Diary for June 2010

TUESDAY 8th JUNE-Call for Films!

Aspekty is a yearly festival of visual anthropology which takes place in Poland and which aims to show the various relationships between phenomena, human interaction and diversity within and amongst cultures through the visual medium. The festival is currently looking for ethnographic or documentary films to be submitted. Films that are submitted must have been completed after 2005. For more information and to download a submission form, visit http://aspektyfestival.pl/en



WEDNESDAY 9th JUNE- The Human Costs of Black Gold

The Environment, Politics & Development Research Group of King's College London will host its Annual Lecture today at Kings College London. Professor Michael Watts (University of California, Berkley) will be delivering a lecture entitled the Permanent Frontier: A Political Ecology of Insurgency. Over the last decade Professor Watt's research activities have focused on the political ecology of oil in West Africa, his most recent book is 'The Curse of the Black Gold: Fifty Years of Oil in the Niger Delta' . The lecture will take place in the Geography Department of Kings College, Room S-2.08 2nd basement, Strand Building, Strand Campus. The lecture will begin at 5:30pm. The event is free and all are welcome. To book your place email: delphine.pejchert@kcl.ac.uk



THURSDAY 10th JUNE-Object-Image-Memory

Today marks the fist day of a three part seminar organised by the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Oxford Academy of Documentary Film aimed at people over 65 who are interested to learn about digital film cameras and would like to capture some of their memories on film. For more information and to book a place you can pick up a form at the information desk or email: alison@oadf.co.uk





THURSDAY 10th JUNE- SKIN

Today marks the first day of the Welcome Collection's exhibition on skin. Skin is the largest organ on the human body, but it wasn't studied as an organ in its own right until the 20th century. The Welcome exhibition looks at the history of skin through medical drawings, paintings and anatomical models. Participants are able to handle skin-flap models used in plastic surgery and try on latex suits. A series of events and a tattoo contest form part of the exhibition. The exhibition is free. Everyone welcome. For more information visit this website.




FRIDAY 11th JUNE- The Morality of Giving and Receiving

Today from 10:30am-12:3pm at LSE's Seligman Library A607 (Old Building), Professor Katy Gardner (University of Sussex) will be giving a lecture entitlted: The Oil Company, 'Partnership' and the morality of giving and receiving. Since 2008 Katy has been working on a project funded by ESRC/Dfid on Mining, Livelihoods and Social Networks in Bangladesh. This has involved returning to her original fieldwork village in Bangladesh, where a multinational company is currently mining natural gas. The project investigates the relationships between transnational migration, global capitalism and resistance, plus multinational policies and practices of 'Corporate Social Responsibility'.





FRIDAY 11th JUNE- Shifting Sands Musical Performance

The Shifting Sands project is a new British Council initiative that aims to explore the musical roots of the United Kingdom and the Middle East as part of an ongoing creative collaboration. Tonight there will be two free performances held at the Southbank Centre from 6pm-8:45pm. Artists include Andy Mellon, Brendan Kelly and Pete Flood from Bellowhead, UK folk's rising star Sam Carter, Middle Eastern music specialist Giles Lewin and one of Scotland's most innovative musicians, Corrina Hewat. For more information visit this website.











FRIDAY 11th JUNE- Human Rights and Visual Culture

The Birkbeck Institute for Social Reserach & Birkbeck Institute for Humanities have come together to provide an event where scholars, campaigners and practitioners can share ideas and experience on the role of visual media in the formation of human rights politics and practices. The event is in collaboration with the Centre for Media, Culture and Creative Practice . It takes place in at Birkbeck in Room B04 from 10:00-5:00pm and is free and open to all. Registration by email is essential. To book your place email Julia Eisner at j.eisner@bbk.ac.uk










SATURDAY12th JUNE- A Day to Learn About Music

Following on from Friday's Shifting Sands concert, is a full day workshop aimed at advanced musicians (aged 16 and over) with an interest in traditional music of all cultures. The day will involve a talk about different music instruments and traditions, followed by a practical workshop session, and as a finale the groups get to perform together in front of 2000 people on the Meltdown band stage in the Southbank Clore Ballroom. For more information and to book your free place email: shiftingsands@southbankcentre.co.uk





MONDAY 14th JUNE- Recycling Textile Technologies

Today at UCL there will be a full day interdisciplinary workshop (9:30am-5pm) exploring the relationships between people and things, raw materials and technologies and the rise of entrepreneurs and innovators in different social contexts. The workshop brings together the work and experience of geographers, anthropologists, historians, designers, waste consultants and consumer researchers. Admission (including refreshments and lunch) is £25 waged and £18 unwaged or student. To book your place email Julie Botticello at ucsajbo@ucl.ac.uk




TUESDAY 15th JUNE- The Creative City after the Crash

Today at the Manchester Museum there will be a CRESC seminar looking at the arts scene and urban cultures of Manchester. An interdisciplinary range of scholars, local policy actors and leading representatives of the arts in the city, will speak about how they envisage the future of cutting edge culture and creativity in the new age of austerity and budget cuts. For more information visit this website. Participation fees are £15, concession £5. To reserve your place email: cresc@manchester.ac.uk




