19/01/2012

Spring Term: Session 2


'Reflections on a Future Nostalgia: Exploring Andrei Tarkovsky's Film Image and its Expansion through Contemporary Art'

Dr Kristen Kreider (Royal Holloway)

6-8pm, Wednesday 1st February, Senate House, Room 261 (2nd floor)

'Time is a state: the flame in which there lives the salamander of the human soul.'-- Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

In this seminar we will explore Andrei Tarkovsky’s theory and practice of the film image, ultimately suggesting its expansion through contemporary art practice. How does Tarkovsky’s film image generate a complexity of meaning through its relation to the artistic symbol, the poetic image, time, place and the viewer? In doing so, how does it evidence a nostalgic impulse? How can one identify the critical and creative potential of this nostalgic impulse? Finally, how do certain contemporary art practices, expanding the complexity of meaning in Tarkovsky’s film image in order to exploit this critical and creative potential, indicate the futurity inherent in Tarkovsky’s ‘nostalgic’ film image? This exploration will take the form of a paper and film screening of Gorchakov's Wish (Kreider + O'Leary, 2011).

Dr. Kristen Kreider is a Lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Royal Holloway, University of London. Since taking this position in 2008, she has sought to promote an interdisciplinary, socially engaged approach to contemporary poetry and poetics, and to encourage a rigorous dialogue between creative and critical practice. Situating her own research in the expanded field of contemporary writing and text-based art practice, Kristen is currently completing a monograph entitled Poetics and Place: The Architecture of Sign, Subjects and Site (I.B. Tauris, forthcoming).

As a pracitioner, Kristen collaborates with architect James O’Leary. The work of Kreider + O’Leary engages with the particularities of a given site – be this a physical, architectural location or more abstract locus of creative intent – in order to open up meaning. The work takes on many forms including performance, installation and time-based media and has been exhibited in the UK as well as internationally in Europe, Australia, Japan and the United States.

http://www.kreider-oleary.net/

Recommended Reading/Viewing

- Tarkovsky, Andrei. ‘The Film Image’ (exct). Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. Trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair. Austin: U of Texas Press, 1986. 104-24.

- Tarkovsky, Andrei, dir. Nostalghia (1983).

All welcome.

14/01/2012

Spring Term: Session 1


Edward Said: The Last Interview
DVD screening

6pm, Wednesday 18 January
Senate House, room 261

Filmed within three days in 2002, just one year before his death at the age of 67, Edward Said: The Last Interview is a compelling portrait of a man who was not only a strong advocate of the Palestinian cause, but an accomplished teacher, literary critic, writer and musician. After living for more than ten years with a fatal strain of leukemia, which he was diagnosed with in 1991, Said refused interviews.

However, former student D.D. Guttenplan along with director Mike Dibb convinced him otherwise. This no-frills documentary does not include archival footage to contextualize the speaker and his life; it simply records the casual conversation between Said and British journalist Charles Glass that weaves in and out of Said’s childhood, writing, life as an academic, involvement with Yasser Arafat, and his strong opinions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. (electronicintifada.net)

All welcome.