Final Event of Damien Roach Exhibition. Temperatures / Sculpture
24 February 7 pm
Two intense, time-bending live music duos close the events programme, with Thurston Moore's favorite fuzzed-out bass & drums duo Temperatures and a narcotic live audio-visual feast of exotic esoterics from tape maestros, Sculpture.
Psychoanalyst Noga Wine will present the lecture The Drive and the Unconscious: two psychoanalytic concepts, which sustain the dimensions of time and space.
Laura Mulvey 'Riddles of the sphinx'
17 February 7 pm
Philosopher Laura Mulvey will introduce the screening of her and Peter Wollen's groundbreaking film 'Riddles of the Sphinx' (1977).
Laura Mulvey is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She worked at the British Film Institute for many years before taking up her current position. Mulvey's is best known for her essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" written in 1973. Her article was one of the first major essays that helped shift the orientation of film theory towards a psychoanalytic framework. Mulvey's contribution was to inaugurate the intersection of film theory, psychoanalysis, and feminism. Mulvey was prominent as an avant-garde filmmaker in the 1970s and 1980s. With Peter Wollen, her husband, she co-wrote and co-directed 'Riddles of the sphinx' and other films.
Sue Golding 'The Assassination of Time'
6 February 2.45 pm
Philosopher Sue Golding / Johnny De Philowill plunge the gallery into total pitch-darkness to envelop the space with her live, spoken 'fractal philosophy installation' The Assassination of Time.
Sue Golding is a philosopher, artist and professor of Philosophy in the Visual Arts and Communication Technologies and Director of the Postgraduate Programme "Media Arts Philosophy" at the University of Greenwich. Her research covers the intra/interdisciplinary discourses associated with the media arts, web sciences and communication technologies. Set out in terms of installation, performance, rolling-documentary, books, articles and aphoristic text, her works address the various aspects of contemporary art practice. She has also published under the pen names Johnny Golding and Johnny de Philo.
Boyle Family 'Son et Lumiere for Earth, Fire and Water'
3 February 7 pm
Sebastian Boyle introduces an evening of live projections and films related to the seminal event Son et Lumiere for Earth, Fire and Water by Mark Boyle and JoanHills from 1966.
Charlie Woolley 'RADIO SHOW'
30 January 11.30 am
Charlie Woolley will transmit his essential, wide-reaching internet radio station 'RADIO SHOW', live from the gallery, banishing dead air with records, conversations and phone-ins. He is joined by special co-host, curator Paul Pieroni.
Screening of excerpts from Fun to Imagine (1983), a documentary about Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman followed by a ritualistic performance of live music and projections from band Hype Williams.
Antepress / Organ Octet
20 January 7:00
Experimental lecture on 'ekphrasis' with actions, performances and readings by antepress, imprint and project platform set up in 2008 by Julia Calver, Patrick Coyle, Cressida Kocienski, Claire Nichols, Tamarin Norwood and Gemma Sharpe. www.antepress.co.uk The evening will continue with shimmering, transcendent reed organ music by Organ Octet.
Burkhard Meltzer
16 January 2:45
Burkhard Meltzer will be talking about his research project Prototype - furniture in art and design.
Meltzer is an independent curator and critic based in Zurich who writes on a regular basis for art magazines such as Kunstbulletin and Frieze.
This is the first event in the framework of Damien Roach's exhibitionShiiin, Jet Stream, White earphones.
Raagnagrok / Charlesworth, Lewandowski & Mann
17 December 6:30
Five Storey Projects - a young five person collective consisting of artists, curators and writers based in London -presents:
In the final reaction to the premise of The Object Of The Attack, Five Storey Projects will host a live music event by Raagnagrok with an intervention by artists Charlesworth, Lewandowski & Mann. Raagnagrok, a London based experimental music project, will produce an interpretative performance of musical rituals to create an entrancing and altered environment. Charlesworth, Lewandowski & Mann work with sound samples generated from Ballard's short story, collaboratively creating sculptural resonances to create an encapsulating parallel universe.
