 |
 |
Dear colleagues, Please join us for the second session of the Alternative Worlds Seminar on 22 February. The seminar is free and open to all, but please email me at [log in to unmask] to reserve a seat. I'd be grateful if you could forward this to others who might be interested in attending. Hope to see you on the 22ndh! Ricarda Vidal NB Sorry for cross-posting! Alternative Worlds: A retrospective of the last 111 years Seminar in Visual Culture 2011 Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, Room ST 274 (School of Advanced Study, Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, WC1B 5DN London) Tuesday 22 Feb. 2011, 6.30pm - 9.00pm Maya Oppenheimer, Preserving Utopia This work stems from a poetics of preservation. Ernst Bloch, in The Principle of Hope, wrote of the directive impulse required in the pursuit of utopia. It is a moment beyond the membrane of the present, something sought after as better than an inadequate material world. I would like to articulate the tensions between utopian aspirations and the impulse to preserve the past. Notions of a Golden Age or theories of collective memory will be useful here to compare the tendency to fictionalise a perfected past, which satisfies in a similar, directive way to utopics. My content will discuss a visual and material culture of preservation with brief case studies of pertinent examples: safe-guarding objects and souvenirs of importance (freezing, chemical storage), the significance of placing objects under glass (museum cases, snow globes, photo frames) and then applying some of these preservation methods to an obsession with defying decay in the ultimate battle site: the human body. Surgery, beauty care, health and lifestyle all attempt to gain longevity. We may collect object histories and respond to images of the past, but to possess age is undesirable. The core of this paper will extend ideas of the above examples, meant to furnish an idealised past, and explore the contradictions that arise when we enliven these moments- taking the preserved body in the present into a utopics of the past via reenactment (specifically amateur leisure practices). This would lend fruitful discussion for the strengthening consideration of those who pursue a future manifest in the past. Maya is currently studying for a PhD at the London Consortium with a thesis on the Visual Culture of amateur and artistic re-enactment practices in contemporary England and Canada. Parvati Nair, 'A different Light: Thinking the World otherwise through Sebastião Salgado's Genesis" After nearly three decades of photographing the mass human and social displacements triggered by industrialization, globalization and conflict, the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado is currently working on his project entitled Genesis, an attempt to rescue the centrality of nature. By seeking out creatures at risk of extinction and little known places on the edges of the modernized world, Salgado presents aspects of our planet to us that many will know little or nothing of. His aim is to remap our perceptions of the world and so realign our perspectives of ourselves and of where we stand in relation to nature. This paper will examine the potential of photography firstly to convey the notion that this world can be other-wise and, secondly, to canvas for commitment towards making it so. Central to this analysis will be Rancière's notion of polity, as opposed to politics or ideology, whereby engagement and solidarity are forged through a democracy of the polis. I shall explore the ways in which the space of the photograph nurtures such polity not solely through what is represented within the image or set of images, but also through the visual dialectic between that which is within the frame of the image and the projection of re-visioning the future. Parvati is Professor of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Chair of the Department of Iberian and Latin American Studies, School of Languages, Linguistics and Film and Director, Centre for the Study of Migration, Queen Mary, University of London. The Seminar in Visual Culture: Alternative Worlds This series of seminars acts as a forum for practicing artists, researchers, curators, students, and others interested in visual culture who are invited to present, discuss and explore a given theme within the broad field of Visual Culture. In an attempt to escape the doom and gloom of the economic crisis the theme for 2011 is 'Alternative Worlds'. The aim is to examine the dreams, plans and hopes, but also the nightmares and fears reflected in utopian thinking since 1900 in the Western hemisphere. What has become of all those possible worlds? How do they reflect their contemporary culture and society and what, if anything, do or can they mean for our present, or indeed, our future? What alternative worlds are engendered by our own times, by the world of 2011 itself? This is, hence not only a retrospective of past utopias and their after-lives but also an invitation to look towards our possible futures. The seminar is free and open to all, but please email me at [log in to unmask] to reserve a seat. Full Programme: See website for all abstracts: http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/events/seminars/alternative-worlds.html Wednesday 26 Jan. 2011, 6.30pm - 9.00pm Ricarda Vidal, Introduction to Alternative Worlds Marjolaine Ryley, 'Growing up in the New Age' Boukje Cnossen, 'The Alternative World of Michel Houellebecq' Tuesday 22 Feb. 2011, 6.30pm - 9.00pm Maya Oppenheimer, Preserving Utopia Parvati Nair, 'A different Light: Thinking the World otherwise through Sebastião Salgado's Genesis" Wednesday 30 March 2011, 6.30pm - 9.00pm Karen Pinkus, 'Infinite Mobility, Infinite Energy: Dream Cars of the Past, Present and Future' Sascha Pohflepp, 'The Golden Institute' Susanne Kord, 'From the American Myth to the American Dream: Lone Legends and 'Family Values' as Alternative Worlds in Recent Hollywood Westerns' Wednesday 27 April 2011, 6.30pm - 9.00pm Mark Pilkington, 'Flying Saucers are (almost) Real - Dreaming the future from 1716 to the present' Ingo Cornils, 'Between Bauhaus and Bügeleisen: the iconic style of Raumpatrouille (1966)' Rachel Steward, 'A Science Fiction of the Present' Wednesday 25 May 2010, 6.30pm - 9.00pm Daniel García-Castellanos, 'Science and Myth of other possible Mediterraneans' Ricarda Vidal, 'Atlantropa - 1927 to 2011' Deborah Jaffé, 'Utopia - Clara Louisa Wells' Wednesday 15 June, 6.30pm - 9.00pm Patricia Silva McNeill, 'The last city of the future': perspectives on Brasília in literature, film and the media Christopher Daley, 'The landscape is coded': J.G. Ballard's Early Fiction and Visual Culture Elena Solomides, 'JG Ballard's High-Rise as a critique of modern living'