The London Consortium is seeking to appoint two doctoral students to work on the project Art School Educated: Curriculum Change in UK Art Schools 1960-2010. This Leverhulme-funded research project is based in the research department at Tate, an institutional partner of the London Consortium, and the students will be expected to work in collaboration with the department and the two postdoctoral researchers assigned to the project. These studentships are fully funded for three years to commence in September 2009 and include a maintenance grant of £14,940 as well as covering UK/EU tuition fees.

The London Consortium is a unique collaboration between Birkbeck College, the ICA, Tate, the Science Museum and the Architectural Association offering masters and doctoral programmes in humanities and cultural studies in a unique multidisciplinary environment. In the first year of the award the successful applicant will follow five core courses and a research methods course designed to provide an exploratory and innovative grounding in the concepts and methodologies of multidisciplinary research. The doctorate will be examined by a thesis of 80,000 to 100,000 words, and will be awarded by the University of London.

The main objectives of the project are to research and record the institutional and curriculum histories of the London art schools in the post-war period to reveal how art school education affected the intellectual formation and practice of the contemporary and recent artists whose work has entered Tate’s collection in recent years. The project will result in a fresh but authoritative historical account of education in the post-war London art schools.

Prospective applicants are invited to apply using the London Consortium’s standard application form, available at www.londonconsortium.com/apply, indicating that they would like to be considered for the award. Applications should reach Birkbeck registry by 20 August at the latest and interviews will take place in the first week of September. 2,000 word PhD proposals should specify a programme of research that relates to the history of art school education in the period. Applicants may wish to specify the topic chronologically, thematically or institutionally and are encouraged to bring their own research interests to the project. Enquiries should be directed to Dr. Matt Taunton, admissions tutor, by email on matt@londonconsortium.com, or by telephone on 020 7836 7558.

Consortium fellow Tom McCarthy is speaking in the symposium on Futurism and the Avant-Garde taking place at Tate Modern on 27th June 2009, to coincide with the recently-opened Futurism exhibition. His talk, entitled ‘These Panels Are Our Only Models for the Composition of Poetry, or, How Marinetti Taught Me How to Write’, asks what characteristics a genuinely Marinettian contemporary literature might have. Other contributors include Lutz Becker, Mary-Ann Caws, David Cottington, Alex Danchev and Matthew Gale.

The London Sound Seminar offers an opportunity for research students and faculty in London to explore issues relating to the history and theory of all forms of sound-making and auditory culture.

This term, we will be combining field trips with more sedentary reflections. All meetings will be in room 308, 30 Russell Square, London WC1

Monday 1st June, 5.30
We will be discussing Bill Fontana’s Silent Echoes, at the Haunch of Venision, 1-30 May.

Friday 12 June, 12.00
The seminar will constitute a pilot study for Jonathan Gross’s ethnography of musical listening, focussing on the experience of the Festival Hall concert of 11 June, featuring performances of Alban Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra and Mahler’s Symphony no. 7.

Thursday 18 June, 12.00
Setting Sound. A series of listenings exploring the theoretical implications of ‘noise’ along with other non-standard forms of music, curated by Matt Clements. ‘My main point of concern is the capacity of listeners to contract ostensibly arbitrary dissonant, or contingent sound-events into relationships and patterns that invoke musical meaning, whilst extending beyond the immediate moment of consciousness. A provisional list of composers includes Bernhard Gunter, Ivan Fedele and Kevin Drumm.’

Thursday 25 June, 5.00
Steven Feld, ‘Sound Worlds’, in Sound, Patricia Kruth and Henry Stobart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp.173-200.
Steven Feld, ‘Communication, Music, And Speech About Music’, in Steven Feld and Charles Kiel, Musical Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, 2nd edn (Tucson, Arizona Fenestra Books, 2005 [1994].) pp. 77-95.
Copies of these texts are available in 30 Russell Square photocopy room.

