Past Events

Writing Culture Reading Group

Reading Flora Nwapa

Welcome to the first BIRMAC Writing Culture reading group. The reading group is student-led and will include books suggested by MA and PHD students at or around Birkbeck. This first session is on Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa’s (aka Flora Nwapa) last, posthumous book, “The Lake Goddess“.

We will be reading the book and discussing it with social anthropologist, Professor Paula Uimonen (Stockholm University), as guest. Prof. Uimonen will be referencing her 2020 book, “Invoking Flora Nwapa“, on female authorship in Nigeria and the legacy of Flora Nwapa. All are welcome.

Event time: 19 December, 18:00-21:00 (at the latest)
Location: Hybrid. Online link and registration here

Case studies I: Transnational Memories in East Asia

TRANSNATIONAL MEMORY OF THE SINO-JAPANESE WAR

Seminar online. Registration required. Register here
Thursday 30 March, 3:00-5pm, UTC
Discussant: Michael Tsang (Birkbeck, University of London)

Reading the Transformations of Chinese War of Resistance Museums in the Xi Jinping Era through the Visual Analysis, Marketa Bajgerova (ERC Project “Globalized Memorial Museums”, Austrian Academy of Science and University of Vienna)

The memorialisation of the War of Resistance against Japan has been always linked to the political imaginings of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s leadership. Since 1949, the narrative regarding the war has served as a tool for progression of the leading power’s political objectives, and thus, just like the CCP’s agenda and leadership itself, has been subjected to constant changes. Since Xi Jinping consolidated his power, the memory politics regarding the War of Resistance began to transform again. The contemporary narrative has brought forth a discourse of China’s global victory and national rejuvenation, downsizing the previously overpowering focus on Japanese war atrocities in favour of the focus on triumph, and expanding the international element of the narrative, presenting China as a global victor of World War II. This presentation will focus on how these transformations in memorialisation manifest and materialise visually in three major War of Resistance state-funded museums in China – Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in Beijing, the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders and The Exhibition Hall of the Evidences of Crime committed by the 731st Unit of the Japanese Imperial Army in Harbin. 

Investigating Photography Albums of Japanese Soldiers in North-East China. Methodological and Epistemological Challenges, Jasmin Ruckert (Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf)

This presentation analyses photography albums produced by Japanese soldiers during their employment in North-East China in the period of the 15-year war. After the establishment of ‘Manchukuo’, the Japanese puppet state founded in 1932, and especially after the official commencement of the war with China, Japanese authorities employed photographic propaganda to convince international partners and the Japanese population of the righteousness of the Army’s activities. In contrast, Japanese soldiers (and civilians) used the camera to manufacture souvenirs of their experiences on the continent for themselves. Yet, private photo albums were not merely created through photographing and preserving images, they were products of a creative process of selection and ordering of images and of adding captions, identifying or describing places, people and situations. The albums served – together with the various reporting and illustrations in Japanese magazines to deeply ingrain visual narrative tropes of war and occupation in the minds of a Japanese populace. The presentation traces the adaptation of stylistic elements from propagandistic material and of ideological viewpoints in these hitherto underresearched medium and asks how the albums function as containers of personal and collective memory.

MEMORIAL SITES IN KOREA

Thursday 30 March, 3:00-5pm, UTC
Discussant: Owen Miller (SOAS, University of London)

The Korean War through Women’s Eyes: Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities, Suzy Kim (Rutgers University)

Known as the “forgotten war” in the West, the Korean War (1950-53) is anything but forgotten in Korea. Subjected to brutal aerial bombing by the superior air power of the United States in a “scorched earth” campaign, upwards of 60 to 80 percent of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is estimated to have been destroyed in the three years of the war, including 12-15 percent of the civilian population. In that sense, the entire country could be said to constitute a kind of “ground zero,” but during the brief occupation of North Korea by the US-led UN forces in late 1950, the town of Sinchon has come to be memorialized as the site of gruesome civilian massacres. Built in 1958 only five years after the signing of the armistice, the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities presents the official North Korean view of the Korean War as an interventionist war of aggression waged by US imperialists. Using newly found archival footage of the site filmed during a 1951 visit by a women’s fact-finding commission organized under the auspices of the Women’s International Democratic Federation, this chapter aims to go beyond a simple critique of the site as a form of state propaganda to show why Sinchon endured, not only in official narratives, but in the collective memories of women.

