Grad Prog talks (22/5): the Market Street Mincer / Sex and the Shameless City

Location: Room 2.20, MediaCityUK (Salford Uni building)

Internal Speaker: Professor Ben Light (3.3.55pm)

Appropriation, Participation and the Creation of Celebrity: Introducing Internet-Mediated Urban Eccentrics

This work, undertaken in conduction with Helen Keegan (University of Salford) concerns the potential, and processes of, the internet-mediated construction and communication of urban eccentrics; ‘local characters’ who have traditionally been known to unconnected groups within a geographic locale. Our work suggests that the internet has the potential to connect these groups and generate notoriety for urban eccentrics, transcending time and space. Despite literatures around online fandom (Baym 2002) and micro-celebrity (Senft, 2008) it appears that the relationships between digital media and urban eccentrics have received very little academic attention. Our research is based on a discourse analysis of the Facebook fan page associated with a particular urban eccentric and other artifacts connected with them and shared throughout the Internet. Drawing upon Monaco’s (1978) concept of the Quasar, a category of celebrity, we undertake a reading of an urban eccentric: the Market Street Mincer (MSM) someone known for walking around Market Street in Manchester, UK during 2001-2003. Monaco defines the Quasar by their unwillingness to ‘be’ a celebrity, that fact they have little control over their status and that our interest is due to what we believe they are. In our case, the MSM operates as an enigma, no-one knows for certain why he does what he does and the extent to which he is willing to become a celebrity and under what terms. For example, several Facebook posts state that he walked to be spotted by a scout for a modelling agency. If that is the case, the attention he has received is something very different from that which he set out to gain. Thus, we need to think about the concept of the Quasar, and their abilities to influence their identities in the light of user generated content.

Guest Speaker: Beth Johnson (Keele University) (4-4.55pm)

Shameless: Situating Sex Beyond the City

This paper explores how the unashamed representations of the sexual desires of four female characters in Shameless (Channel 4, 2004 - present), namely Monica Gallagher (Annabelle Apsion), Fiona Gallagher (Anne-Marie Duff), Shelia Jackson (Maggie O'Neil) and Karen Jackson (Rebecca Atkinson), are connected to and cartographized through the fringe spaces of the Chatsworth estate. Contemplating the ways in which the UK series moves away from high-end US visions of slick surfaces, spaces and bodies, found, for example, in series such as Sex and the City (HBO, 1998-2004), the paper analyses the social positions, dominant sexual desires and complex narrative functions of these women, arguing that in the series, female desire is unashamedly repositioned at the centre rather than at the peripheries of the narrative.

Dr. Beth Johnson is a lecturer in Television and Film Studies at Keele University, UK. She is the author of various extant publications in journals such as Angelaki and The Journal of Cultural Research and her recent book chapters include ‘Realism, Real Sex and the Experimental Film: Mediating New Erotics in Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye’ in Realism and the Audiovisual Media (Palgrave Press:  2009, 135-151), and ‘Sex, Psychoanalysis and Sublimation in Dexter’ in Investigating Dexter: Cutting Edge Television (I.B.Tauris: 2010, 78-95). Beth’s forthcoming publications include a monograph on British television auteur ‘Paul Abbott’ for The Television Series (Manchester University Press, forthcoming, 2013) and a co-authored book entitled Exploring the Carnographic: Sex, Violence and Extremism in Global Culture to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014. Beth has recently co-edited a new collection entitled Television, Sex and Society: Analyzing Contemporary Representations (Continuum Press, August 2012).

Secret City screening

Salford PGR SPARC conference (5&6 June) programme published

See http://www.salford.ac.uk/research/postgraduate-research/sparc/conference-programme 

Deborah Gabriel: "Ethnic and gender inequalities in postgraduate study STILL aren't being addressed"

Another broadsheet intervention from Salford PGR Deborah Gabriel:

"The lack of diversity within postgraduate study leads to a further lack of diversity in the academy. This feeds into the curriculum and has an impact on the student experience. Universities need to go beyond the inclusion of statements about ‘valuing diversity’ on their websites and in their glossy brochures."