Wednesday 1 July, 12.00
Glenn Gould, The Idea of North (1970).
extract

If you would like to join the London Sound Seminar or help develop its activities, please contact Steven Connor

Tate Modern Saturday 20 June 2009, 14.00-21.30

Saturday 20 June 2009, 14.00–21.30

14.00–17.00 symposium 18.00–21.30 dinner in the East Room

In short, this event brings together practitioners and theoreticians of the humanities, arts and sciences to extol or berate, to discuss, explore and explain shortness in all its spatial and temporal manifestations.

Shortness tackles topics ranging from aphorisms, txt msgs and short attention spans to nanophilology, sampling, ephemeral relationships, punch lines, short narratives and other short-lived entities and phenomena (insects and fashion).

The short conference is followed by a long dinner in Tate Modern’s East Room. Dinner guests will be entertained by short speeches and the whole event is supplemented by short films, performances and various interventions.

Conference speakers: DJ Spooky, Sadie Plant, Dan and Lia Perjovschi and Tom Shakespeare. Dinner speakers include Clare Wigfall and Steven Connor amongst others. The compère for the dinner will be Nicholas Parsons.

Organised by Tate Modern Public Programmes in collaboration with Irini Marinaki and Konstantinos Stefanis (London Consortium) and Ricarda Vidal (Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies)

In collaboration with The London Consortium and with additional support from LCACE
Tate Modern Starr Auditorium
£15 (£10 concessions), booking required
£50 (£45 concessions) for dinner and conference

For more information about the event and to book tickets, please visit Tate’s website http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/symposia/18189.htm
book online or call 020 7887 8888.

www.shortness.co.uk

INTERIOR TRACES: A NEW RADIO DRAMA AND PERFORMANCE PROJECT EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF BRAIN IMAGING ON SOCIETY

When the first neurologists started mapping the brain’s functions, they profoundly changed our understanding of its relation to the mind. Today, imaging technologies allow us to observe the structures of the living brain in incredible detail, whilst the future promises an ever-greater appreciation of how our brain, environment, and genes interact to produce behaviour and personality.

Interior Traces is a six-part radio drama, video, performance and debate that looks at how our images and imaginings of the brain have radically changed medicine, law, ethics and our sense of self, and might continue to do so. Spanning one hundred and thirty years, it examines the possible lives of two characters had they lived in Britain in 1906, 2009, and 2030.

The episodes are accompanied by specially-commissioned video works and musical scores and will be performed at three live events in London in May, at Cheltenham Science Festival and broadcast on Resonance 104fm. Each event will be followed by panel discussions with experts from the fields of neuroscience, law, neuroethics and the history of medicine. All events are free.

For full details and booking information see www.interiortraces.com

The Thread is entering its second series in our collaboration with Resonance radio.  We continue in our attempt to rethink the concepts of public speaking, intellectual engagement, and dialogue as research.  We hope to create a public forum in a space fostered by the substance of our arguments.  This suite of shows will run from May through June on Tuesday evenings from 9 to 10 pm on Resonance FM 104.4.

May 5 : Ben Dawson with guests Sean Legassick and Alex Douglas will discuss: Permanent states of emergency that use the threat of various forms of collapse and crisis as a means for sovereign control.  Looking at empirical evidence and philosophical reasoning, how might we better understand the notion of emergency and its relationship to state power?

May 12 : Miguel Cardoso: What do abstract painting and hotel rooms have to do with each other?  The question Miguel asks is what kind of person is assumed to be the subject of advertisements for hotel rooms that declare their rooms contain abstract painting? Who is this person interpellated by ‘abstracticity’, and is this modernist painting project only evincing its ghost in these places of transient habitation?

May 19 : Vasileios Sakkos: The comic book page as a skin of drama, with guests Barry Curtis and Ian Hague. Talking about comic books: how counterculture and America’s underground comic book tradition create certain kinds of stories, certain ways of telling them, also looking to as yet unfulfilled potentials of the medium.

May 26 : Due to technical snafu, an older episode was broadcast on this date.

June 2:  Alex Mackintosh with guests Martine Rouleau and Richard Johnson. Alex and guests will discuss the historical development of attitudes towards the slaughter of animals and the preparation of meat, looking at the curious convergence of consumption and our concerns with death and dying. With the presenter from “Kill it, Cook it, Eat it”.

