UCL’s Documentary Film Festival

UCL’s Documentary Film Festival

UCL hosts the third edition of Open City Docs Fest in venues across campus and beyond, June 20-23.
This is London’s only documentary festival – a gift from UCL to our global city.

Bringing together some of the best filmmakers in the world and the researchers upon whom their films so often rely, the festival creates conversations in and around film.

The festival will screen over 90 films. The best will be judged by a jury chaired by actor turned documentarist, Jeremy Irons. He is joined by our own departing Provost, Malcolm Grant, and others from the world of film and academia.

Open City aims to be much more than a film festival. UCL academics introduce the films, provide screen notes for the audiences, chair post-screening discussions, and participate in numerous panel events. This year panels range from the future of copyright in the age of the internet to the challenges and rewards of studies that run across the life course, from 7UP to Birth Cohort studies.

You can visit our website for details of all events and booking arrangements

Frieze: Issue 156: The Fiction Issue

Issue 156: The Fiction Issue

For this special Fiction Issue of frieze, nine writers and artists consider how narrative will change as technology advances. Featuring: Fatima Al Qadiri, James Bridle, Ian Cheng, Orit Gat, Lev Manovich, Christiane Paul, Alexander Provan, Timotheus Vermeulen and Holly Willis. 

Plus, Katie Kitamura looks at how art can visualize political realities through the artifice of fiction; Laura Pawson asks whether it’s an artist’s duty to bear witness to suffering; and Ben Lerner reflects on whether objects are more real than words.

More highlights include: Dan Fox talks to artist David Levine; Questionnaire with Dayanita Singh;Rajeev Balasubramanyam on national identity and ‘global fiction’; film director Pablo Larraindiscusses the merging of fact and fiction with Rob White; and an extract from Lynne Tillman’s novel-in progress ‘Men and Apparitions’.

In our regular columns: Tom Morton considers the changing face of graduate exhibitions; Kaelen Wilson-Goldie looks at prisoners of conscious and creative acts; and Jason Farago signs up to De Appel’s new course in art dealing.

Also: 37 reviews from 29 cities in 17 countries, including: ‘Umhlaba 1913-2013’, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; and ‘Sharjah Biennial 11’, various venues, UAE.

Read More | Subscribe Now

Frieze 1 Montclare Street, London E2 7EU, UK, | Tel: +44 (0) 20 3372 6111
Email: info@frieze.com | www.frieze.com

///

Picturing Propaganda

Picturing Propaganda: A Study Day

When: Sat 1 Jun 2013, 10.00-16.30

Where: Conference Centre, British Library

Price: £25 / £15 concessions

Book now for 01 Jun 2013, 10.00-16.30

Effective propaganda relies as much on images as it does on words. This study day will explore the role of visual communication in influencing ideas and changing behaviour. Academics and curators will discuss the history of visual propaganda, using fascinating (and sometimes funny) examples from the British Library and British Film Institute collections. The event is aimed at students, researchers and anyone with an interest in 20th century history, design, film or communication studies. Entry to the exhibition is included in the price.

The morning session will give a brief history of visual propaganda, discussing film, posters, leaflets, maps, stamps and more. The afternoon session will focus on three themes that dominate 20th century propaganda: nation-building, health and war. Our speakers will explore the different ways that these themes have been dealt with in the last century, comparing the methods of propaganda and the public response.

In collaboration with the BFI

///

QUORUM

QUORUM

Quorum, 29 May, Dave Beech

We warmly invite you to join us for QUORUM on Wednesday 29 May.

Dave Beech, Chelsea College of Art, will present his paper entitled

‘Spreading The Cost Disease: Handicraft and Art’s Economic Exceptionalism’.

Where: Rehearsal Room 1, Arts One, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Campus

When: 5:15 Wednesday 29 May

Abstract:

I will be developing the ideas of Baumol and Bowen, whose 1966 book ‘Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma’ introduced the idea of the ‘cost disease’. This argument has been expanded recently by Baumol in his book on the cost disease of health and education. I will be asking whether the cost disease is an example of art’s ‘economic exceptionalism’.

Bio:

Dave Beech is an artist in the collective Freee. The group exhibited at the Liverpool biennial in 2010 and has been selected for the Istanbul biennial in 2013, as well as exhibiting at BAK as part of the Former West project, Vittoria, Smart Project Space and Culturegest. He co-curated the exhibition ‘We Are Grammar’ at Pratt Institute, NY and edited the book ‘Beauty’ for Whitechapel/MIT. He teaches at Chelsea College of Art and is currently writing a book on art and economics for the Historical Materialism Book Series.