Lars Laumann / Samuel Craven
10 December 6:30
Five Storey Projects - a young five person collective consisting of artists, curators and writers based in London -presents:
Screening of Lars Laumann's Morrissey Foretelling The Death of Diana, 2006 (David Roberts Collection) followed by a performative talk by Samuel Craven. Laumann's brief montage is embedded with fragmented myths and believable suggestions that produce an appropriated reality where Morrissey operates as a prophet of disaster. Samuel Craven will expand on his ongoing research based work that comments on conspiracy theories and symbols surrounding celebrities, extraterrestrials and cults, presenting them in a wider context.
Susan MacWilliam
03 December 6:30
Five Storey Projects - a young five person collective consisting of artists, curators and writers based in London -presents:
Screening of a new work by Susan MacWilliam, who represented Northern Ireland at the Venice Biennale 2009. Through sourcing paranormal archives and interviewing subjects of the esoteric fringe, MacWilliam delves into the experimental paths of parapsychological research through strategies of participation and translation. Followed by a discussion and live web chat with the film's subject, poltergeist investigator Dr William G Roll.
The Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at University of Westminster presents:
The Future is Now
26 November 6:30
Location: The David Roberts Art Foundation Fitzrovia, 111 Great Titchfield Street, LondonW1W 6RY Chaired by Dr. Marq Smith with:
Dr Garin Dowd is Reader in Critical and Cultural Theory in the Faculty of the Arts at Thames Valley University and has published extensively on Beckett, Ballard, Derrida, Deleuze and Aesthetics.
Stephen Melville is Professor in the Department of History of Art at the OhaioStateUniversity. He has published widely on contemporary art as well as contemporary theory and historiography. Most recently, he served as resident faculty at the Getty Summer Institute in Visual and Cultural Studies, and has given lectures at CornellUniversity, The Johns Hopkins University, and Tate Modern in London.
Dr Alev Adil is Head of the Department of Creative, Critical and Communication Studies at University of Greenwich, a scholar and a poet of longing, belonging, technologies, and desire.
The Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at University of Westminster presents:
The Future is Tomorrow
21 November 2:00
Location: The David Roberts Art Foundation Fitzrovia, 111 Great Titchfield Street, LondonW1W 6RY Chaired by Dr. Marq Smith with:
Lennard J Davis is Professor in the Department of English, Department of Disability and Human Development, and Department of Medical Education at University of Illinois at Chicago. He writes prolifically, lectures internationally, and broadcasts on literature, disability, the medical humanities, and science within the context of the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Professor Davis's books include Factual Fictions (1983), Resisting Novels (1987), Enforcing Normalcy (1995), The Disability Studies Reader (1997), My Sense of Silence (2000), Bending over Backwards (2002), Obsession (2008), and Go Tell Your Father (2009). He has been honoured regularly by the likes of the Guggenheim, and has extensive senior management experience as Head of School, as the Director of the international project Biocultures, and as a member of the Executive Committee on Stem-Cell Research at Illinois.
Ben Watson is an independent music critic, Marxist theorist, poet, and author of books on Frank Zappa, art and class, and Derek Bailey.
Chris Horrocks is Principal Lecturer in the School of Art and Design History at KingstonUniversity. He is author of books on Marshall McLuhan and Virtuality, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, and Tokyo Glamrock.
The Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at University of Westminster presents:
The Future is History
12 November 6:30
Location: The David Roberts Art Foundation Fitzrovia, 111 Great Titchfield Street, LondonW1W 6RY Chaired by Dr. Marquard Smith, with:
Sally O'Reilly is a cultural critic for Time Out, Art Monthly, and Modern Painters, a writer of catalogue essays, an events organizer, Founder of Implicasphere, and author of The Body in Contemporary Art (Thames & Hudson)
Uriel Orlow is a Swiss multi-media installer, historian, and narrator of the impossible, based in London and working at University of Westminster. With recent shows in London, Vienna, Lisbon, Bern, Zurich, Palm BeachFlorida, and China, he has exhibitions upcoming at Seventeen Gallery, Laure Genillard, and Museum Nachum Gutman, Tel Aviv.
