Mediated Cities

The City

MEDIATED CITIES

Mediated Cities Book Series

Open Call for Contributions
Intellect Books will launch its Mediated Cities book series April 01-03, 2016 with three books.

Digital Futures and the City of Today:  New Technologies and Physical Spaces. ISBN: 978-1-78320-560-8
Filming the City: Urban Documents, Design Practices & Social Criticism Through the Lens. ISBN: 978-1-78320-554-7
Imaging the City: Art, Creative Practices and Media Speculations. ISBN: 978-1-78320-557-8

This is a call for chapter contributions for the following book in the series from the perspective of all disciplines that engage with issues of the city, its design, mediation, representation and experience.

Contributions are welcome from urban design, planning, cultural studies, digital art, emerging technologies, social media, film, photography  etc.

The next book in the series will be drawn from the conference: Digital-Cultural Ecology and the Medium-Sized City.

For details: http://architecturemps.com/bristol-uk/

ABSTRACT DEADLINE: 15th NOVEMBER, 2015

This conference is organised by the journal Architecture_MPS, Intellect Books, the University of the West of England and the Centre for Moving Image Research. The publication series is a joint AMPS / Intellect Books initiative. See: http://architecturemps.com/publications-2/

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

Voter Registration in the UK

VOTER REGISTRATION IN THE UK

Don’t lose your Right to Vote!

Get on the Voters Registration by 1^st December 2015!

From 1st December 2015, in the UK, all household members must register individually or face being removed from the Voters Register.

Many could be disenfranchised – make sure you are not one of them!

Anyone who has not individually registered by 1 December 2015 will be removed from the register.

Originally, the deadline was December 2016 but the Tories have brought it forward by one year. This means that potentially over one million voters could lose the chance to vote in next May’s local elections.

Until 2009, one person in each household completed the registration for every resident eligible to vote, but now all that has changed. Each person who is eligible to vote now has to do this individually.

So, make sure you do not lose your right and opportunity to vote – something that has been fought so hard for by activists in history.

Also, see the film ‘Suffragette’ to emphasise the point for women!

So, get online and register to vote at: http://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote

 

Peterloo Massacre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre

Suffragette (film trailer, 2015): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=056FI2Pq9RY and Press Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUKjwIaTZ4Y

 

Further information:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34652008

http://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/feb/05/missing-voters-individual-electoral-registration-disaster

Briefing: Electoral Registration – Order and Regulations, December 2013 [pdf]
Report: Missing Millions – Roundtable into Individual Electoral Registration[pdf]
Briefing: Electoral Registration and Administration Bill Committee stage briefing – day 2 [pdf] –

See more at: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voter-registration#sthash.abXAE3qj.dpuf

***END***

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

Forest Roots @ The Sir Alfred Hitchcock Hotel

The Sir Alfred Hitchcock Hotel

FOREST ROOTS @ THE SIR ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOTEL

Dear Forest Roots Folk

Just to let you know that we are doing a one off night at The Sir Alfred Hitchcock Hotel in Leytonstone on Friday 9th October with Acoustica, featuring Paul Kerr on guitar, Chris Haigh on fiddle and Rupert on double bass with Coxy doing a support set.

We know it isn’t Forest Gate but it is opposite the forest and it’s a great venue with ample parking and a very supportive landlord so we hope you can make it.

So that’s Acoustica on Friday, 9th October at:

The Sir Alfred Hitchcock Hotel, 147 Whipps Cross Road, Leytonstone E11 1NP

Starts 8.30pm

We’d love to see you all again

Stay forever young

Jenny and Caroline

PS please forward this to anyone you think would be interested

The Sir Alfred Hitchcock Hotel: http://www.thehitchcockhotel.com/

Ruth, Gregory and Glenn Rikowski @ The Sir Alfred Hitchcock Hotel – 4th January 2014

***END***

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

FUEL TO FIGHT DS30: Test Film & Book Event

Test Dept

FUEL TO FIGHT DS30: TEST FILM & BOOK EVENT

June 13 @ 6PM, firstsite, Colchester: http://www.firstsite.uk.net/page/fuel-to-fight-ds30-test-dept-film-book-event
Followed by party at the Waiting Room
The legendary London industrial noise musicians Test Dept are presenting a special screening of their film DS30 at the firstsite on the 13 June.

