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Symposium: Conversations on Care and/in the Community – 6 June 2019

Conversations on Care and/in the Community

 

Keynes Library, 6th June 2019, 12.30-6.30pm

Experiences and practices of care have changed dramatically in the past three decades. Since the passing of the NHS and Community Care Act (1990), healthcare, social care and short-term psychiatric care have been increasingly decentralised and delivered ‘in the community’. This shift has been both practical and discursive: altering the pathways by which care is accessed and the sites in which it is received; and changing perceptions surrounding the role of those receiving care in wider society. In the case of mental healthcare for example, it has led us to move from the ‘mental patient’ to the ‘service user’ as labels that define the relationship between persons receiving care and those providing it.

Thirty years on, community care continues to be a fraught subject. On the one hand, it has been seen as having a democratizing influence, opening up the possibility for greater patient choice, and of integrating patients’ and service-users’ voices into care provision. On the other, it continues to be viewed as a chaotic cost-cutting exercise which leaves vulnerable people to fall through the cracks.

‘Conversations on Care and/in the Community’ symposium invites researchers to engage in a series of conversations surrounding these new social and spatial conditions of care in the twenty-first century.

Register for a free space here: http://bit.ly/careandincommunity

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Thinking (about) Automata in Descartes, Shaftesbury, and Diderot – 20 May 2019

Lecture by Dr. James Fowler

Thinking (about) Automata in Descartes, Shaftesbury, and Diderot

6 -7.30pm, Monday 20 May 2019

Keynes Library, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square. WC1H 0PD

The Birkbeck Eighteenth-Century Research Group is delighted to announce a forthcoming lecture by James Fowler, Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Kent.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, discussions of the soul in the secular sphere involved thinking about automata, and whether they might think. Breaking with Aristotle, Descartes uses the cultural phenomenon of automates (such as those he viewed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye) to suggest that, quite simply, all non-human animals are ‘bêtes-machines’. Shaftesbury is strongly opposed to this: refuting Descartes and Malebranche, he argues that all animals – including humans – should only be viewed as ‘clockwork’ when they are seized by fits. By contrast, Diderot (an admirer of Vaucanson) argues, in support of materialism, that humans can usefully be imagined as animal-machines – or indeed as living statues. This tendency in Diderot can be traced in his early (1747) translation of Shaftesbury, in which the automaton, as ‘automate’, is introduced where it least belongs: in the English Earl’s thought experiment concerning a ‘solitary creature’.

 

All are very welcome! Please note: this event is part of Birkbeck Arts Week 2019.

To reserve your free place, and to see the full programme of events, please go to:

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/annual-events/arts-week/arts-week-2019

 

For further information, please contact Dr Ann Lewis: a.lewis@bbk.ac.uk

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Workshop: The Narco-Culture of Narco-Accumulation – Friday 15 March

THE NARCO-CULTURE OF NARCO-ACCUMULATION

A WORKSHOP

The Keynes Library

School of Arts

Birkbeck, University of London

43 Gordon Square

Bloomsbury

London WC1H 0PD

Find us on the map

Friday, March 15th 2019: 10.00 am – 17.00 pm

In this workshop we will discuss the social, political, cultural, as well as the capital-logics of contemporary narco-capitalism and its mobile territories (from the land in which drugs are cultivated, to the virtual world of laundering and finance in which its profits are realized and re-invested), especially as it is both juridically – and thus, militarily – constituted by and at the Mexican-US border. Violence and ‘wars’, of all kinds, are fundamental to these outlaw logics which have spawned a variety of cultural and subjectivizing forms (some of which will be highlighted by our guest speakers here). Indeed, this particular – and supposedly ‘Mexican’ – narco-cultural formation, which at first glance seems to present itself as peripheral, is in fact becoming increasingly central to contemporary forms of capital accumulation and its representation: its presence both seen and heard in the daily news as well as in contemporary art, television, film, literature and music. In this workshop we hope to throw some light on some of these processes from a variety of critical perspectives.

Open to everyone. No booking necessary.

For more information and to see the programme, click here.

This workshop is organised by Professor John Kraniauskas (j.kraniauskas@bbk.ac.uk). For any further information, please contact him.

