Friday 30 March 2012

Singing and dating potential?

Manchester auditions will be held 13 April; please contact them directly if you're up for it...!

Monday 26 March 2012

MMP Grad Programme: Facts, Figures and Phone Hacking (28/3)

Facts, Figures and Phone Hacking: Ethical Problems in the British Press

Dr Carole O’Reilly, Senior Lecturer in Media & Cultural Studies, School of Media, Music and Performance, University of Salford

This talk will examine the long-standing problem of ethics among British journalists. It takes as its starting point a 1938 report into the British Press, which mirrors many of the concerns of the current Leveson Inquiry.

Ethical problems relate not solely to social, cultural and political changes in the wider society but also to fundamental changes in the structure and profession of journalism itself. An emphasis on ill-defined ethical frameworks may be masking the real and more pressing dilemma for British journalists – how to ensure the future viability of their occupation in a digital era.

3.10 - 4pm. Weds 28th March. 2nd floor lecture theatre, Adelphi House.

Wednesday 21 March 2012

"The Smiths Project"

Message from Salford's Professor Tony Whyton

Project Leader, Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities

We had a meeting of the Rhythm Changes project team in Lancaster last week, involving a number of international partners. As part of the three day event, Salford PhD student Nick Katuszonek presented a fantastic performance of his practice-based work at The Storey, one of the main arts venues in Lancaster. ‘The Smiths Project’, forms part of a wider study that explores the boundaries of genre and national stereotyping in jazz. If you would like to see a snippet of this, click on the following link: http://www.rhythmchanges.net/?p=1842

If you want to know more about the Lancaster event and the ongoing work of Rhythm Changes, check out our newly-revamped website www.rhythmchanges.net

Monday 19 March 2012

SMMP Creative Hive Live Event at MediaCityUK 29 May 2012

Creative Hive and The School of Media, Music and Performance, MediaCityUK play host to an exciting creative digital collaboration event using state of the art technology on 29 May 2012, 2pm - 9pm.
Creative Hive Live will form the launch event for Salford University’s School of Media, Music and Performance final year shows, but will draw on the best talent of the University, other Universities and the best creative talent of the North-West of England.

Founder of Creative Hive, Alex Fenton explains, “Creative Hive is an organization based at the University whose goal is to provide real world opportunities and connections between people in education and industry. Creative Hive allows people to showcase their work digitally at www.creativehive.org and in person at physical events.” Alex continued, “We are really happy to be able to stage our latest event at this world class facility in MediaCityUK.”

Creative Hive Live will consist of interactive displays, storytelling, performances, installations, live events and more. The event will be an opportunity to make new contacts and learn from new mixed disciplinary collaborations. There will also be creative speed networking sessions using interactive touch tables allowing creative people to display and discuss their work using the latest technology.

Event curator Angela Tait said, “After the success of our previous events, we are excited about the possibilities that MediaCity brings. One of the primary aims of Creative Hive is to promote cross disciplinary cooperation within the creative industries and so we are particularly looking forward to welcoming collaborative enterprises in this fabulous digital showcase.”

The event will also provide employment opportunities for students and graduates to experience engaging work in this innovative new space. It is a chance to meet new people and potential employers over a glass of fine wine or to sit back and enjoy the event as it unfolds. For creatives, employers and industry the event will provide access to see some of the best emerging talent in the region in this exciting new space at MediaCity located in close proximity to the BBC and ITV.

Professionals and people from industry will tell their stories, promote their work and speak directly to potential new employees or placement candidates. The event is open to anyone to attend or submit an idea for inclusion in the event. The call for submissions and event registration for Creative Hive Live is now open. The event will be free of charge if you register soon at: http://www.creativehive.org/live/. The call for submissions closes on 26 March at 10am.

Sunday 18 March 2012

Hatherley on Pulp

Our thanks to Owen Hatherley (pictured here with Salford's Dr Michael Goddard) for his talk "Britpop vs Class Consciousness - the case of Pulp": artistic apprenticeships on the dole, structuralist influences on the early videos, the murky politics of Britpop, and anticipations of the Simon Cowell-isation of pop...


