Thursday 21 November 2013

Grad Prog talks this Weds: Ridiculumus' Total Football // Voice and Joy Division

Wednesday 27 November, 3pm, MediaCityUK / Salford Uni building; room 2.20; 3-4pm

 Internal Speaker: Dr Richard Talbot

Devising Ridiculusmus’ Total Football: a schematic reading of performance process

This talk critically reflects on a series of drawings created during the devising process for Ridiculumus’ Total Football (2012). Ridiculusmus' production, a narrative of a non-sporty bureaucrat tasked with harnessing the enthusiasm of football fans in the interests of national cohesion, examines the impossibility of thorough incorporation of a national body within the Olympic mo(ve)ment. Based on an existing convention among football commentators for contextualizing and narrating team play, a series of photographs of sketches-in-process discussed here capture the marks of live notation as an urgent activity during devising. As such the reader has access to a snapshot from Ridiculusmus’ rehearsal methods and process. The paper analyses the notation devices employed in the sketches arguing that the approximate qualities of sketched notation, and its failed totality, capture the tone of comedy in this work about masculine hubris. While the sketches attempt to keep pace with the spontaneity of tactics devised by performers, the paper argues that performance systems and dance notation that have paid attention to architecture and spatial arrangement as a score do not generally notate intention or strategy. The paper presents the idea that the sketches document a multiplicity of tactics, and footballing metaphor in process.



Wednesday the 27th of November, Media City room 2.20; 4-5pm

External Speaker: Dr Milla Tiainen (Anglia Ruskin University)

“Ventriloquism and convulsion: Voice, aesthetics, and paradoxes of agency in Anton Corbijn’s Control

As recent returns to this topic in media and cultural theory highlight, attempts to think about the voice soon gravitate on several paradoxes. Vocal emissions performatively produce the very (self-)articulating being and bodily presence that presumably act as their source. Whilst delivering selves and bodies as part of the world, vocal expressions at the same time inevitably depart from their emitters. As projection, the voice both exposes and replaces its source. Whether in a ‘live’ situation or when engaged in cinematic/other mediatised experience, we arguably strive to attach vocal sonorities to a visible origin. Yet, to elaborate on Steven
Connor (2000) there is always something ‘ventriloqual’ in the voice’s ultimate incompatibility with such visually ensured origins. In sum, the relations of voice to agency, embodiment, space, perception, power, and technical media are expandingly complex. My intention in this talk is to explore and further conceptualise these complexities in conversation with Control (2007), the film directed by Anton Corbijn about Joy Division, particularly the band’s late lead singer and lyricist Ian Curtis. This film, I contend, harnesses some of the above-sketched paradoxes of voice through its narrative but especially audiovisual and aesthetic presentations of Curtis’s character and vocal performances. I will inspect the voice as part of Curtis’s diegetic agency, but also as an agency in its own right in excess of its emitter’s control. This takes place in relation to such other distinctive audiovisual aspects of the film’s portrayal of Curtis as the dancing, convulsing body and the (still) face in close-up. This talk aims to address three areas that intertwine in my current research: the study of the ethico-aesthetics of voice in contemporary artistic practices and media culture; the return in the analysis of media to the political potential of sensory, aesthetic arrangements to shape our feelings, experience and thought processes; and the examination of non-normative media cultural masculinities from these two perspectives.


Milla Tiainen is Lecturer and Course Leader for Media Studies at Anglia Ruskin University. During 2013-2014, she is working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Academy of Finland funded project “Deleuzian Music Studies”. Tiainen’s current research interests include the voice in contemporary artistic practice, media culture and theory, theories of affect, rhythm and the body in movement, sound and performance studies, and new materialist approaches in cultural/media studies and feminist thought. She has published widely in the areas of music scholarship and cultural theory. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in such publications as the edited volume  Carnal Knowledge: Towards a New Materialism through the Arts (IB Tauris, 2013), Body&Society, and NECSUS – European Journal of Media Studies. She is finishing a book about a new Deleuzian approach to musical performance (under contract with University of Minnesota Press).

Guardian: Academic CVs -- 10 irritating mistakes


"Applications to academic jobs are notoriously convoluted, says Steve Joy – to make life easier, here's what not to do in your CV":

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/nov/01/academic-cv-job-10-mistakes

Monday 11 November 2013

Saudi Media Research forum; 13/11 at MediaCityUK

Wednesday the 13th of November, Media City room 2.19 3 to 5PM

Saudi Media Research PGR forum.

Emerging out of the strong presence of Saudi Arabian PGR researchers within our school, this forum will present the research work of some of them namely Mohammad Mesawa, Saeed Alamoudy and Abdullah Abalkhail (more speakers TBC). Examining such issues as the rebranding of Makkah as a creative city, online activism and the Arab Spring, this promises to be a lively forum of interest to the School’s PGR and research community as a whole.

Wednesday 6 November 2013

Arts, Health and Social Care Symposia Series


Arts, Health and Social Care Symposia Series

University of Salford

Mary Seacole Building

Launch Event Tuesday 19th November 11am -  6pm
Starts and Ends of Life



Followed by a drinks reception 6pm – 7pm by invitation.

Launch of new Birth Rites* acquisitions

Sponsored by the Wynn Bentham End of Life Memorial Fund

The aim of the arts, health, and social care symposia is to promote interprofessional collaboration between staff, students and practitioners from arts, health and social care; highlighting exemplars of best practice in fields such as birth, bereavement, change, loss and end of life care. The symposia will showcase innovative artworks and installations that portray work surrounding these themes.