June 9:  The Doublespeak Show with guests Roger Orwell, Milly Getachew from the Index on Censorship, and Ken Livingstone, former mayor of London (Originally recorded at the ICA as part of its Talk programme.) We will look at how euphemism, particularly political euphemism, can be either a tool for manipulating and disfranchising the citizenry or, as one of our guests will argue, providing a way to mitigate inevitable social conflict.

June 16: Due to scheduled refurbishment of the Resonance studios, no show will be broadcast on this date.

June 23: States of Exception-Continued

Featured guest Alex Douglas, with Ben Dawson and Matt Wraith.  In a continuation of the discussion on states of exception on May 5 we have reconvened the panel, for the large part, to reconsider what role liberalism may play in our understanding of governmentality.  Is there such a thing as a political liberalism divorced from ideology, and if there is, can it give us a sense of what freedom looks like?

June 30: Nonsense Poetry

Louise Schweitzer with guests James Wilkes and Edmund Hardy. An ‘archaeological’ investigation of Victorian nonsense poetry through the work of Edward Lear, W.S.Gilbert and Lewis Carroll.  Drawn from the unconscious volition, and personal character of these three writers, nonsense poetry is also indicative of the Victorian era’s imaginative freedom, romantic masculinity and sense of colonial superiority.

When?  Saturday 14 November 2009

Where? Simultaneously in Athens, Barcelona, Bucharest, Maribor, Novi Sad, Naples, Istanbul, London, Poznan, Stockholm, Thessaloniki, Wiesbaden and other cities in Europe and beyond.

Awards: Special European Jury Prize + Various Local Jury Prizes

The Theme: Control

We would like to invite filmmakers from around the world to submit short films (animation, music video, artist films, narrative, documentary etc.) up to 10 minutes on the theme ‘Control’.

Have you ever thought of your life as a walk on a tight-rope suspended between control and its loss? Keep walking, don’t waver, don’t lose your grip! Or just let go and savour the moments of weightlessness! Control has many shapes and measures. It can be mental, political, physical, social, scientific, strict, loose or something completely different. You might think about control theory, risk and stress control, mastery and skill, borders, surveillance and mind control, birth and pest control, Control panels, Ctrl Alt Delete, or just the remote control lying on your couch. We look forward to unexpected or surprising takes on the theme, but please don’t lose control of time – we can’t accept anything over 10 minutes! Well, yes we must admit…we are control freaks!

We’re called “Betting on Shorts” because we invite our audiences to bet on which film will win. Bets must be placed before the screening based on a synopsis, filmmaker’s bio and short trailer. Please keep that in mind when you fill in the relevant fields on the entry form and provide us with a short but informative bio and synopsis.

Submission deadline: 1 July 2009

Entry Procedure: Please submit an electronic entry form available on our website www.bettingonshorts.com. The entry form with all required information must also be printed out and sent with a DVD (PAL) preview copy. Your submission (film and entry form) should reach us by 1 July 2009. For preview only DVD copies will be accepted.

Subtitling: All films (including English films) must be subtitled in English. If your film is chosen for the BoSs 2009 programme we will require a dialogue transcript for subtitling in other languages (a spotting list would be ideal).

Please also note that we can only accept one film per director.

Selection and Notification: As we expect to receive a large number of submissions we regret that we can only write to the selected filmmakers. If you have not heard from us by end of September 2009, please assume that you have not been successful this time.

Dispatch Costs: Filmmakers are responsible for the costs of sending the preview copy and should the film be selected, also the screening copy. Preview copies can only be returned if you provide a self-addressed and stamped envelope.

Please send your preview copy to:

Ricarda Vidal

Betting on Shorts

Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies

School of Advanced Study

Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DN

For further information please do not hesitate to contact us at the above address or at:

Tel.: 0044 (0)794045 8535

Email: submissions@bettingonshorts.com

For further information please check our website:  http://www.bettingonshorts.com    

The ICA, in collaboration with the London Consortium and the Canada Council for the Arts, will host a retrospective of short films by the Canadian filmmaker Jamie Travis. Featuring a post-screening Q&A with Travis and professor Barry Curtis, the event will take place at the ICA Cinema at 18:30 on 22 April, 2009.Jamie Travis’ ironic and hyper-designed comedies - The Saddest Boy in the World, The Patterns Trilogy and Why the Anderson Children Didn’t Come to Dinner - have established him as ‘one of the most original voices in Canadian cinema’ (The Toronto Sun). Recurring themes of childhood frailty and self-conscious suspense — alongside painstakingly designed interiors and musical vignettes — have engendered a distinct and consistent cinematic universe that straddles the divide between humour and grief.

