Proposed Readings

Frank O’Hara – Meditations in an Emergency

Laozi – Selected Extracts from ‘Daodejing’

Proposed Location

The Free Hetherington

Propositions

1. We will begin by reading Meditations in an Emergency, and the selected extracts of Laozi out loud.

2. We will discuss the relationship between situation, occasion and the reading of poetry.

2.1. How does the situation and occasion when a poem was written affect the poem?

2.2. How does the situation and occasion when a poem is spoken affect the poem?

2.2.1. How does reading a poem aloud in a space / situation like the Free Hetherington affect the poem?

The Open School work towards collaboratively inventing a fake artist with fake name and biography. They then collectively produce work which they considerer to resemble an art object. For example, a minimal style art object, a nostalgic style art object, an expressive style art object.

More information coming soon

Nottingham Critical Pedagogy invites contributions for a day of workshops considering spaces (both inside and outside the academy) that may help challenge the dominance of neoliberal logics, alienated practices and Eurocentric hegemony in contemporary educational practice, and in so doing contribute to radical social change.

We hope to welcome contributions from a variety of disciplines and from inside and outside the academy. These can be in any format, but we especially encourage those that break from traditional conference paper models: workshops, artistic engagements, poster presentations and performances would all be welcomed. We welcome suggestions for entire workshop sessions (90 minutes), or single contributions, which we will group into workshops.

Our event partners Spaces of Alterity: a conference hosted by the University of Nottingham’s Department of Culture, Film and Media on Wed 27 – Thu 28 Apr 2011, with keynote addresses by China Miéville and Alberto Toscano. Both events are designed to work on their own, but participants are more than welcome to attend both should they wish, and we will be co-curating an Annexinema film night with Spaces of Alterity (details tbc) to show short films which touch upon the themes of the two events.

A non-exhaustive list of themes you may wish to consider is offered over the page. Please do not feel these are mutually exclusive.

Critical Education and ‘The Crisis’

+How can critical education respond to the crisis in higher education and wider societal crises?
+Do these crises close down or create spaces of hope for critical education?
+Defending the university? Transforming the university? Abandoning the university?

Education and the Affective

+Emotional epistemologies and pedagogies.
+The role of hope in critical education.
+‘Radical love’.

Community Education

+Skillshare workshops.
+Social movements/community politics.
+Challenging the borders between HE and community.
+The role of non-traditional educational spaces (art galleries, social centres, etc).

Border Thinking and Hybridity

+The importance of identity and difference for critical education.
+Challenging hegemonic and Eurocentric perspectives.
+How can we introduce the subaltern into the classroom?

Reflections on Practice

+Experiences of critical education.
+What can we learn from past experiences, experiments and struggle?

Art, Music and Critical Education

+The role of art and music in critical education.
+Resonances between critical education and contemporary theory and practice in art and music.
+Problems of assessment in critical and artistic education: or is assessment the problem?

Please send abstracts and information on the format you wish your presentation to take to nottinghamcriticalpedagogy[at]gmail.com. These should be no more than 300 words, but may contain links to further reading regarding your chosen method of presentation.

Deadline: Fri 11 Feb 2011.

Registration is free for Educational Spaces of Alterity but there are fees for Spaces of Alterity: attendance for one day is £25/£35; for both days it’s £45/55 (cheaper price for students and unwaged).

We have a limited amount of money to help cover the travel and accommodation costs of participants who would not otherwise be able to attend, with expenses related to their presentations, or to help with fees for those who wish to stay for Spaces of Alterity. Please indicate if you need financial assistance (and roughly how much) when you apply. Food and drink will be provided for all.

If you wish to attend our workshop but not present, please email us by Mon 28 Feb 2011. We cannot guarantee a place but hope to be able to accommodate you. If demand is too high places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

This is not a postmortem…
And the vote on the 9th December 2010 was not a death throe.

This is an invitation for your theory, praxis and strategy to stimulate discussion of what the university could be.

For detractors and cynics, implicit in any protest against reform is a defence of the status quo. We know this is not the case.

The Roundhouse Group and the Really Open University have teamed up to produce a one-off journal edition entitled ‘Reimagining the University’ to celebrate and document three days of happenings at the University of Leeds. This will be displayed at reimaginetheuniversity.org.uk. We want this platform to go beyond a static depiction of past events; in an effort to ensure this, we now issue a second call for submissions.

