New Media and Global Transformations, Columbia, October 9

An all-day event with an exciting program is being held at Columbia on Friday October 9, check out the schedule here:

http://columbianewmedia.org/

CCC social get-together, Wed, Sep 30m 9pm

CCC is hosting a social get-together for graduate students and junior faculty members in communications and related areas at the Magician on the Lower East Side, 118 Rivington Street, Wednesday September 30, 9 p.m. onwards.

Exit Capitalism, Simon During, Oct 1

Thursday, 01 October 2009, 6PM
Wollman Hall (Eugene Lang College)
65 W. 11th St., 5th Floor (enter 66 W. 12th St.)
free, open to the public

Simon During
Exit Capitalism

Exit Capitalism explores a new path for cultural studies and re-examines
key moments of British cultural and literary history. Simon During
argues that the long and liberating journey towards democratic state
capitalism has led to an unhappy dead-end from which there is no
imaginable exit. In this context, what do the humanities look like?
What’s alive and what’s dead in the culture and its heritage? It
becomes clear that the contemporary world order remains imperfect not
just because it is unjust but because it cannot meet ethical standards
produced in a past that still knew genuine hope. Simon During emphasizes
the need to rethink the position of Christianity and religion in the
past, and at a more concrete level, also analyzes how the decline of the
socialist ideal and the emergence of endgame capitalism helped to
produce both modern theory and cultural studies as academic fields.

Simon During came to Hopkins in 2002 from the University of Melbourne.
His most recent book is Cultural Studies: a Critical Introduction
(Routledge 2005). He is also author of Modern Enchantments: the cultural
power of secular magic (Harvard 2002) which examines the broad cultural
effects of entertainment magic. His previous books are Foucault and
Literature (Routledge 1993), and Patrick White (Oxford 1998). He is the
editor of the Cultural Studies Reader (Routledge 1993 and 1998) and has
also written on postcolonial/globalisation theory and British literature
in the period 1760-1900. Currently he is pursuing research projects on
the literature of settler colonialism and on the history of literary
subjectivity in Britain 1750-1950.

Slavoj Zizek, Miguel Abreu Gallery, October 7

Slavoj Žižek: The Political Parallax

Date: October 7, 2009

Time: 7:30pm

Location: Miguel Abreu Gallery

36 Orchard Street

RSVP REQUIRED.  SEATING IS AVAILABLE ON A FIRST-COME, FIRST-SERVE BASIS AND IS LIMITED TO 85 PEOPLE.

CONFIRMATIONS WILL BE SENT TO THE FIRST 85 RSVP’S ONLY.

RSVP to post@miguelabreugallery.com

A Lacanian Ink Event Free Admission

Etienne Balibar at Columbia, October 1

“Secularism and Cosmopolitanism”, a talk by Étienne Balibar

Date: October 1, 2009

Time: 4:00 – 6:00pm

Location: Columbia University

Masion Française, Buell Hall, East Gallery

This event is free, and open to the public.  For more information, please contact Maison Events by sending an email to maisoncoordinator@columbia.edu

Étienne Balibar, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the Sorbonne and Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the University of California, Irvine, is one of the most influential interdisciplinary thinkers alive today.  A powerful critic of the present, he has written with unique and prophetic eloquence about the links between racism, nationalism, and the plight of non-European immigrants in a newly unified Europe.

“The New Everyday”, unconference at NYU, Friday October 2

The New Everyday event on Friday October 2.

The unconference is at the Humanities Institute, 20 Cooper Square 5th floor, New York, NY 10003. It’s right behind Cooper Union facing the fancy new Cooper Hotel. Nearest subways are Astor Place (6) and 8th St (NR)

The agenda is as follows:

9.30 Coffee. registration (free)

10.00 Introduction

10.15 Five Minute Presentations (22! in total)

12.30 Lunch

1.30 Long Table

3.00 Keynote listener Arjun Appadurai

4.00 Wrap up and look ahead

Wine reception follows immediately

Changing Labor Value, at New School

Short notice, but interesting panel, at the New School this Tuesday, with McKenzie Wark, Andrew Ross, Richard Sennett,  and Tiziana Terranova.

***********

NEL DISCUSSION & ART INSTALLATION
Changing Labor Value
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Panel: 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.
Installation: 5:30 to 9:00 p.m.
The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor, New York City
Admission: $8, free for all students, New School faculty, staff and alumni with valid ID
www.veralistcenter.org

Words Without Pictures

Drawing from critical perspectives on labor, social media, political theory, this panel discussion addresses the nature of the work of Internet users and networked workers, focusing on the relationship between invisible labor, play, exploitation, pleasure, and the production of value. What constitutes work in the digital era? What are some alternatives to the seamless corporate expropriation of value from millions of net users? Is it possible to acknowledge the moments of ruthless exploitation while not eradicating optimism, inspiration, and the many instances of individual financial and political empowerment?

As annotations to the panel, several web-based projects will be installed in the same lecture hall from 5:30 p.m. onwards through the evening.

This event is presented as a prelude to “The Internet as Playground and Factory,” a conference organized by Eugene Lang faculty member Trebor Scholz that will take place at Eugene Lang College (The New School), from November 12 to 14, 2009 (www.digitallabor.org). The conference will address the massive transformations in economy, labor, and life related to digital media and confront the urgent need to interrogate what constitutes labor and value in the digital economy.

