Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA)
  • News
  • About
  • PhDs
    • PhD Alumni
  • Contact
  • Search
  • Menu Menu

Melt, Rise and Hydrological Globalization – An Origin Story 

January 13, 2020/in Then /by Eloe Kingma

ASCA Political Ecologies Workshop announces: Masterclass and Public Lecture with Dr. Cymene Howe (Rice University)

Public Lecture: Friday, March 6th @ 17:00-19:00 (Location PCH 1.05)

The masterclass on March 6th from 10-12 will be in PCH 5.08

Melt, Rise and Hydrological Globalization – An Origin Story 

Around the globe glaciers and ice sheets are losing their mass, oceanic thermal expansion continues and populations are seeing landscapes denuded of ice while others are becoming flooded by seawater. Rapidly transforming cryo- and hydrospheres promise misery to millions. But these elemental state-shifts are also locations of material connectivity where places and people are becoming linked through their water. In this presentation, I juxtapose the loss of Icelandic glaciers with rising seas in lower latitude coastal cities impacted by Arctic melt. A theoretical proposition that I call “hydrological globalization” forms the analytic infrastructure for the presentation and highlights a new NASA model that determines which glacial basins are contributing to sea level rise in the world’s coastal cities. I close with reflections on my recent public-facing work to memorialize the first major Icelandic glacier to be lost to climate change, Okjökull.

Cymene Howe is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rice University and author of Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene (Duke University Press) and Intimate Activism: The Struggle for Sexual Rights in Postrevolutionary Nicaragua, also at Duke University Press. Ecologics is one half of the duograph Wind and Power in the Anthropocene; Engergopolitics, by Dominic Boyer, is the other half.

https://anthropology.rice.edu/cymene-howe

______

Masterclass: Friday, March 6th @ 10:00-12:00 (Location PCH 5.08) (1 EC)

Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene

For the masterclass, Dr. Howe will discuss political ecologies in conversation with her recent book, Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene (Duke UP). Students can access the book as open access (PDF download) here:  https://doi.org/10.25611/j5kf-mr18

Participants should read 1) the introduction, 2) the chapter on “wind,” and 3) Cristián Simonetti and Tim Ingold’s “Ice and Concrete: Solid Fluids of Environmental Change,” Journal of Contemporary Anthropology 5.1 (2018).

All interested in participating should email ASCA Political Ecologies Workshop organizers in advance:

Jeff Diamanti j.diamanti@uva.nl
Joost de Bloois: J.G.C.deBloois@uva.nl

 

 

The King’s two Bodies with Darby English

December 4, 2019/in Then /by Eloe Kingma

2020 KEYNOTE Lecture by Darby English
January 13, 2020, 19:00
Oude Lutherse Kerk
(Singel 411, 1012 WN Amsterdam)

Adapting a chapter on the less discussed legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. within the built environment from his book To Describe a Life: Notes at the Intersection of Art and Race Terror
(2019), English proposes an expanded role for art and aesthetic experience in our tense times.

Darby English is a professor at the University of Chicago, an Adjunct Curator for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the author of milestone studies on art and culture, including
How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness (2007), 1971: A Year in the Life of Color (2018) and most recently To Describe a Life. He has also co-edited three timely volumes: Among Others: Blackness at MoMA (2019) with Charlotte Barat, Art History and Emergency with David Breslin (2016) and Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress (2007) with Ian Berry, Vivian Patterson, and
Mark Reinhardt. A renowned teacher and advisor, in 2010, he was the recipient of the University of Chicago’s Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the nation’s oldest such prize. Refusing reductions and encouraging rare insight, English makes art history into a new tool for urgent public debate.

To Describe a Life

Darby English

From the way this object haunted me, I learned that I’d been thinking about King for a long time: wishing he were still around, wondering how he might’ve evolved his radicality, or adapted his oratory to the sound bitten thrift of contemporary public discourse, or confronted the expansion of the black middle-class, or addressed the ongoing traumas of so-called development in urban centers, or failed differently.

– Darby English, “The King’s two Bodies”  in To Describe a Life (2019)

In the final chapter of his new book To Describe a Life: Notes at the Intersection of Art and Race Terror (2019), the maverick art historian Darby English sets out “to describe rather than contain” a very curious object: Lorraine Motel, April 4 1968. This is a model of the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, produced by the design firm Boym Partners in 1998 as part of the Buildings of Disaster series. English considers the model from several angles: the past and present race terror, the struggle for civil rights, the illusive idea of racial integration, the “ unprecedented levels of nonerotic social intimacy” in the 1960 and the formation of (sometimes though not always shared) desires. In his hands, the object is never one thing – it holds multitudes. And by extension we come to understand Martin Luther King Jr. and his time with greater complexity. English tells of how, when he presented an early version of the chapter at Harvard University in 2016 with the model in hand, ‘everyone ignored the object’. For the inauguration of a new chapter of its operations, De Appel in partnership with Universiteit van Amsterdam makes room for Darby English to deliver his lecture with a fully considered staging of Lorraine Motel, April 4 1968. English’s deft narration of this all too relevant cultural history sets the tone for De Appel’s future programming, foregrounding event- and exhibition-making as a way of making history otherwise.