‘Passivity isn’t really an option when watching his films as the mise en scène is handled with the meticulousness of a serial killer’. (Ion Magazine, Vancouver)

The Saddest Boy in the World (2006) — 13:30

Timothy Higgins, picked last for the team, is the saddest boy in the world. Friendlessness, suburban complacency and prescription drugs have conspired against the youngster to make this his worst year yet. Musical Chairs and birthday cake can’t save him now — at his ninth birthday party Timothy prepares for a show-stopping suicide.

‘A miniature masterpiece — impeccable set design, humour and timing. The self-explanatory story is a wonder, and if Jamie Travis isn’t the next big thing we’ll be entirely gutted’. (The Torontoist)

The Patterns Trilogy (2005-2006) — 40:30

A suspense thriller, a comedy, a love story, a dreamscape and a musical extravaganza, The Patterns Trilogy presents, in three parts, the epic anti-romance of Michael and Pauline.

‘Patterns is a coloured amphetamine that spreads through your entire body’ (Omagiu Magazine, Bucharest)

Why the Anderson Children Didn’t Come to Dinner (2003) — 16:30

Three seven year-olds endure the culinary abuses of their mother. When Mother’s aversion to brown eggs goes too far, young Chester, Eliza and Godfrey employ their queer preoccupations for a communal objective — their heroic absence from dinner.

‘Imagine David Lynch attempting to make a children’s TV series and you’ll be halfway to understanding this movie’. (Channel 4 UK)

The event will be held at 18:30 on Wednesday 22 April, 2009 at the ICA Cinema 1, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH.

Tickets may be purchased at ica.org.uk or by calling the ICA box office at 020 7930 3647.

Curated by Christien Garcia.

Call for Submissions - Shortness, Tate Modern, 20 June 2009

shortness - a very short conference and a very long dinner

Deadline: Friday 20 March 2009

This event will bring together practitioners and theoreticians of the humanities, arts and sciences to extol or berate, to discuss, explore and explain shortness in all its spatial and temporal manifestations.

Topics that Shortness aims to cover include: aphorisms, txt msgs, short attention spans, nanophilology, music samples, ephemeral relationships, short narratives, punch lines, orgasms and other short-lived entities and phenomena (insects and fashion).

The conference itself will only last a few hours and will be followed by a very long dinner. Guests will be entertained by short dinner speeches and the whole event will be supplemented by short films and various interventions.

This call invites submissions for presentations or performances of up to 7 minutes to take place during the long dinner. Please note that we cannot cover any expenses incurred nor can we accommodate installations.Speakers include DJ Spooky, Sadie Plant, Tom Shakespeare, Clare Wigfall and Steven Connor amongst others. The Compère for the dinner will be Nicholas Parsons.

Please send an abstract of no more than 200 words to the organisers and include a short bio of no more than 100 words.

Contact:

short.at.tate@googlemail.com

Shortness is organised by Irini Marinaki, Konstantinos Stefanis, Ricarda Vidal and Tate Modern Public Programmes in collaboration with The London Consortium and the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, School of Advanced Study (University of London).

ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION

Artist’s Series (supported by the London Consortium)

Organised by Parveen Adams

Friday 27th February

Jane and Louise Wilson

have worked together for the last twenty years. Their multi-part video installations are notable for their handling of the viewer’s relation to the spaces as the artists have experienced them - Stasi City (1997), Gamma (1999), Erehwon (2000) among many others. Their most recent work, Unfolding the Aryan Papers (2009) is currently at the British Film Institute’s Southbank Gallery. It is based on unmade Kubrick film concerning a wartime story of a Jewish woman. The actress who was to have played the lead herself figures large in the Wilsons’ film which also includes Kubrick’s wardrobe stills and wartime newsreel images - a complex and stunning work.