This workshop is supported by CILAVS, Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies, and BIH, the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.

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‘Death, Afterlife and the Question of Autobiography (Biutiful, 2010)’ – Friday 15 March

The Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies, CILAVS, cordially invites you to its Seminar Series event for Spring 2019.

“Death, Afterlife and the Question of Autobiography (Biutiful, 2010)”

A talk by Prof. Cristina Moreiras-Menor, U. Of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Friday 15 March, 2019 at 6PM

Keynes Library

School of Arts

Birkbeck, University of London

43 Gordon Square

London WC1H 0PD

Find us on the map

 

The book The Inoperative Community by Jean-Luc Nancy opens with this statement, which registers the exhaustion of thinking through History as one of the tragedies of our times.  I will approach this exhaustion in regard to a Spanish film that speaks of death and extinction while at the same time proposing, through the passion of its image, and in a certain politics of the afterlife that the film emits, a reflection on the political potentiality that is the recovered through a redemptive historicity. I refer to Biutiful, by Alejandro González Iñárritu (2010), which testifies, from the story of the agony of its protagonist, Uxbal, the presence of an essential in-certainty: life as a transition and, therefore, as a new beginning and/or as a non-finitude. The film proposes a historicity of experience erased by the exhaustion of history to which Nancy refers. Biutiful explodes, in the always continuous wandering of its protagonist through a desolated city, the historicity of its experience of life, death and the afterlife. Afterlife is powerfully associated in the film with the promise and permanence of that which has been lost, and therefore with the experience of remembering. Indeed, the film plays with the idea of a recovery, through a story that I will call autobiographical: the experience of history as afterlife and as event that accumulates death. My essay will be an intervention regarding the need of rethinking the politics of life, memory and inheritance through the facticity of death.

Cristina Moreiras-Menor received her Ph.D in Spanish Literature from the University of California, Davis. Between 1996-2002 she taught Spanish Peninsular literature at Yale University. Currently she is Professor of Iberian Literature and Culture and Women’s Studies at The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) where she was the Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures for the last eight years and where she works in Galician and Spanish Literature, Spanish film, cultural theory, and psychoanalysis. She has published extensively on 19 and 20th century Spanish literature and film.  She is the author of Cultura herida: Literatura y cine en la España democrática (Libertarias, 2002), La estela del tiempo: historicidad e imagen en el cine español contemporáneo (Editorial Iberoamericana Vervuert,  2011), and  the editor of a monographic issue of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies entitled Critical interventions on Violence. With historian Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco, she is the editor of Constelaciones, a new series of the Editorial Cómares dedicated to publish outstanding work on Peninsular Cultural studies. She is currently working on two books, one on Novo Cinema Galego with particular attention to documentary, and the second one on the political and aesthetic relation between landscape and historicity in the works of some renowned Spanish writers (Juan Goytisolo, Juan Benet, Federico Sanchez Ferlosio, among others).

Entrance free but booking here necessary.

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Holograms in the Museum – Friday 1 March 2019

Holograms in the museum

Date: Friday 1 March 2019

Time: 6.30-8pm

Venue: Keynes Library, School of Arts Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD

This event explores the increasing role of holographic technology in the arts and cultural sector.

Today the term “hologram” is often used to describe a wide variety of three-dimensional and virtual imagery, generated by technologies ranging from Pepper’s ghosts to augmented reality. Museums and galleries are increasingly using these technologies as a means to reanimate the past, create interactive visitor experiences and offer access to absent or fragile artefacts.

Beyond the initial excitement of these dazzling holographic spectacles, this event creates an opportunity to consider the aesthetic, ethical and technical questions raised by these practices. Why are holograms so popular as a means to reanimate history and culture? How do they alter existing practices of memory and memorialisation? What are our responsibilities when using holograms to reanimate people? How do holograms affect our temporal relationships with people, objects and artefacts? Why has holography become a metaphor for so many types of virtual experience?

This interdisciplinary discussion brings together animators, designers and media and cultural studies scholars to consider the changing significance of holograms in artistic and cultural practice.