Friday 16 March 2012

Manchester exhibition on The Smiths

The Gospel According To... (part 1)

16.03.12 - 04.05.12
Open Monday - Friday 10am - 4pm
Preview: 15 March 6-8pm

The Holden Gallery are pleased to present The Gospel According To... (part 1), a new exhibition conceived in collaboration with CUBE's Creative Director Jane Anderson. Through a range of media this show will explore connections between The Smiths (one of the most critically acclaimed and influential bands in British history) and the work of major contemporary European artists. Full info here. BBC coverage here.

Tuesday 13 March 2012

HRH The Duke of Edinburgh to officially open University of Salford's MediaCityUK facility on Friday 23 March

His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh will officially open the University’s MediaCityUK facility on Friday 23 March – greeted by invited dignitaries and around one hundred specially invited University colleagues and students. Further information here.

The Distribution and Exhibition of Chinese and Asian Cinema in the UK

A Chinese Film Forum UK Symposium 28th – 29th March 2012
Cornerhouse, Manchester

Day 1: Wednesday 28th March 
12.00 Registration
12.45 – 1.00 Welcome and Opening Address 
1.00 – 2.00 Keynote Lecture
‘In absentia: marketing the Asian film author’
Dr Valentina Vitali, Reader in Film Studies, University of East London
Supported by the Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures [RICC], the University of Manchester

2.15 – 3.00 Practitioners’ Panel I
‘Asian cinema and the UK arthouse market’
Jason Wood, Director of Programming, Curzon Cinemas

3.00–3.15 Coffee
3.15–4.00 ‘Issues concerning the distribution, exhibition and reception of “Pan-Asian” Cinema both within Asia and in the UK’
Roy Stafford, independent scholar

4.15–5.15 Practitioners’ Panel II
‘The role of specialised festivals and seasons’
Dr Sonali Joshi, Artistic Director, Pan-Asian Film Festival
Sarah Perks, Programme & Engagement Director, Cornerhouse, Manchester

6.00 – 8.00 Screening in conjunction with the Pan-Asian Film Festival, London
11 Flowers / Wo 11 (Wang Xiaoshuai, 2011)

‘An absorbing coming-of-age drama set during the waning stage of China's Cultural Revolution, 11 Flowers takes its place among Wang Xiaoshuai's finest films.’ Variety
We hope to welcome actor Wang Jingchun for a Q&A following the screening

Day 2: Thursday 29th March
10.00 – 10.45 ‘Pirates and Professionals: The Attitudes of Filesharers to Film Distribution Companies’
Dr Virginia Crisp, Middlesex University

10.45 – 11.00 Coffee
11.00 – 12.00 Practitioners’ Panel III
‘Issues in Distribution and Exhibition’
Mark Cosgrove, Head of Programming, Watershed Media Centre, Bristol
Ian Wild, Chief Executive, Showroom & Workstation, Sheffield

12.00 – 1.00 Lunch
1.00 – 2.00 ‘Pink Fans and Subversive Monsters: The Cultification of Japanese Cinema in the UK’
Joe Hickinbottom, University of Exeter
‘NEO Magazine and the Foregrounding of DVD’
Jonathon Wroot, University of East Anglia
2.00 – 2.45 ‘The Uncanny Disruption of British Chinese Cinema: Why British Chinese filmmakers find it hard to get their work distributed’
Rosa Fong, director and producer; and senior lecturer, Edge Hill University
2.45 – 3.15 Closing Remarks: Chinese Film Forum UK

Registration and Fee
The symposium fee includes the cost of refreshments, a buffet lunch on Thursday, 29th March, and admission to the screening of 11 Flowers, Wednesday, 28th March, 6:00pm.
Full £15 / Concs £10
Tickets are available from 9th March via the Cornerhouse box office or website at
http://www.cornerhouse.org/booking-information-prices
*Please note that numbers are strictly limited so early booking is strongly advised.*
For further information about the Chinese Film Forum UK, visit our website at www.cffuk.org
Chinese Film Forum UK events are supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Sunday 11 March 2012

MMP Grad Programme talks 14 March: Internet PhDs + Pulp

Two talks this Weds in the MMP Grad Programme. Everyone welcome!