Friday 6th March

Melik Ohanian

is a French-Armenian artist working in Paris. In 2006 he showed in South London Gallery - Invisible Film (2005) along with Seven Minutes Before. The latter is an experiment with narrative structure which involves seven screens with seven films taken across two kilometres of a French valley floor which culminate in a single dramatic explosion. In the same year the Institut d’Art Contemporain put their entire space at his disposal. His work has been described as ‘among the most intriguing forms of creative work to be seen at the present day’ (J-L Maubant). Among many projects this year is a group show entitled The Times of a Place in Spain.

Friday 13th March

Matt Collishaw

Haunch of Venison show (2008) - a marvel - Böcklin’s Island of the Dead animated by light changes during the course of a day and projected onto a two-way mirror with complex effects - the viewer held as much by the sheer beauty of the piece as the need to work out how it worked. Shooting Stars projected images of children (from old and new photographs) onto the walls of a huge room in a series of fleeting flashes that might appear anywhere. What were we seeing and why were we seeing it this way? Throbbing Gristle, a large mesmerising sculpture with human and mythological figures, animals and birds constructed like a merry-go-round that rotated with accompanying strobe lighting which conjured up a fearful yet compulsive scene of Chapmanesque excess.

Friday 20th March

Mary Kelly

has shown her work round the world and it is included in major collections. Working in London in the 1970s she incorporated her feminist concerns in the landmark five-part Post-Partum Document. This was followed by a complete showing of the four-part Interim at the New Museum in New York in 1990. She then developed a powerful technique utilising the lint screen of a clothes-dryer by which she produced curved grey mini pads of lint. She has used these to great effect in a series of works in the nineties. She will speak about her recent work including her part in Documenta 2007.

All sessions are 6.30-8.00 at the AA, 34-36 Bedford Square, WC1

Mark Cousins 5.00 lectures Distructure of Cities - on the above dates 

The London Sound Seminar offers an opportunity for research students and faculty in London to explore issues relating to the history and theory of all forms of sound-making and auditory culture.

During the Spring term 2009, we will be reading and discussing a number of key texts in sound theory. All meetings are in room 308, School of English and Humanities Building, 30 Russell Square, London WC1

Monday 26th January, 12.00
Jacques Attali, ‘Recording’, from Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985)

Monday 9 February, 12.00
Michel Serres, ‘Boxes’, from The Five Senses, trans. Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley (London: Continuum, 2008)

Monday 23 February, 12.00
Alain Corbin, Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside, trans. Martin Thom (New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press), pp. 95-158, 298-308

Monday 23 March, 12.00
T.W. Adorno, ‘The Radio Symphony’, ‘The Curves of the Needle’, Music in the Background’, from Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Aesthetic Theory, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone, 1997), pp. 225-29, 248-54, 258-61; Minima Moralia: Reflections From A Damaged Life, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1978), p. 247

If you would like to join the London Sound Seminar or help develop its activities, please contact Steven Connor

The current editors of Static, the online journal of the London Consortium, invite you to the launch of Static 8, the theme of which is: General. We will be celebrating with a special screening of Buster Keaton’s acclaimed 1927 film The General, with Neil Brand providing live piano accompaniment. The screening will be followed by a drinks reception and will take place on 

Friday 30th January, at 6pm. In the Birkbeck Cinema:  

41 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury Birkbeck, University of London, London, WC1H 0PD

We hope to see as many of you as possible there; however, as space is limited, please RSVP to staticgeneral@gmail.com, quoting “RSVP” in the subject line.  

Static 8: General features contributions from Consortium students both present and past. Cécile Guédon’s ‘Abstract Shadows: An Aesthetics of the General’  considers the polarity between the particular and the general in modernism; Matt Taunton examines the responses of Georg Lukács and Theodor Adorno to Samuel Beckett in terms of the question of generalizable experience; and Christien Garcia investigates problems of categorization and community posed in and around queer theory. Other articles include an interview with AA Bronson of the artistic trio General Idea and a consideration of Rem Koolhaus’s concept of the ‘generic city’.  

