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Janna Graham at IMMER #1

VisCult’s Janna Graham will be taking part in IMMER #1, the first International Meeting on Museum Education & Research on ‘Rethinking Museum Theory and Practice’, at the Museu do Douro in Peso de Régua, Portugal, on 23rd – 24th May 2018.

The i2ADS – Research Institute in Art, Design and Society and the Faculdade de Belas Artes, Universidade do Porto (FBAUP), in partnership with the Fundação Museu do Douro, are organising the IMMER#1 First International Meeting on Museum Education & Research – Rethinking Museum Theory and Practices, to be held on 23rd and 24th May 2018 at the Museu do Douro in Peso da Régua, Portugal.

IMMER#1 aims to present, reflect on, and discuss current educational and research practices in the context of museums, seeking to address relational processes and real audience involvement, as well as to explore dissident and transformative pedagogical possibilities in tune with more democratic and socially engaged values.

The language of the meeting will be English.

Further information about IMMER#1, the programme and registration conditions, can be found at http://immer.fba.up.pt

To register for this event, click here before the 20th May 2018.

Irit Rogoff for the 30th Annual Hilla Rebay Lecture at the Guggenheim

VisCult’s Irit Rogoff will be giving the 30th Annual Hilla Rebay Lecture at the Guggenheim in New York on 4th April 2018.

In this lecture, Irit Rogoff explores the “research turn” within art and curating—how research has moved from being a contextual activity that grounds the production and exhibition of art to a mode of inhabiting the art world in its own right. A writer, teacher, curator, and organizer, Rogoff works at the intersection of contemporary art, critical theory, and emergent political manifestations. She is Professor of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she heads the Curatorial/Knowledge PhD program and the Global Arts MA program. This lecture is followed by a reception.

Free, RSVP for updates.

The Hilla Rebay Lecture brings distinguished scholars to the Guggenheim Museum to examine significant issues in the theory, criticism, and history of art. This annual program is made possible through the generosity of The Hilla von Rebay Foundation.

For more information and to RSVP, visit the Guggenheim website here.

PERFORM NOW! The Potentials of a Living Archive

A full recording of last week’s event, “PERFORM NOW!“, hosted by Block Universe and Goldsmiths is now up online.

The event description is below:

To coincide with the launch of the fourth edition of Block Universe, London’s leading International Performance Art Festival; this panel discussion will bring together a number of contributors across disciplines to discuss past and current dynamics of performance art in the UK, and providing a platform to consider the historical significance of the ephemeral nature of performance art, through the lens and personal accounts of artists, critics, curators and academics.

The participants include the subversive 1980s performance group The Neo Naturists; Ellen Van Schuylenburch, one of the founding members of Michael Clark Company, Jane Pritchard, curator of dance for the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and Lois Keidan, director of the London-based Live Art Development Agency – LADA, as well as artists Evan Ifekoya & Victoria Sin, who are both contributing to this year’s edition of the Block Universe.

Together we will explore ideas of an active, living archive, one that takes into account the ability of performance to sustain itself and live on through the body rather than the record, thus re-positioning the body as the centre for knowledge in place of the archive. Can we take the inherent choreographic vocabulary in dance as an example? How can performance as memory exist?

Critical Ecologies

The Critical Ecologies research stream (as part of Technologies, Worlds, Politics) recently held a full day of inaugural activities on Saturday, March 17th. The stream includes VisCult staff Wood Roberdeau, Lynn Turner, Nicole Wolf and Susan Schuppli.

The group is pursuing ongoing research related to questions of global warming, environmental justice, colonial dispossession, climate migration, nuclear cultures, media geology and e-waste from an arts and humanities perspective that takes scientific research and practices seriously.

The stream formalises connections between existing areas of research and practice by bringing together established environment-focused initiatives from across Anthropology, Art, English & Comparative Literature, Media & Communications, Sociology, and Visual Cultures/Research Architecture to develop collaborations, funding bids, and curricula.

Their core aspiration is to evolve new academic platforms capable of shaping public debate.

Critical Ecologies invited representatives from local communities and organisations to present their work and form a space for planning and discussion with an aim to address eco-critical theory and questions of cultivation.

Elizabeth A. Povinelli (Columbia University) delivered the keynote lecture entitled The Toxic Earth and The Collapse of Political Concepts.

Critical Ecologies will be launching their own blog in the near future. Watch this space for future activities.

Film still: Karrabing Film Collective, The Mermaids, Mirror Worlds (film still), 2018

Mark Fisher Memorial Lecture

On 19th January 2018, the Department of Visual Cultures hosted the first Mark Fisher Memorial Lecture, given by Mark’s close friend and colleague Kodwo Eshun.

This lecture marked the first anniversary of Mark’s death but it is hoped that, in the years to come, a speaker will be invited to engage with the themes and ideas written about by Mark with an eye to taking them further or, indeed, somewhere else.