Welcome Mehita and Fred

Lost in CCI is delighted to announce the appointment of two more new members of staff. Mehita Iqani and Frédérik Lasage come to us from the London School of Economics, where they both completed their Doctorates -and at the same time managed to achieve teaching awards.

Dr Mehita Iqani comes from South Africa and her PhD thesis focused on the mediation of consumerism, magazine covers and newsstand spaces. Her research interests include visual culture, visual research methods, magazines, consumerism and consumption, media in public space, and independent creative production. On top of that, Mehita was the founding editor of ITCH, an online/offline creative expression magazine, backed by her experience in media entrepreneurship and media strategy consulting.

Dr Frédérik Lasage’s appointment represents something of a homecoming –he gained his MA in Cultural and Creative Industries with distinction here at King’s in 2005. Fred is a French-Canadian and researched his PhD thesis on the way in which art engages with new media. In addition to teaching at the LSE, he has taught at Cambridge University and Vassar College. While at King’s he interned at the Clore Leadership programme. Outside academia he has worked as a researcher for Proboscis in both the UK and Japan.

Both Mehita and Frédérik will be working as Teaching Fellows and Lost in CCI is delighted to have these excellent new colleagues join us here at CMCI.

Doctor Who in Korea

Dr Ruth Adams was recently filmed for a programme about public service broadcasting in the UK by KBS, the leading public broadcast company in Korea. KBS stated that it wished to learn from the example of the BBC, which, they say, is known to be the public broadcaster to maintain the highest standards in the world, with a trustworthy and quality output. The filming took place on Wednesday 26 August 2009.

Ruth was asked questions specifically about Doctor Who, one of the world’s longest running drama series, and a ‘flagship’ programme of the BBC. Doctor Who is not only very popular and able to command large viewing figures in the UK, but can also boast millions of fans around the world, and is becoming increasingly popular in Korea.

Ruth was asked what she believed to be the most creative and innovative aspects of the programme, in reply to which she emphasised the often daring and boundary pushing nature of the stories and characters, and the significant advances achieved in visual and sound effects, often on very limited budgets.

She was asked also the ways in which she believed the programme to be distinctively British. She suggested that the national character was perhaps apparent in the eccentric, yet pragmatic and resourceful personality of the Doctor himself, and that the programme had reflected the changing demographic and attitudes of the nation in its choice of companions for the Doctor, who now include strong, independent women and black and gay characters. She also noted that although the Doctor can theoretically travel anywhere in time and space, he quite often visits significant moments and figures in British history, and that his mode of transport is a British Police telephone box.

If Ruth’s contributions make the final cut, Korean viewers will be able to watch her on the evening of 3 September, when the programme is to be broadcast.

A Sound Research Resource

The British Library have launched their spoken word and music sound archive on line. They tell us that they are putting “thousands of rare, unpublished and out-of-print recordings” on line for UK academic and researchers.

The archive includes fine art, photography and design interviews in addition to ICA talks from luminaries including Salman Rushie, John Berger, and Germain Greer.

Lost in CCI’s favourite, of course, remains jazz singer Beryl “Queen of the Wasboard” Bryden.

For more information, go to www.bl.uk/sounds

Congratulations Joaquim!

Lost in CCI would like to congratulate Joaquim Negreiros on gaining his PhD.

Joaquim, who comes from Portugal and who was a journalist before beginning doctoral study, wrote his thesis on representations of family life in British lifestyle magazines under the supervision of Centre Director Dr Richard Howells.

His examiners were Shani Orgad from the LSE, and Pertti Alasuutari from the University of Tampere in Finland. Pertti is a leading international exponent of interpretive methodologies and critical discourse analysis, and also the editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies, so this was a distinguished panel. He’s clearly earned his doctorate!

Congraulations, Dr Negreiros!

China in Context

Our friends next door at the The Courtauld Institute of Art in Somerset House are holding a two day conference on ‘Modernity’s Cultural Politics: China in Context’ .

Speakers are arriving from all over the world, and topics include media, film and the fine arts. The organisers are Dr. Julian Stallabrass and Jeannine Tang.

The conference takes place on October 23 and 24; the fee is £25 (£15 concessions and/or students) and pre-booking is required. You can get further information from ResearchForumEvents@courtauld.ac.uk

CMCI graduate and research students might find this particularly interesting, and are always made welcome at Courtauld events.

End of the world is near… on screen

CMCI lecturer Dr. Harvey G. Cohen appeared last Saturday morning on SkyNews, discussing the rash of apocalyptic-themed movies arriving from America in the last couple of years (Cloverfield, Wall-E, and the upcoming 2012, Book of Ely and The Road). He argued that anxiety over 9/11 and global warming plays a part in this trend, just as anxiety over the atomic bomb and the Red Scare led to the angsty science fiction films of the 1950s, such as Them, The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

But, Cohen argued, economics undoubtedly plays a part as well. The computer generated imagery of the 21st-century makes apocalyptic imagery (such as California falling into the sea in 2012) much easier, less expensive and more impressive to create on the screen than ever before. Spectacular special effects require no subtitles, and since the big Hollywood studios get most of their box office revenues from non-American audiences, this is important as well. Lastly, with increased competition in recent years from video games and the internet, major studios seem to feel that making films that resemble video games will attract more of that younger demographic they prize back into cinemas.

If you enjoyed destroying things as a child, then this autumn’s movie season could be for you!

Women in Music

CMCI lecturer Dr Ruth Adams participated in a panel discussion on the topic of Women in Music at the Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham (Monday 31 August).

Also on the panel were Miriam Kaufman who has worked in various areas of the music industry and also sings, sometimes with the band Snow Patrol, and singer-songwriter Lou Brown. The panel was chaired by Pippa Wragg who runs a punk club and record label.

The panel discussed why there are still relatively few women performers in popular music, considering issues such as gendered socialization, the pressure to conform to images of ideal beauty, the prevalence of sexism in the music industry and the entertainment sector more generally, the ‘old boys rock network’ and their ‘tame’ journalists, and the difficulties for women of juggling family commitments with a career that can often involve late nights and travel away from home. They further considered why there are few top female executives in the music industry, but women are perhaps over-represented in the ‘back room’, working in promotion, administration and as artists’ agents and managers.

You Are Not Watching Big Brother

Centre director Dr Richard Howells was quoted in the Daily Mail over the demise of the once popular TV “reality” show Big Brother.

Chanel 4 have announced that the series is to be axed after one final outing next year. The show began in the year 2000, but ratings have fallen from a peak of 10m to just around 2m for the current series.

Howells told the national newspaper: ‘So much of reality TV is about novelty, but eventually it starts to get tired. They tried to jazz up Big Brother with more and more gimmicks – a sure sign something is struggling.’

He added that audiences had started to wise up to editing techniques which meant shows were not as ‘real’ as they believed.

Internationally, Howwells’ comments were also quoted in the California Chronicle.