///

2013 HANNAH ARENDT PRIZE

2013 HANNAH ARENDT PRIZE

Photograph of Hannah Arendt, NYC, 1944. Courtesy of the Estate of Fred Stein (fredstein.com)

THE HANNAH ARENDT PRIZE IN CRITICAL THEORY AND CREATIVE RESEARCH: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Original Writing on Critical Theory and Creative Research

Award presented by the MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research Program
Entry submission: essay of 1,500 words or less

Application deadline: Friday, May 31, 2013

Theme: On Art and Disobedience; Or, What Is an Intervention?

Cash award: 5,000 USD

Winner announced by Saturday, August 31, 2013

Please note that essays over the limit will be disqualified.

The Hannah Arendt Prize in Critical Theory and Creative Research is an annual competition for those interested in the juncture of art and creative research and in the principles at the heart of the arts and humanities, including sense-based intelligence; the reality of singular, nonrepeatable phenomena; ethical vision; and consilience between inner and outer, nature and reason, thought and experience, subject and object, self and world.

Application for the prize is open to the general public. Download the PDF application and email the completed application and the essay (in a .doc or .pdf format) to ctcrprize@pnca.edu.

Explication of theme:

“To disobey in order to take action is the byword of all creative spirits. The history of human progress amounts to a series of Promethean acts. But autonomy is also attained in the daily workings of individual lives by means of many small Promethean disobediences, at once clever, well thought out, and patiently pursued, so subtle at times as to avoid punishment entirely. All that remains in such a case is an equivocal, diluted form of guilt. I would say that there is good reason to study the dynamics of disobedience, the spark behind all knowledge.”

—Gaston Bachelard, Fragments of a Poetics of Fire

Intervention is an omnipresent if not ubiquitous word in contemporary discourse, but what forms does it take in the age of genetic engineering and real-time media? Is the concept a decoy or distraction in the face of futility? A cover or compensation for hopeless battles and set-ups? Is it simply working to slow down the Inevitable, a notion that in and of itself works as a major obstacle to critical thought and action? Or is it something more serious, more durable, and more dangerous? What is the relation of critique and intervention, theory and practice? And what role does art play in what Bachelard called “creative disobedience,” acts of Prometheanism “so subtle at times as to avoid punishment entirely”? Might art now comprise one of the last forms of political stealth, working in increasingly sophisticated time-based ways? What kinds of thought and action are powerful and compelling interventions today, whether one-off spectacles, sabots, monkey wrenches, sleepers, gummy bears, or Trojan Horses?

Along with Anne-Marie Oliver and Barry Sanders, Founding Co-Chairs, MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research, Pacific Northwest College of Art, the judges for 2013 include

Claire Bishop, Professor of Contemporary Art, Theory and Exhibition History, Graduate Center, The City University of New York

Judith Butler, Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, The University of California, Berkeley, and Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy, Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien/EGS

Barbara Duden, Professor Emerita, Leibniz Universität Hannover

Julia Kristeva, Professor Emerita and Head of the École doctorale Langues, Littératures, Images, Université Paris Diderot, Paris 7, and recipient of the Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought

Heike Kühn, Film Critic
Martha Rosler, Artist and contributor to the Hannah Arendt Denkraum (on the occasion of Hannah Arendt’s 100th birthday)

For information about last year’s competition, please see

http://www.artandeducation.net/announcement/the-hannah-arendt-prize-call-for-entries

///

THE TURING NORMALIZING MACHINE

by Yonatan Ben-Simhon and Mushon Zer-Aviv

An experiment in machine learning & algorithmic prejudice

From: http://mushon.com/tnm/

In the 1930s British Mathematician Alan Turing studied normal numbers. During World War 2 he cracked the Nazi Enigma code, and then laid the foundations for computing and artificial intelligence. In the 1950s he was convicted of homosexuality and was chemically castrated. And in June 7th 1954, depressed by the anti-homosexuality medical treatment, and alienated by the society who deemed him abnormal, Alan Turing ate a cyanide laced apple.

In the following decades many of Turing’s ideas have materialized through the digital revolution, while many of them are still being researched. Inspired by Turing’s life and research we seek to finally crack the greatest enigma of all:

“Who is normal?”

