A New Network for Creatives
Come along to the first meeting and help shape Salford's new creative network
Wednesday 3rd July 2013
5:30pm - 7:30pm
Salford Museum and Art Gallery
Peel Park, Salford M5 4WU
Bringing creatives and active
communities together in Salford
Bringing people together for creative conversations across all artforms.
Promoting arts activities and showcasing local talent.
Sharing and extending arts knowledge, skill and aspirations.
Developing collaborative work and projects.
Guest speakers:
Alex Fenton is from Creative Hive, a free to use and advert free way for anyone to blog or set up a
showcase of their work www.creativehive.org.
Susi Wrenshaw specialises in site-specific cutting edge productions and creating new adventures in
unusual spaces www.happystormtheatre.co.uk.
Tell us you're coming.
RSVP on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/events/491358887601633/?context=create
Or email Allison.Stott@SCLL.co.uk
Thursday, 27 June 2013
Wednesday, 26 June 2013
Sheffield Hallam University PhD studentships
Graduate School PhD Studentships
Stage and Screen
Sheffield Hallam University -Department of Humanities
Faculty of Development and Society
Fixed-term for 3 years
Salary £13,726 per annum
Applications
are invited for a PhD studentship in the area of Stage and Screen,
which is housed within the Department of Humanities. The studentship is
for three years, subject to satisfactory progress, and will include
full UK/EU tuition fees and a stipend of £13,726, per annum. Bursary
holders will be expected to contribute to the resourcing of the student
experience during their second and third years of study, either through
seminar teaching or some other form of student support.
The start date for the studentships is 1 October 2013.
As
a minimum, applicants should possess a 1st or 2.1 Honours degree, but
preference may be given to those with a distinction at M level.
Informal enquiries are strongly encouraged and should be emailed to fdsresearch@shu.ac.uk. Further information about research in the Faculty can be found on the Graduate School website at http://www.shu.ac.uk/faculties/ds/gradschool/
Informal enquiries are strongly encouraged and should be emailed to fdsresearch@shu.ac.uk. Further information about research in the Faculty can be found on the Graduate School website at http://www.shu.ac.uk/faculties/ds/gradschool/
We
welcome applications from students wishing to work in the areas of
contemporary British theatre and the processes of playwriting; East
Asian and transnational cinema; film history and criticism; or
adaptation studies.
Application
forms are available from http://www.shu.ac.uk/study/form.html or
through
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AGT948/graduate-school-phd-studentships/
At the top of the form please write 'studentship application' and return to
Graduate School Team, Sheffield Hallam University, Unit 9, Science Park, City Campus, Sheffield S1 1WB or email to fdresearch@shu.ac.uk
Please
note, at this stage, you only need to include the names and contact
details for referees and do not have to request references.
Non-EU Nationals please note
We welcome applications from non-EEA applicants. However, we have a legal responsibility to ensure that all employees are entitled to live and work in the UK. Before applying please check whether you would be eligible to work in the UK under the points-based system by using the UKBA points-based calculator. For further information please visit the UK Border Agency website. If you will need a Tier 2 Certificate of Sponsorship, contact us before applying to check whether we should be able to issue one if you’re appointed.
Closing date: 12 July 2013
We welcome applications from non-EEA applicants. However, we have a legal responsibility to ensure that all employees are entitled to live and work in the UK. Before applying please check whether you would be eligible to work in the UK under the points-based system by using the UKBA points-based calculator. For further information please visit the UK Border Agency website. If you will need a Tier 2 Certificate of Sponsorship, contact us before applying to check whether we should be able to issue one if you’re appointed.
Friday, 21 June 2013
Call for proposals: The Arena Concert: Music, Mediation and Mass Entertainment
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The Arena Concert: Music, Mediation and Mass Entertainment
Challenges to critical
engagement would seem to arise, firstly, along class lines: the event is truly
proletarian (at a time when the “alternative” of music festivals are
increasingly, at times preposterously, bourgeois). Secondly, along
technological lines: musicologists often seem ill at ease when dealing with new
paradigms of mediation, although performance, liveness, authenticity and
intimacy are all now reinvented through these vectors. Thirdly, along
experiential lines: the event can be wearying as much as entertaining. At its
miserable worst, and replicating the existence of battery hens for the fleeced
gig-goers, the arena concert is the eminently avoidable for denizens of
well-PA’d concert halls. Fourthly, in terms of traditional concepts of pop: the
event has little or no “present”, so that nostalgia tours and reunions jostle
with karaoke X-Factor contestants, stars negotiate between “keeping it real”
and hard selling their celebrity, and the “live album” of that night is somehow
also available to buy on that night. And, fifthly, in terms of celebrity:
hysterical mass gatherings around sole focal points are always a matter for
suspicion, and the traditionally oppositional nature of pop music is one that
auto-engenders a distaste for such totalitarian-style mass entertainments, and
its concomitant total consumer environment, on the part of its interpreters.
The arena concert becomes the
“real time” centre of a global digital network, and the gig-goer pays not only
for an immersion in (and, indeed, role in) its spectacular nature, but also for
a close encounter with the performers, in the contained space. This spectacular
nature raises challenges that have yet to be fully technologically overcome,
and has given rise to the reinvention of what the live concert actually means.