Jon Cairnsis an artist, curator, and Course Director of the BA Fine Art at Byam Shaw/Central Saint Martins, London
David Joselit is Carnegie Professor of History of Modern Art and Culture in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University, and author of books including 'Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp, 1910-1941', 'American Art Since 1945', and most recently 'Feedback: Television Against Democracy'.
The Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at University of Westminster presents:
The Future
05 November 6:30
Location: The David Roberts Art Foundation Fitzrovia, 111 Great Titchfield Street, LondonW1W 6RY Chaired by Dr. David Cunningham with:
Tom Corby is an artist and writer whose research is concerned with relocating digital imaging processes within wider aesthetic and social frameworks. He is the deputy Director of CREAM and coordinates the digital art research cluster in the school of arts and media. His experimental digital artworks (produced in collaboration with Gavin Baily) have been internationally exhibited and have won numerous awards,
Benjamin Noys is Reader in English Literature at the University of Chichester. He is author of, among other works, The Culture of Death (2005) and Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduction (2000), and is a member of the editorial board of the journal Film-Philosophy. He is currently writing on accelerationism and has a forthcoming book entitled The Persistence of the Negative due in 2010.
Kester Rattenbury is an architectural journalist, critic and writer, whose many publications include the edited collection This is Not Architecture. She is a consulting editor for the Architects Journal, series editor for the SuperCrit series with Routledge, and leads the ExP research group at the University of Westminster.
John Timberlake is a photographer and writer, who also leads the BA in Fine Art at MiddlesexUniversity. He has exhibited widely in Europe and North America and is an alumnus of the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Programme. A former editor of Everything Magazine, his most recent publication is the book Bussard Ramjet (Artwords 2008) and he is currently exhibiting work at the Pittoresk: Neue Perspektiven auf das Landschaftsbild group show at MARTa in Germany.
David Cunningham is Principal Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at the University of Westminster. He is an editor of the journal Radical Philosophy, co-editor of the book Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century (2005), and has published widely on modernism, aesthetics, architectural theory and urbanism. He is currently completing a book entitled Reflexes of the Future: Essays on the Avant-Garde.
Conversations With the Other Side by Ben Judd and Sidsel Christensen
29 October 7:20
Please note: Limited places. Doors open at 7pm and close at 7.20pm. No one will be admitted after 7.20pm. The experience will last approximately 40 minutes.
From their study of traditional forms of mediumship, hypnosis and religious rituals, Ben Judd and Sidsel Christensen have developed this new, playful and open ritual. One of the artists will enter into a state of trance in order to contact the other side, acting as a medium for the audience in the attempt to bridge the gap between the actual room and the space and people that exist in another dimension.
Talk at Zoo Art Fair
16 October 5:30
Location: Events Room (Zone A), Zoo Art Fair, 3-10 Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6PG
Raimundas Malasauskas, the second guest curator at the David Roberts Art Foundation explains the origin and the process of the exhibition Sculpture of the Space Age together with artists Gintaras Didziapetris, Graham Gussin, Jeremy Millar, and the Foundation's director Vincent Honoré.
Evening of Performances
Nina Beier, Pierre Huyghe, Reto Pulfer, Alexandre Singh, Jack Strange
15 October 6:30
The performances, created or re-enacted for the occasion, have never been shown in London. The evening will present for the first time Pierre Huyghe's Silence Score, written in 1997 but never performed in public, together with new and engaging creations by Nina Beier, Reto Pulfer, Alexandre Singh and Jack Strange.
Karl Holmqvist. How Come Babies Can Cry So Loud?
09 July 8:00
Karl Holmqvist had been invited by Oscar Tuazon to perform during his opening night for the exhibition 'That's Not Made For That'. Working mainly with language, engaging with the inner structures of texts, transmission and communication, Holmqvist will present a new performance work especially produced for The David Roberts Art Foundation.
