The State of Diversity at UvA
Thursday 8 November, 18:30 – 21:15 | CREA Muziekzaal
Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity
Professor David Scott will present on his recent publication ‘Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity’ | In cooperation with the Research Center for Material Culture, ASCA and NICA | Spui25, 30 October 2-4 pm, 2018
Visual Story Telling – Thinking and Making
Masterclass and Workshop with Dr. Simon Grennan | 14 November, 13:00-16:00 | Room BV-0H53, VU, De Boelelaan 1105, Amsterdam
In conjunction with the conference, Amsterdam Comics and NICA will organize a masterclass and workshop focusing on visual story telling.
Drawing Yourself In and Out of It
The 2nd International Amsterdam Comics Conference. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 15-17 November 2018.
Pipeline Politics
Pipelines were never meant to be involved in politics. Over the past decade, however, pipelines have entered the mainstream of political discussion and debate as never before. Dr. Imre Szeman (University of Waterloo) will discuss the issues in the ASCA Cities seminar.
The Digital Mass Ornament: Found Collectivities in Contemporary Art and Culture
Workshop with Natalie Bookchin, June 29, 15.00-18.00. In her art practice, Natalie Bookchin interrogates our contemporary digital surface in order to reveal the social realities that lie beneath.
May 22: Night of Protest
May 22 | For the third time, Humanities Rally is organizing a Night of Protest. As in 2014 and 2015 we will come together because unfortunately we still face the same problems. There are still cutbacks, different studies are being combined and the workload among teachers is too high. Room for choice disappears, lecturers are being fired and the representative advisory bodies can’t do anything about it. Invite all your friends and co-worker to come to Oudemanhuispoort on May 22 at 19:00h for a Night of Protest!
Thinking Through Things
Exhibition, June 1 and 2 | How can analysis take shape? The many different artefacts collected in Thinking Through Things together answer this question. As projects accompanying the theses of eleven rMA Cultural Analysis students from the University of Amsterdam, these artworks, images and objects are each products of individual thought processes, labour and archives: research in practice. Heterogeneous in both subject matter and form, the exhibition includes video essays, textiles, performance poetry, visual works, sculpture and photography — on topics as diverse as astrology, alt-right camp, smart cities, Islam Nusantara and drone cinematography.
PhD Work in Progress 2018
PhD Workshop, June 15, 2018 | Please join us for our annual ‘PhD Work in Progress’ meeting on Friday, June 15, 15:00-17:00, at the Oudemanhuispoort (room E1.08) in Amsterdam. Everyone’s welcome! Our PhD fellows Tingting Hui, Paris Cameron-Gardos, and David Gauthier will share samples of their current work in progress, with joint discussion (and drinks) to follow.
Vanessa Agard-Jones: Decolonial Desires
Lecture and masterclass, June 6 and 7, 2018, 2 EC | In this lecture and masterclass, we reflect upon the meaning of decolonization in Caribbean contexts where political sovereignty is not the anticipated nor desired outcome. As we consider bitter contests over the etiology of same-sex desire in the region and the consistent framing of gender transgression and same sex desire as colonial imposition, we explore the forms of political maneuver that make desire the terrain for proxy debates about sovereignty, freedom, and decolonial futures.
Gina Dent: The Idea of Africa
Lecture and masterclass, May 16, 2018, 1 EC
THE MASTERCLASS IS FULLY BOOKED, please send an e-mail with your name, university and research school to NICA-fgw@uva.nl. We will put you on our waiting list.
Scholar and organizer Gina Dent will give a masterclass at the University of Amsterdam called The Idea of Africa (May 16). Besides a masterclass, she will present from her forthcoming book Anchored to the Real: Black Literature in the Wake of Anthropology (Duke University Press) in a lecture at the Black Archives (May 16) and participate in the Public Dialogue: Radical Solidarity and Intergenerational Coalitions at the Tropenmuseum (May 13). The masterclass, lecture, and public dialogue are part of the weeklong program Moving Together: Activism, Art and Education – A Week with Angela Davis. The masterclass —the title of which is taken from V.Y. Mudimbe’s classic text of the same name—will focus on the epistemological and political position of Africa in cultural studies, the role of anthropology, and the simultaneous processes of over- and under-representation of the continent that mark enunciations of the global and the local.
The Energy Commons, with Ashley Dawson and Jeff Diamanti
Public event, May 24, 2018 | The struggle for democratic control over energy production, distribution, and use is consequently a key front in the fight for a better, sustainable world. In order to make this power shift, we need to stop thinking of energy as a commodity and instead conceive of it as part of the global commons, a vital element in the great stock of air, water, plants, and collectively created cultural forms like music and language that have traditionally been regarded as the inheritance of humanity as a whole.
