Michael Nath shortlisted for James Tait Black Memorial Prize

We are happy to announce the most excellent news that Michael Nath’s debut novel La Rochelle, for which we helped to organise the official launch in 2009, is one of four books shortlisted for the prestigious the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The shortlist was announced at Dover House, London. The winners will be announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August.

The James Tait Black Award, worth £10,000 to the winner, is awarded annually by the University of Edinburgh’s School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, and were founded in 1919 by Janet Coats, the widow of publisher James Tait Black, to commemorate her husband’s love of good books. Past winners of the awards include the likes of DH Lawrence, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, Angela Carter, Cormac McCarthy, Martin Amis, AS Byatt, William Golding and Ian McEwan.

The International Association for Visual Culture is coming…

The International Association for Visual Culture is coming…

Keep a close eye out for forthcoming information on the International Association for Visual Culture.

A little background:

On 29^th May 2010, as the final session of the three-day conference entitled ‘The 2010 Visual Culture Studies Conference’ held at University of Westminster, London, the subject under discussion was the proposal to establish an International Association for Visual Culture Studies. During the session, with presentations from Jeremy Gilbert (University of East London), Michael Ann Holly, and Stephen Melville (Ohio State), and convened by Marquard Smith, a motion was proposed formally by W.J.T. Mitchell (Chicago) that the Association be established. This motion was seconded by Lisa Cartwright (UC, San Diego), and the motion was passed.

At the start of April 2011, Michael Ann Holly, Starr Director of Research and Academic Programming at The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, and Marquard Smith, Founding Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Visual Culture, convened a colloquium of international scholars, museum educators, and practitioners of visual culture at The Clark to discuss further the founding of such an Association – what would be its aims and mission, and how it would function in its service to its members. Following on from this colloquium, the Clark group is moving forward with the formal founding of an International Association for Visual Culture.

The Association for Visual Culture will be launched officially at a conference in New York in May 2012, convened by a group of New York State-based scholars, led by Nicholas Mirzeoff (NYU).

Information will be available soon regarding the Association’s official launch, the chance to register interest in the Association, to receive updates, membership offers, etc.

Watch this space…

Ori Gersht: Artist in Conversation, University of Westminster, 16th June, 6:30-8:30

Our friends in the Group for War and Culture Studies at University of Westminster warmly invited you to:

Artist in Conversation: Ori Gersht
Group for War and Culture Studies Seminar
Thursday 16 June 2011, 6.30pm – 8.30pm
Fyvie Hall, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Ori Gersht’s practice as a photographer is concerned with history and metaphor, journeys and geographical place, intertwined with metaphysical space. Such themes have been explored through major works that document, often obliquely, violent moments in Europe’s recent past: the scars and weals left on the sunlit, war-torn buildings in Sarajevo in his Afterwars series, the white images of ‘frustrating absence’ of his train journey to Auschwitz in White Noise, or the filmed forest loaded with the memory of war in the Ukraine in The Clearing.

At a pivotal moment in the history of photography where digital technology both threatens a crisis and promises a breakthrough, Gersht innovatively researches the possibilities and explores the materiality of his medium through still images and films that (literally) explode the genre of still life. In the films Pomegranate and Big Bang, Gersht has altered Renaissance-like still-life compositions with fast and violent interventions. Whilst a peaceful image is transformed into bloodshed and explosion, a dialogue is established between stillness and motion, peace and violence. In his most recent series of photographs, Chasing Good Fortune (2010), the cherry blossom resonates as a sign of the ephemerality of life. One of its illustrative manifestations was as propaganda in World War II as a representation of soldiers, who were thought of, in combat, to scatter like cherry blossoms, but also to die an honorable and therefore magnificent death.

At a time when many artists dealing with the political are producing work that has more in common with the medium of documentary, Gersht’s photographs, in between becoming and disappearing, have a fragile, phantom quality and dream-like texture on the verge of abstraction. More generally, his work is that of a provocative meditation.

Ori Gersht is an internationally renowned photographer and Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts, Rochester.

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

Disinformation on the radio

A fine radio interview with our AHRC Fellow Joe Banks on ‘The Arts on Sunday’ in New Zealand.

Cloning Tom: An Audience with W.J.T. Mitchell, Monday 13th June, University of Westminster, 2-6

Cloning Tom: An Audience with W.J.T. Mitchell
Monday 13^th June 2011, 2:00-6:00pm , 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster

To celebrate the publication of Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present (University of Chicago Press), the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture is thrilled to host an audience with Professor W. J.T. Mitchell. Mitchell will deliver a presentation entitled ‘The Historical Uncanny:  Phantoms, Doubles, and Repetition in the War on Terror’. His presentation will be followed by a Roundtable with contributors including Maxime Boidy (Strasbourg), Abdelwahab El-Affendi (Westminster), Eyal Weizman (Goldsmiths), and Mitchell himself. The event will be chaired by Dr Marquard Smith (Westminster).