These contributions can be in any form: essays, personal reflections, conversations, even maps. ‘Reimagining the University’ seeks to collate the plurality of practices and theories dispersed through active groups calling for change in Higher Education.

The recent response to the marketisation of higher education has given a voice and a collective identity to a discontent stretching beyond funding constraints. It is now time to respond as well as create, looking for new action and dialogue for the future. We want to open up debate, not close it down.

Issues to consider: What is worth salvaging from the university system? What strategies do we have for attracting those who ought to be sympathetic: passive academics, apathetic students, individuals outside of the University, young people? How to operate within the academy without being corrupted by it? What could The University be? How do we make this happen?

This journal will frame the issues for an open symposium to be held at Westminster University 2011.

Deadline for Papers: Fri 11 Feb 2011

Please send submissions to roundhousejournal[at]gmail.com

Les Murray meets the Queen

Proposed Readings

Philip Larkin – Autumn

Les Murray – The Vol Sprung from Heraldry

W.B. Yeats – The Second Coming

Propositions

1. The session will last for one hour.

2. We will discuss poems about birds.

2.1. We will discuss the relationship, and tensions, between nature, conserving and conservativism

2.2. These will be poems written by poets who tend towards Conservative politics.

3. For every ten minutes we avoid directly mentioning politics, we all get one chocolate biscuit.

3.1. This results in a maximum biscuit provision of six biscuits per person.

3.2. For this session we take our meaning of politics from Aristotle

3.2.1. The proposed translation of Aristotle’s “τα πολιτικά” is “affairs of state”.

3.3. Said biscuits will be vegan, wheat free, and quite possibly organic.

3.4. If the meeting is busier than expected, the amount of available biscuits will be divided by the number of people present, to calculate a new level of biscuit provision.

4. There will be an option for further discussion after the one hour session.

This is yours. Alter, expand, elucidate, discard?

“The pure work implies the disappearance of the poet as speaker” – Mallarmé

Proposed Readings

Stéphane Mallarmé - Collected Poems and Other Verse

Propositions

1. The session will last for one hour

2. We will base this time around one text of poetry

2.1 That text will be the Collected poems of Mallarmé http://aaaaarg.org/text/13592/collected-poems-and-other-verse

3. We will model our practice upon the forms of a Quaker meeting.

3.1. “A Quaker Meeting is based on silence, an expectant silence of waiting, in which we seek to come nearer to each other and to God. Occasionally a Meeting will pass in total silence. The silence may be broken if someone feels compelled by the Spirit to speak, pray or read.  The Meeting ends after about an hour with the shaking of hands.”

3.1.1. For Quaker meetings, the common text is the Bible, for our meeting the common text is Mallarmé

3.1.2. Each person present can speak only once

3.1.3. If you are motivated to speak, you can choose to read directly from Mallarmé or offer responses and thoughts to the work or the words of others

3.2. At the start of the session, we will nominate two people who will mark the end of the session by the shaking of hands.

3.2.1. Following this, everyone present at the meeting shakes hands.

4. There will be an option for further discussion after the one hour session.

This is yours. Alter, expand, elucidate, discard?

SUNDAY 30th JANUARY 1PM at 1/1 61 West Princes Street
Culled from the salvages of Biblical and Talmudic refuse, Sachs/Drool have concocted a compendium of dead words, a forgotten lingua franca awaiting re-discovery, which they molded into a three part participatory, interactive, electroacoustic vocal workshop/performance. An introduction to this world of haunted folklore, they will unravel some of the underlining processes that lurk in the background of this work. With words like Melach, Idna, and Azikim.

Below is what they will be doing the night before:
This month PRIMATE ARENA is coming over to the UK for a string of shows, workshops and talk.PRIMATE ARENA is Israel’s first consistent platform for a wide palette of experimental and improvised music. Hosted by Eran Sachs and Alex DROOL, PRIMATE ARENA is a bi-weekly freeform happening for experimental & out muzak events (mostly in Tel Aviv), dedicated to Psych, EAI, Noise, Speech/Sonic/Concrete Poetry, Avant Rock, post millennial obscurities, pre millennial obscurities, the history of 20th century experimental music & other adventurous ventures. Over the past three years they have created a platform – central to Tel Aviv’s now vibrant, thriving scene – that has nurtured a community of adventurous local musicians including Maya Dunietz and Yoni Silver and hosted visiting internationals such as Adam Bohman, , Jérôme Noetinger, Arnaud Rivière, Ignatz Schick, Daniel Padden, Bob Ostertag and many others. Primate Arena encompasses a regular performance series a number of ensembles and a radio programme.

