UNED Free Online Course on Spanish Illustration, Visual Culture and Urban Life

We would like to announce a new MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) developed by the department of Art History at Universidad Nacional de Eduación a Distancia (UNED). The course is devoted to illustration, print culture, and urban life and will explore materials like the illustrated and comical press, advertisements, and postcards, from an interdisciplinary perspective. We will focus on the cultural production of nineteenth-century Spanish cities and, at the same time, create connections with other European capitals. Our goal is to make these valuable materials accessible to a larger audience and give students the tools and skills necessary to navigate the vast amount of digital resources available on the internet.

The course, which will be conducted in Spanish, is titled Los principios de la cultura impresa moderna: ilustración gráfica, cultura visual y vida urbana. We hope to launch an English version later this year, but for the time being we kindly ask you to share this information with students and professionals interested in Spanish print culture.

This free, online course begins March 9, 2015 and is six weeks long. We encourage you to take part in this innovative model of education. It is our hope to create a participative community of researchers and students across the internet.

You can read more about the course below or visit our website:
https://coma.uned.es/course/los-principios-de-la-cultura-impresa/

[new book] Toward an Urban Cultural Studies: Henri Lefebvre and the Humanities [April 2015]

urbanculturalstudies

The cover for Toward an Urban Cultural Studies: Henri Lefebvre and the Humanities, the first of many new books in Palgrave’s new HISPANIC URBAN STUDIES book series, edited by B. Fraser and S. Larson.

[click here to pre-order on Amazon]

Toward an Urban Cultural Studies is a call for a new interdisciplinary area of research and teaching. Blending Urban Studies and Cultural Studies, this book grounds readers in the extensive theory of the prolific French philosopher Henri Lefebvre. Appropriate for both beginners and specialists, the first half of this book builds from a general introduction to Lefebvre and his methodological contribution toward a focus on the concept of urban alienation and his underexplored theory of the work of art. The second half merges Lefebvrian urban thought with literary studies, film studies and popular music studies, successively, before turning to the videogame and the digital humanities.

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Paul Cahill reviews Barcelonan Okupas: Squatter Power! for the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies

Paul Cahill, Associate Professor of Spanish at Pomona College, reviews Barcelonan Okupas: Squatter Power! for the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies (requires subscription).

In general the review is positive and I am grateful just to be reviewed. Nonetheless, Cahill does have some criticisms. He questions my characterization of poetry as a rule-breaking practice conducive to expressing revolutionary ideas. He argues that defining poetry in such a way is limiting and treats lightly certain complex issues like lyric subjectivity. It was by no means my intention to say that all poetry breaks rules, for I recognize that many forms are, in fact, very rigid. However, it is puzzling to me that “a greater attention to the conventions of poetry would have been particularly welcome in the section addressing Escolar Bautista’s work” when it is precisely poetry’s power to be unconventional and not make sense that poet/squatter Escolar Bautista is trying to harness. As I argued in a different post, we need to counter the logic of capitalism with NON-SENSE, with a different logic, with a different value system. Poetry offers that possibility.

Here’s the first and last paragraph of the review.

Barcelonan okupas: squatter power! presents a vision of the social reality of political
squatting through contextualized readings of news media, legislation, literature, television, and film. Vilaseca situates these texts and their producers within a larger sociopolitical context that includes the operations of the Spanish publishing and media
industries. Through its analyses, this study makes a clear case for the need to recognize politically motivated forms of squatting and the numerous instances in which those in power seek to neutralize these political efforts. While the book focuses on providing a thorough picture of political squatting, the lives of okupas, and in particular how they are presented in a series of contemporary texts, Vilaseca also seeks to offer advice for those engaged in progressive politics.

The book’s conclusion, “Sharing Ideas: Okupas and the United States,” introduces
and uses the concept of priming to show how money impacts and influences our
conceptions of social responsibility and how people interact with each other. The
correlation between money and how bodies react to financial matters provides hope for
Vilaseca, since “[w]ords can lead to new actions” (145). This suggests that other effects
and outcomes can be sought out. The impact of okupas and their efforts is wide because squatting has crossed borders as a model to encourage free exchange, including instances like the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Despite some of the limitations of the interpretive strategies employed in the book’s later chapters, Vilaseca’s study accomplishes its overall goal of introducing readers to the Barcelonan Okupas, their socio-political context, their history, and the many ways that they are seen and presented by themselves and others. The book’s index is clear and thorough, and the bibliography includes URLs to help readers locate the Internet sources Vilaseca incorporates and analyzes. This text will be a useful resource for undergraduates as well as graduate students and professors of Spanish, cultural, and media studies.

 

CFP: ASAP/7

September 24–27, 2015

Hosted by Clemson University
at the Hyatt Regency in Greenville, S.C.

Call for Papers

ASAP/7 invites proposals from scholars and artists on the relations between the public — broadly conceived — and contemporary visual, literary, performing, musical and media arts. From parks, schools and museums to monuments, performances and protests, the public encompasses less a specific domain than a varying set of political institutions, community spaces and cultural objects. Whether construed as virtual or bureaucratic, as utopian or ecological, the public can be both a catalyst for artistic production and an object of cultural critique. Although we gladly accept outstanding proposals on any topic relating to the contemporary arts, we encourage participants to think inventively about the intersections between and among the public, its manifestations and conceptualizations, and the arts of the present.