Jeju 4.3 – Postmemory Aesthetics of Museal Images, Hyun Seon Lee (SOAS, University of London)

Jeju 4.3 was the precursor to the Korean War (1950-53). The designation Jeju 4.3 Massacre,Uprising or – Incident is still disputed. From 1 March 1947 through 3 April 1948 to 21 September 1954, the massive operation by the South Korean interim government aimed to crush South Korean communists and sympathisers on Jeju Island, with the cooperation and approval of the US military. It resulted in the deaths of an estimated 30,000 people, or 10% of the population of Jeju at the time. This tragedy, caused by ideological conflicts in modern Korean history, had been subject to silence and oblivion over 50 years. It only became part of official history in October 2003, commemorated in museums such as the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park, one of the most popular sites of dark tourism. Using the visual images of the Jeju 4.3 commemoration and their representation in photography, visual art and documentary, this presentation asks broader questions about the role and aesthetics of commemorative images produced in recent decades by Korean artists of the postmemory generation who did not directly experience the massacre but grew up with the memories of their parents’ generation. Special attention will be paid to the autobiographical documentary by Korean diaspora auteurs – Soup and Ideology (2021) by Yang Younghi and Reiterations of Dissent (2013) by Jane Jin Kaisen, focusing on the ways in which women filmmakers remember and document Jeju 4.3 and how they challenge the existing forms and politics of commemoration.

Transnational Memory of the Sino-Japanese War

Seminar online. Registration required. Register here
Thursday 30 March, 3:00-5pm, UTC
Discussant: Michael Tsang (Birkbeck, University of London)

MEMORIAL SITES IN KOREA

Thursday 30 March, 3:00-5pm, UTC
Discussant: Owen Miller (SOAS, University of London)

Read more about our Memorial Sites: Acts of Remembering through visual culture series here

Memorial sites: echoes of the Holocaust in Asia

Tuesday, 7th March, 10am-12pm, UTC+1
Discussant: Professor Astrid Erll (Founder of Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform, Goethe University)

Join us for the second in the series on memory, acts of remembering and place organised by B fellow, Marcos Centeno. This second seminar includes two presentations and a discussion on: The Long Journey from the atrocity paradigm to cultural heritage: Discovering S-21, Building Tuol Sleng, with Professor Vincente Sánchez-Biosca (PI Repecri, University of Valencia), and
The Holocaust in a Chinese Mirror – reflections on Shanghai’s Jewish Refugees Museum, with Professor Edward Vickers (UNESCO Chair on Education for Peace, Social Justice and Global Citizenship, Kyushu University, Japan).
This seminar is online. Registration required. Please, register here.

Memorial sites. Acts of remembering through media and visual culture.

Algorithmic Memory: Digital Media and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Joel McKim (Birkbeck, University of London)

Friday 24 February 4-5pm, UTC
Join series organiser & BIRMAC fellow, Marcos Centeno, and Senior Lecturer, Joel McKim (Birkbeck), for the first in a series of seminars on memory, acts of remembering and place. This talk will discuss the significant presence of digital media at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, focusing particularly on the interactive design work of Jake Barton and his studio Local Projects. Through concepts of mediated intimacy, algorithmic memory, and digital engagement, the talk will consider the ways in which forms of computational logic and digital interactivity are transforming the surfaces and interfaces of the traditional memory museum. It will argue that Local Project’s media interventions into the space of the museum present the potential for a productive confrontation with the complexities of post-9/11 memory, while also acknowledging that the studio’s vision for a collaborative and even contested engagement with the past is only partially realized at Ground Zero.

Free event, registration required. Register here.

Part of the Memorial Sites series of events

Decolonial Feminist Forum – Let’s talk about Documenta 15

5 – 6.30 pm, 30 September 2022, Online

As Documenta 15 draws to a close, possibly to be remembered as the controversial iteration of this significant exhibition, we invite you to discuss the actual content of the exhibition (as opposed to its problems or omissions which dominated its coverage), its curatorial approach and the radical departure from the traditional exhibition format, introduced by ruangrupa’s curatorship. In this first iteration of Documenta to be curated by a collective, we witnessed a series of functional networks or nodes, invited by ruanrgupa and fourteen other collectives, mostly from the global south. In this hub of activity, individual authorship took a back seat counting few recognisable artists’ names and instead opening up propositions for organising and collective action.

The DFF is an informal forum, with no hierarchies, no formal presentations and no necessary preparation. It is a conversation. We will show some images from Documenta 15, as a backdrop for a discussion.