This is an overview from a recent lecture by Eran Sachs:
Overview
From the surface below Tel-Aviv might seem like Manhattan: it aspires upwards, its
horizon is vertical, its gaze is focused towards the top of the corporate pyramid. But while
the oh so familiar New-York skyline actually mirrors its essential neurotic spectacular
nature, making it equally attractive to fundamentalists-with-wings and brokers-on-the-
rise, the typical architecture of Tel-Aviv, as well as the dominant visual embodiments of
its urban culture, transmit a categorically different kind of schism.

Tel-Aviv is a hedonistic city, caught in an endless party. Aptly conveyed in the works of
media artist Ran Slavin, Tel-Aviv is an Insomniac City – it flows day and night,
incessantly, fusing manic nightlife and real-estate frenzy. It exemplifies a Dionysu-centric
character that is seemingly ex-placed, detached from the engulfing conflict zone,
oblivious to all but its own dynamic.

But the matter of fact is that it is a thriving metropolis located at the heart of an on going
war zone, in a society which has experienced the vicious circle of wars, occupation, terror
attacks and violent counter-reactions. The experience of terror, of suicide bombers and of
fear, is constitutive to the psychodynamics of the Israeli reality, as is the obscure notion
of threat, of being chased, of being under-siege. The defense mechanisms are stern,
active, powerful – both on the national level and on the individual level. Avenge But One
of My Two Eyes, the latest film by Israeli documentarist Avi Mograbi accurately traces
just how deep this mentality of “siege” runs. The ongoing effects of facing extreme
situations obviously give rise to multiple phenomena expressing states of anxiety and of
panic. Israel is not a happy place, and the society is far from joyous. This is the reason for
the crude language of public media; it is why Israel lacks a real Pop culture; this why
there is a strong link between the Zionist movement and Goa Trance parties.

Still, the driving life-force in Tel-Aviv is immense. But the Party cannot look the War in
the eye. Confronting the actual stressful reality is counter-Dionysic (and bad for business)
and therefore a non-option. Accordingly, the inherent underlying processes of the city are
those of denial: repression, assimilation, sublimation. The prevalent typography in Israel,
for example, apparent in deigns for the most successful signs and logos, expresses the
hidden effectiveness of the logic of military symbols. The schizoid nature demands that
the City turn a blind-eye, in a manner that has by now become a Zionist hallmark: see, but
do not see. Tel-Aviv is the first Zionist city, and as such, the original false representation,
the romantic dismissal by the Zionists who regarded its neighboring Palestinian city of
Jaffa as an “empty, abandoned city”, has by now multiplied itself as a plethora of blind-
spots: there is no terror, no war, no occupation. Everything is OK. Let us build further.

During the last war, even as missiles were landing on Israel’s Northern and Southern
cities, the stock market did not even flinch. In the words of sonic artist Finkelstein, Tel-
Aviv typifies The Art of Escapism. In Jaffa, this ignorance-by-choice serves as the
breeding ground for crude and merciless gentrification. The most successful industry in
Israel is naturally that of security, celebrated by the monumental erection of a
questionable wall, an industry which operates to ensure that the party goes on,
uninterrupted.

One can, nevertheless, point to subversive and critical positions taken by individuals and
political organizations. Active stand can interrupt the automatic workings of the dominant
code. In so far as “noise is a weapon” (Attali), one can recognize different tactics of
reaction taking by artists who are engaged in Noise music. Culturally, Noise is often
referred to as a genre of “ultimate hedonism”; conversely, in a hedonistic society
characterized by schizophrenic escapism, Noise offers a form of involvement, both
emotional and political. In our lecture, we shall survey different tactics of Noise and the
utilization of sound within subversive works in Israel, presented within their specific
social context.

David Oppenheim & Eran Sachs

Hans Arp inspired chance cut out poster play for thiscollection

Hello Goslings,

Hope the new year is going well for all.

We would like to invite creative folk of all ilk who are keen to share or develop their practice to engage with poems from thiscollection.org in any way shape or form.

thiscollection.org is a random collection of 100 100 word poems from postcodes in Edinburgh. The poets are from all walks of life, professionals to amatuers and as seeds to conversations we invite adaptations and discussions about the bounds of canon in a digital age, collective practice, critiques on crowdsourcing and the process of making art a right not a priviledge.

