Research Seminar programme 2014/5 for the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Portsmouth
A selection of events of interest to colleagues are listed below. Events of the seminar series are generally in the Eldon Building, New West - 1.10 , 16.00, unless otherwise stated. Please contact Deborah Shaw for any more information on events and directions
October 8th Prof Arthur I. Miller Colliding Worlds- How Cutting- Edge Science is Redefining Contemporary Art –for more information, see : http://space.port.ac.uk/2014/09/01/arthur-i-miller-lecture-colliding-worlds-how-cutting-edge-science-is-redefining-contemporary-art/
There is a quiet revolution going on in the world of art, a new avant garde pushing the boundaries farther than ever before. These are artists who work together with scientists to make extraordinary creations that may well change the world as we know it. From designer butterflies to plastic surgery as performance theatre, from rabbits that glow in the dark to seeing sound and sculpting data - in my talk I will introduce this brave new world.
What are some of the many sorts of art that spring from the interplay between art and science? How did this interaction begin and where is it going in the 21st century? How are concepts such as art and aesthetics being redefined? Are there similarities between the creative processes of artists and scientists and if so, what? These are some of the questions I will explore while looking into the exciting new art movement which I call artsci.
October 22nd - Yael Friedman – University of Portsmouth - ‘The Place of Culture in a Conflict Zone: Reflections on the Jerusalem International Film Festival and Animix - Israel International Animation Festival in Summer 2014’
Yael will talk about her experiences at two festivals in Israel this summer during the Israel/Gaza conflict while researching her new book Palestinian Filmmaking in Israel: Narratives of Place and Identity.
November 5th ' Jose Arroyo - University of Warwick – ‘Blogging as a new academic practice: thoughts from an academic, critic and film fan'
December 3rd -Rayna Dennison - University of East Anglia, ‘Experiencing Japan’s Anime: Reconsidering ‘Anime’ through the Tokyo International Fair’
Anime’s meanings in the UK are determined by the texts that travel out of Japanese culture, in a variety of forms, to our shores. In this talk I attempt to reconsider anime through the lens of its cultural geography at the Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF), held annually between 2002 and 2013. Focusing on the period of its greatest success (2008-9), and comparing this heyday to TAF’s final year in 2013, I deal with the controversies surrounding the Fair in its latter years, but also with the way the space of the Fair has shaped understandings of anime within its domestic context and beyond. As a space, I argue that TAF has been instrumental as a taste-maker and gatekeeper for anime; that it has shaped anime culture, and has continually worked to expand the borders of ‘anime’ in and beyond Japan. Therefore, I look not just at the mainstream television and film texts that make it to the UK, but I also investigate the inventive, innovative and sometimes seemingly inexplicable ways that anime texts were commingled, conflated and confused within TAF’s cultural geography. The aim is to demonstrate the complexity of Japan’s animation markets while also considering the inward- and outward-facing aspects of TAF’s event space. In doing so, I hope to question current understandings of anime, many of which are determined by the texts that make it to foreign soil, and to refocus attention on the useful and interesting opportunities afforded by an event space that allows a concentrated, intensified opportunity to experience Japan’s anime cultures.
19th November PUBLIC LECTURE organised by Tom Sykes: Independent Publishing in the Digital Age - Portland Building 18.00, for more information, see http://space.port.ac.uk/2014/09/03/cci-public-lecture-independent-publishing-in-the-digital-age/
15–23 November 2014 - Being Human events at the University of Portsmouth,: http://space.port.ac.uk/2014/08/27/being-human-festival-at-university-of-portsmouth/
The University of Portsmouth has been selected to be part of Being Human, the UK’s first national festival of the humanities, 15–23 November 2014.
Free public events will be held at over 60 venues across the UK; in universities, museums, galleries, and cultural and community centres at locations across the UK. The Being Human festival was launched at the beginning of the year, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the British Academy and the School of Advanced Study, University of London - http://beinghumanfestival.org/events/
The Portsmouth events are led by Dr Deborah Shaw and are a collaboration between the Faculties of Creative and Cultural Industries, and Humanities and Social Sciences. The events are organized around the theme ‘Conflict and Resolution Across Global Cultures’, and draw on the academic expertise within the two Faculties. The University is collaborating with the Portsmouth Film Society on the film screenings detailed below.
The Portsmouth festival follows three central themes: Hunger strikes as a strategy for political protest and their legacy; Algerian identity in a transnational, trans-historical context; and the Greek crisis and its global implications. Highlights include:
For details of events see CCI’s What’s On and listed below:
17th November, 6.30 – 10.00 pm Screening of Hunger, panel discussion (hunger strikes as a strategy for political protest), and Suffragette Collections film reel, University of Portsmouth Eldon Building screening theatre, room EW1.11
19th November, 6.30 – 10.00 pm Screening of The Battle of Algiers, and panel discussion, Eldon Building screening theatre EW1.11.