The model will remain on display after the lecture…until the end of February. In this setting, English will return to hold three open seminars with the Curatorial Programme participants and learning partners, based on his two previous books about ground-breaking (yet underexposed) art and exhibition making: 1971: A Year in Color (2016) and How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness (2007). He will also venture into unpublished territory, or as he writes: “This invitation will serve as a much-needed prompt to start giving shape to some new ideas that I have been playing with since last summer. They are to do with water, life, and differences.” English’s fluid way of thinking and his gift in combining seemingly disparate concerns promises to bring together differently-invested people, who would not normally gather in the same space.

PROGRAMME / SEMINARS with Curatorial Programme participants and learning partners from NICA

WHEN : January 14, 15, 16, 2020, 11.00-16.00 hrs

For Graduate Seminar credit (2 EC):
Please register at : nica-fgw@uva.nl

WHERE: De Appel Aula at Broedplaats Lely,
Schipluidenlaan 12,
Amsterdam Nieuw-West

Open for credit to students of Universiteit van Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit, and members of NICA.
Participants without academic affiliation welcome.

http://deappel.nl/en/events/open-seminar-with-darby-english

Darby English leads a special 3-day seminar that guides participants through the development of an art history, a way of reading and lending context to the social life of art, that offers tools for serious engagement with contemporary urgencies. Three questions which connect the days arise:  How to perceive key works of art and artists’ practice, including their role as exhibition makers, in greater depth and dimension? (Greater especially than “instituted meanings of subjectivity and crisis representation”.)  How to make such art truly public? And how then, together, constituting a public, “to sit hard with and listen to what fights meaning and how?”   On each of the 3 days, English takes as a point of departure a different body of research: two published books and one book in the making:

14 January       1971: A Year in the Life of Color (2018)
with special attention to the “De Luxe Show” an exhibition integrating experiments in abstraction curated by painter, Peter Bradley in a former movie theater in Houston’s 5th Ward on the invitation of patrons Dominique and John de Menil.

15 January       To Describe a Life: Notes on the Intersection of Art and Race Terror (2019)
With special attention to “Differing, Drawn”, a chapter on the “Skin Set” drawings of Pope.l, forthcoming artist at De Appel in 2022.

16 January       ‘Purifroy/Robert’ a rare chance to hear about Darby English’s unpublished research
(There will also be an opportunity to discuss English’s recent research into MoMA’s collecting policy summarized in his editorial project Among Others: Blackness at MoMA (2019))

Please submit requests for participation with the heading “Darby English Seminar” to reservations@deappel.nl or to affiliated faculties.

For Graduate Seminar credit via NICA / OSK
Please register at: nica-fgw@uva.nl

WHY THIS HERE NOW?  English has forged a form of historically aware, expanded and fluid thinking that offers particular anchoring stories, which diverse audience can identify with, and interpretive tools for navigating social and aesthetic questions around racial tensions, but also desires for integration.

RECORDING :  Following the keynote lecture, an audio-visual record of the events will be produced for De Appel’s Archive and for enduring dissemination, most widely via Podcast as this medium is increasingly attracting audiences interested in longer-form, essay-style content.

PARTNERS: Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (Prof.Dr. Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes)

TBC, additional: Rietveld General Studio on Color (tbc: Vrije Universiteit, Black Archives, Research Center for Material Cutlure, Iris Kensmil (artist whose presentation at 2019 Venice Biennale featured English’s book How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness)

OUTREACH: will be broad, including students, teachers, plumbers, politicians – everyone is welcomed through a poster campaign that announces To Describe a Life as a Show & Tell Experiment that inaugurates De Appel’s full-year use of the Aula at Broedplats Lely

ABOUT DARBY ENGLISH

https://arthistory.uchicago.edu/faculty/profiles/english

Creative Writing Workshop by Jane Lewty

November 20, 2019/in Then /by Eloe Kingma

Creative Writing Workshop by Jane Lewty

17 or 21 January 2020

Locations:

17 January 2020 | OMHP, Oudemanhuispoort, Amsterdam, room C 0.23
21 January 2020 | PCHoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam,  room 5.59

In this day-long workshop, participants will examine texts that interact with the creative process in a variety of ways, as models and prompts for our own narratives. What happens to prose writing when we engage with other constructions of language? What kinds of actions might be foregrounded, complicated, or transformed? How do we write something new?