So far we have had proposals of a widerange of workshops from folk such as Dr Sound, Film Factory, Goddard/Tarkovsky and poetry on screen, Collective curating assemblies, Opensourcetheatre presents Property and Theft and Writing out Loud- poetry performance for beginners.

The starting point for all sessions/conversations are the poems from thiscollection verbal or non-verbal responses have been brewing and regularly showcased and evaluated. All works made through collaboration with thiscollection.org are invited to be showcased as part of a slow conference in May 10-19th 2011 at The Glue Factory.

If you are interested in running a workshop do email: film[at]thiscollection.org we have spaces available Jan -March 2011. The space is free to use and if you wish you may pass the hat for donations at the end of each session. Please send us a brief bio, rough description of the workshop and resources you may need.

To whet your appetite starting Jan 21st we have Austin Muirhead, Canadian born technical director of The Gulf Islands Film and Television Film School, stomping ground of documentary greats such as Jennifer Abbott of “The Corporation” and Brett Gaylor’s “Rip! A remix manifesto”. Austin has worked on various web and film productions such as Riese the Series, Time Before the Light and Charlie St. Cloud in a one day film workshop that covers the basic rules of filmmaking and invites you to break the rules in the FILM FACTORY. for more details and links please visit the blog for details and updates.

Viva Adorno and hope you will come commit aesthetic crimes with us.
Bicoastally yours,
Stefanie

Just found this, been thinking for ages about building a web platform that better serves GOS, found the perfect example. However -it’s a collaborative educational social network for social entrepeneurs.
They even have editable wiki’s for classes.

http://startup.supercoolschool.com/session/new
http://http://www.entrepreneurcommons.org
http://www.startupcause.org/

Startup School The Indian Startup Scene by Arun Pattnaik http://supercoolschool.typepad.com/startupschool/2010/12/startup-scene-in-india-one-year-later.html

Startup scene in India – one year later! – Startup School

supercoolschool.typepad.com

It’s been exactly a year since I had written about the Indian startup ecosystem. In the meantime, a lot of things have changed, for good. So here’s the good, bad and the ugly, one more time. The real startups Oh boy! They’re everywhere! I see hot new startups budding every other week. Unlike before

December 28, 2010 at 6:23pm

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One class they offer, Education Ventures in Emerging Markets:

Opportunities and challenges for education ventures in emerging markets – with a particular focus on AfChindia* (Africa, India and China).

Chindia is a used term (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chindia) – AfChindia may not be……

Once you’ve had knowledge transferred you can store it just like capital in your knowledge profile.

According to their partner website ‘Entrepeneur Commons’:

‘…the stated aim of Social Entrepeneurs is to improve the community at large while generating profit only as a way to guarantee the sustainability of their project over the long term.’

‘For us an entrepreneur is somebody with 2 major drivers:
- Drive to be independent: you want to work for yourself rather than for somebody else
- Drive to achieve: you want build a solution because there is a problem and nobody else seem to be able to fix it’

Trading ideas as capital

Here a knowledge-sharing model fits snugly with one of micro-finance. Investments of knowledge and cash are inputted with the aim of accumulating further capital on them. I think we need to look into how self-organised educational models are so quickly becoming tools for even more ‘open-source’ boundary-blurring capitalism. There is a need to clarify a stronger position on the difference between our pedagogy of deschooling and their pedagogy of deschooling. The google doc ‘Alter-education/Anti-University‘ had begun to do this.
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The nascent Scottish arm of EntreCo:
‘Our initial aim is to foster a local entrepreneurial network capable of promoting new business and economic models that leverage:

• participatory culture
• sustainability
• socio-economic change
• knowledge sharing
• resources pooling
• …..more?

-We are open to ideas and suggestions, and may contribute our own ‘local flavour’ model to EntreCo
-Currently talking to members interested in being part of the founding team, and decide on the direction ahead.
-To receive an invitation to our next meeting, drop us an email
Look forward to be hearing from you soon -ECS istcsys@googlemail.com’

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EntreCo + Super Cool School have initiated a joint project to encourage people to set up their own businesses through innovative models like their own. Here they borrow the aesthetic of the Creative Commons licenses to situate the project within the domain of collective action . The word ’cause’ implies a project intended to solve a particular issue, however a cause here could be identified as a venture.