Going “Globital”: Beyond Digital Memory in Brazil

Five researchers from CMCI have just returned from Brazil after playing a leading role in a British Council funded Researcher Links initiative between six UK academic institutions and the University of Sao Paulo. The fully-funded three-day workshop entitled ‘Beyond the Digital: Collective Memory and Conflict in the Digital Age’ intensively developed research collaboration between British and Brazilian based academics working in the area of cultural memory and the digital media industries.

Cultural and digital memory expert Professor Anna Reading was invited by the British Council to act as a mentor from CMCI. She also gave a keynote “Globital Memory and Digital Technologies”: “Globital” being a phrase coined by Professor Reading for “unevenly globalized digital memory.”

She flew out to Sao Paulo along with nationally-selected CMCI Early Career Researchers, Dr Paolo Gerbaudo, Dr Red Chidgey, Dr Jessica Rapson and Dr Fidele Vlavo. Professor Reading said, “By the end of the three days three exciting new collaborative research projects on cultural memory had emerged with Kings early careers researchers working alongside those from Brazil. I will continue to mentor them along with senior colleagues from the UK and Brazil so that we can generate a number of new funding applications ”. Early career researcher Dr Jessica Rapson added “ The workshop was a fantastic opportunity. It was incredibly hard work but enabled me to develop new networks with colleagues in Brazil as well as an understanding of funding mechanisms in both countries”.

The workshop included visits to the Musea de Pessoa (Museum of the Person) as well as to ABERJE – the Brazilian Association for Business Communication, and had further keynotes by Brazilian film maker Jorge Bodanzsky, Professor Gilson Schwartz from the University of Sao Paulo, Dr Joanne Garde-Hansen from the University of Warwick and Professor Mike Pickering from the University of Loughborough. The three day workshop was streamed live and gained more than 250 international followers on its Facebook group: . https://www.facebook.com/groups/229437833911504/234999463355341/?notif_t=group_activity.

 

The Titanic in Modern Memory

Richard Howells gave the keynote lecture at IAMHIST XXIV, the 24th conference of the International Association for Media and History, held this year in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference theme was ‘Media History and Cultural Memory’, Dr Howells lectured on ‘The Titanic in Modern Memory’. He anticipated next year’s 100th anniversary of the sinking by showing how the disaster had passed from personal to social memory, and in so doing had been re-animated from history into myth.

He is pictured here describing a record, released in 1912, which urged people to donate to the widows and orphans created by the disaster. As such, it was a seminal “charity record”. In the chair is Professor Nick Cull of the University of California Los Angeles, who is also President of IAMHIST.

Also speaking at the conference was Dr Wendy Burke, one of CMCI’s first PhD students, who presented an illustrated paper on changing images of occupation and resistance in Dutch films about World War II.

A second, revised and expanded edition of Richard Howells’ The Myth of the Titanic is due out from Palgrave Macmillan in 2012.

New Journal, new paper

Andy is pleased to announce the publication of a new article, in a new journal: City, Culture and Society. Copies can be downloaded from this web site. The article is entitled “Creative cities: Tensions within and between social, cultural and economic development. A critical reading of the UK experience.” City, Culture and Society 1:13-20. The abstract says that “This article offers a situated and pragmatic analysis of the state of the art of creative cities policy thinking regarding the governance of the relationship between the cultural and creative economy and urbanization. It argues for the need to pay attention to the context, history and regulatory forms of creative cities and be very cautious in our desire to draw wider lessons based upon policy transfer. The paper examines the UK case as illustrative of the organic and fractured nature of policy initiatives: and, advises against a single policy model. There are many instrumental uses to which creative city polices can be put; and critically, there are a number of intrinsic uses as well. This paper, and the literature more generally, supports the view that the balance of attention has been toward instrumental uses of culture and creativity. It is argued that we need to re-balance policy and academic concern to the intrinsic value of the cultural and creative field.”

City, Culture and Society (CSS) is a major new international peer review journal published by Elsevier, that is included in the Scopus bibliographic database. Andy is on the editorial board of CSS and has another paper in press in a forthcoming issue about Tate Modern and regeneration strategies. Andy is also giving a paper at the CSS international symposium to be held in Osaka in December 2010 where a range of key international urban cultural authors will be giving papers on the theme :’Towards the Century of Cities’ Urban Regeneration through Cultural Creativeness and Social Inclusion’.