The event will feature brief presentations by Chris Walker, and Nick Lambert, Jazz Rasool and Mike Smith, followed by a panel discussion chaired by Dr Silke Arnold-de Simine, Reader in Memory, Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College.

If you have any additional access requirements please get in touch elizabeth.johnson@bbk.ac.uk

The discussion is free to attend but booking is encouraged.

Please book your ticket here. All welcome!

This event coincides with the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci and Perpetual Motion: Visualising Impossible Machines, which is taking place in the Peltz Gallery from 6 February to 12 March 2019.

Prior to the discussion, there will also be an opportunity to experience the Holo Lens animation of da Vinci’s designs in the Peltz Gallery from 5pm.

Speakers’ bios

Dr Nick Lambert is Director of Research at Ravensbourne University London. He studies art and technology, and the position of the digital medium in contemporary art and visual culture. Through this, he engages with questions about the boundary between “fine” and “applied” arts, design and interfaces. Lambert has written on the history of computer art and cutates exhibitions with artists and theorists in this field. He has also developed interests in the evolution of immersive visual technologies, especially full dome; and exhibited his immersive artworks in New York, London and elsewhere.

Jazz Rasool has a background in Science, Computing and Teaching. He is currently a Researcher at Ravensbourne University London (RUL) specialising in Technology Enhanced Education. His most recent work contributed to a €3m EU funded project creating Holographic (Hololens) workplace training for Air Ambulance crew in the Arctic as well as Astronaut trainers in Italy working with International Space Station and Mars missions. In 2018 he won a €30,000 first prize from Farfetch, the world’s 4th largest online fashion retailer, for Disruptive Innovation in Fashion, competing against 50 other companies globally, with his winning idea presenting technology for Holographic projection of fashion on people. Preparing for the 500th anniversary of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Death in 2019 and collaborating with colleagues at RUL, Jazz was the first to create and see a holographic animated rendition of Da Vinci’s designs for Perpetual Motion machines, with the work on show at the Peltz Gallery, London and at the home of Da Vinci’s designs in the Museo Galileo in Florence, Italy.

Mike Smith is a creative content provider, animator, educator and visual storyteller, specializing in heritage, theatre and public installations. His expertise, as an animator and visual effects artist, allow him to provide these sectors with the standard of visualization and storytelling expected in the film and entertainment industries.

Chris Walker is the Managing Director of Bright White; a creative design consultancy based in York, England. Bright White formed in 2004. Their mission is to engage the next generation with the riches of the past and present, to help them live and learn. Bright White believe in learning by doing; giving the audience real agency to explore a subject, sparking their interest, creating memorable moments and, in the process, learning without labour.

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The Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group – 31 January 2019

The Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group will meet on 31st January 2019, 14:30-16:00 in the Keynes Library, Birkbeck School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD to consider work on the topic of the politics of bodily comportment. This session will be led by Dr Harriet Cooper, Researcher in Rights-based Rehabilitation at the University of East Anglia, and the material to be discussed is as follows:

  • Iris Marion Young, ‘Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Bodily Comportment, Motility and Spatiality’, Human Studies, 3, 137-156 (1980)

 

 

 

The readings for each session – including the Iris Marion Young essay not linked above – are held in a shared Dropbox folder. If you need access, email sophie.jones@bbk.ac.uk (include your Dropbox-linked email address, if you have one).

Everyone is welcome at the reading group. There is no need to book.

The Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group aims to create a space in which academics, clinicians and students can come together to explore key readings, ideas and materials in the field of medical humanities. Our endeavour is to find ways of talking across the different disciplines of the humanities and medicine, and we welcome participation from colleagues and students interested and engaged in these areas. For details of previous sessions, please click here.

 

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Bill’s Big Birthday Bash: An Evening of Readings in Celebration of Bill Griffiths 20 August 2018

Monday 20th August. Doors 6:30pm, readings from 7pm. In the Keynes Library, School of Arts, Birkbeck University of London, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD. Free admission, all welcome with no need to book.