One thinks of the autobiographical narratives that come into play, so that the
gig is not just album-centred but life-centred (Alicia Keys revisiting the
music of her childhood, Kylie Minogue reminiscing about illness and past gigs
in the same cities), and not just a performance to attend, but a self-affirming
event (Lady Gaga’s talk of her global constituency). The enormous canvas
requires more - a “total” art. Hence the integration of the tropes and designs
of the fashion show, the circus, theatre and dance, ritual and religion, the
political rally and immersive video-gaming, which are offset by the ways in
which (via giant video screens) intimate and often acoustic moments are
achieved and shared (as with Keane and Coldplay). In this respect the arena
concert has come to compete with outdoor gigs in stadia and at festivals in
terms of remaking the live popular music experience for contemporary times,
raising the stakes for festival headline acts to be ever bigger and starrier
(as with U2, Radiohead and Beyonce).
The editorial team is:
Dr Robert Edgar, York St John University (The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop, Basics Film-Making volumes)
Dr Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs, University of Salford (The Music Documentary)
Dr Benjamin Halligan, University of Salford (Michael Reeves, Mark E. Smith and The Fall, Reverberations, Resonances, The Music Documentary)
Dr Sunil Manghani, Winchester School of Art (Image Studies: Theory and Practice, Images: A Reader, Image Critique and the Fall of the Berlin Wall).
Call for chapter proposals:
The Arena Concert: Music, Mediation and Mass Entertainment
The idea of live popular
music as mass entertainment is one that presents an arresting series of
challenges and remains mostly unexplored in contemporary academic writing. And
yet, it would seem, arena concerts are coming to constitute the commercial
future of popular music, and popular music is being shaped by this phenomena.
We ask: what, then, is this phenomena? And what then are the challenges that
have blocked a critical engagement with this phenomena?
Challenges to critical
engagement would seem to arise, firstly, along class lines: the event is truly
proletarian (at a time when the “alternative” of music festivals are
increasingly, at times preposterously, bourgeois). Secondly, along
technological lines: musicologists often seem ill at ease when dealing with new
paradigms of mediation, although performance, liveness, authenticity and
intimacy are all now reinvented through these vectors. Thirdly, along
experiential lines: the event can be wearying as much as entertaining. At its
miserable worst, and replicating the existence of battery hens for the fleeced
gig-goers, the arena concert is the eminently avoidable for denizens of
well-PA’d concert halls. Fourthly, in terms of traditional concepts of pop: the
event has little or no “present”, so that nostalgia tours and reunions jostle
with karaoke X-Factor contestants, stars negotiate between “keeping it real”
and hard selling their celebrity, and the “live album” of that night is somehow
also available to buy on that night. And, fifthly, in terms of celebrity:
hysterical mass gatherings around sole focal points are always a matter for
suspicion, and the traditionally oppositional nature of pop music is one that
auto-engenders a distaste for such totalitarian-style mass entertainments, and
its concomitant total consumer environment, on the part of its interpreters.
The post-digital landscape of
popular music consumption is one in which, paradoxically, “liveness”, the
experience, and authenticity have been returned to their prime positions -
perhaps for the first time since their folk (Newport) and rock (Woodstock) heydays.
The failures to secure “the product” across the 2000s (via anti-piracy software
and corporate malware, judicial attacks on Napster and Pirate Bay, the locking
of hardware, and reimagining questions of ownership) have rapidly led to albums
being reduced to little more than giveaway promotional fodder. And popular
music, post-MTV, is no longer an audio form: a nexus of image and news,
celebrity and fandom, seeking to saturate all digital platforms, comes to
constitute what is both popular and what is considered to be music. For bands
and artists, managers (and even medics) are replaced by tour organisers. For
young fans, the gig becomes the only complete way of buying into the music, and
the experience of attending the gig is authenticated (and propagated) via
social media, with the night itself commemorated via DVDs of the event (of a
new subgenre of the arena concert film). For not so young fans, a plethora of
artists of yesteryear are suddenly available, and live, and live, once again: a
post-MP3 reformation.
The arena concert becomes the
“real time” centre of a global digital network, and the gig-goer pays not only
for an immersion in (and, indeed, role in) its spectacular nature, but also for
a close encounter with the performers, in the contained space. This spectacular
nature raises challenges that have yet to be fully technologically overcome,
and has given rise to the reinvention of what the live concert actually means.
One thinks of the autobiographical narratives that come into play, so that the
gig is not just album-centred but life-centred (Alicia Keys revisiting the
music of her childhood, Kylie Minogue reminiscing about illness and past gigs
in the same cities), and not just a performance to attend, but a self-affirming
event (Lady Gaga’s talk of her global constituency). The enormous canvas
requires more - a “total” art. Hence the integration of the tropes and designs
of the fashion show, the circus, theatre and dance, ritual and religion, the
political rally and immersive video-gaming, which are offset by the ways in
which (via giant video screens) intimate and often acoustic moments are
achieved and shared (as with Keane and Coldplay). In this respect the arena
concert has come to compete with outdoor gigs in stadia and at festivals in
terms of remaking the live popular music experience for contemporary times,
raising the stakes for festival headline acts to be ever bigger and starrier
(as with U2, Radiohead and Beyonce).