The event will be divided into two sections; the first will take the form of a short lecture on current trends, patterns and concerns of creative writing practices. Focus will be given to hybridity as form, by expanding our definitions of “crossing genres” and questioning the binary of the poetry / prose definition. Then, we will look at contemporary writers whose work subverts narrative practice, and who have embarked on collaborative acts across mediums with artists, dancers, scientists, architects and musicians. Through short creative writing experiments, participants will investigate the ways in which sound and image can interrupt, complicate, and layer a text, as well as the reasons a writer might embrace this multimodal, multivocal form.

The second section will focus on the craft of writing. Participants will learn contemplative practices that ground mind and body in active attention, invite curiosity, and prompt new directions for their ongoing academic work. Part of writing creatively is to be aware of a space that is equally open to possibility and failure; in our explorations, we will see that “failure” can also be innovative. We will take chances with form that may bring surprise and insight, and build a space for writing in which original compositions are able to appear. At the end of the session, participants will have produced a short creative manuscript that both reflects their immediate embodied experience, and is in some way responsive to the texts we have consulted throughout the day. All disciplines are welcome, since the objective of this writing workshop is to see how genres can merge and perform alongside one another.

This workshop will be of interest to current PhD students who not only wish to investigate the correlation[s] between creative and critical writing, but also want to expand their knowledge of cross-genre work. Students undertaking the rMA at NICA and OSL will similarly be energized by writing exercises and research strategies that may compliment their existing practice. They may earn one or two credits for their involvement.

Registration contact: Eloe Kingma at nica-fgw@uva.nl. Please mention your affiliation.

Jane Lewty is the author of two collections of poetry: Bravura Cool ( 1913 Press: 2013), winner of the 1913 First Book Prize in 2011, and In One Form To Find Another (Cleveland State University Press: 2017) winner of the 2016 CSU Open Book Prize. She has also co-edited two volumes of essays: Broadcasting Modernism (University Press of Florida, 2010) and Pornotopias: Image, Desire, Apocalypse (Litteraria Pragensia, 2009). She is currently collaborating with the Dutch artist Jennifer Tee in a series of multilingual performance pieces on ecology. At present, she teaches History of Art at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and she has held faculty positions at universities in the UK, USA and The Netherlands

Cities of the Symbiocene: Relational Energy Literacy as Spatial Praxis

October 29, 2019/in Then /by Eloe Kingma
Cities of the Symbiocene:

Cities of the Symbiocene: Relational Energy Literacy as Spatial Praxis

Guest lecture by Dr. Derek Gladwin (UBC) organized by the ASCA Cities Project on Friday 1 Nov., 3-5pm, in the Potgieterzaal, University Library (Singel 425, Amsterdam).

A 2016 Report from the World Energy Council titled “Innovating Urban Energy” predicts that by 2030 the global footprint will triple in urban areas. Without an understanding of the spatial effects of energy use and demand, urban populations cannot fully engage in the development of better practices and policies to create a just society. Consequently, there is an urgent need to address the ways cities might produce knowledge about their energy use, impact, and relationships. When building energy literacy and the link to urban infrastructures, assemblages, and power structures, we are also speaking about relationality – to each other, to systems, to societies, and to the spaces we inhabit – and the ways we produce and are produced by space. This talk considers a relational paradigm applied to the spatial dynamics of energy cultures in the Symbiocene – shifting the dominant paradigm from reductive individualism to a relational model of social symbiosis and aesthetic practice.

Dr. Derek Gladwin is an Assistant Professor of Language & Literacy Education and a Sustainability Fellow with the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. His interdisciplinary research and teaching focus on transformations in society and culture through environmental humanities, energy literacy, and sustainability education. He has held visiting fellowships at Concordia University (Montréal), National University of Ireland, Galway, University of Edinburgh, and Trinity College Dublin. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of six books and special journal issues, including Contentious Terrains (2016), Ecological Exile (2018), and Gastro-Modernism (2019), and is currently working on a book titled Energy Literacy: Narrating Transitions and Futures.

Preparatory reading/viewing:
Albrecht, Glenn. “Exiting the Anthropocene and Entering the Symbiocene.” Minding Nature 9.2 (2016): 12-16.
Broto, Vanesa Castán and Baker, Lucy. “Spatial Adventures in Energy Studies.” Energy Research & Social Science 36 (2018): 1-10. [Note: focus on sections 1-2]
Skawennati. She Falls for Ages. Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace. Montreal: Obx Labs, 2018. Please watch this film (21 min.): see www.skawennati.com/SheFallsForAges/

The texts can be accessed via: www.dropbox.com/sh/czvtz54cssq95xl/AADgQG28toT-nI8IIX_Tlffma?dl=0

Power and Politics in Contemporary Culture and Media

October 28, 2019/in Then /by Eloe Kingma
Power and Politics in Contemporary Culture and Media

Power and Politics in Contemporary Culture and Media

Master class with with Dr. Shelley Cobb (University of Southampton) and Dr. Neil Ewen (University of Winchester)

P.C. Hoofthuis, room 6.25, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam | Thursday November 7, 2019, 13:00-17:00

Open to all RMA and PhD students. Register by sending a mail with a project/thesis description and your cv to gaston.franssen@uva.nl. Due to room size, the number of available spots is limited.

