The Third Visual Culture in Europe Meeting, Trondheim, 6-7 September 2012

Contributions are invited which address the relationship between ecology and visuality in the broadest sense. On the one hand several discourses have come to revolve around what Susan Sontag described in On Photography as an ecology of images, a perspective which raises both epistemological and ethical questions concerning our interactions with the image. On the other hand there are presently several indications of a pressing need for the field of visual culture studies to address what we might call the visualities of ecology, or the place of environmental issues in contemporary visual culture. Topics may include but are by no means limited to:

Images and Ethics // “Ecology” as a Metaphorical Nexus in Visual Studies // Visual Culture within and without the Ecology of Disciplines // Consumerism and Visual Culture/The Visual Culture of Consumerism // Climate Change in/and Visual Culture // The Rhetorics of Environmentalism in Media and/or Art // Apocalyptic Narratives in Visual Culture

To submit a proposal for a paper presentation, please email an abstract of approximately 200 words to the conference organisers, Nina Lager Vestberg (nina.vestberg@ntnu.no) and Øyvind Vågnes (ov@nomadikon.net), by 7 March 2012.

The Machinima Issue – Free for you to access until 31st December 2011

Simply click here to access the content of this Themed Issue

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

Forthcoming themed issues include:

In 2012

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

In 2013:

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

The second biennial International Association for Visual Culture conference:

‘Now! Visual Culture’

May 31-June 2, 2012

20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor, New York, NY, 10012

See the flyer attached.

Email: nm45@nyu.edu

More details forthcoming in the weeks to come at: http://www.journalofvisualculture.org/blog/

“This special issue of the Journal of Visual Culture is a remarkable and much needed addition to the critical analysis and development of translation as a metaphor for creative acts and products. [...] I can wholeheartedly recommend ‘Acts of Translation’ to anybody interested in the critical engagement with cultures, whether historical or contemporary, visual or linguistic. It deserves to become an essential reference in departments of visual culture, fine art, art history and, importantly, also translation studies.”

Katja Krebs, Translation Studies, May 2010

]]> http://www.journalofvisualculture.org/2011/09/on-acts-of-translation/feed/ 0 http://www.journalofvisualculture.org/2011/05/w-j-t-mitchell-at-university-of-westminster-on-13th-june-from-2-6-in-the-board-room-309-regent-street/ http://www.journalofvisualculture.org/2011/05/w-j-t-mitchell-at-university-of-westminster-on-13th-june-from-2-6-in-the-board-room-309-regent-street/#comments Tue, 31 May 2011 16:51:02 +0000 Marquard Smith http://www.journalofvisualculture.org/?p=321 The eagerly awaited ‘Audience with W.J.T. Mitchell’ will take place in The Boardroom, 1st Floor, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster, on Monday 13th June 2011 from 2-6. All are welcome, and attendance is free, but you must RSVP to Sharon asap here: sinclas@wmin.ac.uk

Cloning Tom: An Audience with W.J.T. Mitchell

Monday 13th 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.

Scarcity and Consumption is part of Scarcity Exchanges, 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.

Iain Boal is a social historian and co-founder of the Retort collective, an association of radical writers, artisans, and artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has taught at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Cruz. He is presently Research Fellow of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London. In his remarks, “Scarcity and the necessities of life”, Boal will review the Reverend Malthus’ definition of economics as “decision under scarcity”, and asks whether another economics, indeed another world, is possible.

Lyla Mehta is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex and an Adjunct Professor at Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences. She is a sociologist and her work focuses on the politics of scarcity, water and sanitation, gender, forced displacement and resistance, rights and access to resources and the politics of environment/ development and sustainability. Several of her publications have been concerned with scarcity including the recently edited work ‘The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation’. Her talk is entitled ‘Taking the scare out of scarcity: Why ‘perfect storm’ narratives serve to keep the poor poor’.

Wednesday, 1 June 2011, 6.30 pm, University of Westminster, Marylebone Campus, London

This event is free but registration is required.

13th June 2011, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster, 2:00-6:00, FREE. Booking essential.

To celebrate the publication of ‘Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present’ (The University of Chicago Press), the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at University of Westminster 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 on sinclas@wmin.ac.uk

Contributors:

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.

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

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.

The Whitechapel Salon is an annual series co-organised by the Whitechapel Gallery and the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at the University of Westminster, in which leading intellectuals conduct discussions on a contemporary cultural issue in an informal atmosphere (with booze). Come and join us.

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

Further details: http://instituteformodern.co.uk/

‘Poster Power: Images from Mao’s China, Then and Now’

At 309 Regent Street Gallery, University of Westminster, London

On Wednesday 11th May 2011

From 6:30-8:30 p.m.

Please do come along. And bring a friend. Or two.

Exhibition continues 12th May – 14th July

Invitation to the Private View attached. For further information on the exhibition please see:

http://www.westminster.ac.uk/about/news-and-events/events/2011/poster-power

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.