This proposed volume will be
the first such exploration of the arena concert. It will test and define,
intervene and assess, offer pre-histories, present histories and consider
future directions, and will concern itself with designers, choreographers,
mixers, musicians and bands, promoters, security, broadcasters, caterers,
social media use and audiences. We invite proposals for academic chapters,
interventions, interviews and more, and have secured informal interest from a
major academic publisher. Proposals should be 400-500 words and emailed as a
Word file (not a PDF) with minimal formatting, and with a biographical note and
contact details included, to Benjamin Halligan (b.halligan@salford.ac.uk) by 23
July 2013. Informal inquiries prior very welcome.
The editorial team is:
Dr Robert Edgar, York St John University (The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop, Basics Film-Making volumes)
Dr Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs, University of Salford (The Music Documentary)
Dr Benjamin Halligan, University of Salford (Michael Reeves, Mark E. Smith and The Fall, Reverberations, Resonances, The Music Documentary)
Dr Sunil Manghani, Winchester School of Art (Image Studies: Theory and Practice, Images: A Reader, Image Critique and the Fall of the Berlin Wall).
Sunday, 9 June 2013
CFP: Death and Decay
Death and DecayThis call for papers invites submissions on the subject of ‘Death and
Decay’ for the third edition of HARTS & Minds, an online postgraduate
journal for students of the Humanities and Arts, which is due to be
published online in Winter 2013-14.
Our first edition and further information can be found at
www.harts-minds.co.uk and you can get updates on our journal at
www.facebook.com/hartsandminds.
Submissions should adhere to the guidelines available on our website.
You can either send us an abstract (approximately 300 words in length)
and a completed article (no longer than 6000 words) OR you may provide
an abstract (300 words) and a synopsis outlining the structure and
argument of your intended article (approximately 1500-2000 words).
You must use the article template available on our website to format
your article. All submissions should be sent with an academic CV to
editors@harts-minds.co.uk by Friday 4th October.
We will also consider Creative Writing pieces (poetry or short stories
of up to 6,000 words) please email for more details.
Subjects may include but are not limited to the following:
- Elegy, Obituary, the Funeral March, laments, Eulogy
- Medical Humanities (e.g. Parasites, disease, autopsy, the cadaver)
- Rituals and rites of the dead in various cultures
- Burial practices
- Death and dying in literatures
- Visual Death; in art, photography, illustration, in film and
television, on stage
- Death personified: the Grim Reaper, Yama & Lord of Naraka, Hel, Hades
etc.
- The geography of death; real or mythological
- Decay if buildings, bodies, nature, morals
- The undead, reincarnation, immortality
- The death of discourse, language, the author, God
- Death as taboo
- War and death
- The future of death in a posthuman world.
- Moral death
- Death: presence and absence
- Afterlife, textual afterlives.
- Hauntings, the undead, vampires, zombies.
- Eschatology
- The value of Death: what makes a justified or honourable death?
- Dirt and debris, Wrecks and ruins, Flotsam and Jetsam
- Monuments, Memorials and the Archive
- Suicide, both literal and metaphorical.
Please consider that HARTS & Minds is intended as a truly
inter-disciplinary journal and therefore esoteric topics will need to be
written with a general academic readership in mind.
--
The Editors
HARTS & Minds
editors@harts-minds.co.uk
www.harts-minds.co.uk
Thursday, 6 June 2013
Nina Power talk at MediaCityUK
Our thanks to Nina Power for her fantastic talk yesterday... the feminisation of rebellion, the media's moral narratives of protests and riots, cultures of surveillance and panda masks, the privatisation of public spaces...
That concludes our Graduate Programme for this academic year. The new programme will be announced in September / October, and October will also see a substantial PGR event at MediaCity too.
Monday, 3 June 2013
Grad Prog Weds 5 June: Nina Power / Representing Rebellion
Weds 5th June, MediaCity, Room 2.20, 4-5pm
Guest Speaker: Nina Power (Roehampton University)
Representing Rebellion: Media and Protest
Representing Rebellion: Media and Protest
This paper examines the framework in which the media - both putatively "left" and "right" - construct an examine of protest and perpetuate the myth of the "good" and the "bad" protester. It looks at the ways in which terms like "violence" are used by the media in a general way that nevertheless invokes both fear and permits the state to construct the context in which individuals receive lengthy jail sentences in court. It also looks at the way in which gender is invoked in images of protest (e.g. the Daily Mail's "Rage of the Girl Rioters" article during the student protests of late 2010). It argues that the media is complicit in a structure that seeks to uphold the existing order and pre-emptively criminalise protesters in much the same way as the state does. Sources will include: newspapers, tv footage, court reports and the police protester database.
She is the author of One-Dimensional Woman (Zer0, 2009) and is interested in independent publishing and
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/nina-power
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