Seminar 49 // 28, 29, 30, 31 January 2015 // London
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Curatorial/Knowledge Seminar, 28–31 January 2015
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Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 6–8pm
Location: RHB Small Cinema
Visiting professor Michel Féher:
‘Thank You for Sharing: The Social Life of Human Capital’
(Lecture 6 of the lecture series The Age of Appreciation: Lectures on the Neoliberal Condition)
Féher’s previous lectures in the series are webcast on the department’s web page:
http://www.gold.ac.uk/visual-cultures/guest-lectures/
Thursday, 29 January 2015, 11am – 5pm
Location: Prokofiev Room, Rutherford Building (Library)
(for those without Goldsmiths cards: one of us will be outside at 11am)
Following up on our discussions around ‘Methodologies’ in the first two seminars of the year, we will continue to read Giorgio Agamben’s chapter ‘What Is a Paradigm?’ from his book The Signature of All Things: On Method. Irit and Stefan will address different aspects in the morning and afternoon sessions respectively.
Readings:
– Giorgio Agamben, What Is a Paradigm?
1.30–2.30pm: Lunch Break
Thursday, 29 January 2015, 5–7pm
Location: LG02, Professor Stuart Hall Building (New Academic Building)
Visual Cultures Public Programme:
Wendy Wheeler (London Metropolitan University):
‘Creative Evolution & the Logic of Abduction: The Biosemiotic Self & the Umwelt’
An important theoretical underpinning of biosemiotics is the semiotic philosophy of American scientist and semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) and his observation that ‘the universe is perfused with signs’. Semiotic biology was born from a similar insight, that living systems – cells, organisms, and ecologies – are not mechanical but are scaffolded by semiosis. Semiotic systems characterise life throughout. They bridge the supposed gap between mind and body, culture and nature, and idealism and realism.
Friday, 30 January 2015, 11am – 6pm
Location: Prokofiev Room, Rutherford Building (Library)
(for those without Goldsmiths cards: one of us will be outside at 11am)
On this day we will have Michel Féher again as a guest in our seminar. Please make sure you come to his lecture on Wednesday, as we will specifically focus on the impact of ‘sharing’ on the social life under the neoliberal condition.
Michel has sent links to a selection of materials to read and look at, ‘pertaining to the economic aspects of my sharing talk’:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/01/23/airbnb-and-the-unstopp...
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/5/sharing-economy-inequality....
https://hbr.org/2013/01/from-zipcar-to-the-sharing-eco/
http://www.rachelbotsman.com/
http://www.shareable.net/users/janelle-orsi
http://www.zestfinance.com/
http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/potential-consumer-publics
‘If you have no time for more, just combine the video on the home page of zestfinance with the TED talk of Rachel Botsman – it is all you need …’ (Michel)
2–3pm: Lunch Break
8pm: Dinner together
Saturday, 31 January, 12–4pm
Location: Delfina Foundation (29 Catherine Place, Victoria, London SW1E 6DY; closest tube: Victoria)
Reading group, chaired by C/K participants Carolina Rito and Rana Hamadeh:
Alain Renais’s 1961 feature film, Last Year in Marienbad, and Gayatri Spivak’s 'Translator’s Preface' to Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology, are the selected ‘texts’ for this seminar’s reading group, which will be dedicated to modalities of reading as well as to the question of how to take part in reading. Rather than operating as centre-pieces, the two selected works are intended to function as platforms from where instances of readership can be proposed, rehearsed and tested – among these figures are reading ‘at the surface’ and reading ‘nearby’.
References:
– Gayatri Ch. Spivak, Translator’s Preface, from J. Derrida, Of Grammatology
– Alain Resnais, Last Year in Marienbad (1961)