The event is FREE but booking is essential so please RSVP to Sharon Sinclair: sinclas@wmin.ac.uk

Professor W. J. T. Mitchell is Editor of Critical Inquiry and the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, the Department of Art History, and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author of seminal books including What Do Pictures Want? and Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, and editor of collections such as Against Theory, Landscape and Power, On Narrative, and Picture Theory.

Maxime Boidy is the French translator of W.J.T. Mitchell’s Cloning Terror (with S. Roth) and has also translated books by Susan Buck-Morss and Mike Davis, as well as Mitchell’s Iconography. He is a doctorial candidate in the Laboratoire Cultures et Sociétés en Europe at Université de Strasbourg.

Dr Abdelwahab El-Affendi is Reader in Politics at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster and co-ordinator of the Centre’s Democracy and Islam Programme. He is also currently an ESRC/AHRC Fellow in the Global Uncertainties Programme working on a project entitled ‘Narratives of Insecurity, Democratization and the Justification of (Mass) Violence.’ Dr El-Affendi is author of books including About Muhammad: The Other Western Perspective on the Prophet of Islam, The Conquest of Muslim Hearts and Minds, For a State of Peace: Conflict and the Future of Democracy in Sudan, Rethinking Islam and Modernity, and Who Needs an Islamic State?

Dr Marquard Smith is Director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster, and Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Visual Culture.

Dr Eyal Weizman is Director of the Centre of Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. His work includes buildings and stage sets in Israel/Palestine and Europe. Weizman works with a variety of NGOs and Human right groups in Israel/Palestine. He co-curated the exhibition A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture, and co-edited the publication of the same title. These projects were based on his human-rights research, and were banned by the Israeli Association of Architects. They were later shown in the exhibition Territories in New York, Berlin, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Malmoe, Tel Aviv and Ramallah. His books include Lesser Evils, Hollow Land, A Civilian Occupation, and the series Territories 1,2 and 3.

Multi-Personae Disorder of Mme Dragu

Multi-Personae Disorder of Mme Dragu
Thursday May 19 2011, 6.00-8.00pm
Fifth Floor, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T

Hosted by Stefan and the Institute, this lecture and performance is FREE, but participants are asked to bring some fresh fruit for the Art Tea Party fruit salad… Request a place by emailing Stefan at: s.szczelkun@westminster.ac.uk

Thomson & Craighead this summer

Thomson & Craighead are showing three pieces of template cinema called, ‘Somewhere in Sweden’, ‘A short film about nothing’ and ‘Five Ghosts’ as part of the online component of this years Biennale de Montreal, curated by Paule Mackrous. The exhibit is published by the Centre International d’Art Contemporain de Montreal’s electronic magazine, issue 39/2011. Other artists include: Mark Amerika, Grégory Chatonsky, Jhave and Mouchette (aka Martine Neddam). More about template cinema here.

In other news, the duo are showing ‘Tallinn Wall’ (a re-working of their installation ‘London Wall’) and ‘BEACON’ as part of Gateways:  Art and Network Culture at the Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia: the museum’s keynote exhibition for Tallinn’s year as European Cultural capital in 2011. Also, a solo presentation of ‘Flipped Clock’, curated by Richard Rinehart, will run from June 1st – August 31st 2011 at the Berkeley Art Museum, California.

Whitechapel Salon: Cultures of Capitalism I, May 12th

Thursday 12 May 2011, 7pm
Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1
Price: £7.00 / £5.00 concessions (includes free glass of wine).

This season’s new Whitechapel Salon organised by the IMCC in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery will be on ‘Cultures of Capitalism’. In the first of four events interrogating contemporary economies of art and culture, Esther Leslie, author of Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism, Adrian Rifkin, author of Street Noises, and David Cunningham, co-editor of Adorno and Literature, discuss ‘The Culture Industry Now’. Chaired by Marquard Smith.

Book your ticket at:
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/22/product_id/871

‘Media Acts’ Call for Papers, NTNU, Trondheim,

Our friends in the Department of Art and Media Studies at NTNU, Trondheim, Norway, are organizing The 10th International Conference of the Nordic Society for Intermedial Studies, 26th-28th October, 2011. Entitled ‘Media Acts’, confirmed speakers include Jacques Ranciere, James Elkins, Sara Danius, Frederik Tygstrup, and Aud Sissel, Hoel. The ‘Call for Papers’ is here – Media Acts October 26-28 2011 Call for papers – and the deadline for abstracts is 15th May!

The Scarcity Exchanges

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

Private View, 11th May, 309 Regent Street Gallery: ‘Poster Power: Images from Mao’s China, Then and Now’

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.

Visual Culture in Europe Network: From Barcelona to Trondheim and beyond…

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.

Utopia London screening

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

Opportunity: Writer-in-Residence, University of Westminster archive

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)

Fitzrovia Noir’s ‘Intervention Art Trail’

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, Barcelona

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.

Representing Communism seminar

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

Home and Away: Group for War and Culture Studies

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

The Fitzrovia Intervention Art Trail (26th March – 16th April 2011)

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.

Rorschach Audio On The Road

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.