50th Anniversary Events

Some of the events held in conjunction with the Department's 50th anniversary.

Annual Methods Lab Lecture with Jean Mohr

Edward is still with us: Jean Mohr reflects on Edward Said in Palestine & After the Last Sky 

Thurs 27 March 2014
Small Hall, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths, Lewisham Way. New Cross SE14 6NW
5-7pm, inc. drinks reception with exhibition viewing
Free & Open Public Event, marking 50 years of Sociology at Goldsmiths.

In this public conversation, Jean Mohr reflected on his collaboration with Edward Said on After the Last Sky, as well as on his wider oeuvre of work.

Please note that Mariam Said joined Jean Mohr at this event as a guest of honour.

After the Last Sky came about after Jean Mohr was commissioned by the UN, on Edward Said's recommendation, to take photos of some of the key sites in which Palestinians lived their lives. Because the UN allowed only minimal text (the names of places) to accompany the photographs, Said and Mohr decided to work together on an 'interplay', as Said put it, of Said's personal account of Palestinian suffering and exile and Mohr's photographs – 'an unconventional, hybrid, and fragmentary [form] of expression' - which they called After the Last Sky (1986).

The Space and Gaze exhibition at Goldsmiths (September 2013 – July 2014) brings Mohr's images and Said's text from this seminal book together for the first time. Working against the grain of speeded up short durations in gallery spaces and the cultural sector more widely, we have chosen to live and converse with the images and texts for the longer duration of an academic year. Against the grain of the corporatization of the academy, the exhibition claims the space for an alternative writing on the walls of the university.

This is Jean Mohr's second exhibition at Goldsmiths. His first, which was held in the 1970s, was titled Two portraits and a Story, and consisted of photographs of peasants in Haute Savoie, France. He is well-known for his many collaborations with John Berger, which include A Fortunate Man (1967), Art & Revolution (1969), A Seventh Man (1975), Another Way of Telling (1995) and John by Jean: fifty years of friendship (2014).

More than 80 exhibitions have been dedicated to his photographic work worldwide. He has worked for numerous international organisations (UNHCR, ILO, JDC) and was ICRC delegate for the Middle East 1949-1950. In 1978 he was awarded the prize for the photographer who had contributed the most to the cause of human rights. Speaking of his position as a photographer he has stated: 'If I see a child drowning I can't take a picture of the scene. I can lend a hand or grab a stick to remove the child.' He has an interest in theatre and his large body of work also includes plasticine photography, usually in colour, as a reflection of formal experimentations in the art field.

This is the Annual Methods Lab Lecture.

To view the exhibition SPACE & GAZE: Conversations with Jean Mohr & Edward Said in Palestine visit the Kingsway Corridor at Goldsmiths, Richard Hoggart Building, University of London, Lewisham Way, New Cross. SE14 6NW. Times: on until July 2014, Mon-Sat 8am-9pm, Sun 9.30am-6pm. Free.

Exhibition: MA Visual Sociology and MA Photography and Urban Cultures

March 21-31 2014, New Academic Building

On view is the collective works from the MA in Photography and Urban Cultures (PUC), the MA in Visual Sociology, and Gasket Gallery in celebration of the 50 years of Sociology at Goldsmiths.

Artists
Heather Agyepong, Silvia Andrade Marin Rivade, Kamal Badhey, Yemisi Blake, June Cadogan, Stefano Carnelli, Karolis Civinskas, Andy Day, Rose Delcour-Min, Yinae Deokwoo Hwang, Al Eisa, Michael Frank, Judith Fischer, Lizzie Godfrey, Gillian Golding, Carolina Gonzalez Buendia, Rosanna Goodchild, Christopher Haney, Sally Hart, David Kendall, Jade King, Katie Knapp, Stephanie Lai, Mattias Malk, Michael McCormack, Roz Mortimer, Nora, Christina Paugger, Yuanfang Ren, Simon Rowe, Marina da Silva, Simon Song, Anita Strasser, James Wakefield, Gesche Würfel,

Gasket Gallery
Gasket are a photographic collective who curate and exhibit visual practitioners critically engaged with urban representation. Gasket grew from a shared experience of the Photography and Urban Cultures programme at Goldsmiths College and seeks to continue the tradition of critical visual practice learned in their own work. Beginning in late-2012 with an exhibition celebrating 10 years of the PUC programme, Gasket have since exhibited in London and Vienna and will participate in the Milan photo fair later this year. Gasket are grateful for the opportunity to assist in these celebrations and hope to continue the success of other PUC alumni.

Masters in Photography and Urban Cultures ‌
This exhibition is created by students of the Masters of Photography and Urban Cultures program (PUC) to commemorate the fiftieth year of the Department of Sociology. These works respond to issues brought up during the Talking Practice workshop and the feedback received from tutors and peers. The artists adopt multidisciplinary attitudes in their works and draw influences from art practice, philosophy, journalism, and architecture. They bring a diverse point of view and critical eye, through their discovery of everyday life within the urban realm. Through the connection of theory, practice and discussion PUC students have engaged in core themes of urban cultures. This exhibition is a visual manifestation of collective dialogue.

Masters in Visual Sociology ‌
The MA Visual Sociology began in September 2013. It aims to introduce and build on a range of debates within visual and sensory sociology, encouraging an engagement with sociology as an inventive research practice. The 50th anniversary exhibition documents some of the workshops that students have been involved in this year – including on using food to research social class, an introduction to 16mm film (run by No.W.Here) and a course on the internet of things and lo-fidelty prototyping with arduino platforms ‌(funded by Intel). It also showcases work in progress by current students around the theme of social mobility. A separate end of course exhibition on the theme of austerity and the body is open to the public from 5.30-7.00, 28th March, 288 New Cross Road.

Photograph above right by Mattias Malk (MA PUC)

Lena Horne: Divas, Desire and Discipline

A talk by Deborah Paredez (University of Texas at Austin)

Friday 14 March, 2014
RHB 309
4.30-6.00pm

This paper offers a close analysis of a performance by the diva, Lena Horne. In her 1963 appearance as the headlining act on the The Judy Garland Show, Horne resists the racial liberalist framing of their staged act and queers its constructions of racialized femininity. Through gesture, voice, comportment, tempo, reserve, and tenor, Lena Horne's performance signals the disciplining of the civil rights era body for the cameras while simultaneously baring its affective underseam of justified—barely fastened—rage.

This event was ran by the Unit for Global Justice.

Globalisation Studies on Culture and Governance

Thursday 20 March, 2014
RHB Cinema, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths, University of London, SE14 6NW
4-7pm
Free & Open Public Event, marking 50 years of Sociology at Goldsmiths

Pertti Alasuutari, Professor of Sociology, is Academy Professor at the University of Tampere, School of Social Sciences and Humanities. He is editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies, and his research interests include global and transnational phenomena, media, social theory, and social research methodology. Publications include National Policy-Making: Domestication of Global Trends (ed. with Ali Qadir; Routledge 2014), Social Theory and Human Reality (Sage 2004), Rethinking the Media Audience (Sage 1999), An Invitation to Social Research (Sage 1998), and Researching Culture: Qualitative Method and Cultural Studies (Sage 1995).

Motti Regev is a sociologist of art and culture whose major research interest is in popular music studies. He is professor of sociology at the Open University of Israel, where he currently heads the MA program in Cultural Studies and the Department of Literature, Language and the Arts. His recent research is about pop-rock music and cultural globalization. His book on this subject, Pop-Rock Music: Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism in Late Modernity, was published last year (Polity, 2013).