Full article here: http://www.independent.co.uk/student/postgraduate/postgraduate-study/ethnic-and-gender-inequalities-in-postgraduate-study-still-arent-being-addressed-8599466.html?origin=internalSearch#

Grad Prog talks this Weds (8 May): Studying TV News // Research and Writing for Students

MediaCity campus, Room 2.20. (Non-Salford students and PGRs can sign in at reception at 3 and at 4).

Internal presentation, 3.10-4pm 

Dr Sharon Coen (Psychology)

The talk will present results from a large comparative study on 'Media Systems, Political Context and Informed Citizenship: an 11 Nations study'.

The study consisted of a content analysis of (among others) TV News and a survey on a large representative sample in each Nation (Australia, Canada, Colombia, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway, UK and US). I am hoping to get some useful feedback concerning the best way to present the wealth of information gathered.

Guest lecturer:

Dr Rob Edgar (York St John University), 4.10-5pm.

Theorising Practice and Writing for Education: Writing for an Audience

This presentation will discuss the role of the academic in writing specifically for a student audience. While debates persist over the nature and importance of "pure" academic research, the issues of impact and relevance are becoming ever more importance. And, in approaching these issues, the functions of educational writing and and the role of practice in research are revealed to be increasingly relevant, and vital, as forms of research.

Dr Robert Edgar is Head of Postgraduate Film and Television Production at York St John University.  In this role he heads the MAs in Film Production and Documentary Production and supervises PhD students, increasingly in practice led theses.  He is the author and co-author of a number of text books for the AVA series in Film making and, with Salford's Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs and Benjamin Halligan, co-edited The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop (Routledge, 2013).

Visit and Lecture from Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus on Saturday 18 May

On Saturday 18 May, Professor Muhammad Yunus, the “world’s banker to the poor”, will visit Salford, giving colleagues, students and members of the public the chance to speak with the inspiring world leader.
Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi banker and economist widely credited for developing the concepts of microcredit and microfinance.

He is only the seventh person in history to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. This achievement places him in the company of Norman Borlaug, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel, Aung San Suu Kyi and Mother Teresa.
Yunus’ concept of micro-credit – small loans given to poor villagers in Bangladesh to help them buy livestock or fund an enterprise – has grown from $27 he loaned out of his own pocket into the Grameen Bank, which has loaned more than $25 billion to some 20 million borrowers around the world. Despite a lack of collateral or signed loan documents, 99 per cent of the loans have been paid back. The Grameen Bank provides services to more than 71,000 villages in Bangladesh alone through 2,226 branches and his programme now operates in more than 100 countries including the USA. The first Grameen branch in the UK will open soon.

At our 18 May summit, which will mark the announcement of Salford’s new Social Business Centre, Yunus will speak about the importance of social ventures that depart from purely profit-driven business models. He will also urge students and all those with entrepreneurial spirit to consider pursuing businesses motivated by social causes rather than profit alone. Yunus will be joined by number of distinguished guest speakers including Salford alumna Fay Selvan (CEO of the Big Life Group) and who will present ideas, solutions and case studies on the impact of social business creation on the lives and health of disadvantaged communities.
Colin McCallum, Executive Director of University Advancement, said: “Having Professor Yunus visit the University is a tremendous privilege and coup for us. He is one of the world’s most inspiring individuals and one of the original Global Elders, along with Nelson Mandela, Mary Robinson and Kofi Annan. His visit has sparked an interest among a number of colleagues to build on many activities already taking place across campus around the encouragement of social enterprise, social and community benefit and micro-finance research. Salford is a University that has always been firmly rooted in its local community, but with international reach. Muhammad Yunus exemplifies our mission and I hope his visit will serve to inspire us all.”
For more information and to register for this event on Saturday 18 May, please register at https://supporters.salford.ac.uk/MuhammadYunus.