Marking 30 years since the 1984-5 miners’ strike, DS30 is a political collage of sound and image. The film is set within the monumental structural lines of Dunston Staiths built on the River Tyne in 1893 to ship coal from the Durham coalfields to the world. Featuring footage of mining communities and industry along the River Tyne and of the wider mining community together with footage and sounds from Test Dept’s own archive related to the strike, DS30 reflects on the group’s nationwide Fuel to Fight Tour in support of the miners, during which they collaborated with local activists and mining communities. These included Kent miner Alan Sutcliffe, who performed as writer and guest vocalist on live and recorded material and the South Wales Striking Miners’ Choir, with whom they recorded the album ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ to raise money for the Miners’ Hardship Fund.

This screening of DS30 is accompanied by a selection of archive material of the group on film and video and will be followed by a Q & A with founding member Paul Jamrozy, who will be joined by Peter Webb (from PC Press), and Stevphen Shukaitis (from the University of Essex).

This event also celebrates the release of the book Total State Machine, a major historical document and visual representation of Test Dept, published by PC-Press. There will be a launch event following the screening.

Test Dept formed in the decaying docklands of South London in late 1981. The group made raw, visceral music out of re-purposed scrap metal and machinery scavenged from industrial waste-ground and derelict factories; a percussive sound with a political edge performed live against monumental slide and film projections in recently abandoned industrial spaces. Drilling, pounding, grinding, metal bashing – a Constructivist/Futurist-inspired soundtrack to the death throes of industrial Britain.

SCHEDULE
6:00 PM Doors Open
6:15-7:15: Film screening
7:15-8:00 Discussion with Test Department
8:00-11:00 Move to Waiting Room for drinks, DJs

Event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/695456000563749/
—

Stevphen Shukaitis

Autonomedia Editorial Collective

http://www.autonomedia.org

http://www.minorcompositions.info

***END***

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

THE GLASS FORTRESS

THE GLASS FORTRESS

THE GLASS FORTRESS

A free adaptation of Zamyatin’s prospective novel “We”, this concept album will take you in the wake of D–503 and I–330, two freedom-and-passion loving people.

A Dystopia tinged with Revolutionary Romanticism, first of its kind.

Album available from January 15^th 2015

 

Rémi Orts

Brave New World, 1984, The Wall, Equilibrium and more recently The Hunger Games, modern culture is haunted by the spectre of extremely well-organized societies whose apparent perfection conceals dark dictatorial worlds.

If this formal exercise is known to all, what is the intimate origin, the true source of its inspiration?
In fact, everything comes from a small Russian sci-fi novel published in 1920 by Yevgeny Zamyatin, “We “.

Rémi Orts Project and Alan B wish to pay tribute to this counter-utopia, first of its kind, by revisiting it in their concept album, “The Glass Fortress”.

Let yourself be taken in the wake of Daniel and Iris, two human beings opposed in every way, that nonetheless will rejoin in the same destiny, the choice of Life, even at their own peril…

Adapted from this album, a short film, innovative and moving, will be released in April 2015 with the collaboration of the talented photographer, Fanny Storck.

Lyrics : Alan B
Music : Rémi Orts
Photos : Fanny Storck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPuAwNUSLI8&list=PL5KtMvKvWwKDcTibMWVLeKg5YoHuCsZZ-&index=1

See: http://www.remiorts.com/index.php/albums-remiorts/41-remi-project/96-the-glass-fortress

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Violence, Representations and Sexuality

Aesthetics

VIOLENCE, REPRESENTATIONS AND SEXUALITY

FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK FOR SEXUAL ETHICS AND POLITICS – INSEP

CALL FOR PAPERS – INSEP2015

13th ‐ 15th July, 2015, Ghent University, Belgium
Hosted by CEVI – Centre for Ethics and Value Inquiry
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2
9000 Ghent – Belgium
See: http://www.insep.ugent.be/insep2015/
General Conference Theme – Violence, Representations and Sexuality

The relationship between violence and sexuality is one of the most critical areas of engagement for sex and sexuality research and activism. There continues to be an epidemic of violence against women and children – rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment and abuse – across the globe, manifest in different cultural customs and practices, authority structures, hetero‐patriarchal and hetero‐normative regimes at both national (and supranational in the case of trafficking) and everyday micro levels. This epidemic is often met with: limited regulatory responses suffused with heterosexist assumptions; legal authorities that fail to prioritise or regard it is less important than other criminal activity; indifference; and/or claims that the prevalent cultural milieu makes it impossible to act. While some efforts have been made in North America, Europe and Australasia to effect change, in many parts of the globe sexual subjection and suffering continues to be seen as a normal state of affairs.