Andy in Donostia, Gipuzkoa

Andy gave a paper at the World Urban Development Congress INTA 34 held in Oct 25-26 in San Sebastián, the Basque Country, Spain (or as the Basque locals call it Donostia, Gipuzkoa). The conference took place at the Kursaal Palace, one of the architectural highlights of the Basque country (aside from Bilbao). His paper was on “The cultural economy, creative organisations and the city” and it contributed to debate about Workspace Urbanism. This paper takes up some of the themes that Andy has explored recently about the future of work, land use and energy use in the city as seen through the lens of the cultural economy. The paper challenged the normative view of future urban form under technological change (as exemplified by the knowledge economy, and in particular by the cultural and creative industries) based upon recent analysis of the emergent organisational characteristics and forms being adopted in this economic sector based around, project based enterprises and portfolio work, and the extensification of work practices. Andy argues that this is leading to new forms of ‘clustering’ unlike the simple compact city, or agglomeration, of popular urban discourse. The paper outlines these forms and the challenges for those governing future urban form, and future urban economies. A further development of this paper is being prepared for publication in the journal City, Culture and Society, a version of which will be presented in Osaka in December 2010.

Toussaint Optimism

Lost in CCI bloggers are proud to welcome back Toussaint Nothias from presenting a paper at the International Conference on Media and Sport in Portugal. Toussaint based the paper on his MA CCI dissertation on afro-pessimism in French and UK newspapers during the 2010 South African World Cup. Encouraged by his MA supervisor, Dr Hatty Oliver, to apply to the University of Porto hosted conference, Toussaint told CCI that the experience was a lovely post-dissertation reward (sun and port wine!) and a great chance to network with other researchers.

Toussaint’s research analysed the way in which the media’s reporting of sports mega events reinforced the stereotypical vision of Africa as the ‘Dark Continent’, and implied that South Africa would be unable to successfully host the World Cup due to issues of poverty, violence and insecurity. Toussaint argued that the success of the 2010 World Cup contributes to the trumping of this afro-pessimist ideology, as least in terms of media reporting. He told us that ‘this links two major creative industries: the media and sports mega events. It’s also relevant to the question of symbolic impact of cultural events on identify formation and representation of race’.

Pictured here demonstrating ‘le hand ball’, Toussaint is now pursuing PhD applications. He told CCI that the conference was an exciting opportunity to exchange ideas with other researchers and hear new perspectives on his work. We’d like to wish Toussaint all the best and to keep us posted in all his future success!

More information can be found on the ECREA blog.

A busy time for Dr. Ruth Adams…

Dr Ruth Adams has had a busy couple of weeks, squeezing in a conference paper and two publications either side of the start of the academic year.

On 10 September 2010 she gave a presentation at the 9th International Colloquium on Arts, Heritage, Nonprofit and Social Marketing, which was organized by colleagues in the Department of Management and held here at King’s. Ruth’s paper was entitled ‘Tipu’s Tiger – An inAPPropriate marketing tool?’, and considered the ethics of using artefacts plundered during colonial periods in marketing and merchandising campaigns which perhaps efface these objects’ origins. You can see the inspiration for the paper here.

On a similar theme, Ruth had a paper published in the journal museum & society called ‘The V&A: Empire to Multiculturalism?’ which critically considers how well the Museum has managed this transition, with particular reference to the V&A’s collections from the Indian Subcontinent. You can read the whole article here.

She has also published a paper on a rather different topic, Andy Warhol, Kurt Cobain, and the pressures of celebrity – entitled ‘False Idols or Latter Day Saints: “Kurt & Warhol” at the Seattle Art Museum’ – in an online publication called The Other Journal. You can read this here.

Reputation

Andy presented a paper at the Work employment and society conference, Brighton, 7-8th September.

The paper was entitled ‘Reputation work/the work of reputation’ and was part of a whole day ‘strand’ to the conference on cultural work. The paper argues that this provides us with a way to discuss the diverse ‘values’ of work that have become more salient in the employment relation, in work more generally; and, in economies. In many cases (the culture sector particularly) these reputation values are above and beyond economic values. This paper discusses how reputation can be seen to take on new significance in three particular ways. As I show, there is much work in making, maintaining and interpreting a reputation.
Andy is working on a version of this paper for an academic journal

‘Rethinking the Cultural and Creative Economy of Cities’

Andy Pratt gave a paper at the International Sociological Association’s annual meeting in Gothenberg on July 12th. Andy’s paper was entitled Rethinking the Cultural and Creative Economy of Cities and was part of a panel called “Creative Cities” after the Fall of Finance as part of the RC21 strand (Urban Sociologies) that Andy co-organised with Michael Indergaard, St. John’s University (New York), and Tom Hutton (University of British Columbia).