The Turing Normalizing Machine is an experimental research in machine-learning that identifies and analyzes the concept of social normalcy. Each participant is presented with a video line up of 4 previously recorded participants and is asked to point out the most normal-looking of the 4. The person selected is examined by the machine and is added to its algorithmically constructed image of normalcy. The kind participant’s video is then added as a new entry on the database.

As the database grows the Turing Normalizing Machine develops a more intricate model of normal-appearance, and moves us closer to our research goal: to once-and-for-all decode the mystery of what society deems “normal” and to automate the process for the advancement of science, commerce, security and society at large.

The abnormal,
while logically second,
is existentially first.

Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, 1966.

Conducted and presented as a scientific experiment TNM challenges the participants to consider the outrageous proposition of algorithmic prejudice. The responses range from fear and outrage to laughter and ridicule, and finally to the alarming realization that we are set on a path towards wide systemic prejudice ironically initiated by its victim, Turing.

by Yonatan Ben-Simhon and Mushon Zer-Aviv. [contact]

///

Write for The Artifice

The Artifice is an online magazine that covers a wide spectrum of art forms. It operates independently with the writers collaboratively building and maintaining the platform.

Write for The Artifice

http://the-artifice.com/

The Artifice is an online magazine that covers a wide spectrum of art forms. We do not run The Artifice, you do. The Artifice is collaboratively built and maintained by your fellow writers.

Some of what The Artifice offers:
Exposure: The Artifice is structured to let you focus on the quality of the content while it deals with the exposure of it to an audience of millions.

Collaboration: Various features are available to establish a supportive and encouraging environment where the writers have the freedom to showcase their creative horizons with ease and without worry.

System: The platform is designed to reward you based on how you interact with it and its users. Once the system learns to trust you, you will be able to manage everything.

You could say that The Artifice has synthesized aspects of Wikis, Blogs and Forums in an original way. Hopefully, you will see for yourself when you participate and experience it!

Go to: http://the-artifice.com/write for more information on to how to participate.

///

Now online: the historic Chomsky-Foucault debate.

By Tamara van der Putten

http://roarmag.org/2013/05/chomsky-foucault-debate-full-video-subtitles/

On May 8, 2013

Excerpts from the Foucault-Chomsky debate on human nature and power have circulated online for years — now it’s available in full for the first time.

In 1971, with the Vietnam war in full swing and radical social movements destabilizing the social, political and cultural order throughout the Western world, Dutch philosopher Fons Elders invited two of the world’s leading thinkers — the American linguist and activist Noam Chomsky and the French social theorist Michel Foucault — to debate a thorny and perennial question: is there such a thing as an “innate” human nature, and if so, what are its implications for our ideas about power, justice, revolution, and the shape of the ideal human society?

The resulting dialogue has been described as one of the most original, provocative, and spontaneous exchanges to have occurred between contemporary philosophers, and above all serves as a concise introduction to their basic theories. What begins as a philosophical argument rooted in linguistics (Chomsky) and the theory of knowledge (Foucault), soon evolves into a broader discussion encompassing a wide range of topics, from science, history, and behaviorism to creativity, freedom, and the struggle for justice in the realm of politics.

In his book, The Passion of Michel Foucault, James Miller recounts that, while Chomsky and Foucault prepared for the debate in the preceding hours, “there were already signs that this was not going to be any ordinary debate”:

Hoping to puncture the prim sobriety of the Dutch audience, the program’s host, Fons Elders, a professed anarchist, had obtained a bright red wig, which he tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Foucault to wear. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Chomsky, Foucault had received, in partial payment for his appearance, a large chunk of hashish, which for months afterwards, Foucault and his Parisian friends would jokingly refer to as the “Chomsky hash.” (Ibid., p. 201, hat tip to Aphelis for this quote).

Excerpts from the video of the debate — which was broadcast on Dutch television — have been circulating online for many years, and a book with a (rather liberally) translated transcript of the discussion has been published and republished many times. More recently, however, a full video of the debate has surfaced, allowing ROAR, in collaboration with a group of Dutch anarchists, to assist in a new translation of the debate. With this project completed, we are proud to share the first version of the full Chomsky-Foucault debate with English subtitles.

Special thanks to Anarchistische Groep Nijmegen. Translations from Dutch by withDefiance and Tamara van der Putten; translation from French by Tamara van der Putten.