Art, Politics and the Pamphleteer

A RadicalAesthetics/RadicalArt (RaRa) event

People’s History Museum, Manchester,

FRIDAY June 14th 2013

Art, Politics and the Pamphleteer will explore the history and relevance of the pamphlet for contemporary art practice through presentations by speakers and performers.  The one-day event will coincide with a small display of selected pamphlets from the PHM collection (curated by the RaRa organisers) together with a selection from our ‘call for pamphlets’.

Radical Pamphlets

It is written because there is something that one wants to saynow, and one believes there is no other way of getting a hearing. Pamphlets may turn on points of ethics or theology but they always have a clear politicalimplication. A pamphlet may be written either for or against somebody or something, but in essence it is always a protest.

George Orwell (1948) in British Pamphleteers Volume 1, from the sixteenth century to the French Revolution

For Orwell, the pamphlet is a polemical provocation. Through the 20thc and beyond, artists have worked and acted provocatively and polemically with text, images and performance, publishingwritings and producing pamphlets and manifestoes, including the Futurists (1909), Surrealists (1924), Fluxus (George Maciunas, 1963), First Things First (Ken Garland 1964), Mierle Laderman Ukeles (Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969) and Stewart Home’s Neoist Manifestos (1987). More recently, in 2009, Monica Ross and fifteen others co-recited the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the  Anniversary of The Peterloo Massacre at John Rylands Library Manchester and the Freee Art Collective have performed their manifestoes in a range of public settings. The edited book (2011) by Danchev 100 Artists' Manifestos: From the Futurists to the Stuckists (Penguin Modern Classics) demonstrates it as subject of current interest.

The last decade has seen art’s increasing engagement with political and social issues, whereby in some instances artists’ activities have become indistinguishable from social activism (e.g. Wochenklauser) or other disciplinary functions (e.g. artist as ‘anthropologist’ as in Jeremy Deller’s Folk Archive).The art community’s current preoccupation with revolutionary movements and global politics is being addressed from different perspectives. The format and traditions of the ‘radical pamphlet’ may provide an alternative platform for artistic intervention and provocation.

The People’s History Museum (PHM) is a national research facility, archive and accredited public museum, which contains unique collections of documents and artefacts. The collection includes the British Labour Party and Communist Party of Great Britain papers, extensive amateur and documentary film holdings and the largest trade union and protest banner collection in the world. The Museum suits our particular brief of radicality in its focus on histories of radical collective action.

http://www.phm.org.uk/

The RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt  (RaRa) project was initiated in 2009 at Loughborough University (LU) under the auspices of the Politicized Practice Research Group (PPRG). The RaRa project and its associated book series (with I.B. Tauris) explores the meeting of contemporary art practice and interpretations of radicality to promote debate, confront convention and formulate alternative ways of thinking about art practice. Previous RaRa events have included ‘DIY cultures’ and Radical Footage: Film and Dissent at Nottingham Contemporary.

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/research/groups/politicised/index.html

http://www.ibtauris.com/Highlights/Radical%20Aesthetics%20Radical%20Art.aspx

Book here: http://store.lboro.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&prodid=199&deptid=252&catid=72

PGR Scholarships at MMU in Art and Design

See http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AGJ477/art-and-design-studentship-opportunities/
and
http://www2.mmu.ac.uk/research/studentships/art-and-design/

Grad Prog talk: Mary Oliver - "Crossing the Virtual Divide" (1 May)

Wed 1 May, Rm 2.20 MediaCityUK, 3.10-4pm. All Welcome

Internal Session: Professor Mary Oliver (University of Salford; Performance Directorate)

Please take my hand and talk to me: crossing the virtual divide with acts of empathy and kindness

Touching as an act of empathy and kindness has become demonized, perverse in our physically disconnected technologically dependent lifestyles. Our hands are the tools with which we communicate remotely, altering hand eye co-ordination capability, which in turn impacts on our cognitive functions.  We have adapted ourselves to these machines and in doing so have become trapped in a communication system that is alien to us as a warm, tactile, intuitive species. This paper is part an exploration of why it is so difficult to change the HCI and part performance research as I strive to create a new work using both physical touch and sensing technologies.

