GradProg talks Weds 21/5/14: Pop Music & Disability / Punk Sounds and Northern Ireland

MediaCityUK, room 2.20, Weds 21st May. First talk 3-4pm, second talk 4.10-5pm. All welcome.

Popular Music and Disability
George McKay will speak about his newest book, Shakin' All Over: Popular Music and Disability (University of Michigan Press, 2013). It was supported by a grant from the AHRC. George has compiled a fascinating Top Ten of disability pop songs connected with the book at http://georgemckay.org/shakin-all-over/top-ten

George McKay is a writer on alternative cultures, popular music/media, cultural politics, disability. From jazz to punk. Via gardening. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1960 though mostly raised in Norfolk, England. He is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Salford, UK, and currently a Leadership Fellow for the Arts & Humanities Research Council. George's website is packed with information and links: http://georgemckay.org


External Speaker: Dr Liz Greene

Good Vibrations: punk montage sequences and audio-visual representations of Northern Ireland.

This paper will consider the use of montage sequences in fiction and non-fiction film and television programmes about Northern Ireland. Political and socio-economic representations are often problematic within film texts due to the need for brevity within the medium. However, the montage sequence contains a double bind, that of further time constraints and often the need for popular music to package an experience. In this paper I will consider both drama and documentary film and television programmes and will discuss the problematic relationship of framing history through the youthful (MTV) prism of fast edits through the theoretical frame outlined by Kay Dickinson in her work, “Pop, Speed, Teenagers and the “MTV Aesthetic” and Paul Virilio’s work in Speed and Politics. Considering punk music here, this paper will chart youth counter cultures that have stood in opposition to state repression and will assess how well these representations have been served by the montage sequence. Problematising notions of nostalgia, here I turn to Martin McLoone’s writing on “Punk music in Northern Ireland” to question, who are the perceived audience for contemporary punk films?

Dr Liz Greene is a sound practitioner and academic whose main research interests are in the theory, history and practice of film sound. She teaches film and television studies in the School of Cultures and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow. She teaches and writes about film sound design and specialises in sound effects, the voice and sound archiving. Liz also creates sound art, music, and radio shows. She is currently creating the sound design for a documentary film on women’s experience of Long Kesh/The Maze prison during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.