Equally, across the globe sexual difference and departures from heterosexuality are met by varying degrees of violence, ranging from physical attack and murder, to prejudicial and pathological assumptions that are present even in the social context of equality and rights discourses. To be different is still to be ‘othered’ to varying degrees, and that ‘othering’ often takes damaging forms of practice against those who present themselves as different.

The cultural and representational contexts are of particular importance here. It is in the representational form that we most saliently see the cultural demarcations of legitimacy and illegitimacy for sex and sexuality. Through representations, tensions are played out in the public arena that are sometimes manifest only in inter‐subjective or hetero‐normative meaning making. In societies where gay men and lesbians are formally recognised, there remains a dichotomy between the ‘respectable’ different that operates within homonormative constraints and lives without troubling heteronormative assumption, and the ‘queer’ whose personal practices challenge or disrupt cultural and social norms as a feature of being themselves. Likewise, the representation of sex in mainstream medias often reinforces particular understandings and meanings suffused with power, presumption and prejudice. Against that, alternate forms of media can play an important role in promote constructive understandings of the relationship between desire, pleasure and healthy satisfaction.

Violence and sexuality also creates a nexus of troubling contradictions. Recently, the fetishisation of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, e.g., normalises a commodified and limited exploration of sexual imagination, whilst BDSMers and others who wish to move beyond difference as an adjunct to genito‐centric and penetrative sex remain culturally prejudiced against and subject to different and sometimes punishing pathologies and legal regulatory regimes. Pornography and prostitution represent other areas of contestation. Is pornography or prostitution inherently violent? Or is there room for sufficient levels of agency and choice? The juxtaposition of pain, violence and sex, whether in practice or in representation, whether consenting or not, splits those radical voices who often support sexual freedom. Does violence and sexuality represent a fault‐line for disagreement? Is that disagreement one of language and representation or of power, degradation and its effects? We welcome papers that explore any aspect of the relationship between violence, representation, sexuality and sex. As always, we also welcome other papers that reflect innovative, creative and thought‐provoking work on sexual ethics and politics in general. For this purpose we retain open streams at the conference. Please feel free to email the conference organisers for further inquiries.

Acceptance Policy

The fifth international conference of INSEP welcomes papers, presentations and panels focusing on conceptual and theoretical debates, cultural and political analysis and empirical studies from which conceptual, ethical and political conclusions are drawn.

INSEP seeks to provide a critical and dynamic space for cutting edge thinking, new research and key discussions and debates about issues of sexual ethics or politics, whether conceptual and theoretical discourse, analytical studies or aesthetically or empirically constituted insights. INSEP sees the value in the fullest range of approaches to the study of sexual ethics and politics, including: gendered and feminist perspectives; distinctive lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and transsexual perspectives; queer perspectives; and approaches from more general positions such as liberalism, Marxism and democratic theory.

The 2015 conference seeks to be an inclusive space for discussion, welcoming dialogue and vigorous debate, but not sectarianism. We consider paper proposals and panel proposals from any disciplinary field, and are willing to consider expositions that take less orthodox forms.

To facilitate funding applications ‐ please note INSEP has no funds of its own – we operate a ‘rolling’ process of abstract review and acceptance or rejection, and can provide documentation where it is required to facilitate funding. Our turnaround time for refereeing is 10 days.

Submission & Timeline: Submissions for papers (250 words), panels or workshops (500 word stipulating participants) should reach us by Monday 15 June at the latest. Earlier of course, is better.

Normal acceptance/rejection notification ‐ 10 days. All delegates/paper‐givers must register by Monday 23 June, and we encourage earlier registration when acceptances have been communicated.

Please send abstracts to: insep.network@gmail.com

The conference fee for the full three days is 150 Euros, which includes the conference pack and refreshments. A concessionary rate of 100 Euros is available to students and postgraduates.

INSEP publishes a journal and a book series with Barbara Budrich Publishers. We would anticipate commissioning publications from the conference and, dependent on quality and coherence, may publish a collection based on themes emerging from the conference. INSEP also welcomes submissions to the journal and proposals to the Book Series.