Andy will be developing a proposal for a special issue of an academic journal to publish the papers presented at this panel. Other contributors were:
The Colours of Money: Art-Money as Cultural Production and Alternative Currency
Mark Banks (The Open University, UK)
Cultural Economy Planning in the Creative City: Toronto Case Study, Carl Grodach (University of Texas, Arlington, US)
The Golden Calf: Finance and Creativity in Contemporary London, Andrew Harris (University College London, UK)
New Forms of Regulation for the Cognitive-Cultural Economy: Two Experiences from Southern Europe
Marianna d’Ovidio (University of Milano-Bicocca, ITALY), Marc Miguel Pradel (University of Barcelona, SPAIN)
Changing Relationship between the Local Authority and Nonprofit Art Organizations in Creative City Yokohama after the Global Financial Crisis, Hideaki Sasajima (Tohoku University, JAPAN)
Creative City Strategies, Global Financial Crisis and the Importance of Local Contexts: The Case of Athens
Nikos Souliotis (University of Thessaly, GREECE)

CMCI ‘downunder’

In April, Professor Rosalind Gill gave the keynote at the Society of Australasian Social Psychologists in Perth, Western Australia. The title of a 45 minute plenary address was “Objectification: what is it good for?” Those old enough to remember will recognize this as a play on the song ‘War what is it good for’. Whilst Edwin Starr concluded with a bald “absolutely nothing”, Ros was more equivocal , pointing to three changes that ‘troubled’ the use of the term as a way of talking about representations of women. First, the shift away from depictions of women as passive, sex objects towards showing some as active, playful sexual subjects; secondly, the increasing idealization and eroticization of male bodies in public space; and thirdly the way in which image makers (such as magazine editors or advertisers) frequently anticipate and build in responses to accusations of objectification (or indeed sexism more generally)

Intimacy, Mediation and Power
On May 21, CMCI hosted the second in a series of six ESRC-funded seminars designed to open up and complicate discourses about the alleged “sexualisation of culture”. On a beautiful sunny day, 50 people came to hear talks about male seduction communities, queer, transnational subjectivities online in the Gulf, the difficulties of interpreting interview talk about sexual experiences, and ‘sex on the newsstand shelf. Photographer and activist Alex Brew also presented her recent project Asking for It.
The grantholder is Ros Gill, in collaboration with Meg Barker (Open University), Emma Renolds (Cardiff) and Jessica Ringrose (Institute of Education). The third seminar will take place at King’s on November 5th 2010.

The Future of Cultural Work
June 7th 2010–lively post-election debates characterized the one-day conference on the future of cultural work, organized by CMCI’s Ros Gill and Andy Pratt, in conjunction with Mark Banks and Stephanie Taylor from the Open University. More than 100 people gathered to hear 30 presentations addressing issues from arts funding to precariousness and social exclusion. More than 25 would-be presenters were turned away, indicating the significant upsurge of interest in this topic. Whatever the future for cultural work, there certainly seems to be a future for discussions about this, with many current and recent Ph.D.s reflecting the “turn to labour” in interests about culture.

Dr. Ruth Adams gave a paper at the Fourth Annual Comedy Conference

Earlier this month Dr. Ruth Adams gave a paper at the Fourth Annual Comedy Conference in Manchester, ‘So Funny It Hurts’ – http://www.famss.salford.ac.uk/page/4th-comedy-conference-2010

Ruth gave a paper on Mike Leigh’s iconic 1970s play Abigail’s Party, in which she discussed – drawing on the writings of the French philospher Henri Bergson – whether this was, as a number of contemporary critics claimed, a cruel play, or a play about cruelty. Either way, it’s certainly funny.

Ruth enjoyed meeting academics from all over the country and from a wide range of disciplines, from history and sociology to film studies and drama, some of whom were involved in the production of the current exhibition of comic art, ‘Rude Britannia’, at Tate Britain – http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/britishcomicart/ and the accompanying BBC4 series – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ssz7f