Mary Oliver is Reader in Digital Performance and head of the Performance Research Centre in the School of Arts and Media. She has been a professional performer, writer and video maker for over twenty years, performing internationally across the fields of contemporary music, theatre, and dance. For the last decade she has focused on bringing impossible performers to the live stage,primarily using her own badly behaved Digital Double.  She is leader of the ‘As Yet Impossible: in human performance’ research project, which is examining the development of new performance paradigms.

GUEST SPEAKER TALK // ANNA COLIN // ISLINGTON MILL 

Wednesday 1st May 6.30pm. FREE. First Floor Common Room Space. 

The next guest speaker to be part of our 'Intervention' talk series in collaboration with University of Salford is independent curator Anna Colin. The talk will converge around the two projects she is concurrently working on: an exhibition exploring Victorians' utilitarian and socialist approaches to art on the one hand and an art school that places emphasis on social practice. She will present her research in progress and reflect on a set of historical and contemporary considerations around art as an educational and socially meaningful tool. 

Anna Colin works in London as an independent curator. She is currently preparing a display at the Whitechapel Gallery, following a fellowship with the Contemporary Art Society and the Harris Museum in Preston. She is also involved in setting up Open School East, an art school and communal space in Hackney, which will launch in September 2013. Previously she was associate director of Betonsalon - Centre for Art and Research, Paris (2011-2012) and curator  at Gasworks, London (2007-2010). 

For more information please contact shereen@islingtonmill.com

Salford PGR published in The Independent

Another fantastic piece of research in the public eye, by Deborah Gabriel:

http://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/selfempowerment-is-the-best-way-to-defeat-racism-in-academia-8582702.html

Postgraduate Research Programme (Art and Design), 17 April

17th April 2013, MediaCity Room 2.20.

Agenda:
2:00 – 2:20
Practice based research
Rosie Miller

2:20 – 2:40
‘Playing History: Fostering the Understanding of the Past through Meaningful Gameplay’
Juan Hiriart (PGR)

2:40 – 3:00
Education in Museums
Alex McDonagh

(PGR)
Break

3:20 - 4:30
Research Impact Seminar
Professor Paul Haywood and Sam Ingleson




The next event will be held on the 1st May HT217 Centenary Building.
Professor Paul Sermon will run a seminar on ‘How to publish your research work?’
and Andrew Wootton will showcase the team’s most recent research project:
Engaging young people in design against crime. Detailed agenda will be circulated in due course.

WSWS at 15

David Walsh, of the WSWS, delivered a lecture on the Graduate Programme on contemporary film and the organisation have extended an invite to the below meeting:

 

The Working Class and Socialism in a new revolutionary epoch

 

The Socialist Equality Party is proud to announce that David North, chairman of the World Socialist Web Site international editorial board and national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States, will speak on May 5 at a public meeting in London on the political significance of the site’s fifteenth anniversary.

North is the author of numerous articles, essays and books on contemporary politics, on the history of the Fourth International and on the political legacy of Leon Trotsky.

In the 15 years since the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) began publication on February 14, 1998, it has established itself as the most widely read and authoritative socialist publication in the world, accessible in 20 different languages.

In the run up to the London meeting there will be a series of regional meetings, including one in Manchester,on the subject of the WSWS fifteenth anniversary - see below for details.

Manchester:
Wednesday April 17
7 pm
Friends' Meeting House, Room 1
6 Mount St (rear of Manchester Central Library)
Manchester
M2 5NS

PGR Workshop on Neo-Liberalism at MMU (6-7 June)

Full details:

http://www.hssr.mmu.ac.uk/neoliberalmmu/neoliberalism-as-policy-theory-and-practice-student-workshop/

Quietus review of Salford Sonic Fusion

http://thequietus.com/articles/11864-chris-cosey-harmonic-coaction-holly-herndon-salford-sonic-fusion-live-review

"A slowly undulating bass groan slowly gives way to a transitional tattoo of pulsing electronics and acres of dubbed out echo. If the piece is site specific, then this reflects a Salford far removed from that of the shining, Logan's Run dock regeneration of Media City UK (but that's ok, as no one's forcing us to make a digital choice between one or the other). This majestic sound is of an older Salford, with the oppressive bass weight of Satanic millstones."