THURSDAY 17th June- The Quest for Perfect Skin

'Since the 17th century, a multimillion-pound industry has developed that feeds on our aesthetic concerns about skin'. As part of its new exhibition on the history of research and visual depictions of skin, the Welcome Trust is hosting a series of lectures. Tonight's lecture will be delivered by Stefania Crowther. She will be speaking about the roots of the cosmetic industry and how it affects individual relationships with health, comparing early modern skincare preparations with today's practices. The talk will be held at the Welcome Collection. Tickets are free and open to everyone. Tickets are given on a first come first serve basis and can be collected from the information desk from 4:30pm onwards on the day.




FRIDAY 18th June-Ecstatic Flow

A new exhibition called Ecstatic Flow is on display at the October Gallery in London. The exhibition shows the magnificent artwork of Algerian artisti Rachid Koraïchi . Koraïchi's work is heavily influenced by his Sufi upbringing and is infused with the ethos and symbolism of Sufi mysticism and numerology. Koraïchi's works include a wide variety of media such as: ceramics, textiles, poetry, calligraphy, and paint. The exhibition is particularly concerned with the Islamic concept of Safar (travel and transcendence), the installation traces the journey of medieval Muslim traveller Jalal Al Din Al Rumi across the Mediterranean to meet the Sufi mystic and poet Ibn El Arabi. The exhibition runs until the 18th of July. For more information and booking details, visit this website.







FRIDAY 18th JUNE- Religion in Amazonia

Today from 10:30am-12:3pm at LSE's Seligman Library A607 (Old Building), Professor Mark Harris (University of St. Andrews) will be talking about local religion in Eighteenth-century Brazilian Amazonia. Harris has been conducting research with peasant river dwellers in the Brazilian Amazon since 1992. He has also conducted archival research on the region, focusing on the origins of a massive rebellion in the 1830s.






SATURDAY 19th JUNE- Refuge in Films

Refuge in Films is a group of young people some of whom are refugees and migrants from around the world who come together t0 make documentaries about their lives and experiences. This year's festival will be held at the BFI. Over three days from 11:00am onwards, short films ranging from bike projects for asylum seekers in the UK, to rebuilding communities in Ethiopia after 2007. Visit this website for a detailed programme of the festival. Ticket prices can be found on the BFI website.




FRIDAY 25th JUNE- Suicide in an Indian Town

Today from 10:30am-12:3pm at LSE's Seligman Library A607 (Old Building) Professor Jonathan Parry will be giving a talk on suicide in an Indian steel town. Professor Parry has been doing fieldwork on industrial workers in the central Indian steel town of Bhilai (in the Chhattisgarh region of Madhya Pradesh) which was built on a "green field" site with Soviet collaboration and technology in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The public sector Bhilai Steel Plant is now one of the largest steel plants in Asia, and has served as a magnet for a great deal of private sector industrial development. Part of the fieldwork has focused on on shopfloor organisation, but much of it has been conducted in the ex-villages-cum-labour colonies in which the workers have their homes.




SATURDAY 26th JUNE- Treasures from Trash

Today is the first day of an exhibition at Croydon Clocktower which explores how 'trash' is recycled around the world to make everyday objects. Communities around the world are using their creativity to create eco-products such as hats made out of pop cans, tyre buckets transformed into toys, and stoves made into handbags. These treasures are supporting groups of artists around the world and providing them with an new source of income. The exhibtion is free and open to everyone.













SATURDAY 26th JUNE- Okinawa Day

Today in Spitalfields, from 11:00-7:00pm there will be a celebration of Okinawan culture, music, art, dancing and food. The event is free and everyone is welcome. Take a look at photos and videos from last year's festival on this website.







Monday 28th JUNE- Culture Evolves

As part of this year's See Further:Festival of Science and Arts the Royal Society is hosting a free two day interdisciplinary conference called Culture Evolves aimed at academics/students interested in cultural evolution. 'The capacity of culture is a product of biological evolution-yet culture itself can also evolve, generating cultural phylogenies. The workshop will address new discoveries and controversies illuminating these phenomena, from the roots of culture in the animal kingdom to human, cultural evolutionary trees and the cognitive adaptations shaping our special cultural nature. The event is free but registration is essential. For conference details and registration visit this website.



ONGOING:

Anthropologist Carla Stang has recently published a wonderful accessible ethnography called 'A Walk to the River in Amazonia' . The ethnography follows the everyday realities of the Mehinaku Indians, an Amazonian people by observing various aspects of their experience and by relating how these different facets come to play in a stream of ordinary consciousness, a walk to the river. In this way, abstract schemata such as ‘cosmology,’ ‘sociality,’ ‘gender,’ and the ‘everyday’ are understood as they are actually lived.