Installation shot, Documenta Halle, Image: Lina Dzuverovic ©2022

What does a free, democratically run university look like? 

Thursday 15th September 2022 , 2-4 pm, Keynes Library, Birkbeck 

A talk about the Universidad de la República, Uruguay with Birkbeck School of Arts Honorary Research Fellow Prof Ana Laura López de la Torre
This was an in-person event.

This event will also be a fund raiser for the UCU Birkbeck Hardship fund, so please bring cash for the food stall!

The event is hosted by Dr Sophie Hope in collaboration with UCU Birkbeck and Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture (BIRMAC).

About the event:

The Universidad de la República is the public university of Uruguay. Founded in 1849, it enrols over 150 thousand students annually. It offers free tuition at undergraduate and postgraduate level in all disciplines and fields of knowledge. Although fully funded by the state, the autonomy of the university’s governance was enshrined in a national law in 1958 following 20 years of organised action by students.

All academic activity is organised under 3 essential functions: teaching, research and extensión. This last function – loosely translated as ‘outreach’ – is a distinctive element of the Latin-American university movement. Extensión mandates public universities to serve society and the public good. Over the years, the way this has been interpreted and put in practice has changed alongside ideas of democracy, equality, social justice and inclusion. Today, ‘critical extensión’ is a complex field of theoretical and methodological innovation, connected to the fields of critical pedagogy, southern epistemologies and decolonial thought.

Read more here

Multispecies Encounters – Barbican visit and reading group

5-8pm, Tuesday 26th July 2022

“One species among millions of others, striving to live together in a delicate balance. It’s a vital connection, and one we can’t afford to lose.” This is the tagline of ongoing exhibition, Our Time on Earth, at the Barbican. Featuring 18 international artists, the exhibition speaks to a more-than-human experience of the world. This exhibition presents a grand narrative in response to catastrophic climate change. 

BIRMAC and the Environmental Humanities hub invite you to join us on a visit to the exhibition where we view it not only through our own lens, but through the work of feminist scholar, Isabelle Stengers and her work, In Catastrophic Times. 

We ask you to think of our time on earth as catastrophic, for any number of reasons. We also invite you to read the exhibition through the work of Zakiyyah Iman Jackson (in Wilcox 2022) and her work on plasticity and anti-blackness to highlight the process of racialisation that in ongoing in some multispecies work. Finally, we take inspiration from Adrienne Maree Brown in looking for ways forward and inspiration for thinking beyond Our Time on Earth.

Read more here.

Recovering Pasts, Producing Futures: Reimagining archival research and practice

22 June 2022, 2-3.30pm, Keynes Library

BIRMAC sponsored panel, School of Arts Doctoral Conference 2022

Working in and with archives is always about more than recovering or discovering the past; it also entails producing or shaping various futures, both by accident and design. This panel explores this productive tension, bringing together researchers engaged in the implications of the archive in both theory and practice.

Organised as part of the FMACS Doctoral-Led Conference, and sponsored by Birkbeck Interdisclinary Research in Media and Culture (BIRMAC), this interdisciplinary panel will provide the space to explore questions pertaining to memory, temporality, ideologies, counter-archives, and the production of present and future histories through archival practice.

This call is for research students across the School of Arts. Areas of interest include curatorial practice and museology; born-digital and audio-visual archives; archival ordering and medial logic; internet (as) archive; notions of play; remixing and image circulation; memory transmission; loss and absence. We welcome proposals that engage with these themes, archival and counter-archival thinking, and methodological approaches to studying archives.

Chair: Dr Silke Arnold-de Simine, Panel presenters: Sean Cham, Katherine MItchell. Raquel Morris, Selena Robertson.

Organised by Katherine Mitchell.

Digital archives: tools, ethics and issues of materiality

6th May, 1:30pm-3:00pm, Online

Archives in Pandemic-stricken times, workshop 02

Digital archives: tools, ethics and issues of materiality

Register for this event here

Join Dr Eleni Liarou and an international panel of academics, Dr Emily Bell, Dr. Joseph John Viscomi and Dr. Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, will lead the second workshop and they will present their work in relation to digitisation and new research tools, the politics of data archives and the relationship between archives and historical materiality.

Read more here

Decolonial Feminist Forum – Decolonising the Museum

5pm, 29 April 2022, Online

In this session focussed on the recent lecture ‘Decolonizing the Museum?’ by  Françoise Vergès, a French political scientist, antiracist and decolonial feminist activist. She is the cofounder of the French association ‘Decolonize the Arts’ and the author of  A Decolonial Feminism (2021).  Her work focuses on postcolonial studies and decolonial feminism.