Congrats to colleagues from the Music Department for an incredible event!

"Power in Your Pocket" event (26/4/13)

"Power in Your Pocket: the creative use of mobile technologies to enhance learning and teaching in the performing and visual arts"

26th April, University of Salford, Old Fire Station
Full event details and booking here:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2013/24_April_CLL_Manchester

Attendance is free, and early booking is advised.

Salford academics see "The Music Documentary" published

Salford's Drs. Ben Halligan and Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs (along with York St John University's Dr Rob Edgar) co-edit this collection of essays on the music documentary --- the first of its kind --- which has been published today.

The collection arises in part on the Summer 2010 conference "Sights and Sounds: Investigating the Music Documentary" which was co-convened at Salford by Dr Halligan and the late Prof David Sanjek.

David's paper for that conference, on documentaries at the end of the countercultural period, is included here, along with considerations of everything from Woodstock to White Diamond, Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii to The Song Remains the Same, via extended sections on punk and post-punk, the conceptualisation of music videos then and now, the British concert film, considerations of teaching in the area of music documentary making, satire and the "rockumentary", and the ways in which the music documentary form has been co-opted for promotion. The volume ends with a consideration of future directions for the genre.

For Table of Contents, see Routledge's page for the book, here:
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415528023/

UK orders via here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Music-Documentary-Electropop-Routledge/dp/041552802X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364938690&sr=8-1

US orders via here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Music-Documentary-Electropop-Routledge/dp/041552802X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364938755&sr=8-1&keywords=halligan+music+documentary

Dave, hosting a session with Tony Palmer at the University of Salford (photo included in the Introduction).

Salford's Rethink Jazz Cultures conference (11-14 April)

Full programme now available:


http://www.scribd.com/doc/132628820/Rethinking-Jazz-Cultures-Programme

Clifford Whitworth library: new PGR room now open

(My thanks to whichever PGR took these shots!)

Training for all CASS PGRs

Please don't forget to book yourself onto a training session if you're a PGR in the College of Arts and Social Sciences who is delivering teaching and you haven't already gone through the programme. (Emails have been sent out but check with the Research Support Unit if you're unsure).

Jodi Dean at Salford

Our thanks to Jodi Dean for her fantastic talk... Communism as an unvanquished fear, creativity and the architecture of MediaCityUK, the reordering time in the Occupy movements,  feminist theorising of domestic subjectivities.

Jodi's new book, The Communist Horizon, available here

  (Jodi with Dr Michael Goddard)

6 Million Ways of Getting into the Arts: Moving Image

Tuesday 19 March, 6-9pm

Venue: Alan Turing Room, Dock House, BBC, MediaCity UK, Salford, M50 2LH

In partnership with BBC North and Quays Culture, Castlefield Gallery are very pleased to present a range of expert speakers working in moving images, within broadcasting, contemporary art, and digital and media training.

How do you tell your story on television? Louise Blythe, Executive Producer at the BBC Academy, will provide an insight into the commissioning process and Karin Thayer, Multi-Media Trainer at the BBC College of Journalism, demonstrates good practice in the social media sphere.

Guest speakers are Rosalind Nashashibi, Northern Art Prize 2013 shortlisted artist and Karen Shannon, Arts Development Manager: New Media at Lets Go Global who will highlight some of the many diverse routes to developing careers in this expanding field.

So join us, be inspired by the talks and be ready to ask questions at the Q&A session.

