Supported by the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS and the Goldsmiths GRADUATE
SCHOOL

6pm until 8pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor,
right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME

** PLEASE NOTE THAT THE DATE FOR ELENA COLOGNI'S CLUB SESSION HAS BEEN
CHANGED FROM THE 28th of FEBRUARY TO THE 6th of MARCH **

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*28 FEBRUARY with RAYMOND HARMON
:
Painting in Light: Experimental Film and the Advent of Improvisational
Cinema*

The traditional model for cinematic expression is as a controlled
environment moving forward in a linear direction. From its inception the
art of filmmaking has been dominated by a single form of chronological
development. Each film exists as a series of frames that are static at the
start of the film.

Improvisation, a language largely defined within the practice of music, is
something that has slowly grown from impractical experimentation to a
living form of performance art over the past century.

Tracing the historic aspects of this new creative model this presentation
will cover the many parallels between diverse genres of musical
improvisation and the art of improvised cinema in the 21 century. From
paint on celluloid, to live lights shows through to contemporary VJ
culture "Painted in Light" explores the vast arena of the future of this
new paradigm of creative expression.

RAYMOND HARMON is a Chicago-based cross-genre media artist, filmmaker,
sound artist, and record producer, with a CV extending from performance
based 16mm and 8mm film to video circuit-bending and analog feedback
installations as well as sound and visual conceptual installations and
guerrilla media actions. Utilizing new media, web based content and
interactive architecture in coordination with public performance, graffiti
style ad bombing, and web based social engineering Harmon's work has
carved out an over arching form of contemporary media insurgency.
raymondharmon.com
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*6 MARCH with ELENA COLOGNI
:
The Film As Document In (Of) Real Time*

A meta-linguistic performative experiment.

Key questions:
1. In my video live installations I investigate the perception of time
(psychological time ), non simultaneous artist and audience interchange in
liveness, and the production of the video document. Live recording,
pre-recording and their transmission, as overlapping layers of
representation of time, unfold in duration.
2. I am now starting to contextualising the recent work, which I believe
challenges the early Bergsonian differentiation between memory and
perception based on the assumption that the former is linked to the past
(representation) and the latter to the present (action) (as in latest
Deleuzean scholar Guerlac ’s book).
3. I also contribute to the debate on performance documentation in
parallel to recent Auslander’s publication : embedding the document (eg.:
video recording) in the event allows audience to witness its very
production, thus emphasising the document’s ‘performativity’ aspect.

ELENA COLOGNI is an art practitioner. Currently Research Fellow at York St
John University, her PhD ‘The Artist’s Performative Practice Within The
Anti-Oculatcentric Discourse’ is from Central Saint Martins College of Art
and Design (CSM), London. After the post-doc AHRC and CSM awarded project
'Present Memory and Liveness in delivery and reception of video
documentation during performance art events', she was at Glasgow Centre
for Contemporary Arts for a Creative Lab residency focusing on questions
of migrations, remoteness and transmission of information over time and
space. She is active in the debate on practice as research methodologies,
as well as the relationship between performance and new media. Her artwork
has been presented internationally.

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*13 MARCH with ANNA HOWITT
:
The Empty Space Gallery*

The Empty Space Gallery exists to foster creativity, and encourage debate
about what ‘art’ is and what ‘artists’ are. It’s a novel way of
encouraging people to engage with this thing we call ‘art’ and what it
might be. Ultimately it is an experiment in ‘art’, ‘artists’, those that
believe in them and those that think they are. The Empty Space Gallery can
also be considered an anonymous art fair, where more established and
well-known artists share the same space and audience as unknown doodlers.

How does The Empty Space Gallery work?

Individuals, whether ‘artists’ or not, are invited to submit anything they
deem to be ‘art’, in any medium whatsoever. The purpose of the experiment
is to gain some insight into, not so much how work is created, but how it
is received, consumed, and engaged with. The aim is to uncover some of the
processes we employ in order to decide whether something is ‘art’ or not.