Labour Practices: Ethics of Service and Ideas of Labour in Performance
19 June 6:30
Location: Pinter Studio, Arts Building, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, E1 4NS Free. Reservations on rsvp@thisisliveart.co.uk
This event will look at the ways in which artists use ideas of service and labour as creative strategies, and consider the ethics of recruiting the labour of others in works of art.
Playing with the idea of labour and service the Live Art Development Agency have outsourced the researching and writing of a paper on these issues to the writer Mary Paterson, who will in turn outsource the presentation of the paper to the Agency's Projects Manager and practicing artist Andrew Mitchelson. Artists and writers working in these areas including Nicholas Ridout, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, and Emma Leach and Natasha Vicars of Position Unpaid will respond to the paper in relation to their own practices and approaches and provoke further discussion.
Labour Practices is supported by Queen Mary, University of London.
Contributors: Mary Paterson is a writer and producer based in London. She was a writer with Live Art UK's 'Writing from Live Art' initiative (2006 - 2008) and Writing Live Fellow for Performa International Biennial of Performance (2007), supported by Arts Council England. She is co-director of Open Dialogues. www.open-dialogues.blogspot.com
Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre is a conceptual and live artist whose work centers around participation, informal networks and the uses of public space as a platform for self-expression, diversity, and the co-existence of conflicting views. Using the ephemeral, the overlooked and the underrated as the starting point, her work creates visible and unexpected connections between things, people and places. The rhetoric of conversation, participation and celebration are often deployed as a strategy for engagement, in which the public is invited to become an active contributor and collaborator to the work. www.lopezdelatorre.org/
Position Unpaid is a collaboration between Emma Leach & Natasha Vicars. The project asks awkward questions about arts internships, and moves towards some constructive answers. Emma Leach is a part time writer, curator and artist assistant, and a full time artist. Natasha Vicars makes live and participatory work in which there is an exchange of individual experience. Both have worked as interns in more than one art institution.
Nicholas Ridout teaches in the Department of Drama at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of Stage Fright, Animals and Other Theatrical Problems (2006), a book which considers theatrical labour and its related affects. Recent publications include an essay on Performance and the Service Economy, and a short book called Theatre & Ethics.
Services Rendered: A Talk with Harold Offeh
1 June 7
Location: Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium
Harold Offeh employs a range of strategies to explore contemporary popular media representations of race, identity and desire. The artist will discuss his new series of clandestine actions commissioned by the David Roberts Art Foundation for the exhibition At Your Service, including secret performances which occur in undisclosed locations within Tate Modern in May.
Ghosts (Nick Broomfield, 2006, 96 mins)
30 May 2:30
Screening part of the Film Programme Invisible Labour Location: Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD.
Twenty-three Chinese workers drowned in Morecambe Bay on 5 February 2004. Their families in China are still paying off their debts. In a film whose principal characters are played by Chinese former illegal immigrants, Nick Broomfield offers a unique insight into a secret world that surrounds us.
Clean Sweeps: Films Exploring London's Night-time Cleaners
26 May 6:30
Screening part of the Film Programme Invisible Labour Location: Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD. Nightcleaners (Berwick Street Collective, 1975, 90 mins) Initially intended as a campaign film on behalf of the struggle of women office cleaners to organise and unionise, Nightcleaners began as a cinéma-vérité documentary, which was then transformed by the filmmakers at the editing stage into a film that radically questioned the conventional forms of agit-prop cinema.
Underground Londoners (Dagmar Diesner and Klara Jaya Brekke, 2007, 29 mins) Based on a year of ongoing conversations and interviews with migrant workers employed as cleaners by the London Underground, this film explores their living and working conditions as migrants with precarious status.
A City Sleeps aka Tube Fluffers (Pathe Newsreel, 1949, 2 mins) A newsreel on cleaners (also called 'fluffers' the time) at work on the Underground at night. They are shown working in Piccadilly Station - we see them at work cleaning the lines, and then having tea and sandwiches while still underground.