ASCA and NICA are proud to welcome dr. Shelley Cobb (University of Southampton) and dr. Neil Ewen (University of Winchester) for a special two-day visit to the University of Amsterdam. On Friday November 8, they will be the main speakers of a public symposium on Public Intellectuals: Celebrity, Advocacy, Activism (13-17 hrs., VOC-zaal, Bushuis, Kloveniersburgwal 48); on Thursday November 7, they will be leading a RMA/PhD masterclass, during which they will share their expertise in research into power and politics in contemporary culture and media with a select group of RMA/PhD students.

RMA/PhD students whose current research touches upon this topic and who want to seize the opportunity to receive feedback from two international experts in this field are therefore invited to present their current project during this unique masterclass. Presentations take the form of 15 minutes research pitches, and will be followed by intensive discussion with and feedback by Dr. Cobb and Dr. Ewen and other presenters. Please note: due to room size, the number of available spots is limited.

All interested in taking part are requested to sign up for the masterclass by sending an email with their project description and cv to gaston.franssen@uva.nl before November 4.

Shelley Cobb is an Associate Professor of Film at the University of Southampton. Her main areas of research and teaching expertise are in women and film (both production and representation), gender and popular culture, celebrity studies and adaptation. Her monograph Adaptation, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) considers film adaptations directed by women that foreground the figure of the female author. She is also co-editor (with Neil Ewen) of First Comes Love: Power Couples, Celebrity Kinship and Cultural Politics (Bloomsbury, 2015).

Neil Ewen is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at the Department of School of Media and Film, University of Winchester. His research interests lie in the politics of contemporary media and culture. From a critical media and cultural studies perspective, he writes about celebrity, sport, politics and politicians, film, television, and journalism. He is the co-editor (with Shelley Cobb) of First Comes Love: Power Couples, Celebrity Kinship and Cultural Politics (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Capitalism, Crime and Media in the 21st Century (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2020).

Page 2 of 63‹1234›»


NEWSLETTER

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates about our news, lectures, seminars, workshops and more.

ABOUT

NICA is the Dutch national research school dedicated to the academic study of contemporary culture from an interdisciplinary, theoretical, and critical perspective.
More... →

PS

  • Asad Haider: Emancipation and ExhaustionFebruary 25, 2021 - 2:57 pm
  • Summer School: The Posthuman and New MaterialismFebruary 22, 2021 - 1:32 pm
  • Thinking with Derrida Now – Workshop and MasterclassFebruary 22, 2021 - 1:13 pm
  • Call for Papers ESSCS 2021: Art in Common(s) – Understanding Art and CommunalityFebruary 18, 2021 - 11:36 am
  • Call for Papers: Networked Images in Surveillance CapitalismFebruary 15, 2021 - 2:39 pm

Share this page

  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on WhatsApp
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share by Mail

Research Schools

  • Huizinga: Cultural History (Amsterdam)
  • Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies NOG (Utrecht)
  • OSK: Art History (Utrecht)
  • OSL: Literary Studies (Amsterdam)
  • RMeS: Media Studies (Amsterdam)

Research Masters

  • Art and Visual Culture (Radboud University Nijmegen)
  • Art Studies (University of Amsterdam)
  • Artistic Research (UvA)
  • Arts and Culture (Leiden University)
  • Cultural Analysis (Amsterdam, UvA)
  • Gender and Ethnicity (Utrecht)
  • International Performance Research (University of Amsterdam)
  • Literary and Cultural Studies (Groningen)
  • Literary Studies (Leiden University)
  • Media, Art and Performance Studies (Utrecht University)
  • Religious Studies (Amsterdam, UvA)
  • Visual Arts, Media and Architecture (Amsterdam, VU)

Local Research Institutes

  • Amsterdam Research Center for Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS)
  • Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA)
  • Centre for Gender and Diversity, Maastricht
© 2021 - Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA)
Website door Nikolai NL Design Studio
  • Privacy
  • Contact
Scroll to top

We use cookies only for the purposes of measuring effectiveness of our website. Our Privacy Statement.

OK

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refuseing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Privacy Policy

You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.

Privacy
Accept settingsHide notification only