Ashley Dawson: Can New York Be Saved?
Masterclass, 1 EC, May 24, 2018 | Taking New York City as a paradigmatic example, this masterclass explores the question of the urban condition in the Anthropocene Age. If the urban communities that will face the gravest threats are those already coping with entrenched forms of economic, social, and environmental injustice, what role do urban movements for just adaptation have to play in an era of climate chaos? And how can such movements best challenge the disasters brought on by a capitalist system run amok?
Elvis Lives in Amsterdam
CFP, deadline May 21, 2018 | We aim to have an interdisciplinary discussion about the various ways in which our understanding of musicians taps into the imaginary, and what case studies about musicians can teach us about the imaginary constitution of our everyday experiences. Our interest will not be to debunk myths, but to understand what role imaginary representations of musicians play in our personal lives, in society and the arts in general.
Moving Together: Activism, Art and Education, with Angela Davis
Week-long programme, May 12-17, 2018 | Artists, educators and activists have often been at the forefront of challenging social and cultural hierarchies within society. Events of the past decade have highlighted a noticeable increase in authoritarianism, racism, sexism, environmental disasters and economic hardship at local and global levels. This turbulent climate has prompted significant responses in the form of social movements calling for more inclusion, decolonization, and liberation within cultural and educational institutions. Moving Together aspires to amplify ongoing conversations on refugee, anti-racist, feminist, queer, trans*, anti-border, anti-nationalist, prison abolition, and environmental justice struggles through sharing knowledge and strengthening connections between arts, activism and education.
New Materialism, Politics and Design Cultures in the Humanities
Workshop, April 12 | The humanities has recently undergone a paradigm shift in its turn to ‘new materialism’. This new materialist perspective has had profound implications for humanities’ understanding of politics not as delimited to a specific domain of human activity but as a complex and scattered reality where power is thoroughly distributed between different entities. How can the humanities, by engaging with this new materialist understanding of politics, be relevant to urgent societal and scientific questions today?
As Slowly As Possible: Entangled Temporalities
Workshop, May 24, 3 EC | In a comparative analysis, we will discuss the four keynotes’ different approaches towards the interrelation of the temporality of media on the one hand, and human temporality on the other. We will analyze how the different media these scholars and artists scrutinize (sound, moving image, literature, performance) are related to different approaches towards mediated, embodied, and experienced time, as well as towards natural, human, and technological concepts of time.
Richenel Ansang: Critical Thinking in Curacao
Lecture and masterclass, 2 EC, April 3 and 6 | Richenel Ansano is the UNESCO Facilitator on Intangible Heritage in Curaçao and an expert on heritage and memory. The lecture examines the landscape of 20th century critical thought in Curaçao in relation to regional, Kingdom and global developments, its own unique traditions, and how this vital thought-action culture is forgotten by a society marked by a history of slavery, colonialism and rapid industrialization. The masterclass discusses various concepts of opposition, repression, romanticization, decontextualization and appropriation in the Curaçaoan context, and dives into the contentious relationships among critical Curaçaoan thinkers. Additionally, the active construction of forgetting in Curaçao will be taken into account.
Florian Cramer: Weaponization of the Carnivalesque
Public Lecture, April 20 | Florian Cramer is a reader in 21st Century Visual Culture at the Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam. This lecture will map the network and history of the large white suprematist subculture of the “Alt-Right” along with related currents and subcultures, break down its deliberately hermetic linguistic and visual codes, and explain their relation to popular visual culture on the Internet.
(In)Human Time: Artistic Responses to Radiotoxicity
CFP, deadline March 26 | Radiotoxicity – the toxic effects of a radioactive substance on living cells or tissue – is notoriously intangible. Not only is ionizing radiation imperceptible to the unaided human senses, diseases caused by radiation exposure often develop only years or decades later, making it hard to make juridical claims. To complicate matters, radiotoxicity does not only rupture human time, but opens the inhuman perspective of a deep future, forcing thousands of future generations to live with the radioactive contaminants released today. What role does art and visual culture assume in debates on radiotoxicity and its complex temporalities? How have artists responded historically to the phenomenon of radiotoxicity and how has this changed with major ‘nuclear events’ like the detonation of the atomic bomb, the Three Mile Island accident or the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters? And what aesthetic strategies do artists develop to make radiotoxicity tangible? These and related questions shall form the frame for this workshop.