Betting on Shorts is a film contest with a difference, as it requires audience members to place bets on which film will be the winner. Established in 2005 as part of activities for the London Consortium’s European Summer School, Betting on Shorts has taken-on a life of its own. 2007 will see the third annual contest, and this time it’s taking place across Europe and beyond - a Eurovision of short film. This year’s theme is ‘Mad or Bad?’

See the Call for Submissions here..

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London Consortium Research Fellow, Hilary Powell’s film The Games is being screened twice during Architecture Week. The film is a 15 minute surreal exploration of the current landscape of the area in East London now being developed for the 2012 Olympics.

The film can be seen and discussed at both these events:

London Architecture Week event, Wednesday 20th June

Space Studios / Museum of London event, Olympic Artists, Saturday 23rd June

Static (the London Consortium’s online journal, http://static.londonconsortium.com/ ISSN 1754-5374) is inviting teams of guest editors to submit proposals for the sixth and subsequent issues. Static issue 05 is due to come out at the beginning of July 2007. Static issue 06 will be expected to go online in November 2007.

Guest editors will be responsible for circulating call for papers, editing submissions and putting the issue online. Assistance on all stages will be provided by the current members of Static’s editorial board (Prof. Steven Connor, Irini Marinaki, Martine Rouleau, Konstantinos Stefanis, Vlad Strukov and Matthew Taunton)

Please, send your proposals (theme, possible format, or any other information relevant to your project) of no longer than 250 words to static@londonconsortium.com.

The deadline for submissions is Friday 22nd of June 2007.

Please note that this is open to London Consortium’s students, alumni and faculty only.

Tate Modern, 19.30, Sunday 27 May - 15.00, Monday 28 May 2007

To mark the twentieth anniversary of his death in 1987, Andy Warhol’s (1928-87) first ever film, Sleep 1963, is screened throughout the night, accompanied by the legendary musical performance that inspired it. The five and a half-hour film will be looped to provide over eighteen hours of continuous viewing, and is a meditative study of the poet John Giorno asleep in his apartment. Warhol was inspired to complete the film with a new repetitive editing structure after attending the writer and composer John Cage’s (1912-92) historic 1963 performance at the Pocket Theatre in New York of the French composer Erik Satie’s (1866-1925) epic repetitive work for piano, Vexations, 1893. This transfixing event at Tate Modern brings together two artistic landmarks from a momentous year, and will be a contemplation on stillness, repetition, time and death.

This landmark event is accompanied by a panel discussion about the relationships between Warhol, Cage and Satie.

The concept for the event came from London Consortium PhD student Lauren A Wright, and, with support from the Consortium, has been developed by her in collaboration with Tate Modern as part of the Tate Long Weekend. Full details and booking information are available on the Tate website.

The London Consortium issues an open invitation to anyone who would like to drop-in at an informal information evening, where we will discuss ‘The Possibilities of Multi-Disciplinary Study’.

Tuesday 15th May 2007
6.00-7.30pm

The Council Room, Birkbeck College main building
Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX

From 6pm, faculty and students of the Consortium will be available to discuss our programmes and the potential that multi-disciplinary study might have for your own areas of interest.

At 6.30pm, Professor Steven Connor, Academic Director, will give a short presentation.

Wine and soft drinks will be available throughout.

Terrence Malick’s 1978 film Days of Heaven will be screened in ICA Cinema 2 on Thursday 19th April at 2pm.

It is hoped the screening and following discussion will lead to the creation of a London Consortium reading/viewing group on the poetry of Wallace Stevens and the cinema of Terrence Malick.

The screening and the reading group will be open to Consortium and Birkbeck postgrad students.

A skim through Stevens’ Harmonium would be good preparation for the screening, especially the poems “O, Florida, Venereal Soil”, “The Comedian as the Letter C” and “Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb”.

Further reading: Simon Critchley, Things Merely Are (2005).

Nec manet sui similis res: omnia migrant, omnia commutat natura et vertere cogit
(Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, V. 828)

The fifth issue of Static invites critical and creative contributions on the theme of Metamorphosis. The mutability of things is a theme that has gripped people from the ancient world to the modern. This issue of Static will focus closely on the changing forms in which change of form is thought about and represented in literature, myth, and arts. Metamorphosis is the vehicle by which different cultures think concretely about the relations between form and time, fusion and undoing, the singular and the multiple, the absolute and the intermediary. Among other things, metamorphosis refers to the transformations of the body effected in body practices, cosmetic, ritual and sexual.

We invite all kinds of submissions but we particularly welcome contributions in non-textual media, be it photographic images, art projects, animation, short film, or other media.
Please contact the editorial team at static5_meta@yahoo.com in the first instance to discuss the format and other technical details before you submit your work.

The deadline for submissions is April 15, 2007.

Editorial Team
Prof. Colin MacCabe, Prof. Steven Connor, Irini Marinaki, Martine Rouleau, Konstantinos Stefanis, Vlad Strukov

About Static
Static is the London Consortium’s web resource. Edited and managed by Consortium students, it aims to presents contributions from an international team of academics, artists and cultural practitioners.
To see previous issues go to www.static.londonconsortium.com

14th and 15th October 2006

ICA in association with The London Consortium

Plug-In City, Instant City, Suitaloon, Living Pod … These were just some of Archigram’s projects, Britain’s most radical architecture group, whose continued influence on architects and artists was rewarded by the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture in 2002. To celebrate the launch of the Archigram Archival Research Programme at the University of Westminster, a series of Archigram events took place at the ICA, which hosted their first major exhibition, Living City, in 1963.

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From September 16th until the 21st a group of fourteen London Consortium students, accompanied by faculty members Richard Humphreys (Tate Britain) and Alan Walker, visited the city of Istanbul on the occasion of the opening of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial. The trip provided the opportunity of attending a world-prominent art event, in an exciting city. The participants visited exhibitions, openings, and various parallel happenings during the first days of the Biennial’s launch. Moreover, they had the chance to become acquainted with cultural practitioners from Turkey and abroad.

The Consortium delegation hits Istanbul…

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The second ICA / London Consortium short film competition. What makes this contest different from any other short film contest is that the audience bet on which film will be the winner - though bets had to be placed before the screening. All contestants were asked to write a short but informative blurb about their film and give some background information about themselves. This information, together with a still from the film, was made available to the audience 2 hours before the screening, and was the basis on which they placed their bets.

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