About INSEP

Sexual ethics and politics lie at the heart of how we understand and practice our sexual lives. They form the basis from which we understand and engage with diverse and different sexualities. Both, however, are currently open to question. On the one hand, discussion of sexual ethics has previously been confined to the auspices of an abstract intellectual discourse, effectively separating it from practice. Sexual politics, on the other hand, has seen progressive advances through world‐wide activism by grass‐roots movements, NGOs and national and international agents, but in the push for progress, the space for self‐critique and reflexivity is often eradicated. INSEP wants to activate a critical dialogue between sexual ethics and politics by connecting them and exploring the ways they can contribute to each other. The sexual is political and just as sexual politics could be enriched by emancipatory ethical thinking, sexual ethics should connect with contemporary sexual activism, politics and practices aiming for the realisation of sexual equalities and justice.
For more info on INSEP & the 2015 conference please visit:

INSEP2015: http://www.insep.ugent.be/insep2015/
INSEP – http://www.insep.ugent.be/
Journal INSEP – http://budrich‐journals.de/index.php/insep
Paul Reynolds
Reader in Sociology and Social Philosophy
Edge Hill University, UK
reynoldp@edgehill.ac.uk
Tom Claes
Associate Professor of Ethics
Ghent University, Belgium
Tom.Claes@UGent.be

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

News From Nowhere Club: 2015 Programme

William Morris

NEWS FROM NOWHERE CLUB: 2015 PROGRAMME

Patron: Peter Hennessy                                                                      

‘Fellowship is life and the lack of fellowship is death.’ William Morris

 

PROGRAMME 2015

VENUE  Epicentre, West St. Leytonstone E11 4LJ

TIMES 7.30 Buffet: please bring something, 8.00 Talk and questions/discussion

TRAVEL Leytonstone or Stratford tube, 257 bus or Leytonstone High Rd overground and short walk

All welcome, just turn up. Free. Donations welcome. Car park.  You need to walk to the front of the building – back door is usually locked. Quiet kids welcome.

Enquiries:   0208 555 5248 or 07443 480 509   info@newsfromnowhereclub.org.

 

Saturday 10 January 2015: Bollington: Utopia in Cheshire? And Letchworth Garden City: Health of the Country, Comforts of the Town

Speakers: Jim Hoyle & William Armitage

Jim moved from Birmingham to Bollington in 2012, having fallen in love with it. He has not been disappointed. His talk will consider every aspect of this unique Cheshire town. Its history, rich cultural life, demographics and campaigns will be covered in a witty presentation……. In 1898 Ebenezer Howard, Letchworth’s founder, had a vision: through careful planning we could elevate many of the desperately poor living & working conditions in towns & villages.  Today Letchworth remains close to its original ideals. William, Board Member of Letchworth Heritage Foundation, was Managing Director of David’s Bookshop in Letchworth for 40 years.

 

Saturday 14 February 2015: The Bethnal Green Tube Shelter Disaster

Speaker: Joy Puritz

One evening in March 1943, 173 people, including 62 children, were crushed to death trying to enter a station shelter. This talk is a description of the circumstances which led to the worst civilian disaster of WWII in this country, whether it could have been avoided & if anyone was to blame. Many have thought there was a cover up. Poignant anecdotes will be related. Joy has been closely involved in the Bethnal Green Memorial Project, an oral history project organised by the University of East London & has studied witness statements taken for the Government enquiry in 1943, interviewed survivors, shown visitors around the memorial sculpture & written texts for the project’s archive & guidebook.

 

Saturday 14 March 2015: The Life of Bees

Speaker: Ian Nichols

Ian, a local beekeeper and active member and Trustee of Essex Beekeepers Association, initiated, as Annual Conference Chair in 2013, a forum on ‘Plants, Pollinators and Pesticides’, with lectures by leading experts. He has worked with prominent figures in the bee world, has done much to promote awareness of the plight of bees in the wider community & was delighted with the award of First Prize and Best in Show for his honey & photography at the Essex Show in 2014. He will give his high speed talk covering: A Short History of the Honey Bee, Life inside the Hive, Bee Products, Danger & Threats to Bees. He will also be selling his award winning honey.

