Friday 27th January 7pm
BFI southbank gallery

A re-staging of Aura Satz’s  ‘Ventriloqua‘ performance with thereminist extraordinaire Lydia Kavina playing the electromagnetic waves of a pregnant body. Referencing ventriloquism, as in ‘belly-speaking’, the body becomes a musical instrument, an antenna, a medium, through which a pre-verbal, pre-vocal otherworldly voice is transmitted. Meanwhile, a flame alphabet visualizes the sounds in a secret fire-code using a Ruben’s tube.

Part of the Samsung Art+ prize at the BFI project space

The Apathy Complex

A six-week, multi-disciplinary course at Tate Modern
Saturdays 25 February – 31 March 2012
Led by Richard Martin and Lucy Scholes

In contemporary society, we are constantly urged to participate, to engage and to get involved. To be apathetic – about politics or culture – is regarded as irresponsible, indulgent and even dangerous. Such extortions are accompanied by widespread disaffection and feelings of social alienation. Yet, from Greek philosophers through nineteenth-century novelists to contemporary artists, apathy has held its own creative possibilities.

These competing ideas lie at the heart of the fascinating apathy complex that will be explored in this new six-week course. We’ll take a thoroughly multi-disciplinary approach, placing film, literature and critical theory alongside works by modern and contemporary artists represented in the Tate collection. We’ll also discuss how the exhibitions of Yayoi Kusama and Alighiero Boetti might contribute to the debate.

Booking details, plus a full course outline, are available here.

Aura Satz’s work has been shortlisted for the Samsung Art+ Prize.
Her Oramics: Atlantis Anew, a film about the Oramics Machine made in collaboration with the London Consortium, will be shown at the exhibition.

Come along to this month’s Science Museum Lates on Gaming (on 28th September from around 7pm), where the Consortium speaker will be Rob Gallagher.

Science fiction meets fictional science

Many videogames borrow narrative and aesthetic tropes from science fiction. But as a medium that combines representation and simulation, digital games are also capable of supplementing science fiction with ‘fictional science’, of implementing made-up physical laws that promote a reconsideration of our relationship with science and technology.

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/events/events_for_adults/Lates.aspx

Maya Deren: 50 Years On
BFI, Oct 4th - Oct 12th 2011

Curated by Elinor Cleghorn; a collaboration between BFI and the London Consortium

Fifty years after the death visionary filmmaker, theorist and proselytiser Maya Deren, the art and influence of one of experimental cinema’s most inspiring and charismatic figures is celebrated and explored. This dedicated programme of screenings and events includes ‘Maya Deren: New Reflections’ (Saturday 8th October) a one-day symposium exploring Deren’s legacy through the lenses of visual art, choreography, anthropology and film theory.

For full programme details and to book tickets please visit the BFI link here

Two events dedicated to reading the matter and metaphors of waste and value, in and through spaces, objects and language.

Rubbish film double-bill

Friday 29th July
6pm - 9pm
Birkbeck College
B20 Main Building
Torrington Square
London, WC1E 7HX

Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine, 2009)
The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000)

Rubbish Symposium

Saturday 30th July
9am-5pm
Birkbeck College
B20 Main Building
Torrington Square
London, WC1E 7HX

Keynote - Professor Steven Connor
Respondent - Professor Esther Leslie

Speakers:
Henderson Downing (Birkbeck) - “No Shit, Sherlock”: Psychogeography and Other Rubbish Theories
Natalie Joelle (Birkbeck) - The Back Art of Things: Gleaning and Picking in Agnes Varda’s The Gleaners and I and Lucy Walker’s Waste Land
Lisa Mullen (Birkbeck) - Undead Toys: When Objects Refuse to be Rubbish
Terri Mullholland (Oxford) and Sian Thomas (Poet) - The Things that Remain: The Abandoned House as Archive of Poetic Memory
Daniel Rourke (Goldsmiths) - On Kipple and Things
Rosemary Shirley (Sussex) - Keeping Britain Tidy: Litter and Anxiety
Jon Tee (Birkbeck) - ‘Sound, Noise… Rubbish? Ballard’s “The Sound-Sweep”, Musique Concrète and the “Music for Magnetic Tape Project”‘
Tony Venezia (Birkbeck) - “There is no real magic” – George A. Romero’s Martin as Rustbowl Fantasy
Will Viney (London Consortium) - ‘Unproductive and Uninhabited’: Wastes of Place and Time
James Wilkes (London Consortium) - Follies, Ruins, and Fossils: Paul Nash’s Swanage Photographs

Chairs: Dr. Brian Dillon (Kent); Zara Dinnen (Birkbeck); Matt Wraith (London Consortium)

The symposium will be followed by a wine reception.

Both events are free.

Tom McCarthy on Robbe-Grillet: Thursday 9 June, 7:00pm at the Institut Francais, 17 Queensberry Place, London
tickets and information here.

Words on Mondays with Robert Coover: Monday 13 June, 7:00pm at Kings Place, London N1 9AG
Discussion with Robert Coover, John Banville, and Tom McCarthy.
tickets and information here.

Electra presents Dirty Literature Series: Thursday 16 June, 7:00pm at the National Portrait Gallery
Francesco Pedraglio and Tom McCarthy
Tickets and information here.

Calling All Agents: A symposium on the work of Tom McCarthy
Birkbeck College, Univeristy of London, 22-23 July
Calling All Agents: A symposium on the work of Tom McCarthy’ is the first academic symposium on the work of British novelist Tom McCarthy. This event will feature papers on McCarthy’s three novels, Remainder (2005), Men in Space (2007) and C (2010), as well as his role as General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society, and his relationship with the Tintin series. The day will conclude with a reading by and Q&A session with McCarthy.
Registration and information here.