 

Bill Griffiths (1948-2007) was a poet, publisher, translator, archivist, Anglo-Saxonist, prisoners’ rights activist, biker, classical pianist and much more. He was born in Middlesex and was primarily based in the London area before moving to Seaham, County Durham, in 1990. Monday 20th August 2018 would have been his 70th birthday. The Contemporary Poetics Research Centre at Birkbeck and the Poetics Research Centre at Royal Holloway are pleased to announce an evening of readings to mark the occasion and celebrate Griffiths’ achievements. Refreshments provided. This event will feature:

  • Mendoza and Peter Manson reading to launch their new collection WINDSUCKERS & ONSETTERS (SONNOTS for Griffiths). Published by MATERIALS (UK) / MATERIALIEN (Germany), this collaboration is inspired by Griffiths’ research into the lexicons of County Durham’s fishing and mining communities.
  • A collaborative performance by poets Geraldine Monk (who has described Griffiths as her ‘very first poet friend’) and Alan Halsey (editor of Griffiths’ three-volume Collected Poems, published by Reality Street, 2010-2016).
  • A talk by poet and historian John Seed about Griffiths’ life and lexical research in County Durham, plus a reading from Seed’s own poetry about the region.
  • An opportunity for audience members to read excerpts from Griffiths’ work, share their own poems in response to his accomplishments, or speak about their memories of this remarkable writer – if you would like to participate in this segment, please honour a time limit of two minutes, so that everyone has a chance to contribute.
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CASTING CODE: Reflections on 3D Printing half day symposium – 14th May 2018

CASTING CODE: Reflections on 3D Printing half day symposium

Date: Monday 14 May 2018

Time: 1-5pm

Venue: Keynes Library, School of Arts Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD

Free to attend, but registration is required. Book here

All welcome

This half-day interdisciplinary symposium will explore how digital 3D technologies are transforming the ways that art and cultural artefacts are produced, stored and shared.

3D printing has been used to reconstruct destroyed ancient monuments, inspire activist communities and help reimagine contemporary art practice. As digital 3D technology finds new applications in an ever-growing number of fields, it has opened up new possibilities for digital reproduction on a global scale, seeming to promise new alternatives to mass-manufacture and unprecedented opportunities for the circulation and exchange of objects.

The increasing role of digital 3D technology in the production and reception of art and cultural heritage raises numerous urgent aesthetic and ethical questions. Although many of these concerns – such as big tech monopolies, uneven accessibility and energy consumption – are shared with other areas of digital culture, their particular manifestations in relation to 3D printing technologies frequently animate these issues in ways that emphasise the interconnection between the digital and the material. As such, critical explorations of digital 3D technology can help to challenge out-dated distinctions between virtual processes and material objects and infrastructures, revealing some of the ways in which our world is being radically, but often silently, reshaped by the power structures that underpin digital technology.

This interdisciplinary symposium brings together artists, curators, conservators and researchers working in art history, law, media studies to explore the significance of 3D printing and associated digital 3D technologies for artistic and cultural practice.

Event schedule

13:00     Welcome: Elizabeth Johnson (Birkbeck)

13:15     Amelia Knowlson (Sheffield Hallam University) will present new research on the curatorial decision-making processes behind 3D digitisation at The British Museum. Her work used design-based methods to examine micro pre-existing and emerging 3D projects across curatorial departments.

13:45     Xavier Aure (University of West England) will discuss the influence of computer graphics techniques in his research on visualisation and texture reproduction of paintings.

14:15     Dukki Hong (Bournemouth University) will introduce some IP issues in relation to emerging 3D printing technologies, considering what IP law is; how it is constructed; and most importantly why 3D printing matters to IP law.

14:45     Break

15:15     Mara-Johanna Kolmel (Leuphana University Lüneburg,) will be speaking about Reforming the Formless. An art historical perspective on 3D technologies.

15:45     Daniel Rourke (Goldsmiths) will discuss The 3D Additivist Cookbook, a compendium of 3D .obj and .stl files, critical and fictional texts, templates, recipes, (im)practical designs and methodologies for living in this most contradictory of times, which he devised and edited in collaboration with artist Morehshin Allahyari.

16.15     Discussion chaired by Joel McKim, (Birkbeck)

If you have any additional access requirements please get in touch elizabeth.johnson@bbk.ac.uk

This event is kindly supported by the Lorraine Lim Postgraduate Fund and the Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology

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