 

Saturday 11 April 2015: ‘The most lovable figure’: George Lansbury and East End politics

Speaker: Professor John Shepherd

‘The most lovable figure in modern politics’ was how A.J.P. Taylor described Christian socialist and pacifist, George Lansbury. At 73 the former rebel in 1932 took over the helm of the Labour Party of only 46 MPs in the Depression years. Throughout a remarkable life, the immensely popular Lansbury remained an extraordinary politician of the people, associated with a multitude of crusades for women’s enfranchisement, social justice and universal disarmament. He was twice jailed for his political beliefs in 1913 over ‘votes for women’ and during the 1921 ‘Poplar Rates Revolt,’ when 30 Labour councillors willingly went to prison in defiance of the government, the courts and their own party leadership. Lansbury never sought personal wealth, travelled everywhere by public transport and made his family home in impoverished East London. His final years were spent in a tireless international crusade, including visits to Hitler and Mussolini in 1937, to prevent the drift towards another world war.

 

Saturday 9 May 2015:  Permaculture: Working with Nature

Speaker: Ros Bedlow

Take a walk in Epping Forest. Trees, grasses, fungi, birds, insects, squirrels, foxes, all going about their business. Things change, but the forest keeps going: sustainable in the true sense of the word. What is it about an ecosystem like this that keeps it going & can we learn anything from it? Permaculture, developed in Australia in the 1970s as a response to agricultural practices which were degrading the land, was based on observation of nature & provided a framework for designing sustainable food growing systems. Ros has taught permaculture since the 1980s  & is particularly interested in the way permaculture ethics & principles can be applied to groups, communities, indeed to any system, to increase their sustainability.

 

Saturday 13 June 2015:  “It’s the Monarchy, Stupid”: Why the Crown is the Biggest Obstacle to Constitutional Reform

Speaker: Graham Smith

The monarchy is the keystone of the British constitution & the source of political & royal power, the wellspring of the establishment’s culture of pomposity & authority.  Yet it is wrong in principle, wrong in practice & bad for British politics, the antithesis of the democratic spirit that drives ever-growing demands for reform & the biggest obstacle to the radical reform Britain needs.  Arguments about devolution, localism & city mayors miss the point: the democratic revolution must happen in Westminster first. Without a seismic shift in our political system’s  foundation, all else is tinkering at the edges of a fundamentally flawed system. Graham is the Chief Executive Officer of Republic campaign.

 

Saturday 11 July (part of the Leytonstone Festival): “All’s Well”: A Musical Journey to Antarctica

Speaker/ Performer: Jake Wilson

In 2012, guitarist & songwriter Jake Wilson released “All’s Well”, a collection of songs marking the centenary of the deaths of Captain Scott & his polar party on their return journey from the South Pole. In 2013, Jake received unique permission to travel to Antarctica & perform his songs in the actual hut where Scott & his team lived & worked before setting out for the Pole. Jake will be talking about Scott & his companions, performing his songs & discussing his own extraordinary musical expedition to Antarctica.  For more information:  http://www.jakewilsonmusic.com

 

Saturday 8 August 2015:  ‘It Happened Here’

Speaker: Kevin Brownlow

Kevin Brownlow, the British film restorer, historian & director recently awarded an honorary Oscar for lifetime services to cinema, will talk about his first film It Happened Here, co-directed with Andrew Mollo when both were teenagers: a counter-factual history of Britain under Nazi occupation in the closing year of World War Two. Often described as the best amateur film ever made, superb in its authenticity & attention to period detail, it contained scenes in which genuine British Nazis were allowed to expound their views, leading to its being misinterpreted & condemned by many as pro-Nazi.  Kevin, who visited Hamburg in 2014 for the film’s first public showing in Germany, will talk & show us excerpts of his film.

 

Saturday 12 September 2015: James Pound, Rector of Wanstead, Natural Philosopher and Astronomer

Speaker: Dr John Fisher

In 1707 James Pound survived a massacre at an outpost of the East India Company near Cambodia. He navigated a small ship through pirate-infested waters. In 1709 he was appointed Rector of Wanstead by Sir Richard Child. Pound, a Fellow of the Royal Society, sought a solution to the problem of determining the longitude at sea, before the Longitude Prize was instituted. From 1710 Wanstead became a leading centre of scientific research. Pound worked with Edmond Halley and Isaac Newton. Pound’s nephew, James Bradley, became the first to demonstrate that the Earth was in motion. The work at Wanstead led to the solution of determining longitude at sea. Dr John Fisher lives in Forest Gate, was a factory worker without any educational qualifications, was one of the first Open University students and later lectured in the history of science at Imperial College, London.