FREE but booking is essential. Book at http://6millionwaysmovingimage-eorg.eventbrite.com/#

or call 0161 832 8034

More on:
Rosalind Nashashibi, artist
Rosalind Nashashibi was born in Croydon, South London and is based in Liverpool. She studied at Sheffield Hallam University and Glasgow School of Art, and currently teaches at Liverpool John Moores University. Her work is shown internationally and she has recently had solo exhibitions in Rome, Milan, Brussels, London, and Vancouver.  She represented Scotland at the 52nd Venice Biennale, and has shown in the 5th Berlin Biennial, Manifesta 7 and Sharjah 10. She won Beck’s Futures in 2003, the first woman to do so, and is shortlisted for this year’s Northern Art Prize. Much of her work consists of films at the borders of the everyday and the mythological.
Karen Shannon, Lets Go Global
Karen Shannon is the founder of Lets Go Global, a non-profit organisation based in MediaCityUK that exists to share skills in digital and creative technology. LGG combines art, education, film-making, digital development and training. Karen works with people to promote arts and digital culture, to influence new ideas, policies and partners to support the sector to encourage innovation, understanding, new audiences, and meaningful digital engagement with people.
—
For further information contact Jennifer Dean, Communications and Audience Development Coordinator at Castlefield Gallery on jennifer@castlefieldgallery.co.uk or on 0161 832 8034
—
Quays Culture is a new arts programme based out of the Quays/MediaCityUK and aims to attract local and international talent to Greater Manchester audiences. They work with artists that use innovation and creativity for live and digital interactions. The world-class location and partners support a collaborative programme of arts festivals, events, new art works, learning and new fun experiences for all to join in.

Castlefield Gallery would like to thank Programme partners including: BBC North, Eccles Gateway Centre, Islington Mill, IWM North (part of Imperial War Museums), The Lowry, MediaCityUK, the University of Salford, Salford City Council & Trafford Borough Council.

MMP Grad Prog: Jodi Dean - The Communist Horizon (20/3)

20^th of March, 4pm-5pm, MediaCityUK (University of Salford building: Room 2.36)

(Non-Salford students: please meet 3.50 at reception and you'll be signed in).

Jodi Dean: The Communist Horizon

How is communism actual for us here and now? Jodi Dean considers how communism is the horizon of our contemporary politics in six ways: the past that remains present, the force of the ideal, the sovereignty of the people, the desire for the collective, the common and the commons, and the actuality of revolution.

Jodi Dean is a Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY and Erasmus Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University. She is the author or editor of eleven books, including Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies (Duke 2009), Blog Theory (Polity 2010), and most recently The Communist Horizon (Verso 2012). Her work on communicative capitalism has been at the forefront of contemporary political and media theoretical debates with figures including Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou and Geert Lovink.

Changing Our Textual Mind

Adriaan van der Weel, the Professor of Book History at Leiden
University, will be visiting MMU to talk about his new book, Changing
Our Textual Minds, on Monday 18 March.

The book emerged from Adriaan's famous course on the History of Text
Transmission at Leiden University. His argument is important, timely
and completely fascinating.

Changing our Textual Minds analyses the continuities and
discontinuities in textual transmission as we move from a print
paradigm into an increasingly digital world. It conceptualises the
transition from analogue to digital both in factual terms and in terms
of its social significance. Our entire way of disseminating knowledge
and culture is firmly based on print culture. The need to come to
grips with the shift to digital textuality in the early twenty-first
century will literally change our minds. Text has always been the
chief vehicle for the inscription and dissemination of knowledge and
culture. As more and more of our textual communication moves into the
digital realm we have reached a crucial moment in the history of
textual transmission. In many respects digital text looks deceptively
like print. But beneath the surface of the screen, digital textuality
obeys very different rules from printed text. The digital textual
universe offers a wealth of new and exciting possibilities -- but it
also sets new rules for the writer's and reader's engagement with
text.

There will be a reception at 5:30pm, followed by a FREE public lecture
at 6:00pm. All are welcome.

