[EMS-NEWS]
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>> Electra: electricity in culture
>>
>> 2-7 pm Saturday May 22nd 2004
>>
>> Electricity into culture, culture into electricity: the fascination that
>> artists, writers and thinkers have with electricity will be examined in a
>> one-day event organised by the Royal Institution and programmed by Tom
>> McCarthy.
>>
>> Generating a host of new templates for thought and metaphors for
>> representation, the medium of electricity brought with it an aesthetic of
>> connectedness, of pulses, flows and relays - a new order in which the self
>> had to be re-thought in terms of circuits and networks. Electra combines
>> lectures and discussions with performances by artists whose work grapples
>> with the challenges and possibilities this new order brought about - ones
>> that grow more intense with each advance in electronic culture.
>>
>> The day features many different contributions from writers, artists,
>> composers and academics. Lectures give way to performances which give way to
>> discussions which give way to film and music. There is even a guest
>> appearance from Michael Faraday.
>>
>> Michael Faraday explains his discoveries made at the Royal Institution that
>> brought about 'the electric revolution'.
>>
>> Steven Connor (Prof of Modern Literature and Theory, Birkbeck College)
>> examines the ways in which electricity has been imagined from its beginnings
>> - not just as a force conducted through wires, but also as a more expansive,
>> airborne phenomenon, giving rise to an anxious and exhilarated fascination
>> with processes of permeation and radiation.
>>
>> Writer Ken Hollings, in collaboration with composer Graham Massey and
>> filmmaker Howard Walmsley, uses mythically enlarged recollections of the
>> 1932 film Dr X to create futuristic images of a totalitarian New York in
>> which AC electricity is banned and 'radio psychics' are used in the
>> detection of crimes.
>>
>> Electra's legacy is a panel debate featuring author Sadie Plant, composer Jo
>> Thomas and novelist Ken Hollings. The chair is Dr. Jane Lewty (University
>> College London).
>>
>> Disinformation's National Grid is a sub-bass sound installation. Joe Banks
>> and Mark Pilkington will be plunging the RI deep into the heart of the
>> electric storm, generating a throbbing, crackling soundscape incorporating
>> pure mains electricity and a variety of unusual electrical devices from the
>> archives of the Royal Institution itself and the personal collections of
>> Disinformation and Strange Attractor.
>> Tickets £10, £7 concessions
>>
>> More info at: http://www.rigb.org/rimain/calendar/detail.jsp?&id=43
>> <http://www.rigb.org/rimain/calendar/detail.jsp?&id=43>
>>
>> or call (+44) 0 20 7409 2992
>> Press Contact: Olympia Brown, [log in to unmask] or 020 7670 2939
>> Electra is supported by Arts Council England
>>
>>
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