 

Saturday 10 October 2015: Walking with Passion: A One Way Ticket to Jarrow

Speaker: Carole Vincent

Journeying from Jarrow to Trafalgar Square, a group of people from all walks of life came together in August 2014, planning to walk an historic route first taken by the Jarrow March for Jobs on 2 October 1936. However, this was the first of its kind to enlighten communities on route of the devastating privatisation of our NHS & to muster support for the ‘Call999fortheNHS’ Campaign. Carole tells her story of those three weeks & why she walked the 300 miles.

 

Saturday 14 November 2015: Trauma, Grief and Resilience in Gaza

Speakers: Dr Mohamed Altawil and David Harrold

What does it means to be a child in Gaza? You may be surprised by answers from Dr Mohamed Altawil & David Harrold of Palestine Trauma Centre (UK) who work with a trauma centre in Gaza helping children & families. The situations are often harrowing; but the people, especially the children, can be inspiring. Mohamed & David will show the work of the trauma team, recite some poetry & discuss future prospects for these wonderful children who have experienced eight years of siege & four brutal invasions.

 

Saturday 12 December 2015: The Direct Path to Enlightenment

Speaker: Vanaraji

How can we live in a better world? Changing our mind changes the world. The teachings of the Buddha help us change how we think & give us a new perspective on life that leads  to freedom from suffering, for ourselves & others. Vanaraji, an Ordained Buddhist in the Triratana Buddhist Order, will give an overview of Buddhist principles & practices that free us from mundane consciousness & help us experience more vividly the Enlightened world.

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

 

Cyborgian Images

The Capitorg

CYBORGIAN IMAGES

First Issue Call for Articles

Yearbook of Moving Image Studies

Cyborgian Images: The moving image between apparatus and body

Deadline for Articles: December 31, 2014

The double-blind peer-reviewed Yearbook of Moving Image Studies (YoMIS) is now accepting articles from scientists, scholars, artists and film makers for the first issue entitled »Cyborgian Images: The moving image between apparatus and body.

YoMIS will be enriched by disciplines like media and film studies, image science, (film) philosophy, art history, game studies and other research areas related to the moving image in general. Modern perspectives on the structure of moving images exemplify a complex multimodal mechanism that interacts in specific ways with the recipient and various levels of the perception of images. In this case neither moving images nor the subjective reception are passive processes. Movement, time, space and different modalities interact with senses, memories and anticipation and create a complex hybrid structure of medium, recipient and sensory stimulus processing. This refers to the fact, that on the one hand the technological structure of displays and interfaces are relevant, and that on the other hand the role of the lived-body and mind is crucial for an understanding of the effects of the moving images. It is the interaction between the image, the dispositive and the recipient which brings the pictures to life and unfolds its meaning in diverse dimensions. This remark becomeS obvious when looking at the recent evolution in media technologies. New displays and interfaces like the Cinemizer (Zeiss), Oculus Rift (OculusVR) or Kinect (Microsoft) promote the progressive embodiment of the recipient or user by the medium, and, in doing so, they force the amalgamation of the subject of perception with the moving image.

Therefore »Cyborgian Images« addresses the broad field of the relationship between the technological dimension of the medium, its aesthetic and structural impact on the representational status of the moving image and the effect on the bodily level of the recipient, including affective and somatic reactions.

Contributions should be 5000 to 8000 words in length.

Please send your abstract, biographical informations, contact details and your article to Dr. Lars C. Grabbe and Prof. Dr. Patrick Rupert-Kruse via: kontakt@bewegtbildwissenschaft.de.

The official deadline for articles is the December 31, 2014.

If you are interested in contributing an article you will find a style sheet online: http://www.movingimagescience.com

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the managing editors via mail.