Further details of the event are here:
http://www.hssr.mmu.ac.uk/2013/02/20/professor-adriaan-van-der-weel-leiden-university-changing-our-textual-minds/

To reserve your place, please email Helen Darby on h.darby@mmu.ac.uk
or follow this link: http://adriaanvanderweel-arp.eventbrite.com/#

MMU Artaud event

The Institute of Humanities and Social Science Research: Centre of Research in English at Manchester Metropolitan University present a one day symposium on ‘Antonin Artaud: Affects, Effects, Bodies’.
Wednesday 24th April 2013

Artaud’s influence on theory and practice in the arts is substantial. As a playwright, director actor, film scenarist, poet, artist and critic he challenged existing modes of working and thinking in ways that are still generating considerable interest and debate. His iconoclastic work, which brings the affective body and its creative potential to the fore, has shaped artistic experiment and new modes of critical thinking and writing and substantial critical studies of Artaud have been written by Derrida, Deleuze and others. Diagnosed as clinically schizophrenic, Artaud’s writings and drawings are also of considerable interest to psychologists and art therapists. The event should bring together research students, theorists and practitioners from fields both within and outside the academy.

The workshop will take place from 12.45pm-5.30pm in Geoffrey Manton room 332
This is a one day open-to-all workshop and we will seek to engage with an audience that spans academics, research students and the public.

12.45pm Welcome from Anna Powell
1pm Xavier Aldana Reyes (MMU): Artaud’s Theatre of Affect: From Cruelty to Horror
2pm Ros Murray (Manchester): Artaud on Paper
3pm break
3.30pm Anna Powell (MMU): Passional Bodies: Artaud’s graphics as interstitial force
4.30pm Jay Murphy (Aberdeen): The Artaud Effect
5.30pm close

Please register on Eventbrite here:  http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5737246258

Places are limited!

Salfordian Dining Experiences...

MMU Redux

CODE Creatives} [UPDATE] - The proposed two-day gathering has been streamlined to Audio:Visual:Motion [REDUX]  - a day of presentations, discussions, demonstrations, screenings and performance - and is now FREE to all.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

A {CODE Creatives} and MMU Digital Innovation Event

<image001.jpg>

[REDUX]

a day of presentations, discussions, demonstrations, screenings and performance

Friday 15th March 2013, 11am-6pm

Capitol Theatre, Manchester Metropolitan University, Mabel Tylecote Building, Cavendish Street, Manchester M15 6BG

FREE – book via Eventbrite - http://codecreatives.eventbrite.co.uk/

Full details: http://www.codecreatives.info

If you’re a postgraduate or early career researcher based in the North West (and possibly beyond) then your expenses to participate in this event may be covered by Designing Our Futures. All PGRs and ECRs interested in participating should also register here – http://dof.miriadonline.info/expressions-of-interest/).

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Programme

10.30-11am - Registration + Coffee

11-11.10am - Welcome + Introduction - John Hyatt + Lewis Sykes

11.10-11.30am - Screening - Simon Katan - Cube With Magic Ribbons (2012)

11.30am-1pm - Presentation - Charlie Gere, Alex McLean & Kate Sicchio - Viewpoints on the Digital/Analogue Relation

1-2pm - Lunch

2-3pm - Presentation - Mick Grierson - The Synthetic Audiovisual Contract

3-4pm - Demonstration - Paul Prudence - Deconstructing Cyclotone

4-4.30pm - Coffee

4.30-4.50pm - Screening - Larry Cuba - 3/78 (1978), Two Space (1979) and Calculated Movements (1985)

4.50-5.10pm - Performance - Mick Grierson - Delusions of Alien Control

5-10-5.30pm - Performance - Sicchio and McLean - Sound Choreography <> Body Code

5.30-5.50pm - Performance - Paul Prudence - Cyclotone

5.50-6.pm - Closing Remarks - Lewis Sykes

Details of the programme, including biographies of the Audio:Visual:Motion [REDUX] contributors and outlines of their various presentations and performances are now available via the {CODE Creatives} website.

PARC North West EVENT GENERATOR – 20 March

1.30pm – 5.00pm Wednesday 20 March

MIRIAD, Manchester Metropolitan University, Righton Building, Cavendish Street, Manchester M15 6BG

Building on the success of last year, PARC North West is holding another regional event to give PGRs, ECRs and their Supervisors the opportunity to generate a series of cross-institutional activities for this and next Academic Year.

