Title: Science and the Nation
Location: E:vent Gallery
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2009-05-29

Speakers: Revital Cohen, Martin Conreen, Emily Dawson, Anna Dumitriu, Ben Johnson, Kira O’Reilly & Janet Smith, Rob La Frenais, Brendan Walker

Guest curated by Tobie Kerridge & Elio Caccavale

Science and the Nation is the title of a book collectively written by the Association of Scientific Workers and published in 1947, offering a rousing appeal for the transformation of post-war Britain:

“Scientists can only make things possible, but it is the responsibility of every citizen to get things done”.

Tired of waiting for the green shoots of recovery from our contemporary crisis? Come and hear alternative manifestos for Science and the Nation from key interdisciplinary practitioners.

Title: CHE: PART TWO
Location: Rio Cinema (Friday 20 February for 1 week)
Description: Benicio Del Toro masterfully reprises his role as revolutionary Guevara in this, the darker half of Soderbergh’s superb biopic. Following the Cuban Revolution, Che disappears at the height of his fame and power, re-emerging in Bolivia as he attempts to bring his ideas of freedom to the rest of Latin America. But unable to drum up the levels of support that led to success in Cuba the attempt fails, bringing forth Che’s downfall. This is a much more painful tale of determination and sacrifice, bringing Che’s story and life to a close but offering an understanding of his legacy, and why he became, and remains, a symbol of idealism to millions around the world.
Date: 2009-02-20

Title: SANG BLEU launch
Location: Cafe Oto, Dalston

Description: Finally, Sang Bleu is returning home and launching ISSUE III/IV in the big LDN!
Come and show some skin, some love whatever else you got! Live (& loud) music by Queen of Swords & guests!
Start Time: 20:00
Date: 2009-02-20

Title: # Lars Müller # Communicating Architecture
Location: ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION
Description: The lecture will investigate the potentials of the book as a medium for the communication of architecture. Editorial conditions and design rules have changed since the challenges of digital media emerged. Lars Müller will analyse the structural and functional differences between analogue and digital media and their abilities and limits in the expression and communication of architectural atmosphere. His evaluation will focus on the book and its exclusive attributes and will feature its characteristics as an object and its materials, the structure, the content and the handling of text and image.

Lars Müller is founder of Lars Müller Publishers, known for books on design, art, photography and architecture on, among others, Peter Zumthor, Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron and Steven Holl. Recently, it has expanded its catalogue to include social and political subjects. The Face of Human Rights and Who Owns the Water? are examples of publishing as a democratic and humanistic effort. Müller teaches a course entitled Communicating Architecture at Harvard University.
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2009-02-19

* image found on Lars Müller Publishers website

Title: Joseph Grigely — Exhibition Prosthetics
Location: ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION
Description: ‘Exhibition Prosthetics’ is a term used to describe a loosely ordered array of exhibition conventions. These conventions include labels, titles, checklists, exhibition announcements, press releases, and catalogues; and in some instances, exhibition publications that manifest themselves outside the physical space of the gallery. In this respect, moving closer to the artwork involves moving away from the artwork – to look closer at fringes and margins and representations, and ask what seems to be a very fundamental question: to what extent are these various exhibition conventions actually part of the art – and not merely an extension of it? How might it be that ‘art’ is subsumed by the various representations that we make for it? This talk will focus on situations in which the representations are art – not merely re-presentations of art.

Artist Joseph Grigely’s lecture ‘Exhibition Prosthetics’ is the first in the Excursus lecture and publication series initiated by Bedford Press, a small-scale private press and publisher operating under the auspices of the Architectural Association.
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2009-02-18

Bedford Press: Excursus Series
Artist Joseph Grigely’s lecture Exhibition Prosthetics is the first in the Excursus lecture and publication series is initiated by Bedford Press, a small-scale private press and publisher operating under the auspices of the Architectural Association.

Exhibition Prosthetics, Joseph Grigely
Exhibition Prosthetics is a term used to describe a loosely ordered array of exhibition conventions. These conventions include labels, titles, checklists, exhibition announcements, press releases, and catalogues; and in some instances, exhibition publications that manifest themselves outside the physical space of the gallery. In this respect, moving closer to the artwork involves moving away from the artwork–to look closer at fringes and margins and representations, and ask what seems to me a very fundamental question: to what extent are these various exhibition conventions actually part of the art–and not merely an extension of it? How might it be that ‘art’ is subsumed by the various representations that we make for it?  This talk will focus on situations in which the representations are art–not merely re-presentations of art.

Title: Le Corbusier - The Art of Architecture
Location: Barbican Art Gallery
Date: 2009-02-19

Title: It’s not for reading. It’s for making
Location: 51–63 Ridley Road, London E8 2NP (http://www.formcontent.org/)
Description: A reflection on collecting and archiving with interventions by Luca Frei, Edgar Schmitz, Charlotte Moth, Guestroom, Raymond Taudin Chabot, Matteo Terzaghi & Marco Zürcher
12 February – 5 April 2009
Date: 2009-02-14

Title: The Ideology of the ‘Iconic’
Location: ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION
Description: Love her or loathe her’ says Kirsty Wark of Madonna, ‘you cannot underestimate the impact she has had on music, or her iconic status.’
The word ‘iconic’ might be the best way into a discussion of where postmodernism’s collapse of high and low has led us: to a situation in which opting out of mass market phenomena simply isn’t considered to be an option. The ‘iconic’ as an ideology means that, regardless of taste, we all have to pay attention to – and analyse, preferably in a sub-Barthesian manner infused with terms like ‘guilty pleasures’ and ‘getting my fix’ – a new canon in which commercial status and cultural status are one and the same thing. As a result, even in the academy quantitative terms have swamped qualitative ones, and criticism – co-opted and confounded by the comforting repetitions of celebrity culture and PR – is in crisis. As we approach the end of this postmodern tyranny, Momus signals what he calls Unpop as one possible exit strategy.

Momus is a singer, writer and artist living in Berlin. As well as 18 albums of ‘disorienteering’ pop music, he’s written for Wired, Frieze, and has a weekly design and culture slot on the website of the New York Times. His first novel, The Book of Jokes, will appear in 2009, when Sternberg will also publish his Book of Scotlands, a piece of speculative non-fiction listing 1000 parallel world Scotlands.

Future guests in the ‘Pop and Populism’ Lecture series include Sam Jacob.

Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2008-10-14