Once the ‘works’ are received they are catalogued and sealed in plain
white A4 envelopes. Only these envelopes are placed on display; no details
of the ‘artist’ are available at this time. Visitors to the gallery are
invited to pick, at random, any envelope they choose and own whatever they
find inside.
In addition, visitors are also invited to create an ‘artwork’ there and
then, for inclusion in the gallery, which is then passed on again to
another visitor.

ANNA HOWITT is artistic director of The Forward Company, an
interdisciplinary arts company based in Berkshire. She also is an arts
and literary reviewer. She finished her MA in Contemporary Arts at the
Manchester Metropolitan University in 2001 and has since had a residency
at the South Street Arts Centre in Reading (2003-4).
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** PLEASE NOTE: KATE PULLINGER & CHRIS JOSEPH (whose Club event had to be
postponed for personal reasons) WILL BE KICKING OFF THE SUMMER TERM OF
CLUB EVENTS ON 24 APRIL **
::

*24 APRIL with KATE PULLINGER & CHRIS JOSEPH
:
Flight Paths: a networked book*

"I have finished my weekly supermarket shop, stocking up on provisions for
my three kids, my husband, our dog and our cat. I push the loaded trolley
across the car park, battling to keep its wonky wheels on track. I pop
open the boot of my car and then for some reason, I have no idea why, I
look up, into the clear blue autumnal sky. And I see him. It takes me a
long moment to figure out what I am looking at. He is falling from the
sky. A dark mass, growing larger quickly. I let go of the trolley and am
dimly aware that it is getting away from me but I can’t move, I am stuck
there in the middle of the supermarket car park, watching, as he hurtles
toward the earth. I have no idea how long it takes – a few seconds, an
entire lifetime – but I stand there holding my breath as the city goes
about its business around me until…
He crashes into the roof of my car."

The car park of Sainsbury’s supermarket in Richmond, southwest London,
lies directly beneath one of the main flight paths into Heathrow Airport.
Over the last decade, on at least five separate occasions, the bodies of
young men have fallen from the sky and landed on or near this car park.
All these men were stowaways on flights from the Indian subcontinent who
had believed that they could find a way into the cargo hold of an airplane
by climbing up into the airplane wheel shaft. No one can survive this
journey. “Flight Paths” seeks to explore what happens when lives collide –
the airplane stowaway and the fictional suburban London housewife, quoted
above. This project will tell their stories; it will be a work of
digital fiction, a networked book, created on and through the internet.
The project will include a web iteration that opens up the research
process to the outside world, inviting discussion of the large array of
issues the project touches on.

Questions raised by this project include: what are the possibilities for
new narrative forms? How do we “write to be seen” or “write to be heard”
when creating multimedia narratives, and can we imagine writing to be
smelled, tasted, felt? What are the effects of collective authorship
across multiple forms?

KATE PULLINGER works both in print and new media. Her most recent novels
include A Little Stranger (2006) and Weird Sister (1999). Her current
digital fiction projects include her collaboration with Chris Joseph
(babel) on 'Inanimate Alice', a multimedia episodic digital fiction and
'Venus Redemption', a game for female casual gamers. Pullinger is Reader
in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University.

CHRIS JOSEPH is a digital writer and artist who has created solo and
collaborative work as babel. His past projects include 'Inanimate Alice'
(with Kate Pullinger), an award-winning series of multimedia stories; 'The
Breathing Wall' (with Kate Pullinger and Stefan Schemat), a digital novel;
and 'Animalamina', a collection of interactive multimedia poetry for
children. He is editor of the post-dada magazine and network 391.org, and
a founding member of The 404, a network of artists. He is currently
Digital Writer in Residence at De Montfort University, Leicester.

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THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested
in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity,
technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and
tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

For more information email Maria X at drp01mc@gold.ac.uk

To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/