21st November, 7.00 – 10.00 pm Screening of Fascism Inc. including a Q & A with director, Eldon Building screening theatre EW1.11.
20th October – 26th November, 9am – 5pm, weekdays A Story of Revolutions, an exhibition by Patrick Altes on display in the Eldon Building throughout the festival period.
The exhibition is FREE to all. The screenings are FREE to all students. The films are being screened by Portsmouth Film Society (PFS) at the University of Portsmouth. PFS offer memberships and discounts to staff and the general public for attendance at more than one film, visit their website for more information.
January 14th Anne Howeson 'Metropolis Transformed' - This drawing and photographic series pieces together layers of architectural history in the largest area of urban redevelopment in Europe (the King's Cross project) by appropriating fragments from print archives, transforming them in scale, context and content to evoke a sense of passing time. The unbuilt places of the future and the disappeared buildings from the past are imagined and revisited. Part document, part fiction, the work presents architectural regeneration as inevitable, while considering its effect on the environment and communities of today.
January 28th, Alex Counsell & Paul Charisse University of Portsmouth -"Feature Film Production in Education" |
Alex and Paul lead the Foam Digital team and have produced the animated film Stina & The Wolf – see trailer here: http://stinaandthewolf.net/?page_id=437
February 11th Van Norris Broad Strokes and Absences": Mapping a history of British Television Animation'. Van will deliver a talk based on his book, British Television Animation 1997-2010
http://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Television-Animation-1997-2010-Norris/dp/1137330937
25th February, Searle Kochberg, University of Portsmouth - The Place of Gay Jewish Men on the Streets of London
There is evidence to suggest that for reasons to do with self-identification
as ‘other’ that Jewish Londoners have a heightened awareness of
where they are within the public realm (paraphrasing Vaughan, 2012). In my
seminar paper I will propose a collaborative filmed walk method
as an efficacious strategy to decentre, challenge and
upstage the dominant representation of “authentic” Jewish London in
mainstream documentary. I have taken an auto-ethnographic approach
to this cine-ethnographic project: friends - my "family” of gay Liberal Jewish men - are filmed by me on their chosen, "performed" Jewish walks on the streets of London.
11th March - Janet Delve, Senior Lecturer in Creative Technologies, University of Portsmouth, "Raiders of the Lost Ark: Curation and Creativity - the E-ARK project and other developments."
April 8th - Louis Netter, Senior Lecturer in Illustration, University of Portsmouth, www.louisnetter.com
Adaptation and the literary Graphic novel
The graphic novel is a relatively new topic of academic study and nuances of the form are still ripe for inquiry. Complex narrative and visual landscapes as seen in the work of Chris Ware and others, has elevated the formerly marginalised position of sequential art and has pushed the potentiality of the medium. My own foray into the graphic Novel has been revelatory. My graphic novel Lizard World is an adaptation from a novel by Terry Richard Bazes and he condensed his own narrative in the form of a ‘script’. I would like to present this process of adaptation as more than a re-contextualisation of the original text but a fixed interpretation. The adaptation into a form like a graphic novel or film is a consolidation of a singular interpretation of the work. This flattening of the interpretive qualities of a literary (written) work takes on a highly specific form. The graphic novel adaptation, like other adaptations, is the fulfilment of one vision of the text and this is both a limitation of the text and an exponent of the text. I would also like to explore the nature in which the graphic novel gives visual form to the narrative structure of the novel. Through repeated patterns of action and characterisation, the literary devices within the novel become writ large. Additionally, this gives symbolic references the poignancy of being realised in drawing and the impact of repeating the visual symbols at key points in the narrative. Although the singular nature of interpretation in the adaptation is evident, the stylistic qualities of the drawn line then open up several more layers of interpretation. These stylistic considerations are myriad and although they are the result of purposeful intentions, the way in which they are ‘read’ by the viewer/reader is based on the filter of that individual’s experience. Specific examples of the above points will be shown from the graphic novel.
29th April- joint event by colleagues from the School of Media and Performing Arts at the University of Portsmouth - Laura MacDonald, ‘Consuming Potential: The Musical Theatre Spectator as Consumer and Commodity’; Ben Macpherson "The Journey Home is Never Too Long: Cultural Appropriation and the Psycho-Geography of 'home' in Bombay Dreams - 2001"
May 6th - Danny Birchall (Wellcome Trust) - title TBC