YoMIS: http://www.buechner-verlag.de/index.php/programm/yearbook-moving-image-studies

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Approaching Posthumanism and the Posthuman

Capitorg

APPROACHING POSTHUMANISM AND THE POSTHUMAN

Conference and Doctoral Workshop

June 4-6, 2015 – St. Maurice, Switzerland

 

Keynote Speakers:

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, George Washington University

Stefan Herbrechter, Coventry University

Margrit Shildrick, Linköping University

Cary Wolfe, Rice University

 

Organizers: Deborah Madsen, Manuela Rossini, Kimberly Frohreich, and Bryn Skibo-Birney

 

CALL FOR PAPERS: http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/57765

 

A highly topical and sometimes contentious notion, posthumanism continues to spark debates as to how it is

and should be defined, particularly in relation to humanism. One might ask whether the posthuman is merely

an imaginative, literary, and/or theoretical figure or if we are already posthuman. Is posthumanism simply

“after the human” or does it speak to a being beyond, above, within, encompassing, and surpassing what we

currently know as “the human”? Moreover, even if we recognize that posthumanism is inextricably bound to

and wound up in humanist discourse, does the posthuman figure effectively open up alternative perspectives

and positions from which to question, to destabilize, and to decenter the human?

 

These questions permeate contemporary literature, film and television, comic books, video games, social

media, philosophical and theoretical essays in which posthuman figures abound. From avatars and cyborgs to

clones and zombies, the posthuman appears continually to challenge the line dividing the human from the

nonhuman. Whether blurring the distinction between human and machine, human and animal, organic and

inorganic, or the living from the dead, whether destabilizing gender, sexuality, race, class, age, the

mind/body dichotomy, or species categorization, posthumanism points to the ways in which (the exclusion

of) the Other is necessary to the self-bounded identity of the human(ist) subject. More than a contemporary

issue, posthumanism appears whenever “humanness” or anthropocentrism is in crisis, and critics have

accordingly noted the presence of posthumanist thought, themes, and figures not only in postmodern

literature but in much earlier literary periods as well.

 

The aim of this conference is both to explore the multiple ways in which posthumanism in its various

configurations questions, complicates, destabilizes, and “haunts” humanism and the human, as well as to

discuss theoretical approaches to posthumanism and/or the posthuman. In addition to inhabiting a wide range

of literary periods, genres, and media, posthumanism can also be said to blur the seemingly well-defined

borders between humanities disciplines, lending itself to interdisciplinary approaches involving literary and

cultural studies, media studies, animal studies, and fields like the digital, medical, and environmental

humanities, as well as drawing from multiple theoretical frameworks such as feminism, gender studies, queer

theory, race theory, disability studies, postcolonial studies, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction.

 

Please send 300 word abstracts to Kimberly Frohreich (kimberly.frohreich@unige.ch) and Bryn Skibo-

Birney (bryn.skibo@unige.ch) by September 15, 2014.

 

Paper topics can address (but are not limited to) any of the above areas and themes across disciplines, periods, genres, and media.

An additional list of potential paper topics is below:

• Posthumanist discourse and/or figures in medieval, early modern, modern or contemporary literature
• Posthuman figures in film and television
• Posthuman figures in comic books and graphic novels
• Posthuman figures in contemporary media forms, e.g. video games, social media, etc.
• Posthumanism and critical animal studies
• Digital humanities and posthumanism
• Medical humanities and posthumanism
• Environmental humanities and posthumanism
• Postcolonial posthumanism
• Posthumanism and the Gothic (then and now)
• Posthumanism and fantasy, science fiction and/or speculative fiction
• Virtual versus embodied reality
• Monsters, ..freaks,.. and/or superheroes
• Metamorphoses and interspecies being/becoming
• Posthuman(ist) subjectivities
• Embodying posthumanism or the posthuman body
• The posthumous
• Language and the posthuman
• Posthumanism and gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, and/or class
• Anthropomorphism
• Posthuman politics and ethics

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

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Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

 

London Anarchist Bookfair 2014

Anarchism

LONDON ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR 2014

Saturday 18th October 2014

10.00am – 7.00pm

Queen Mary University of London

Mile End Road

London

E1 4NS

 

Books, pamphlets, magazines, films, meetings, and discussions along with crèche, older kids space and much more.

Website: http://www.anarchistbookfair.org.uk

Email: mail@anarchistbookfair.org.uk

Flyer: http://anarchistbookfair.org.uk/images/2014frontandback.pdf

 

The London Anarchist Bookfair is the biggest anarchist event in the country but there’s a lot more to anarchism than books or bookfairs. Saturday also sees the national TUC organised demonstration in London with a big anarchist presence, showing anarchists are part of all workers struggles. But we don’t accept the idea that our problems will be solved for us by Union leaders or politicians.