Look for Static 8: General online in February.

www.static.londonconsortium.com

On 7 May 1959, C. P. Snow delivered the Rede Lecture in Cambridge. His influential and controversial address on the subject of ‘The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution’ condemned the widening gap of knowledge and understanding between ‘literary intellectuals’ and ‘natural scientists’.

Fifty years on, The London Consortium is bringing together the Science Museum, Tate Modern, the Wellcome Trust and Birkbeck, University of London, in a three-day conference. The conference will consider whether Snow’s critique has been addressed by the increase in multi-disciplinary work and research and the emergence of new cultural forms. Have the distinctions between and within the two cultures become further entrenched? How have the terms of the debate changed?

Programme

Thursday 22nd January, Birkbeck, University of London. Room B01, Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London. 9.30am-5.30pm.

A day of academic papers from leading and emerging scholars in the field.
Keynote address: Professor Patricia Waugh (University of Durham).
Please contact Laura Salisbury to book a place: l.salisbury@bbk.ac.uk

Friday 23rd January, Dana Centre, Science Museum, Exhibition Rd, London. 9.30am-5.30pm.

A day of lectures and discussion from leading figures in the arts and sciences.

Professor George Rousseau (Oxford University)
Dr Robert Bud (Science Museum)
Professor John Dupré (Exeter University)
To book a place, go to:
http://www.danacentre.org.uk/events/2009/01/23/460

Friday 23 January, 6.30-8.00, Reception at the Wellcome Collection.

Saturday 24th January, Tate Modern, Bankside, London. 10.30am-5.30pm.

A day of public lectures and conversation from renowned figures in the field.

Gillian Beer
Marcus du Sautoy
Ben Goldacre
Anthony Grayling
Jonathan Miller
Alan Sokal

Book tickets at:
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/symposia/16580.htm

The London Consortium in collaboration with the Science Museum invites applications to a new PhD studentship to commence in September 2009. The London Consortium Science and Humanities Studentship is offered to support projects of doctoral research into an area that involves or establishes a significant relation between science and the humanities. The award is tenable for three years and will cover the full cost of fees for a home student, or if awarded to an overseas student it will have the effect of reducing the overseas rate to the home rate. It will also include an annual stipend of £3,000 towards living expenses. 

The London Consortium is a unique collaboration between Birkbeck College, the ICA, TATE, the Science Museum and the Architectural Association offering masters and doctoral programmes in humanities and cultural studies in an innovative, multidisciplinary environment. In the first year of the award the successful applicant will follow five core courses and a research methods course designed to provide a rigorous grounding in the key concepts and methodologies of multidisciplinary research. The doctorate will be examined by a thesis of 80,000 to 100,000 words, and will be awarded by the University of London.

The studentship will be awarded to a candidate who proposes an original and cross-disciplinary research project exploring the relation between science and the humanities. The student is encouraged to make use of the Science Museum’s unique collections relating to science, technology and medicine. With over 300,000 objects in its care, the Science Museum has particular strengths in the history of western science, technology and medicine since 1700. This collection is supported by the books, journals and archives which are available in the Science Museum Library. Interested applicants should apply to the London Consortium’s doctoral programme, indicating on the application form that they would like to be considered for the award. Applicants should have a good 2:1 (or equivalent) in a discipline relevant to the application.

Enquiries about the Science and Humanities Studentship should be directed to Matt Taunton, admissions tutor, by email on matt@londonconsortium.com, or by telephone on 020 7836 7558.

Fortnightly research seminars series presented by David Bennett:

Thursdays, 12.00-2.00 p.m., on 30 Oct., 13 Nov., 27 Nov. and 11 Dec., 2008.