Moderator:
McKenzie Wark, Associate Professor, Chair of Media Studies and Associate Dean of Eugene Lang College

Panelists:
Andrew Ross, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University and author of the recently published collection of essays, Nice Work if You Can Get It
Richard Sennett, Professor of Sociology, New York University and author of The Craftsman
Tiziana Terranova, Associate Professor of Sociology of Communications, Università di Napoli “L’Orientale” and author of Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age

Artist projects by:
Burak Arikan
Scott Kildall
Ursula Endlicher
Stephanie Rothenberg and Jeff Crouse
and others

Image: Stephanie Rothenberg and Jeff Crouse, Invisible Threads/Double Happiness Jeans (2008)

Presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2009/2010 program theme “Speculating on Change.”

Memefactory, Oct. 9

Note: This event comes warmly recommended by Biella Coleman, who knows what she is talking about.

*****************MEMEFACTORY***********************************************

WHAT:  Memefactory is a performance for anyone who uses the internet. Whether you are perplexed by pictures of cats with awful spelling or spend over 9000 hours a week surfing image boards, we promise you’ll either learn something or explode from overexposure to lulz.

Three gentlemen with three computers and three projectors take the audience on a fast-paced and whirlwind tour of every major internet meme, famous piece of internet media and more YouTube footage that we care to admit over the course of one and one half of one hour. Biologist Richard Dawkins defines as meme as a unit of cultural transmission – in the general sense a meme can be any piece of information which travels between members of culture – for us, however, memes involve funny pictures of cats and people doing silly dances.

WHEN: October 9 7:30-9:00.

WHERE:  Warren Weaver Hall RM 109, http://cs.nyu.edu/web/Location/directions.html (Free and Open to the Public)

WHO: What We Know So Far http://www.whatweknowsofar.com/

WHY: Because it is not another academic lecture but lively performance filled with nothing but insight and humor for die-hard Internet memeologists and newbies alike. Take the plunge with the memefactory!

SPONSORED: Free Culture NYU, Council on Culture and Media, Center for Religion and Media, Evan Korth’s Computer and Society Class, Gabriella Coleman’s Hacker Culture and Politics Class.

Workshop on projection, with Zizek, NYU, Sep 25 & 26

“The workshop will discuss elements of the concept of projection ranging from the erection of authority, via concepts of depth and evil, racism and hatred, to questions of media theory. From the beginning, projection was conceived as analogous to cinematography; the gaze of man was described as a projector of wishes and anxieties, good and bad internal objects onto the world, which paradoxically first comes into being through this process.”

Program: http://www.nyu.edu/deutscheshaus/email/Inside.pdf

Keynote: Slavoj Žižek

Participants: Elisabeth Bronfen (University of Zurich), Achim Geisenhanslüke (Regensburg University), Hans-Christian von Herrmann
(University of Jena), Martin von Koppenfels (Bielefeld University), Inka Mülder-Bach (Ludwig-Maximilians- University /Munich), Avital Ronell (NYU)

Tim Lenoir at NYU, Sep 23

Emergence: A Massively Multiplayer Online Game Environment for Building Cultural Diplomacy

September 23, 2009, 12-1:30 pm

Speaker: Tim Lenoir

Location:  Polytechnic Institute of NYU, JAB 774

September 23, 2009 – 12:00pm – 1:30pm

* Location:Jacobs Academic Building, 774
Six MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, New York, US
* Contact:Myles W. Jackson, Ph.D.
mjackson@poly.edu

In this new era of international diplomacy and cooperation the time is right for a new approach to winning the hearts and minds of young people around the globe. Tim Lenoir, Jenkins Chair for New Technologies in Society, Duke University, will present work underway on a game project that breaks with violence and seeks to engage an increasingly more socially aware generation of gamers schooled in games such as World of Warcraft, Halo3, Gears of War.

Emergence is a new breed of game in which the social, intellectual, and narrative complexity of gameplay rivals the appeal of combat, a game in which the mastery of diplomatic, economic, and social dynamics pays greater dividends than the exercise of brute force, a game in which the strategies required to succeed within the game are equally effective outside the game. Emergence will provide a context for discussing new platforms for public scholars and engaged humanities.
About Lecturer Tim Lenoir
Jenkins Chair for New Technologies in Society, Duke University

Tim Lenoir is University Professor and the Kimberly Jenkins Chair for New Technologies in Society at Duke University. In addition to publishing several books and articles on the history of biomedical science from the nineteenth century to the present, he has also been involved in digital archiving and web-based collaborations, including projects with Stanford University, MIT, and the NSF-sponsored Center for Nanotechnology in Society at UC Santa Barbara. His current research centers on the use of text-mining and visualization tools for mapping the recent history of bio-and nanotechnology, the use of computers and digital imaging in biomedical research, and the history of interactive simulations and video games. Lenoir also teaches courses on interactive simulation and video games. As recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Digital Millennium Award, Lenoir recently completed work on Virtual Peace, a multi-player first person simulation environment for students and humanitarian
groups and workers in the field of peace and conflict resolution.