This year the Event Generator could be used to develop submissions to the Creative Arts and Industries: Collaboration in Practice conference, 21-22 June 2013 (details attached). Closing date 25thMarch!).

At the same time we are looking for events for next academic year in November and March. If you have an event idea already, or would like to be involved in one, this is your opportunity to develop it with your peers. These ideas can be topic or disciplinary based, specific or broad in nature, PARC North West is here to support your events. 

The 'Event Generator' is a creative activity based on 'Open Space Technology' to generate ideas. All who participate will be able to develop their own ideas or join with others. Together we will then transform these ideas into one or more events in the coming months.  

Please email RSVP to MIRIAD@mmu.ac.uk, headed 'Event Generator’

You may wish to answer the call to Creative Arts and Industries: Collaboration in Practice conference, 21-22 June independent of the Event Generator

Grad Prog talks 6/3: Information Wars / The Aesthetics of Disappearance

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Wednesday 6 March:

Internal Speaker: Carole O’Reilly (University of Salford; Journalism division)

MediaCity, 3.10-4pm, Room 3.32.

‘Resistance is Victory’: Occupy Bilderberg, Journalism and the Information Wars

This paper examines the tactics of this small and tightly-focussed Occupy movement as they protest the annual meeting of the Bilderberg group and their subsequent attempts to influence the reporting of that event.

The Bilderberg group consists of an alliance of politicians, academics, bankers and economists. The group has been the focus of numerous conspiracy theories centring on the alleged establishment of a ‘new world order’ and a shadow world government.

Members of Occupy Bilderberg are comprised of individuals of very diverse and divergent political views but their main focus is to protest and disrupt the annual Bilderberg meeting and to gain mainstream media coverage. This study examines the strategies deployed by the group in 2011 and 2012 to publicise their activities through websites, livestreaming, Youtube and Twitter and their interactions with the mainstream media.

This paper demonstrates how this interaction can help us to understand the relationship between mainstream journalism and citizen journalism – many Occupy Bilderberg members define themselves and act as citizen journalists. While some writers have celebrated citizen journalism as a democratic liberation from the restrictions of an increasingly corporate mainstream journalism, this paper demonstrates that, in practice, the boundaries between the 2 have resulted in a fractious and confrontational relationship that has resulted in a new information war.

Guest Speaker: John Armitage (Northumbria University)

MediaCity, 4.10-5.00pm; Room 3.32.

The Aesthetics of Disappearance

Media theorists generally associate Paul Virilio with his conception of the “aesthetics of disappearance.” This illustrated lecture examines his contribution to the debates over contemporary aesthetics by considering one of his most powerful texts, The Aesthetics of Disappearance (2009). It explains the importance of the argument of this book to afford an entry point into it for uninitiated English-speaking readers. The lecture then surveys the ramifications of Virilio’s study for theorizing and practicing media in the present period.

The theme of the book is the development and modern-day condition of human perception in the world’s advanced cultures. Virilio’s text is therefore about how diverse ways of perceiving and coping with the realms of photography and technology, science, and cinema are appreciated and incorporated into postmodern culture.

Perhaps the principal claim of the text is its description of the aesthetics of disappearance as an “irresistible project and projection toward a technical beyond” (Virilio 2009: 103). Before presenting an explanation of what Virilio means when he employs concepts such as “aesthetics” or the “technical beyond,” it is vital to grasp how this assertion stems from The Aesthetics of Disappearance in its entirety. Consequently, the purpose of this lecture is to offer a foundation for an appreciation of what he means by defining the aesthetics of disappearance in this way.

John Armitage is Professor of Media Arts at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. He specializes in the cultural and media theory of Paul Virilio, the French contemporary philosopher and ‘critic of the art of technology’. Professor Armitage is the founder and co-editor, with Ryan Bishop and Douglas Kellner, of the Duke University Press journal Cultural Politics and the author or editor of seven books on Paul Virilio including, most recently, Virilio and the Media (Polity, 2012) and Virilio and Visual Culture (EUP, 2013).