Location: Tillotson Room, 30 Russell Square

What is ‘libidinal economy’ and how has it informed ideas about subjectivity, desire, commerce and subversion since the rise of consumer culture in the eighteenth century? These four research seminars will investigate a tradition of thinking sexuality through the trope of economy which figures desire or libido as something quantifiable that may be spent, saved, squandered or profitably invested. Since ‘to spend’ became the standard vernacular term for orgasm in the late seventeenth century, the metaphoric commerce/intercourse between the languages of money and sex has been richly promiscuous, producing such influential bodies of theory as Freudianism’s economic model of the psyche. These seminars will examine how libidinal economy has operated in discourses as disparate as Victorian pornography and self-help manuals, psychoanalysis, radical political philosophy, market research and advertising. They will consider how the ‘homo oeconomicus’ model of the citizen-subject-on which both classical political economy and neo-classical economics are predicated-has shaped explanations of sexual desire, deviancy and pleasure, and how changing accounts of the costs and benefits of expending libido have interacted with the producer and consumer ethics in the transition from liberal capitalism to late consumer culture.Each seminar (talk + discussion) will focus on a different aspect of the sex-money nexus that libidinal economists have undertaken to interpret, regulate or exploit.

Click here for full information: Libidinal Economy.

The fourth annual Betting on Shorts short film competition, organised by Consortium students Ricarda Vidal, Irini Marinaki and Konstantinos Stefanis, came to a great climax on Friday 21st November 2008 at the ICA. The audience watched a programme of 17 wonderful short films on the theme of ‘Money, Money, Money’, which were simultaneously being seen in 12 other European cities - Athens, Barcelona, Bucharest, Istanbul, Maribor, Naples, Novi Sad, Paris, Poznan, Stockholm, Thessaloniki and Wiesbaden. The London jury chose as its winner Paul Cotter’s Last Hand Standing, finding it ‘perfectly conceived and executed, in such a way as to pack a full-length feature into 7 minutes’ and calling it ‘a film fable that educated its viewer out of cynicism into joy’. The overall winner across Europe was Mischa Leinkauf and Matthias Wermke’s Trotzdem Danke. Watch trailers from all the films in this year’s competition on the Betting on Shorts website.

Figuring Landscapes is a remarkable collection of moving image works that has grown from the background of the political and cultural history that links the UK and Australia. Presented internationally as a series of screening programmes, the works in Figuring Landscapes address questions of ecological survival, post-industrialism, gender, the touristic gaze, and uniquely in Australia, the social, political and cultural status of Indigenous people in a post-colonial society.

Exhibitions
25 - 30 November 2008: Figuring Landscapes premieres at ArtSway in the New Forest;
Tuesday 25 November at 7pm: Gallery talk with Steven Ball and Catherine Elwes
ArtSway, Station Road, Sway, Hampshire SO41 6BA
tel: +44(0)1590 682260
email: mail@artsway.org.uk

Figuring Landscapes screens across the weekend of 6 February 2009 at Tate Modern, London then tours the UK through 2009 to Showroom, Sheffield; Chapter Arts, Cardiff; Cinematheque, Brighton; Bureau, Salford; Dundee Contemporary Arts; Vivid, Birmingham; FACT, Liverpool; Glimmer, Hull. Full details to be confirmed. Australian venues will be announced in 2009.

Catalogue
Figuring Landscapes is complemented by a major catalogue edited by London Consortium PhD student Eu Jin Chua, Catherine Elwes and Steven Ball. It is handsomely designed by Oscar Bauer and Ewan Robertson and contains extensive programme notes, artists’ biographies and colour images. A collection of reflective and contextualising essays are included by members of
the curatorial team and academic commentators. Professor Malcolm Andrews, Eu Jin Chua, Professor Catherine Elwes and Steven Ball, Dr. Stan Frankland, Professor Ross Gibson, Dr. Eric Hirsch, Professor Pat Hoffie and Dr. Danni Zuvela. Selection of extracts from the catalogue essays.