Migrating Europe: Artists Shorts
23 May 2:30
Screening part of the Film Programme Invisible Labour Location: Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD. Maersk Dubai (Matei Bejenariu, 2007, 7.30 mins) In the spring of 1996, three young people from Romania were thrown overboard the Taiwanese ship Maersk Dubai for being stowaways, embarking illegally in order to cross the Atlantic and reach Canada. Artist Matei Bejenariu creates a poignant portrait of his discovery of the tragic deaths of the three Romanians aspiring to find work abroad.
Sudeuropa (Raphael Cuomo and Maria Iorio, 2007, 40 mins) Sudeuropa stages a complex joust between the spectacular media coverage of immigrant disembarkations on the Italian island of Lampedusa and the far more intimate and circumspect explorations of the artists themselves.
Cabot Circus Cantata (Neville Gabie, 2008, 40 mins) Cabot Circus Cantata is a collaborative project led by Neville Gabie and developed in association with David Ogden, composer and conductor of the City of Bristol Choir. Neville and David spent several weeks on the Cabot Circus building site collecting songs from site workers that reflect the global nature of the workforce.
Matrioskos (Deimantas Narkevicius, 2005, 23 mins) Matrioskos uses the documentary style to portray the lives of four Lithuanian prostitutes. The human and social tragedy has a touching effect on the viewer, allowing the evident discrepancy between image and narrative to be bridged over.
Ain't No Way to Make a Living!
9 May 1.00
A Cultural Workers Survival Fair. Open to anyone. Free of charge. Location: Christie's Education London, 153 Great Titchfield Street, W1W 5BD. The Carrot Worker's Collective offers a performative investigation into the inter-connections between free labour, precarity in the cultural sector and new policies developing around the creative industries. The Carrot Workers Collective is an open collaboration, including researchers, interns, precarious and full time employees in London's cultural sector. They are currently working on a Survival Guide for Interns in London's cultural industries.
Work is a Four-letter Word
25 April 2.00
Guest Curator Cylena Simonds discusses the connections between the service industry and migrant labour as explored in the exhibition At Your Service as well as the phenomena of contemporary art practice as a service to the public. The discussion will feature presentations by artists Nada Prlja and Manuela Ribadeneira who have created new commissions for the exhibition.
Invisible Labour: Film and Video Screenings
21 April 2.30
Riff Raff (Ken Loach, 1991, 95 mins) Location: Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD. Organised in collaboration with Ian Christie, Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, University of London, At Your Service presents a series of feature films, documentaries and artist shorts exploring migrant labour in Britain and Europe.
Raúl Ortega Ayala. Last Supper
6 April 7.00
We are pleased to launch the exhibition At Your Service with a performance by Raúl Ortega Ayala. Arrive early for your chance to be one of the 12 dinner guests and join in the meal! Participants will be seated by 6.30pm, the performance will commence at 7pm.
Alastair Mackie
19 March 6.30
Alastair Mackie discusses with Vincent Honoré, Curator of The David Roberts Art Foundation, how the works in the exhibition had been produced and why they mark a new stage in his artistic practice. This talk has been organised in collaboration with the Contemporary Art Society, London.
Future Map 2008
13 December 2.30
Please join us for hosted by former Future Map selection panelist and Seventeen Gallery Director, Dave Hoyland. Dave is joined by a selection of this year's participants, including video artist Andrew Hodgson, sculptor Jera May and performance artist and painter John Michael Robinson. This talk has been organised in collaboration with the University of the Arts London.
Talk at Zoo Art Fair
17 October 12.30
Catherine Wood, curator at Tate Modern, will discuss with artists Jiri Kovanda and Nina Beier and Marie Lund, performances and the collaborative processes in the exhibition All the Best.
All The Best. Performance evening
16 October 6.30
We are pleased to present an evening of performances and actions by International renowned artists Jiri Kovanda, Jacob Dahl Jürgensen, Dora Garcia, Benoit Maire and Nina Beier and Marie Lund. The event, organised in collaboration with the Czech Centre, London, coincides with Beier and Lund's exhibition All the Best.