N.B. Hit the ‘captions’ button if the subtitles don’t show up.

Noam Chomsky (1928): linguist, historian, philosopher, critic and political activist. As the “father of the modern science of language” (linguistics), Chomsky focused on the issue of the innate versus the learned. Over the course of his career, Chomsky evolved into a major critic of US foreign policy (from Vietnam to South America and the Middle East) and the propaganda of the mass media. One of his major works is ‘Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media’, co-written with Edward S. Herman. Chomsky continues to write prolifically today.

Michel Foucault (1926-1984): French philosopher, social theorist, historian and literary critic. In his work, Foucault dealt with the issue of power and how it works in practice; how it influences knowledge; and how it is used as a form of social control. Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions such as psychiatry, social anthropology, the penitentiary system and the history of human sexuality. His works are still very influential in academic circles. One of Foucault’s major works is ‘Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison’.

///

 

Making It Up: Photographic Fictions

Untitled – May 1997, Hannah Starkey, 1997, Museum no. E.491-1998. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London / Hannah Starkey

3 May 2013 – 12 January 2014
Room 38A
Free admission

Photography is widely associated with truthfulness yet it has also been employed throughout its history as a means of telling stories and evoking the imaginary. This display includes photographs by some of the most influential contemporary artists working in this vein, such as Gregory Crewdson, Duane Michals and Cindy Sherman, alongside examples by 19th-century practitioners including Julia Margaret Cameron, Clementina Lady Hawarden and Oscar Gustav Rejlander.

About displays
Complementing our permanent collections, there are many free temporary displays around the V&A. They range in size from a single case to a room.

///

Review by Susan Steward in the Evening Standard:

The photographs selected for this exhibition are drawn from the vast V&A archives, images from the 1850s to 1870s to today’s contemporaries. Some are paired across time, others stand alone, but all are engaged in detailed conversations and stories plotted for costumed actors by the photographers. Cindy Sherman greets the exhibition, an appropriate exemplar of many alter egos and photographic fictions, here presented as a Fifties or Sixties Hollywood actress.

The earliest works inevitably include the young 19th-century daughters of Julia Margaret Cameron and children of friends of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), all carefully choreographed into familiar poses, but the lesser-known Clementina Hawarden’s girls pose like young lovers, one cross-dressed and with more edge. They complement Hannah Starkey’s colourful cinematic scene of two 21st-century students sprawled on a party sofa. A lone, anonymous and calmly poignant 1850s scene is set outside a chapel where a mournful Bride of Christ in her wedding dress is seated alongside a young nun, a story loaded with emotion but with its religious detail unexplained.

As we see, theatrical narrative serves different purposes beyond pleasure. Many 19th-century painters used it as models for their work, as with SR Percy’s staged gypsy girls in a country scene. For the Chinese photographer Wang Quigsong, Night Revels of Lao Li imitates traditional scroll paintings working the vignette sequences like a story-board.

The museum’s two recent acquisitions fit into these fictions, with William Henry Price’s portrait of Don Quixote and the contemporary German, Jan Wenzel building complex stories through photo-booth snaps.

The silent dialogues behind the frames are an irresistible lure to viewers following the made-up tales.

Until Jan 12 (020 7907 7073, vam.ac.uk)

///

The Noun Project

About the Noun Project

http://thenounproject.com/about/

Creating, Sharing and Celebrating the World’s Visual Language

The Noun Project is building a global visual language that everyone can understand. We want to enable our users to visually communicate anything to anyone.

Humans have been using symbols to communicate for over 17,000 years because they are the one language everyone can understand. Symbols can transcend cultural and language barriers and deliver concise information effortlessly and instantaneously. They allow people to communicate quickly, effectively, and intuitively. And for the first time ever, this language is being combined with technology to create a social language that unites the world.

You can read more about us in Core77, Fast Company, The New York Times, The 99 Percent, and GOOD.

Building a Global Visual Language from The Noun Project on Vimeo.

Our Team

Want to join us? We’re hiring!

• Scott Thomas
• Edward Boatman
• Sofya Polyakov
• Jeremy Mumenthaler
• Chris Wolff
• Matt Brooks

Advisors

• The Designer Fund
• Scott Belsky
• Sam Teller
• Ken Pelletier
• Steven Walker

How We Got Started

///