This symposium brings together a stellar cast of international speakers to explore Mark Rothko’s late work in the context of the 1960s, a time of historic turmoil when the practice of painting was under increasing attack. The speakers explore key issues such as series and seriality, and the existentialist endeavour of Rothko’s late paintings against the rise of Pop art, minimalism and Conceptual art, offering new ways of thinking about one of the most significant artists of the last century.

£20 (£15 concessions), booking recommended

During the first Fluxus event at the ICA, 1962’s Festival of Misfits, it is reported that artist Robin Page kicked his electric guitar off the stage and down the stairs of the Dover Street building and into the street. The July 1966 press release for The Destruction in Art Symposium (at the Africa Centre) announced that: “The main objective of DIAS was to focus attention on the element of destruction in Happenings and other art forms, and to relate this destruction in society.” In January 1964 the ICA was given over to the theme of Violence, while that November Cornelius Cardew warned that “Experimental music is the most DEADLY form of TOTAL ABSTRACTION ever devised… INSTANTLY you will see how to DESTROY ILLUSION AND DRAW ATTENTION TO THE FACTS.”

Can curators and artists draw attention to the ‘facts’ of an often violent world through extreme methods of curation? Is it possible through extreme methods and content to avoid mere spectacle within the gallery? Speakers: artists Stuart Brisley and Mark McGowan; Lauren Wright, curator Long Weekend, Tate Modern; Yasmin Canvin, curator AfterShock: Conflict, Violence and Resolution in Contemporary Art, Sainsbury Centre; artist and novelist Stuart Home. Chair: Dr Dorothée Brill, lecturer and curator.

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

The internationally acclaimed critic, artist and novelist John Berger is here to talk about his new book, the Booker-longlisted From A To X: A Story in Letters, and about the connection between writing and political resistance. Berger will be in conversation with Geoff Dyer, critic and author of The Ongoing Moment and But Beautiful.

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

The skeletons in the Wellcome Collection’s exhibition may be hundreds of years old but they have the power to stir living feelings in many of us. How does London feel about its dead bodies? Body-snatching in the 1800s had a huge influence on the development of modern medicine. But what rights does a dead body have today, and how do these rights change over time?

What’s the difference between a skeleton that is 99 years old and a skeleton that is 100 years old? Should we be using the dead at all? What limitations, rules and regulations are in place to mark our use? Join our speakers for a discussion of regulatory, philosophical and historical perspectives on death and dying in the capital.

Free entry (Booking required).

The first in a series of half-day conferences on writers who crossover between literature, science and
philosophy. J. G. Ballard is a prominent chronicler of the near future. He may also be thought of as an ‘imaginary scientist’. ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ describes/depicts the ways in which scientific socio-technical systems structure
consciousness. Technology acts as a dis-inhibitor releasing aggressive and libidinal urges - and in their
wake enhanced possibilities of perversion. This conference will focus on Ballard’s role as a writer of ‘wrathful science’.

£10

Are museums ready to play in the digital age? Rapid advances in technology are making the traditional audiotour increasingly redundant, and visitors are now offered sophisticated multimedia tours on PDAs, iPods and even mobile phones.

This symposium is for museum workers who want to know more about how the new generation of mobile devices can benefit their institutions. International museum professionals with in-depth experience in handheld program design, development and evaluation lead the day’s discussions. Case studies will include Tate’s own pioneering work in this area which includes a Bafta-award winning multimedia tour, mobile phone tours, a tour that allows visitors to create their own user-generated content, and the UK’s first iPod touch tour.

£150 (£80 concessions), booking required

If ‘place’ is the settling of history onto landscape, is everywhere, in some sense, imprinted with memories of the past? Taking the late German-born writer WG Sebald as their guide, artists and writers consider our relationship to place and its recollection. This event includes key contributions from Marina Warner and Iain Sinclair, amongst others, as well as films, readings and other interventions from artists Tacita Dean, Alec Finlay and Simon Pope. Curated by Jeremy Millar and Steven Bode.

£25 (£18 concessions), booking required.

The Goldfinger Project explores social utopian ideology throught the photography of Brutalist architecture. The project documents both fictional and factual narratives across a wide range of media from one of Brutalism’s key exponents and a leading figure of the Modern Movement; Ernö Goldfinger.

Contemporary scholar and artist, Arni Haraldsson has compiled key moments from Goldfinger’s lifetime and documented his legacy to architecture within the urban landscape. Harladsson examines the accomplishments of Goldfinger through the presentation of photography, film footage, historical documentation, popular cultural memorabilia, sound and resourced information. The display includes material from such diverse sources as BBC news reels of the Ronan Point tower collapse, the Barbican, Trellick Tower t-shirts, popular music songs, advertising campaigns, interviews with residents and James Bond movies.

Architect & Pritzker prize-winner Zaha Hadid and architect and designer Amanda Levete of Future Systems discuss their major contributions to the London Design Festival in the form of structures placed in the outdoor areas of Southbank Centre as part of the Size & Matter project.

Tickets £8 - book online.

Visit http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/festivals-series/london-design-festival for more information about the London Design Festival

Developing out of the 20th September conference Can Artists Make Great Places? Create KX and LCACE with the support of London Borough of Camden, invite you to explore the past, present and future of public art strategies for central London’s biggest redevelopment in over a hundred years. Make a choice of two guided tours around King’s Cross or along the Euston Road charting previous public realm commissions and interventions and revealing the physical and social landscape within which the new art and cultural activity will be sited. Following lunch, the themes of the conference and walkabout with the issues and opportunities arising in King’s Cross will be drawn together in discussion and debate.

£15 includes the walkabout, seminar and lunch. For full details and to book a place go to http://www.lcace.org.uk/events/index.php?archive=0&event=55.