Artists
Vernon Ah Kee, Steven Ball, George Barber, Anna Cady, Peter Callas, Nick Collins, John Conomos, Roz Cran, Daniel Crooks, Sergio Cruz, Sofia Dahlgren, Dalziel + Scullion, Destiny Deacon, Sarah Dobai, Ann Donnelly, Jeff Doring, Catherine Elwes, Merilyn Fairskye, Allan Giddy, John Gillies, Shaun Gladwell, Dryden Goodwin, Tony Hill, Hollington & Kyprianou, Tammy Honey, Hobart Hughes, John Hughes & Peter Kennedy, Matt Hulse, Esther Johnson, Lyndal Jones, Andrew Kötting, Sandra Landolt, Mike Latto, Brendan Lee, Eugenia Lim, David Mackenzie, Mike Marshall, Jo Millett, Scott Morrison, Matthew Murdoch, Susan Norrie & David Mackenzie, David Perry, Patricia Piccinini, Bronwyn Platten, William Raban, Dominic Redfern, Emily Richardson, Ben Rivers, Semiconductor, Dan Shipsides, Genevieve Staines, Margaret Tait, David Theobald, Warwick Thornton & Darren Dale, Hugh Watt.

Figuring Landscapes Team
Figuring Landscapes devised by Catherine Elwes & Steven Ball
Australian Curators: Professor Pat Hoffie & Dr. Danni Zuvela.
UK Curators: Professor Catherine Elwes & Steven Ball.
Programme Advisors: Peter Bonnell, Eu Jin Chua, Stuart Comer, Harry Darby, Dr. Stan Frankland, Dr. Eric Hirsch, Mark Segal.

For full information visit: www.figuringlandscapes.co.uk

This year’s Friday Lecture Series by London Consortium faculty member Mark Cousins concerns the destruction of cities and urban objects. It is not a material history of such destruction, but rather an investigation of why the city is central to the issue of destructiveness. It concentrates upon the stories and fantasies of such destruction and the reasoning about their causes.

A sequence of case histories leads to an investigation (in the second term) of the issue of destruction in modernity. Behind the optimism of the Enlightenment has fallen the shadow of a distinctly modern relation to destruction, one which defines a contemporary melancholy. The series concludes by opposing such melancholy as well as by guarding against any optimism.

They are held at 5pm in the Lecture Hall at the Architectural Association,  36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES.

Autumn dates:
7 November, The Destruction of the Library at Alexandria
14 November, The Fall of Rome
21 November, The Earthquake in Lisbon

Spring dates and themes will be announced at a later date.

Click here for details.

London Consortium PhD student Nathan Dunne will be leading a book club on Andrei Tarkovsky’s Sculpting in Time at The Photographer’s Gallery at 6.30pm on November 13th 2008.

Book Club: Andrei Tarkovsky’s ‘Sculpting in Time’
The Photographers Gallery
5 & 8 Great Newport St, London, WC2H 7HY

Click here for further details.

Betting on Shorts presents animations, narrative, documentaries, artist films from around the world, in response to our theme Money Money Money.

21 November 2008 ICA, Cinema 1, The Mall, SW1Y 5AH, 6.30pm

Betting on Shorts (BoSs): More than a Eurovision of Shortfilm is an international short film contest with simultaneous screenings in 13 cities all over Europe. In its fourth year at the ICA, BoSs presents this year’s programme of short films on the theme Money Money Money.

It will be screened simultaneously at the ICA in London and in Athens, Barcelona, Bucharest, Istanbul, Maribor, Naples, Novi Sad, Paris, Poznan, Thessaloniki, Stockholm and Wiesbaden.

The films are judged in each venue by a local jury and the overall favourite is awarded a prize. After the screening we’ll convene in the ICA bar and set up an audiolink to all participating venues to find out which film has won in which city.The film that has won in most is awarded fame, glory and £500 in cash!

Before the show begins the audience will be asked to bet on who will be the grand winner. Check out clips of the films in the ICA bar or on the Betting on Shorts website from 15 November.

Bet on the right film and win an ICA Membership or cinema tickets. Audience winners will be announced in the bar as soon as all the juries’ decisions are in. Join us for music and celebrations in the bar from 8pm till late.

Sponsored by The London Consortium, Minimatik, Nextnode.net and Plaisio.

Curated by Ricarda Vidal, Irini Marinaki and Konstantinos Stefanis.www.bettingonshorts.comThe London Jury includes: Steven Connor (London Consortium), Philip Ilson (London Short Film Festival), Kathy Noble (Tate Modern), Tejinder Jouhal (ICA), Caren Willig (BFI). Tickets: £8 / £7 Concessions / £6 ICA Members. Book here.