If revolution breaks out in Hyde Park we’ll be there. If not the Bookfair is 15 minutes away on the central line.

The week after there is a United Friends and Families Campaigns (UFFC) march – for the hundreds who have died in police custody or at the hands of the police. These cases and the UFFC’s resistance remind us again of what state power and policing means for many people. UFFC will be speaking at the Bookfair.

So the Bookfair is a small part of a movement and struggles that become more crucial every year. But it’s also a celebration of those fights and a place to set out our stall(s). As always there are books, magazines and newspapers full of ideas and opinions and passion, there will also be dozens of meetings and discussions, films, cabaret and more than anything a chance to meet other people who want to build a new world.

Anarchism doesn’t mean no organisation, so there’s food, a well-run crèche and older kids space and anything we think can make the day more open and accessible. Crèche Available for children 2-8 years. Younger children welcome with carers. Older children There is a supervised space and a youth space.

**END**

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Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

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Jason Read at the TheoryLAB

Nanopolitics

JASON READ AT THE TheoryLAB

Dear All

Please find details of the next event in the seminar programme: Identity, Alterity, Monstrosity: Figures of the Multitude organised by Caroline Williams, TheoryLAB , SPIR and Filippo del Lucchese, Brunel and CIPH, Paris. We hope you will be able to join us.

Please distribute to interested colleagues.

Full details and eventbrite link via the TheoryLAB page: http://www.politics.qmul.ac.uk/theorylab/

Seminar Two: 14 May 5-7pm

Venue: Queen Mary University of London, Arts Two, 3.16

 

Jason Read

The Affective Composition of the Political: From Negative Solidarity to Collective Indignation
Jason Read is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine. He teaches courses in the history of political philosophy, contemporary social theory, the politics of work, philosophy of film, and philosophy of history. He is the author of The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the Prehistory of the Present (SUNY 2003) and Relations of Production: Transindividuality between Economics and Politics (Brill/Haymarket 2014/15) as well as articles on Althusser, Deleuze, Spinoza, Hegel, Negri, and The Wire.

 

Dr Caroline Williams

School of Politics & International Relations Queen Mary, University of London

327 Mile End Road

London E1 4NS

United Kingdom

Email: c.a.williams@qmul.ac.uk

Webpage: http://www.politics.qmul.ac.uk/staff/drcarolinewilliams.html

 

**END**

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Tales of the 1%: Noir and Capitalism

Eisenstein

TALES OF THE 1%: NOIR AND CAPITALISM

CLASS, CRIME & INTERNATIONAL FILM NOIR

 

Dennis Broe with Steven Wishnia
Wednesday, April 30, 7:30 pm

Brecht Forum @ The Commons, 388 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn 11217

http://brechtforum.org/civicrm/event/info?id=12681&reset=1

 

Brecht Forum: http://brechtforum.org/

 

In the decade between the Popular Front and the Communist Purge (1938-48), lower budget, seedy crime films not only in the US, but also in Europe and Asia, collectively called film noir, were a prominent way that film artists critiqued the new international reign of corporate capital. That critique has continued today where regional formations of the style (Nordic, Asian and Mediterranean Noir) have nourished and kept alive noir’s biting critique of the accumulation of capital where lives are smashed, dreams are brutally broken, and those left standing endure with bitterness and confusion while those who hide behind the laws and accumulate bigger piles of loot.

Dennis and Steven will speak of the body of work in film, fiction and other cultural works about what noir is, and how it came about and new directions in lm and literary noir today.

Dennis Broe is a professor of media arts at Long Island University. His previous book, Film Noir, American Workers and Post-War Hollywood was a Choice Outstanding Academic Book. He has written widely on political economy, movie studio history and the Western in Cinema Journal, Jump Cut, Situations and other journals. He is also a film critic on Pacifica Radio. His latest book from Palgrave/Macmillan is Class, Crime & International Noir: Globalizing America’s Dark Art, which will be published on May 8.

Steven Wishnia is the author of the novel When the Drumming Stops (Manic D Press, 2012), the short-story collection Exit 25 Utopia, and The Cannabis Companion, and contributed to Long Island Noir. A journalist specializing in housing, labor, and drug issues, he co-edited Imagine: Living in a Socialist U.S.A. He also played bass in the 1980s punk band False Prophets and artist Mac McGill’s multimedia show.

Economics of the 1%

 

**END**

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Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

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