Internal speaker: Dr Richard Talbot. 3.10-4.00pm

Opportunities and challenges of an Internet-based PhD submission.

Richard Talbot will discuss the process of a web-based PhD project in Performance Studies. The discussion will consider the process of designing, programming, creating and developing content, content- management systems and the user interface. This paper will touch on some challenges with performance documentation and reflection in the context of PhD viva and final submission criteria. He will draw primarily on his own PhD by practice-as-research The Clown Who Lost His Memory: Multiple Faces of the Clown in Practice & Theory (University of Roehampton, 2008). See www.ninaandfrederick.co.uk/pollard


External Speaker: Owen Hatherley 4.10 - 5pm.

Owen Hatherley’s recent publications include the widely acclaimed A Guide to the New Ruins of Britain (Verso, 2011) and Militant Modernism and, on Pulp, Uncommon (Zero Books, 2009, 2011), as well as a chapter for Mark E. Smith and The Fall: Art, Music and Politics (ed. Michael Goddard and Benjamin Halligan, Ashgate, 2010). Hatherley is a regular contributor to Building Design, New Statesman and New Humanist and has also written for The Guardian, Icon, Socialist Worker and Socialist Review. He sits on the editorial boards of Archinect and Historical Materialism, and maintains three blogs, Sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy, The Measures Taken and Kino Fist. Owen's Guardian profile


Britpop vs Class Consciousness - the case of Pulp

Though it is doubtful that actual musicians ever saw it that way, the welfare state and British pop music were mutually dependent phenomena, and both died around the same time. This talk will consider how this starts to come to consciousness in the work of Pulp, an arguable final member of the art school pop lineage, who brought to the surface the largely suppressed class politics of the poujadist 90s pop movement known as Britpop.











All sessions: second floor lecture theatre, Adelphi House
Building 3 on page 3 of this map: http://www.salford.ac.uk/travel/campus-map.pdf
(NB: Not Adelphi Building, and beware of Google Maps that confuses the two).
If you need parking, please let Ben Halligan know ahead of time: b.halligan@salford.ac.uk

New Issue of Subjectivity on Collective Becomings / Bifo

** Article by Salford's Dr Michael Goddard ("Cinematic and aesthetic cartographies of subjective mutation"), concerning the work of Bifo, who delivered a talk at Salford in 2010. Journal can be downloaded for free, but only for a month.


New issue of the journal Subjectivity on the work of autonomist media theorist Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi. The issue is freely available for the rest of March.

Subjectivity Volume 5 Issue 1 (April 2012)
Special Issue: Collective Becomings
Edited by Stevphen Shukaitis & Joanna Figiel
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/sub/journal/v5/n1/index.html
Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi is a contemporary writer, autonomist theorist and media activist. He founded the magazine A/traverso (1975-1981), and was part of the staff of Radio Alice, the first pirate radio station in Italy (1976-1978). His work analyzes the role of media and information technology in post-industrial capitalism, in particular drawing from schizoanalysis and aesthetics to investigate processes of subjectification within precarious labor.

This issue of Subjectivity, which is the first major engagement with Bifo’s work in English, focuses on the themes of collective becomings, whether manifest in the eruption of new political movements, within the workings of the economy, or in the artistic sphere. It is not just a collection of essays that take Bifo’s ideas as their starting point, but rather a collection of essays that all start from the conjuncture of Bifo’s ideas, the issues and conditions raised by them, with forms of collective becomings in the present.

The purpose then is not to consider Bifo’s work in isolation, but rather to develop it as a tool, one that is explored through continued usage and application. This conjunctive approach is the most productive and valuable feature of Bifo’s writing, and autonomist analysis more generally: its ability to act as a kind of crossroads for bringing together different forms of political analysis and social theory, to act as a bridge between them.