The digital archive: definitions, challenges and implications

Archives in Pandemic-stricken times, workshop 01

11am-12:30pm, 4th March 2022, Online

Register for this event here

Join Dr Eleni Liarou and workshop speakers, Hannah Ishmael (Black Cultural Archives, Collections and Research Manager)Mark Duguid (British Film Institute, Senior Curator), and Jake Berger (BBC Executive Product Manager, BBC Archive), who will discuss current challenges and opportunities for public archives such as the BCA, BFI and the BBC.

Read more here

Decolonial Feminist Forum – ‘Love is an action: never simply a feeling’

5pm, 25 February 2022, Online

In this session we reflected on the enormous significance of the work of the recently-departed American author, professor, feminist, and social activist bell hooks. Participants were sent several links and were invited to select a quote from one of the talks (or a text) and bring it to the session along with personal comments about their choice.  

Book here.

The Friday Club

11 am – 2 pm, 24th February 2022, Online

Image: Rebekah Cupitt ©2019

Welcome to The Friday Club. Join us every last Friday of the month for The Friday Club group writing sessions. Each meeting is designed to help the busy scholar dedicate time and focus to a piece of writing that stubbornly refuses to be written, a draft that is driving you crazy, a grant application that needs some finesse, or even that thesis that just won’t take form. For more info and to book.

Book Launch: What Will Be Already Exists – Temporalities of Cold War Archives in East-Central Europe and Beyond

4 – 6.30 pm, Friday, 11 February 2022, Online

BIRMAC in association with Artpool, is delighted to celebrate the launch of ‘What Will Be Already Exists’, an edited volume emerging from a conference organised around Artpool’s 40th anniversary, published by Transcript Verlag in 2021.

The book includes texts by Emese Kürti / Zsuzsa László (eds.) with essays by Zdenka Badovinac, Judit Bodor-Roddy Hunter, David Crowley, Lina Džuverović, Daniel Grún, Emese Kürti, Karolina Majewska-Güde, Kristine Stiles, Sven Spieker and Tomasz Zaluski. More information.

Invited respondents, art scholar, critic, and curator Ieva Astahovska (Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga, Latvia) and art historian and curator, Cristian Nae (George Enescu National University of Arts, Iasi, Romania), will offer their responses to the publication, which will be followed by a panel discussion with the editors and a number of contributors. Chaired by Dr Sophie Hope (Department of Film Media and Cultural Studies, Birkbeck College).

And Others: The Gendered Politics and Practices of Art Collectives

BIRMAC and Art Monthly, in association with Electra present a series of four online panel conversations

Participants: Ximena Alarcón-Díaz, Felicity Allen, Carla Cruz, Fabiola Fiocco, Karolina Majewska Guede, Lily Hall, Manual Labours, Kuda.org/Zoran Pantelić, Kirsten Lloyd, Chris McCormack, Gerrie van Noord, Helena Reckitt, Irene Revell, Marina Rosenfeld, Katja Praznik, Abhijan Toto, Jelena Vesić.

All talks will be held online via MS Teams, booking details for each event below.

BIRMAC and Art Monthly, in association with Electra present a series of four online panel conversations.

Current enthusiasm towards collectivity within the artworld, including within prize-giving culture, harbours a certain romanticising of collectives, a simplification of collective practice suggesting that collective work—be it artistic, curatorial, or within an arts organisation—is somehow automatically emancipatory and egalitarian, that collectivity by its very nature preserves the promise of equality and inclusivity. But the reality of working collectively is filled with challenges and those working collectively are no less vulnerable to exploitation than individual cultural workers.  

Building on two months of asynchronous collective writing, involving seventeen participants, the panellists consider how we might write, think, read and practice together through other means.

Panel One: Labour, Value and Social Reproduction

Monday 31 October, 7pm GMT

Discussants: Fabiola Fiocco, Katja Praznik, Karolina Majewska-Güde, Kirsten Lloyd, Jelena Vesić, Moderator: Lina Džuverović.

Panel Two: Why collaborate? Network Formation, Reproduction, Access

Thursday 10 November, 6pm GMT

Discussants: Carla Cruz, Lily Hall, Abhijan Toto, Felicity Allen, Manual Labours, Moderator: Lina Džuverović

Panel Three: Is Ephemerality Freedom?

