, and Smuts Fellow at University of Cambridge.
Venue: Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Monday 17th October, 6.30pm

THE MAKING OF A MODERN INDIAN ARTIST-CRAFTSMAN: DEVI PRASAD
Devi Prasad was India’s pioneering artist-potter, visionary educationist and pacifist. This event looks at how his story exemplifies the importance of the Arts and Crafts Movement in shaping the nature of Modernism in India, and the role of pottery and the community of potters that Prasad set up. Naman P. Ahuja, (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), will speak about the themes of his new book, The Making of a Modern Indian Artist-Craftsman: Devi Prasad, followed by a conversation with architect Sunand Prasad, Devi Prasad’s son, and with potter and writer, Julian Stair, Visiting Lecturer in Ceramics at the University of Westminster.
Venue: The Boardroom, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Friday 2nd November, 5pm – 9pm

INDIAN ARTS ON FILM: Charles Correa, Bhupen Kakar, Nalini Malani and Vivan Sundaram
What makes a successful documentary about art? What specific issues arise when translating the visual arts onto film? How far do different cultural contexts require different approaches? Award-winning arts filmmakers and scholars, Arun Khopkar and John Wyver (Iluuminations and University of Westminster), together with art historian Partha Mitter (University of Sussex), discuss these questions, followed by a screening of two of Khopkar’s films: Figures of Thought (1990, 33 mins), on Bhupen Kakar, Nalini Malani and Vivan Sundaram, and Volume Zero: The Work of Charles Correa (2008, 59 mins) on India’s most eminent architect.
Venue: P3 Gallery (5pm) and Cayley Lecture Theatre (7pm), University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

These events have been organised in association with our partners, DSC-South Asia Literature Festival and Magic Lantern Persistence Resistance Festival. As spaces are limited, BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL (follow web-links for each event). For full details visit http://www.westminster.ac.uk/schools/media/cream

Call for participants: Conflict and Memory symposium, Dec 3 2011

Spaces of Reckoning: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Conflict and Memory
Call for participants

Saturday 3 December 2011, University of Westminster, London

UPDATE: new website for the symposium at: http://www.spacesofreckoning.co.uk/ 

Both Conflict Studies and Memory Studies have, in recent years, become of increasing interest across the Humanities and Social Sciences, as they generate compelling dialogues between fields of study and build on the interdisciplinary turn in contemporary academe. This event will create a space that will allow for two things. The first is the development of opportunities for discussion across academic and cultural spheres. This will come about through the analysis and presentation of the representations and conceptualizations of violent conflict and memory addressed by emerging scholars seeking new networks and approaches to research. Secondly, it will include voices from outside academia that can provide new insight and potential empirical challenges to theoretical discussion.

The event will gather together new researchers, and is especially designed to bring together individuals from disciplines that do not traditionally intersect (e.g. Visual Culture and Socio-Legal Studies). The conference will allow mutually beneficial input and new ways of addressing the praxis of Conflict and Cultural Memory through the presentation of and analysis of both objects and concepts. When reflecting on the proposed theme, Post War Reckoning, Memorialisation, Institutions, Artefacts and the Semiotics of Collective Memory, for example, offer a wide territory for investigation, especially when combined with the study of cultural representations of these themes. We are seeking interested participants from across and outside the academic spectrum to contribute to the creation of new and productive dialogues.

Please submit up to 200 Word abstracts for 20 minute papers / presentations by November 10th  2011 to the organisers:
Marija Katalinic, Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies: marijakat@gmail.com
Tallyn Gray, Department of Advanced Legal Studies: tallyn.gray@my.westminster.ac.uk

‘Queer Comrades’ seminar, Oct 19 2011

Wednesday 19 October 2011, 4-6pm
Cayley Room, Room 152, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B

‘Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Queer Politics in Postsocialist China’
Dr. Hongwei Bao (Goldsmiths)

One of the most interesting phenomena in modern Chinese language is manifested by the semantic change of the term tongzhi. Literally ‘comrade’, tongzhi was the most popular address term in China’s socialist era. Since the 1990s, the term has been used by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) people in the Chinese-speaking world to refer to sexual minorities. Today, the queer use of tongzhi has dominated Chinese cyberspace. How did the change take place? What does the change mean? Was this simply linguistic change, or does it indicate transformations in bodies, desires, identities and subjectivities under shifting governmentalities? In this talk, Dr. Hongwei Bao traces the genealogy of the term tongzhi, discusses its political and social implications, and unveils its pertinence for contemporary Leftist politics.

Dr. Hongwei Bao is a British Academy visiting fellow at the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London. He has taught media and communication, gender studies, cultural studies and Asian Studies at the National Academy of Chinese Theatrical Arts, Beijing, the University of Sydney, and University of Potsdam.

All welcome, but non-University of Westminster attendees please register with Derek Hird: d.hird@westminster.ac.uk

Research Seminar: Helen Glew on Women at the Poly

Wednesday 10th October 2011, 1.15-2.30pm
Room 106, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T 3UW

Helen Glew (History, University of Westminster)
“Women at the Regent Street Polytechnic, 1882 – 1945”

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

Metropolis Portuguese translation

David Cunningham’s 2005 essay ‘The Concept of Metropolis: Philosophy and Urban Form’, originally published in Radical Philosophy, has been translated into Portuguese by Luciana Rocha for the Brazilian journal Revista Periferia.

Any Portuguese readers can see it here: http://www.febf.uerj.br/periferia/index.html

Early warning: Joe Banks’ next Rorschach Audio lecture, Dec 7th

‘Rorschach Audio: Mysterious-devil-tale, Devil-bewitched-by-Death’
Wednesday 7 December 2011, 1.15pm – 2.45pm
Room 359, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B

Following on from the “Rorschach Audio” lecture demonstration presented to the IMCC in March 2011, and, in particular, that lecture’s discussions of Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, EH Gombrich, Primo Levi and Leonardo da Vinci, visual and sound artist Joe Banks presents further explorations of the influence of “Rorschach Audio” phenomena on contemporary literature and creative art. This presentation directly extends the material discussed in the previous lecture, so any guests not familiar with the earlier talk are encouraged to read the “Rorschach Audio” research publications available here…

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lmj/summary/v011/11.1banks.html
http://www.slashseconds.org/issues/002/004/articles/jbanks/index.php