Tag Archives: cultural production

Events, Past Events

Common Ground: Democracy & Collectivity in an Age of Individualism

We live in an epoch of personal choice, hyper-mobility, celebrity-worship and fiercely competitive labour markets. But this is also the age of networked communication, of global culture, of Occupy and the new politics of ‘the Commons’.

What are the connections and tensions between such apparently diverse tendencies, and do they help democracy to develop, or render it impossible?

This public seminar, marking the launch of Jeremy Gilbert’s book Common Ground (Pluto Press),  will discuss the relationship between collectivity, individuality, affect and agency today, asking whether personal freedom is the great achievement of our era — or if individualism is actually forced on us by capitalist culture, fatally limiting our capacity to solve the problems that we can only solve together.What forms of politics, culture and philosophy might take us beyond the limits of traditional conservatism or banal individualism?

At: Brilliant Corners, 470 Kingsland Road, Dalston, London, E8 4AE

Speakers: Anthony Barnett, Lisa Blackman, Mark Fisher, Jeremy Gilbert
Continue reading Common Ground: Democracy & Collectivity in an Age of Individualism →

Uncategorized

Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies at UEL

Stuart Hall, the globally-respected and much-loved public intellectual and giant of cultural studies, who has just died, had a huge influence on the development of Sociology and Cultural Studies at the University of East London.

UEL (then still North East London Polytechnic) was the first university in the UK to establish an undergraduate degree in, and later a department of, Cultural Studies. The BA, launched in 1980, was developed by a group of UEL staff several of whom had had strong links with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham, the unit directed by Stuart Hall. Continue reading Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies at UEL →

Events, Past Events

Vinyl Culture: A Seminar and a Party

L1230621Vinyl is the medium that won’t die. How do we explain it’s long-lasting appeal, its unique aesthetic qualities, and the strange sense that these questions are somehow important? This event will see a panel of expert commentators and practitioners discussing the issues in the ideal setting of Brilliant Corners, London’s only audiophile venue, before then hosting a party to put theory into practice.

 

Attendance is free and open to all – no need to register, just turn up.  Continue reading Vinyl Culture: A Seminar and a Party →

Events, Past Events

Radical Space

radical space cover v3Our conference for 2013 will address the problematics of space both as concept and as lived social reality, with a particular emphasis on the tension between spaces of control in the context of contemporary neoliberalism, spaces of resistance and the apocalyptic spaces which emerge from war, forced migration and the failures of consumer capitalism.

What are the politics of space in contemporary contexts? How can we re-think space beyond the public/private divide? How do spatial arts re-configure space and the way in which it is experienced? What new configurations of space may emerge from burgeoning forms of community? How do the theatres of contemporary war force a re-assessment of spatial concepts? Is it still possible for the notion of virtual space to function in opposition to the striated space of contemporary cities?

We are pleased to announce that Deborah Dixon and Carl Lavery of Aberystwyth University,  Dimitris Papadopoulos (University of Leicester) and the independent artist Joanna Rajkowska have been confirmed as keynote speakers. The conference will also offer the chance to participate in movement workshops and performative explorations of space.

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN

FULL PROGRAMME

RADICAL SPACE PAGE

Events, Past Events

Security, Community & Democracy

This is the second seminar in our Culture & Polity series in which our invited speakers will be examining the post-neoliberal subject as produced by the strategies of behavioural economics, security screening and the discourse of virology. What is the meaning of community and the social under these conditions? What forms of governance emerge from new techniques of securitisation and behaviour management and what are the implications for democratic processes?

Continue reading Security, Community & Democracy →

Events, Past Events

Digitisation and Value

This is the first seminar in our Culture & Polity series, interrogating urgent questions of cultural change in the context of new forms of community, contemporary commodity forms and government policy.

This session will bring together a range of perspectives on the question of digitization and value, from the spheres of media and cultural studies, digital arts practice, and open source enterprise. To what extent do networked digital technologies enable new forms of human subjectivity, social organization and expressive new forms of culture? Do digital production tools and networked communications provide new modalities of intensity and sensation? Or do the materialities of digitization merely extend the field of neoliberal authority? Can technology offer new tools for building communities and potentially emancipate impoverished groups and environments? How do we conceive of value in a digital world?

Continue reading Digitisation and Value →