Seminar 44 // 12, 13, 14, 15 March 2014 // London

Curatorial/Knowledge Seminar, March 12-15, 2014

Wednesday, 12th March, 6–8pm

Location: New Academic Building (NAB), LG01

Visiting professor Michel Féher:

‘Improve Your Credit: What Human Capital [Still] Wants’
(Second part of the lecture ‘Improve Your Credit: What Human Capital Wants’)

Féher’s previous lectures in the series, which took place in November and January, are webcast on the department’s web page:
http://www.gold.ac.uk/visual-cultures/guest-lectures/

Thursday, 13th March, 11am – 5pm

Location: Prokofiev Room, Library (Rutherford Building)

Presentation by Samia Henni and Leire Vergara (Curatorial/Knowledge):

Two Vocabularies in Contact

The dialogue between Samia Henni and Leire Vergara discusses French and Spanish colonial spaces and powers in North Africa. The discussion is based on the exposition of a number of terms and notions that operate within their respective researches on two specific colonial models of spatial occupation and organization. Samia focuses on the centres de regroupement (regrouping centres), militarily controlled camps designed for counterrevolutionary strategies in rural areas during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). Leire investigates the historical development of the plazas de soberanía (places of sovereignty), the empty occupied enclaves scattered across the northwest African coast that have functioned as territories of exception throughout Spanish colonialism, decolonialism and postcolonialism in the area.

The dialogue between these vocabularies intends to trigger a critical reflection on the undefined intervals, which remained unexplored, between these two colonial models of territorial occupation.

Readings:
– Gilles Deleuze, ‘What Is a Dispositive?’
– Frantz Fanon, ‘On Violence’ (from The Wretched of the Earth)
– Roger Trinquier, ‘The Need to Adapt Our Military Apparatus to Modern Warfare’ and ‘Modern Warfare Defined’ (from: Modern Warfare: a French View of Counterinsurgency, first published in 1961 under the title La guerre moderne).

(Lunch break: 1.30–2.30pm)

Thursday, 13th March, 5–7pm
Location: Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre, Whitehead Building

Visual Cultures Public Programme:
Thomas Keenan (Bard College) – Anti-Photojournalism

We are now witnessing a radical transformation in photojournalistic practices, and more generally in the way cameras record and make news. Artists, reporters, citizens, scholars, activists and archivists are doing exciting things that link the image to political and social struggles, often in unexpected ways. Their work is interesting in its own right, and for the deeper questions it often raises about the fundamental concepts of photojournalism.

Thomas Keenan teaches media theory and human rights at Bard College, where he directs the Human Rights Project and helped create the first undergraduate degree program in human rights in the United States.

Friday, 14th March, 11am – 6pm

Location: Prokofiev Room, Library (Rutherford Building)

Seminar with visiting professor Michel Féher:

Following up on our session with Michel Féher in January, the seminar will again take the form of a conversation, this time initiated by all C/K participants with a view to an interview project with Michel (as discussed in January). In addition to the readings for the last seminar, please also read John Maynard Keynes’s text ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’: ‘It is an enticing and crucial essay, written in 1930, for the understanding of Keynes’s anthropological outlook, with a touch of horror in the middle of it (Keynes exhibits his relentless and open antisemitism – a sobering counterpoint to his appeal).’

Readings:
– John Maynard Keynes, ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’

(Lunch break: 2–3pm)

Around 8pm: Dinner together

Saturday, 15th March, 12am – 5pm

Location: Raven Row (56 Artillery Lane, London E1 7LS; closest tube: Liverpool Street Station)

Reading group:

In continuation of our reading group session in January we will go back to The Undercommons by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten – this time also including chapter 5, ‘Fantasy in the Hold’.

Reading:
– Stefano Harney / Fred Moten, The Undercommons. Fugitive Planning and Black Study,
http://www.minorcompositions.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/undercommon...