Join us for a Lecture by Professor and Cultural Critic Steven Shaviro

FERRETS ON CRYSTAL METH:
POST-CONTINUITY AND POST-IRONY IN CONTEMPORARY FILM

                      Still from Domino (2005), Dir. Tony Scott

Friday, March 15
1pm
3222 Angell Hall

This talk will look at recent shifts in style and mood in moving-image media. By “post-continuity,” I refer to recent trends in Hollywood cinema in which the traditional anchoring by means of continuity editing has become less important than a kind of immanent affective organization of the narrative in terms of moments of transition and shock. One can see this in a number of post-2000 action blockbusters by directors such as the late Tony Scott, but also in various unusual styles of low-budget independent filmmaking. By “post-irony,” I refer more to a change in tone and mood than in one of stylistics: the tendency, found in certain recent art pictures and low-budget exploitation pictures alike, to move beyond the “postmodern” cynicism and irony regarding the proliferation of simulacra in the late 20th century, to a new kind of ontological reckoning with such developments.

Dr. Shaviro is the DeRoy Professor of English at Wayne State University, where he teaches courses on literature, film, and contemporary cultural theory.
His books include: Connected, Or, What It Means to Live in the Network Society (2003), DoomPatrols:  A Theoretical Fiction About Postmodernism (1997), and The Cinematic Body (1993).

Lunch will be served
Please RSVP to Katie Lennard: Klennard@umich.edu

State of Exception

The VCW is working on some exciting events for this semester.

In the meantime, go see the provocative exhibition, State of Exception at the Institute for Humanities Gallery, 202 S. Thayer.

“This exhibition presents traces of the human experience–backpacks, water bottles, border patrol restrains, and other objects left behind in the desert by undocumented migrants on their journey into the U.S. This in combination with video shot by Richard Barnes on location along the U.S./Mexico border comprises State of Exception, the first major curation of the work of U-M anthropologist Jason De León’s Undocumented Migration project. This collaboration between artist/photographer Richard Barnes, De León, and curator Amanda Krugliak considers the complexity and ambiguity of the found objects and what they may or may not reveal in terms of transition, human experience, culture, violence, and accountability.”

Tomorrow! Visual Cultures of Emancipation: A Gallery Tour of “Proclaiming Emancipation” with curators Martha Jones and Clayton Lewis

Visual Cultures of Emancipation

A Gallery Tour of “Proclaiming Emancipation” with curators Martha Jones and Clayton Lewis

Hatcher Library Gallery 100

Monday, November 26

2-3 pm

The exhibition “Proclaiming Emancipation” examines debates surrounding the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 through a visual framework, helping contemporary viewers to see how massive social change was envisioned, challenged, and enacted by Americans as part of their everyday lives.Spanning a wide range of media, our tour will examine photographs, lithographs, pantings, journal, and sculpture, in order to see how such various visual perspectives on this period offer us new insights into the study of an historical phenomenon.

Please join the Visual Culture Workshop for a tour and discussion of this exciting exhibition! We look forward to having a wide range of disciplinary perspectives in our discussion of both the materials at hand, and the process of curation as a tool for scholarly inquiry.

Please RSVP to Katie Lennard

klennard@umich.edu

 

Proclaiming Emancipation is presented by the Law School’s Program in Race, Law & History and the William L. Clements Library, in cooperation with the Hatcher Graduate Library.

Monday October 29th

The Visual Culture Workshop presents

a panel discussion:

 Curating for Non-Curators

 

L to R: Vietnam War Memorial (c Smithsonian Institution); First editions (collectorsweekly.com); Carte de visite (Special Collections, University of Texas); Slave chains (Slave Relics Museum, Walterboro, SC); George Vargas, “1949 Chevy” (Latinos in Michigan, UM Bentley Historical Library)

Monday, October 29th from 2:30-4 p.m.

3222  Angell Hall

How and why do humanities scholars & social scientists engage with images and visual objects as part of their teaching and research?  How can the project of displaying, conserving, or exhibiting visual or digital objects enhance disciplinary & interdisciplinary work in contexts that aren’t typically focused on the visual?  What new questions & possibilities come into view for scholars who make curating part of their practice? What kinds of challenges does such work pose?

Please join us for an informal panel featuring Sara Blair (English) Maria Cotera (American Culture, Latino/a Studies, Women’s Studies), Nan Z. Da (English), Kristin Haas (American Culture), and Martha Jones (Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, Law School).

Refreshments will be served; PLEASE RSVP to klennard@umich.edu, so we can provide sufficient quantities.

Don’t miss this opportunity to join us for lively discussion and exchange!

Welcome Back

The Visual Culture Workshop is returning for 2012-2013.

We’re hoping to see you soon!

Monday April 9, 2012

Exhibiting Community:
A Conversation with Ellen Hartwell Alderman and Jennifer Garcia Peacock
Monday April 9, 2012
3512 Haven Hall
4-5:30 pm

Please join us for a conversation with two curators/scholars/activists who use exhibition as a way to envision, explore, and expand their own communities.

Currently a PhD candidate in American Culture here at UM, Jennifer Garcia Peacock’s scholarship is intimately bound with her involvement in the creation of El Museo del Norte in Southwest Detroit, a grassroots museum and cultural center celebrating Latina/os historical presence in Michigan.

Ellen Hartwell Alderman is a Chicago-based curator and creative programmer for the Graham Foundation, a major arts nonprofit in Chicago committed to fostering new ways of thinking about the role of architecture in society. When not at the Graham, she is busy running an independent gallery space, Alderman Exhibitions, in Chicago’s West Loop.

The VCW is bringing together two individuals who operate both inside and outside major arts and academic organizations in order to have a frank and lively discussion about the role of community within contemporary exhibition practices. Each curator/scholar will provide insight into the ways that different kinds of institutions support and produce cultural knowledge, and the generative potential of locating a scholarly or creative practice between several of these sites.  Please bring any questions you may have about the process of founding or developing an alternative exhibition space, or the challenges of running an arts organization.

Light Refreshments will be served.
Please RSVP to klennard@umich.edu

“Flix Remix: From Compilation Doc to Culture-Jam,” a presentation by Craig Baldwin

The Visual Culture Workshop

invites you to attend

“Flix Remix: From Compilation Doc to Culture-Jam”

a presentation by

 

Craig Baldwin

Tuesday, March 27

at 1pm 

in Angell Hall 3222

Refreshments will be served

Please RSVP to akivag@umich.edu or klennard@umich.edu

Craig Baldwin is a filmmaker, curator, publisher, and educator from San Francisco, California, who is visiting Ann Arbor for a series of screenings and to deliver the Penny W. Stamps Memorial Lecture. He is the director of seven 16mm ‘found-footage’ films–among them Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America and Sonic Outlaws–that are driven by an energized montage of found, archival, and original material. His own approach to the ‘collage-essay’ has been influenced by both the West Coast ‘Funk Assemblage’ aesthetic of Bruce Conner and also the Situationist practice of ‘detournement‘, and his technique has developed from a sort of long-form culture-jam to a more narratively driven political satire. He will lead a discussion about his personal artistic practice, his 25-year microcinema curatorial/exhibition project Other Cinema, his international DVD-publishing initiative OCD, and their positions within the larger experimental/underground film movement.

 

Baldwin is currently a professor at the University of California at Davis. His works have been screened at the New York Film Festival, the Musee du Louvre, and the Whitney Biennial.