School of Architecture and Planning

Assignment _ April,29 Simin Farkhondeh seminar

Reading Discussion Reflection: A “discussion question” cannot be answered simply by looking the answer up somewhere in the text, but must be explored and argued. It is not completely open-ended, but specifically grounded in the text. It arises from careful consideration of the reading assignment: what the text says, and how it says it. Pose a discussion question from the reading. In half a page (150 words), explain what prompted the question, what thinking went into arriving at the question, what possible answers have been considered. Try to frame the question itself in one brief interrogative sentence. Bring a copy of your discussion question to the seminar. Be prepared to share your discussion question in class for discussion.

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Readings are on reading category in Materials.
The Third eye1, 2

Announced on 25 April 2013  5:59  p.m. by YaeJin Shin

Please read for Monday 4/8 and Tuesday 4/9 texts by Nora Alter

Texts are in the Materials section.

Announced on 05 April 2013  9:28  p.m. by Renee Green

March 4 to March 7th: John Akomfrah and Lina Gopaul, Cinematic Migrations guests

Program Schedule
Monday, March 4
Tuesday, March 5
Wednesday, March 6
Thursday, March 7 (wrap up)

Cinematic Migrations Visiting Artists: John Akomfrah, Director and Lina Gopaul, Producer, Smoking Dogs Films, London in residency at ACT/MIT VAP

Program Themes

Monday, March 4
10-12pm \ Seminar and lunch:
The Spectropoetics of Diaspora; Hauntologies
Films include: The Genome Chronicles and The Call of Mists
Location: ACT Cube, E15-001

Hauntologies is artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah’s compelling meditation on disappearance, memory and death. From his first exhibition for Carroll/Fletcher gallery the virtuosity and depth of Akomfrah’s practice is revealed in three new video, sound and installation works – never before presented in the UK – as well as a new presentation of a video essay from 1998.

The Hauntologies show was comprised of Peripeteia, an 18-minute gallery based film set in the 16th century about the lost lives of two characters sketched by the German artist Albrecht Durer; The Call of Mist, a film essay on memory, cloning and loss; At the Graveside of Andrie Tarkovsky, a sound installation and Allegories of Mourning, a series of large scale photographic diptychs.

The Genome Chronicles is a film by John Akomfrah, produced by Smoking Dogs Films, on the artist Donald Rodney, 40 min. (2008). “The Genome Chronicles is ultimately in memoriam of a friend mourned, a threnody on lost time.” Seminar discussion will examine works that traverse the gallery and cinema spaces.

7-9pm \ ACT Lecture Series: Cinematic Migrations:
Considering The Stuart Hall Project
Films include: The Unfinished Conversation and
The Stuart Hall Project
Location: ACT Cube, E15-001

The three-screened work, The Unfinished Conversation, is considered in relation to the single screen film premiered at Sundance in 2013,The Stuart Hall Project. Hall’s concept of the formation of identity emerges from both a dialogue with the external world and with that of the terrain of the psyche. The differences between these projects and approaches to perception are unpacked with a focus on shared themes of identity and migration.

Tuesday, March 5
9:30- 12:30pm \ Continuation of…
The Spectropoetics of Diaspora; Hauntologies
Films include: Peripeteia and Memory Room 451
Location: ACT Cube, E15-001

The theme of lost lives, haunting, and re-imagining lives through cinematic means will be probed. Peripeteia is an exploration of two prints by Dürer. Memory Room 451 is a companion piece the film to Last Angel of History.

12:30-2pm \ ACT Presentation and lunch \ Renée Green: On Other Planes of There
Location: E15-207
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Wednesday, March 6
9:30- 12:30pm \ Seminar:
Twelve Theses on Migration
Films include: Que Viva Mexico by Sergei Eisenstein
Memories of Underdevelopment by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Location: E15-207

John Akomfrah presents a paper addressing a discussion of migration as a pre-filmic fact exploring the phantasmagoric ground of cinema as a dialectic directly within the frame. Films analyzed include Sergei Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment.
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Program Themes
Theme 1: The Spectropoetics of Diaspora
The themes of re-imagined history, lost past, and haunting of past are presented through a series of short film screenings produced for the gallery and the cinema.

Theme 2: Twelve Theses on Migration
John Akomfrah presents a paper based on and using film excerpts from early cinema that explore migration as part of cinema’s formation, a pro-filmic fact inscribed in the history of filmmaking.

Theme 3: Considering the Stuart Hall Project
The three-screened work, The Unfinished Conversation, is considered in relation to the single screen film premiered at Sundance in 2013,The Stuart Hall Project. Hall’s concept of the formation of identity emerges from both a dialogue with the external world and with that of the terrain of the psyche. The differences between these projects and approaches to perception are unpacked with a focus on shared themes of identity and migration.

Theme 4: New political economies and moving images: films by artists amidst myriad migrations
Experimental distribution of film and collaborative production is considered throughout the seminar.

Thursday: Wrap up discussion: planning upcoming production and symposium for Spring 2014. Location and time TBD.

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venue
mit program in art, culture and technology
20 Ames St, Cambridge, MA

Announced on 03 March 2013  4:40  p.m. by Renee Green

Chris Marker: A Symposium | Things That Quicken the Heart

http://cinemastudies.sas.upenn.edu/events/2013/March/ChrisMarkerSymposiumThingsQuickenHeart

Announced on 28 February 2013  9:54  a.m. by YaeJin Shin