The London Consortium presents:
Professor Beatriz Colomina
Towards a New Posthuman Architect

Wednesday June 1st, 7pm
The Royal Institute of British Architects, Lutyens Room
66 Portland Place, W1B 1AD

Air travel was revolutionized in the late1950s with the arrival of commercial jetliners. Le Corbusier saw the collapse of traditional space and time as nothing less than the emergence of a new kind of human. En route to India, in his favorite airplane seat, he notes: “January 5, 1960. I am settled in my seat by now acquired number 5, -alone, admirable one-man seat, total comfort. In fifty years we have become a new animal on the planet.” This posthuman is an animal that flies; the airline network is its “efficient nervous system,” its web covering the globe. The hyper-mobile architect is a symptom of a globalized society in which humanity will be necessarily transformed.

Beatriz Colomina is Professor of Architecture and Founding Director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University. She is the author of Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (MIT Press, 1994), Sexuality and Space (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992), and Domesticity at War (ACTAR and MIT Press, 2007). Recently she curated with a team of Ph.D. students from Princeton the exhibition “Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X.”  The catalogue of the exhibition, co-edited with Craig Buckley, has just been published by ACTAR. Her next research project is “X-Ray Architecture: Illness as Metaphor.”
This is the inaugural talk in the London Consortium’s ongoing visiting speakers series.
 

Please RSVP for free attendance: info@londonconsortium.com
£5 on the door, pending availability, for unconfirmed guests.

The Thread season 5: ‘How To…’

In our 5th series of broadcasts The Thread presents a suite of interrelated conversations, each springing from a set of instructions to our listeners. We take items and experiences such as an elaborate meal, a camouflage kit, a pugilist’s punch or a terrorist sighting and examine how they can be assembled, produced, performed or encountered. With our ‘How To…’ series we try to understand aspects of culture by finding out what makes them work, both practically and conceptually.

The Thread is a free conversational space that goes beyond the university, a place where complex ideas can flourish in public dialogue. Created and produced by PhD students from the London Consortium, it brings artists, academics, amateurs and professionals together in wild and wide-ranging discussion. The Thread uses speech as a tool for research to open up new and unexpected angles. This is live radio thinking.

The Thread ‘How To…’ series is broadcast live on Tuesdays from 7.00 to 8.00 pm on Resonance 104.4 fm and streamed on the Resonance website.
Show podcasts are archived on the Thread website.

Download the full programm here.
Check the Thread website for more information.

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.

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

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).

Last June, Peter Greenaway took computers, projectors and speakers into a Milan monastery in an attempt to reinterpret Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Now he comes to the ICA to argue that the world of text is giving way to a exciting new age of visual literacy. Greenaway is the director and writer of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and The Draughtsman’s Contract.

The use of camera phones and recording equipment during talks and events in the Feedback series is encouraged.

£10 / £9 Concessions / £8 ICA Members.

The recent emphasis on public education as a means of thwarting the “obesity epidemic” in the UK has made the campaign against obesity part of a national program for “good health.”  The assumption seems to be that it is only with collective action that our waistline can be reduced and good health maintained or obtained.  How much are we as individuals responsible for our own health and how much should we rely on the “nanny state” or even Jamie Oliver to make us healthy?

Free entry.

At the extreme of physical and mental damage lies trauma. But what causes trauma in the first place and what makes it different from other injury? This is a subject fraught with difficulties. This event will bring together anthropological and psychological perspectives to tackle these contemporary issues.

Notorious for her rape-revenge novel and film Baise-Moi, Virginie Despentes is at the ICA to present ideas from her new book King Kong Theory. A trenchant new defence of feminism, shaped by her experiences in the porn and prostitution industries, the book argues that feminism is needed to rip away the trappings of femininity in a society obsessed with consumption and packaging. Despentes will be in conversation with Zoe Williams, columnist at The Guardian.

£10 / £9 Concessions / £8 ICA Members.

Join the Photographer’s Gallery team for a discussion on the molecular physics of sand and sand castles.

£5.00/ £3.50 concs. (ticket includes free beer).

To book email the Information Desk on info@photonet.org.uk

DAWOOD/DEORA is a collaboration between artists Shezad Dawood and Mukul Deora that bridges the gap between the politics of experimental electronic music and video art, exploring notions of nationalism, modernism and secularism in the new India.

Their new project Expressway has been commissioned as a soundtrack to the Serpentine’s exhibition Indian Highway and features the Mumbai/Pune expressway as a point of departure for an audio-visual journey through the virtual/viral context of the exhibition. Expressway will take a number of forms – from gallery interference to live off-site electronic sets – and build into an array of sonic and video mutations of the original soundtrack.

Free, seats allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

On Saturday January 17th at 4.30 p.m., the INS Joint Declaration on Inauthenticity, by Tom McCarthy and Simon Critchley, is to be delivered in the Clore Auditorium of Tate Britain. This is the statement, originally delivered in The Drawing Center, New York, that Zadie Smith goes on about at some length in her recent New York Review of Books piece on Remainder, and that Peter Schwenger claims in Triple Canopy ‘didn’t actually take place’. Come and decide for yourself how authentic or in- it is, and say hello afterwards (the Tate’s generously serving free drinks to all who come).

£8 (£6 concessions), booking required