Harry in Afghanistan

This whole hullaballoo about Prince Harry serving in Afghanistan has been fascinating –not because of what he was or wasn’t doing there, but because of the way it was (or wasn’t) covered in the media.

Watching the television news last night, you could have been excused for asking: if all this was such a secret, how come the media were there and knew about it all along?

Your question is answered extremely well by the BBC’s World News Editor Jon Williams in his blog article at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/02/news_blackout.html

It tells you why and how a “news blackout” was voluntarily observed by the British media, and how it all fell apart when the American blog The Drudge Report broke the story on its front page.

The ethics of any kind of news blackout –especially by the news media themselves- remain a matter for debate. Should the news media ever hold back the news –even in “the public interest.” And what, after all, is the public interest? Who decides? It’s usually not the interested public!

Dr Richard Howells

The Conformist

Former MA CCI student Sarah Robertson is now working at the BFI’s marketing department, and asked us to publicise the forthcoming showing of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist, opening on 29 February. Details here.

The gallery as adult play centre

Mark Boyle and Joan Hills, ‘Oh What a Lovely Whore’, ICA 1965, film still.

Our friends at the ICA have recently been running a series of discussions on curatorship, and this Friday (29 February, 7pm) sees the latest, entitled ‘Fun and Games: The Gallery as Adult Play Centre’. Further details here. The event is chaired by Marko Daniel, curator of public programmes at Tate Modern – another friend of ours!

Sixties counterculture

Dr. Harvey G. Cohen will be giving a guest lecture this Tuesday, 26 February 2008, 10am-12pm, on ‘The 1960s Counterculture in American Popular Music’. The lecture will feature generous amounts of music and video from the rock, pop, jazz, and country genres.  All MA CCI students are invited to attend. The venue is room SWB 18 in the Strand Building. The lecture is being given as part of Dr. Cliff Eisen’s course on the music of the 1960s, based in the Department of Music.

Origins of the Royal Academy

One of the cultural organisations that regularly takes on MA CCI students as interns is the Royal Academy of Arts.

Hence readers of Lost in CCI may be interested to note that Charles Saumarez Smith, Secretary of the Royal Academy, will be giving a public lecture at Queen Mary, University of London, on February 26th at 6.30pm. His lecture will be on the origins of the Royal Academy and National Gallery. For further details of the talk and to book a place, please click here.

Many thanks to Ruth Adams for letting us know about this.

Richard Howells and the Half-Blood Prince

Centre Director Dr Richard Howells has been on set to watch the making of the forthcoming Harry Potter film: “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” This is the sixth in a series of seven films based on the hugely succesful books by J.K. Rowling.

Unfortuantely for Lost In CCI… Richard was only allowed into the studios and onto the set on condition that he signed a blood-curdling confidentially agreement, which means that he (tantalisingly) cannot tell us anything about what he saw and heard.

But he has let slip that even though he can’t say anything about the making of this film in particular, it’s helped him understand all the more about the realities of working on and putting together a major motion picture today.

Regular readers of Lost in CCI will remember that Richard gave an interview to Sky News about the Harry Potter phenomenon when the last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was published over the summer. If you don’t already know whether Harry dies… we are not going to spoil it for you here.

Exhibitions organiser wanted…

…at the ICA. Deadline Monday 25th February 2008. Details here

Cultural industries and the internet

MA CCI graduate Cathy Ma (2006-7) will be coming back to King’s College to give a guest lecture on Thursday 21st February, 3-4pm, in Room 1B27, Strand Campus.

Cathy has several years’ experience working in digital media, and since graduation has been working for Yahoo! here in London, as Community Manager for Europe.

The title of her presentation will be: ‘The Internet and its Communities: the Hidden Dragon of Cultural and Creative Industries’. She will discuss the discourse and upsurge of online communities, and will consider what they mean for the cultural and creative industries, as well as the social, cultural and legal landscapes of the current discourse.

Please note that Cathy will not be at liberty to comment on Microsoft’s recent acquisition bid for Yahoo!

Random Dance

A friend of Lost in CCI is one of the composers of the music for Entity, a forthcoming Wayne MacGregor & Random Dance production at Sadler’s Wells, 10-12 April 2008. More details here.

Music, Sound and Space

Professor John Deathridge of the Music Department at King’s is among the speakers appearing at a two-day conference in Cambridge called Music, Sound and the Reconfiguration of Public and Private Space, 18-19 April 2007. Further speakers include Steven Connor (Birkbeck) and David Toop (musician and writer).

Further details here.