Tuesday 6 March 2012

#digcult12: Theory, Context and the Internet

13-14 June, 2012
University of Salford, MediaCity:UK

Registration details will be provided shortly: http://www.digcult.org/

Organizers
Ben Light and Marie Griffiths, University of Salford
Siân Lincoln, Liverpool John Moores University
Steve Sawyer, Syracuse University


Keynote Speakers:
Dr. Terri Senft, New York University, USA.
Everything I Ever Wanted to Know about Micro-celebrity, I Learned from the Camgirls


Professor James Newman, Bath Spa University, UK.
Dead games: the National Videogame Archive and the preservation of play
Conference Theme


In a world of virtual communication and social media, it can be argued that we face challenges regarding the theorization and contextualisation of Internet mediated activity. The desire to generate new knowledge coupled with the hyperbole and ‘upgrade me’ mindset that so often surrounds the Internet means that often new theoretical approaches are introduced as a way to understand current uses and meanings where perhaps they are not necessary. In terms of context, contemporary experiences can sometimes be decoupled from prior experiences, resulting in rhetoric of ‘the new’. The outcome of this can be an emphasis on discontinuity for example as demonstrated in discourses regarding the pre-Web 2.0 era. Web 2.0 is conceptualised as new, contextualised in a simplistic fashion and claims are made regarding the necessity of new theory to understand such a ‘revolutionary new world’. While clearly, societal change and socio-technical change are occurring variously across the planet (although the two may not necessarily be linked) continuity is also present – empirically and theoretically. There is therefore, a need to consider the history of Internet mediated arrangements and, to continue an interrogation of the abilities of extant theory to respond to and facilitate understandings of contemporary situations.

We call for contributions that do 2 things:

  • One, engage with an aspect of Internet mediated activity and historically contextualise it
  • Two, engage with/generate theoretical approaches in a reflexive fashion.

Themes that papers might address include (but are not limited to:
Dating, Commerce, Gaming, Politics, Play, Social networking, Privacy management, Sex work, Home working, Entertainment, Celebrity, Music production and consumption, Pornography, the intensification of work and Work-life balance, mediated youth cultures, learn/educate, health and well-being, travel/tourism, search information and media consumption, blurring boundaries between work and non-work times and places.


Following from the previous workshops, we see this conference as an outlet for digital media, ICT and technology related research which may not readily sit within conventional disciplinary areas.

We seek extended abstracts of up to 1000 words (excluding references) that engage with theory, context and the internet. We also welcome panel proposals incorporating three presentations. These should comprise 3 x 1000 word abstracts and an outline of the purpose of the panel of no more than 750 words.

We are hoping to see fully polished papers this year and as related to the conference theme. However, we will also consider research in progress/poster sessions for work that is more generally related to digital culture or which might be in earlier stages of development. Our desire for more focussed and complete work is two-fold. First, in engaging the structure as above, we hope to generate a more intensive and reflexive discussion about the Internet than might be possible with more fragmented approaches. Second, we intend the conference to be the starting point for an edited collection of papers in the area and contributors will be invited to submit to a wider call.

This follows in the tradition of previous conferences – for example, a special issue of the journal Information Technology and People entitled ‘Digital Culture: New Forms of Living and Organising , based partly on based on the 2010 workshop published in January 2011 (please see http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0959-3845)

Abstracts should be submitted to Siân Lincoln at s.lincoln@ljmu.ac.uk by 6 April 2012. Please also email Siân if you require any further information at this stage.

Sunday 4 March 2012

4 x PhD studentships, University of Manchester

The Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), University of Manchester, announces 4 PhD studentships - two in peacebuilding and two in any discipline. While these are primarily orientated to the social sciences, HCRI would welcome applications from students interested in the relations between the arts and humanitarianism.
More information at:

Thursday 1 March 2012

Our thanks to Dr Sian Barber


Our thanks to Dr Sian Barber for her fantastic talk on the BBFC during the 1970s: it's fascinating to get this dispatch from the frontlines in term of the history of the organisation, as it is now being written, and the many myths that Sian dispelled in relation to -- as her book terms it -- "the decade that taste forgot"!