Contributions

Artworks and installations in a variety of media (including but not limited to performance, music, poetry, creative writing, photography, film, pottery, sculpture, artefacts, drawing, painting, graphics, crafts and social media). Workshops and poster presentations linking arts related activities with care provision. Practical workshops developing artworks and installations during the symposia. Interactive ‘pop-up’ workstations/workshops and games.  Public engagement through case studies and stories highlighting service user and carer perspectives.

Confirmed Presenters

Rebecca Baillee Mother Artists: The representation of pregnancy, miscarriage and infertility in art.

Marie Brett Amulet and Anamesis www.mariebrett.ie

Michaela Barnard, Dave Garbutt & Leah Greene Challenging Situations at the End of Life, Hi Fidelity simulation of sensitive communication

Dancesyndrome  charity & social enterprise to improve and empower people with learning disabilities lives through the vehicle of dance  www.dancesyndrome.co.uk

Anija Dokter Sound and Childbearing: realities and imaginaries

 Professor C.J.Hollins-Martin Bereavement Care

Helen Knowles & Samantha Lippett Birth Online : Birth Offline Cross cultural participatory arts project exploring Native American and British perceptions of childbirth http://birthonlinebirthoffline.tumblr.com/

Judith Kurutac & Andy Lawrence Born, documentary film that examines two couples very different experiences of birth. The film draws us into an examination of the connection between birth and death to explore what role fear plays in childbirth and how the ways in which we deal with fear effect the way in which a child is born. “Our hope is to create a magical-real environment in which to go beyond the limits of our historical perspective on childbirth and its culturally bound rites, and to demonstrate an emotionally connected knowledge which can contribute to the debate on how we give birth and die.”

Claire Lawrie A Massive Nothing

Tabitha Moses False Starts and Happy Endings

Jesse Olszynko-Gryn Feeling pregnant: the changing experience of pregnancy in twentieth-century Britain

Helen Sargeant The egg, the womb, the head and the moon

Elaine Uppal Art of Midwifery

Erika Robertson Contrasts between Life and Death

Eti Wade Starting My Journey as a Mother

Artefacts

Participants are encouraged to bring an artefact or memento of a loved one who has passed away, the symposia would like to record the meaning of these symbols and how it reminds you of the person you lost. Please bring a photo of the person and we can record your memories on paper, audio or video. A publication may arise from this activity.

Temporary Exhibition

Artwork

Installations

Posters

Birth Rites Exhibition, including launch of new acquisitions

Claire Lawrie ‘A Massive Nothing’ 2011

Tabitha Moses ‘Islands of Blood and Longing’, 2010

Janet Russek (three photographs) from her Pregnancy Series 2005

David Scheinbaum (three photographs) ‘Jason. A Homebirth Experience’ 1979 – 1980

Valerie Schmidt (one photograph) ‘Formations’ (Seeds)

Dominika Dzikowska (three photographs) from the series: Wet warm velvet, 2009-2013

Eti Wade (2 photographs) ‘Home Birth (in the kitchen)’ 2001; ‘Home Birth’ (with vacuum cleaner) 2001

Marie Brett Amulet Project –she will be bringing two framed works and sound works – these are temporary installations as she will be donating to the collection at the end of the Amulet tour next year.



www.birthritescollection.org.uk

Birth Rites is a collection of contemporary art on childbirth. The first of its kind in the world. It is housed between the Royal College of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians in London and the Mary Seacole Building in the Midwifery Directorate in Salford University and is on display for staff, students and the general public. The collection currently comprises photography, sculpture, painting, artist books, print, wallpaper, drawing, new media and film.



This is a free event, however lunch and refreshments can be booked for £10

To book a place, go to the onlineshop.

http://shop.salford.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&deptid=2&catid=227&prodvarid=162

Venue: Mary Seacole Building, University of Salford, Frederick Rd, Salford M6 6PU (close to Salford Crescent train station)

A free drinks reception will be held between 6.00pm and 7.00pm as part of a special viewing of 13 new acquisitions to the Birth Rites Collection which is housed in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work.

For more information contact E.Uppal@salford.ac.uk 0161 295 436


  *Birth Rites Collection is the only collection of contemporary art on the subject of childbirth in the world and is housed permanently in the Mary Seacole Building in Salford University. The collection is open to the public. www.birthritescollection.org.uk

Tuesday 5 November 2013

Salford academic's chapter on female celebrity and ageing published

Well done to Dr Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs --- her chapter "Nothing less than perfect: female celebrity, ageing and hyper-scrutiny in the gossip industry" has just been published in Routledge's Female Celebrity and Ageing: Back in the Spotlight.

Abstract:
From Perez Hilton to Lainey Lui, the figure of the gossip blogger no longer exists solely on the periphery of celebrity culture. The ‘bitchy’ personas that celebrity gossip bloggers espouse are now firmly embedded within mainstream media. Gossip blogs regularly feature posts that scrutinise female celebrities in terms of how well, or not, they age. Much of this scrutiny is centred on narratives of cosmetic surgery. This article will examine such narratives and discuss the ways in which the construction of the ageing female celebrity and the state of endless transformation that is so revered in neo-liberal and post-feminist cultures operates in the gossip industry, suggesting that the notion of continual self-maintenance through consumption has become a necessity in a society that rewards continual corporeal change.

Link for the book: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415832366/



(photo is of Barbara Cartland and companion)