Tag Archives: Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture

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BIRMAC Summer 2016 Programme

BIRMAC (Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture) is delighted to announce its forthcoming events for the Summer term.

Wednesday 18th May 2016 | The Apparitional: films by Barbara Hammer and Sandra Lahire | curated by Ricardo Matos Cabo and Selina Robertson | Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square | 14:00-17.00.

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/birmac/2016/04/07/the-apparitional/

This event is sponsored by BIRMAC and BIMI and held as part of Arts Week 2016

Taking the concept of ‘The Apparitional’ from Terry Castle’s 1993 literary and social history The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture where she locates the ‘ghosts’ of lesbian sexualities obscured by history, together with the documentary and experimental films of Barbara Hammer, Dr Watson’s X Rays (1991) and Sanctus (1990), and Sandra Lahire’s Uranium Hex (1987) and Serpent River (1989), this event will explore the idea of ‘The Apparitional’ within the context of the X-ray as a presence of the uncanny, a ghostliness, the body as subject, illness, radiation and (film) exposure, conflicts between scientific and visual objectivity and the politics of gender and sexuality.

This screening and discussion will explore the idea of ‘the apparitional’ through the films of the radical lesbian feminist filmmakers, Barbara Hammer and Sandra Lahire. These are powerful films about the vulnerability of the body, of women’s bodies, made (in)visible by and exposed to radiation, unprotected against the effects of contamination by uranium mining, emerging as ghosts through an intense alchemy of images and sounds.

After the screening, Selina Robertson will be joined in conversation with Dr. Sophie Mayer and Sarah Pucill.

Book your free place via Eventbrite.

Thursday 19 May 2016 | Ephemeral Ruins: the Fragility of Holocaust Memory | Room: G03, 43 Gordon Square | 18:00-19:30 http://www.bbk.ac.uk/birmac/2016/04/08/ephemeral-ruins-the-fragility-of-holocaust-memory/

This event is part of our Ruin/s theme (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/birmac/current-theme/), curated by Dr. Silke Arnold-de Simine, and held as part of Arts Week 2016

Since the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps the question of preservation of these sites of mass destruction has been intensely debated by national representatives of victim groups, survivors and their families as well as a diverse group of museum practitioners and educators. Key questions for debate include: Should nature overtake and completely efface the concentration camps? Will this dissolution lead to oblivion? Can preservation ensure remembrance? This talk by Dr. Diana Popescu, Research Fellow at the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, will look at these questions from the multiple perspectives offered by memorial museums, contemporary artists and visitors from Poland and Germany.

Dr. Jessica Rapson, King’s College London, will offer a response, followed by discussion.

Book your free place via Eventbrite.

Friday 27 May 2016  | What Things Are, and What Things Do | Keynes Library | 14:00-17:00 |

Followed by a free screening of Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975) | Birkbeck Cinema | 18:00 – 20:00 http://www.bbk.ac.uk/birmac/2016/03/08/what-things-are-what-things-do/

Organised by Güneş Tavmen and Hannah Barton, co-winners of the BIRMAC 2015-16 Student Competition, this interdisciplinary event seeks to debate the role of ‘structuring structures’ in media cultures, and includes presentations from Dr. Emily LaBarge (writer and researcher) and Dr Maan Barua (Somerville College, Oxford)

BIRMAC is also part sponsoring Conventions of Proximity in Art, Theatre and Performance, which combines papers, workshops from guest artists in the School of Arts’ studio space, film screenings in Birkbeck Cinema, performance installation, and an exhibition of contemporary art in the Peltz Gallery.

Thursday 5 May |  researchers and practitioners will share their work in parallel panel presentations, from which attenders can make a selection.

Friday 6 May | film screenings, panel presentations, workshops and a performance installation will run in parallel, from which attenders can make a selection.

Everyone is welcome, so please come and participate in these stimulating events.

Best wishes,

Lorraine Lim and Janet McCabe, Co-Directors of BIRMAC

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Conventions of Proximity in Art, Theatre and Performance. 5 & 6 May 2016

Thursday 5 May 1-6pm & Friday 6 May, 10am-6pm
School of Arts, Birkbeck College, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD
Booking: http://bit.ly/1YiQzYJ

Immersive and curatorial strategies are highly current in contemporary theatre, visual art and exhibition culture – bringing audiences into close and often interactive relationships with artistic work. But how else do art, theatre and performance engage ideas of proximity, and how have they done so in the past?

 

Conventions of Proximity in Art, Theatre and Performance investigates forms of nearness and distance from numerous perspectives: dramaturgical, curatorial, affective, social, conceptual, virtual, geographical. Over a day and a half, artists and writers will share their work on proximity as an idea and as a practice. From the early modern to the contemporary, in examples drawn from southeast Asia to the global north, the symposium explores proximity in relation to a diverse range of topics, including digital networks, architectural design, home, public space, cinema, loneliness, friendship, listening, darkness, museum display, and music.

Conventions of Proximity combines papers, workshops from guest artists in the School of Arts’ studio space, film screenings in Birkbeck Cinema, performance installation, and an exhibition of contemporary art in the Peltz Gallery.

On Thursday 5 May, researchers and practitioners will share their work in parallel panel presentations, from which attenders can make a selection.

On Friday 6 May, film screenings, panel presentations, workshops and a performance installation will run in parallel, from which attenders can make a selection.

Contributors include:
Silke Arnold-de Simine (Birkbeck, University of London)
Maaike Bleeker (University of Utrecht)
Fiona Candlin (Birkbeck, University of London)
Fourthland
Sheila Ghelani
Alison Green (Central Saint Martins)
Peader Kirk & Teoma Jackson Naccarato
Nicholas Ridout (Queen Mary, University of London)
Victoria Walsh (Royal College of Art)

Conventions of Proximity takes place on Thursday 5 May, 1-6pm and Friday 6 May, 10am-6pm. It is free of charge to attend but places are very limited, and booking is essential. The schedule can be seen here.

Booking: http://bit.ly/1YiQzYJ

Co-hosted by Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre and Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture, and supported by Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image.

Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-research/bcct/events

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