Friday 18 November, 6pm GMT

Discussants: Ximena Alarcón-Díaz, Kuda.org/Zoran Pantelic, Irene Revell, Marina Rosenfeld. Moderator: Lina Džuverović

Panel Four: ‘The Third Hand’—Claire, Bernadette and Friends

Thursday 1 December, 7pm GMT

Discussants: Helena Reckitt, Chris McCormack, Gerrie van Noord, Moderator: Lina Džuverović

Further information about the project can be found here.

Funded by Open Society University Network, Centre for Arts and Human Rights at Bard College.

Archives in Pandemic Times

Workshop 02

Digitising the archive: matters of materiality

6th May, 1:30pm-3:00pm, Online

Register for this event here [coming soon]

Join Dr Eleni Liarou and an international panel of academics, Dr Emily Bell, Dr. Joseph John Viscomi and Dr. Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, will lead the second workshop and they will present their work in relation to digitisation and new research tools, the politics of data archives and the relationship between archives and historical materiality.

Read more here

Holograms in the Museum

This event is held in collaboration with the Vasari Research Centre

 

Friday 1 March 2019 | 18:30-20:00

Keynes Library, School of Arts Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD

 

Today the term “hologram” is often used to describe a wide variety of three- dimensional and virtual imagery, generated by technologies ranging from Pepper’s ghosts to augmented reality. Museums and galleries are increasingly using these technologies to reanimate the past, create interactive visitor experiences and offer access to absent or fragile artefacts.

Beyond the initial excitement of these dazzling holographic spectacles, this event creates an opportunity to consider the aesthetic, ethical and technical questions raised by these practices. Why are holograms so popular as a means to reanimate history and culture? How do they alter existing practices of memory and memorialisation? What are our responsibilities when using holograms to reanimate people? How do holograms affect our temporal relationships with people, objects and artefacts? Why has holography become a metaphor for so many types of virtual experience?

This interdisciplinary discussion brings together animators, designers and media and cultural studies scholars to consider the changing significance of holograms in artistic and cultural practice.

The event will feature presentations from Chris Walker and Nick Lambert, Jazz Rasool and Mike Smith, followed by a panel discussion chaired by Dr. Silke Arnold-de Simine, Reader in Memory, Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College.

The discussion is free to attend but booking is encouraged.

This event coincides with the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci and Perpetual Motion: Visualising Impossible Machines, which is taking place in the Peltz Gallery from 6 February to 12 March 2019.

Prior to the discussion, there will also be an opportunity to experience the Holo Lens animation of da Vinci’s designs in the Peltz Gallery from 5pm.

Speakers’ bios :

Dr Nick Lambert is Director of Research at Ravensbourne University London. He studies art and technology, and the position of the digital medium in contemporary art and visual culture. Through this, he engages with questions about the boundary between “fine” and “applied” arts, design and interfaces. Lambert has written on the history of computer art and cutates exhibitions with artists and theorists in this field. He has also developed interests in the evolution of immersive visual technologies, especially full dome; and exhibited his immersive artworks in New York, London and elsewhere.

Jazz Rasool has a background in Science, Computing and Teaching. He is currently a Researcher at Ravensbourne University London (RUL) specialising in Technology Enhanced Education. His most recent work contributed to a €3m EU funded project creating Holographic (Hololens) workplace training for Air Ambulance crew in the Arctic as well as Astronaut trainers in Italy working with International Space Station and Mars missions. In 2018 he won a €30,000 first prize from Farfetch, the world’s 4th largest online fashion retailer, for Disruptive Innovation in Fashion, competing against 50 other companies globally, with his winning idea presenting technology for Holographic projection of fashion on people.

Mike Smith is a creative content provider, animator, educator and visual storyteller, specializing in heritage, theatre and public installations. His expertise, as an animator and visual effects artist, allow him to provide these sectors with the standard of visualization and storytelling expected in the film and entertainment industries.

Chris Walker is the Managing Director of Bright White; a creative design consultancy based in York, England. Bright White formed in 2004. Their mission is to engage the next generation with the riches of the past and present, to help them live and learn. Bright White believe in learning by doing; giving the audience real agency to explore a subject, sparking their interest, creating memorable moments and, in the process, learning without labour.

If you have any additional access requirements, or questions about the event, please get in touch with Dr. Lizzie Johnson, at elizabeth.johnson@bbk.ac.uk

Curated by Dr Lizzie Johnson (Vasari Research Centre) and Dr Silke Arnold-de Simine (Birkbeck)

This event is funded by the Vasari Research Centre at Birkbeck, University of London