Possible Topics

• “Outsider,” Self-taught and DIY Art
• Social Protest and the Arts
• Monuments and Anti-monuments
• Private and Civic Life
• Land Art
• Art Squats and Artist-run Collectives
• Pedagogy and Art Education
• Media Ecologies
• Political Aesthetics
• Neoliberalism and Late Capitalism
• The Commons

• Urban Planning, Bureaucracy and Built Environments
• Regional/Transnational Geographies
• Landscapes, Cityscapes, Soundscapes
• Gender, Sexuality, Spectacle
• Spaces of Race, Ethnicity, Migration
• Temporality, Commemoration, Futurity
• Design, Architecture and Infrastructure

The program committee will consider papers on these or any other topic relating to the contemporary arts. In keeping with our mission, we are especially interested in sessions that feature more than one artistic medium and more than one national tradition. The program committee will give preference to panels and roundtables that feature papers by scholars and artists working across and between disciplines.

Session Formats

We welcome and encourage creative and alternative presentational styles, alongside traditional papers and panels. Seminars, workshops, panel debates, artist discussions, films, installations, visual displays and PechaKucha sessions will all be considered. Seminar leaders are asked to propose topics by the deadline and to submit the full roster of participants by March 15, 2015. Seminars normally meet for a single session, and papers are circulated among participants in advance of the conference.

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts and session submissions should include the following information:

1. Title of paper or session
2. Author(s): name and contact information (including email address)
3. Format and style of presentation
4. Abstract or session description:

• 300-word abstracts for individual papers or
• 700-word abstracts for:
  • Panels (3–4 participants)
  • Roundtables (5–9 participants)
  • Seminars (8-10 participants)
  • Other formats

5. Brief descriptions (up to 150 words) of work and publications for each participant
6. Optional: Up to two jpeg images, each under 2MB, to complement your proposal

Proposed sessions should include speakers from more than one institution. We welcome submissions from a wide range of disciplines, academic ranks and institutional positions, as well as from practicing artists in any medium.

PLEASE SEND PROPOSALS TO: asap7.greenville@gmail.com

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 1, 2015

For more information, see artsofthepresent.org.

Physical Map Projection Mapped

ART & CARTOGRAPHY

Projection mapping offers exciting opportunities to animate and alter our perceptions of a physical space through light. More often the physical space projected on to is buildings with mesmeric light sequences and often contextual narratives.

Image © 2015 Dalziel and Pow

Much like Louis Daguerre & Charles Bouton achieved a sense of movement through altering the play of light on a large transparent screen with the Diorama in 1822, projection mapping can create this immersive and moving scene onto any 3d object or screen. Through altering the play of light with large amounts of lumens generated by today’s digital projectors, artists and designers can become the theatrical painters without being limited to dark purpose built venues and opaque or translucent paints, but can be achieved in other lighting situations with custom built screens & pixels.

Dalziel + Pow have moved the play of light onto a physical map where they experiment…

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How Do Social Movements Communicate?

 

I just came across this video. It is a little over a year old, but it still is very relevant.

Affect Theory Conference: Worldings / Tensions / Futures – October 2015 in Lancaster, PA

Progressive Geographies

Affect Theory Conference: Worldings / Tensions / Futures – October 2015 in Lancaster, PA

Over the course of the last decade especially, it is safe to say that affect, studies of affect, and theories of affect have steadily risen to prominence within and across a variety of academic disciplines, artistic practices, and research approaches. Not without some amount of controversy and pushback, the relatively rapid movement of affect toward the forefront of critical attention has been opening new paths of intellectual inquiry, reshuffling longstanding debates and conceptual formations, and inspiring imaginative cross-fertilizations of disciplinary and aesthetic genres. Now seems a perfect time to pause and take stock. So, let’s do that.

Gathering together many of the leading and emerging voices that have helped give contour and texture to the contemporary discourses of affect, this three-day conference – with a lively mix of plenaries and selected panel-streams – will be devoted…

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AAG 2015 – Urban Cultural Studies (Interactive Short Paper Session)

urbanculturalstudies

Interactive Short Paper Session

at the Association of American Geographers Conference in Chicago

2669 Urban Cultural Studies

is scheduled on Wednesday, 4/22/2015, from 5:20 PM – 7:00 PM in Randolph, Hyatt, East Tower, Ped Path

Organizer(s):
Stephen Luis Vilaseca – Northern Illinois University
Araceli Masterson-Algar

Chair(s):
Stephen Luis Vilaseca – Northern Illinois University

Abstract(s):

5:20 PM   Author(s): *Benjamin Fraser – East Carolina University

Abstract Title: Urban Cultural Studies as Interdisciplinary Field in the Lefebvrian Mode

5:25 PM   Author(s): *Stephen Luis Vilaseca, Associate Professor of Spanish – Northern Illinois University

Abstract Title: Mapping the Marginalized in Barcelona and Valencia, Spain

5:30 PM   Author(s): *Steven Spalding – United States Naval Academy

Abstract Title: From Wheel to Reel: Documenting the Mobile French City in 1920s & 1930s

5:35 PM   Author(s): *Matthew D. Lamb, PhD – Penn State University

Abstract Title: PARTY CITY: Architecture, Well-being, and Cities as Adult Playgrounds

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An anarchist house