i dont even know what commodity means.
cultural exchanges 2008 was a very interesting experience. i am quite fond of the general concept, and think anyone who opts out of getting a huge dose of free culture is an idiot.
i was supposed to attend 4 events, but due to the inconsiderate, pushy middle-aged excuses of human beings behind us in a queue, i could not get into the music technology performance.
myself and griff missed out on the sue townsend event also, which was a great shame- we both woke up with matching eye infections and spent so long trying to sort them out that we missed it.
tom leonard was a very interesting man, but i assume many cret writters will decide to write a blog on his perfoamnce as so many of us showed up.
instead, i choose "writing about parents" which i attended to show some support to JT.
i found it insightful to say the least.
the guest "stars" all presented the audience with contrasting readings, which was brilliant.
my favourite of course, was JT, as i am very fond of him and his book.
i found the question and answer session useful, and the guests were eager to answer any queries we had to full potential.
(... more to come soon, just wanted to get something written down for starters)
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Going to pot (Grayson, not Claire)
He didn't wear a frock - the first disappointment. The shock of of blonde hair wasn't teased into curls. Grayson, not Claire. Transvestism was touched on - and bondage, and S&M - but the emphasis was on the pots.
Traditional pots. "Originality's over-rated," Grayson declared. "In tradition, after 10,000 hours you've learnt a craft, can make something worthwhile." Good point.
It's a long process, making pots: a basic shape (more tradition), nineteen layers of slipware, transfers designed and applied, more slipware. Weeks of work before the perils of the kiln. Some pots are lost for ever.
Grayson Perry makes 15-20 pots a year. Some shimmered on slides above his head. When I saw one in Glasgow I was hooked.
His conversation hooked me too. "I like trends on the turn (like milk)." "I love village art-shows - thousands of rural scenes with no cars."
The second disappointment? It ended.
kb
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
♥It's guy love between two guys♥
I've been a fan of slash fanfiction for years now. And that's the first time I've ever admitted it in writing. Why is that? There's something about that particular genre that seems like it should be taboo; when my friends first became interested in it, I was very sure that it 'wasn't my thing'. However I soon realised that I was only pretending not to like it, even though I was still too embarrassed to admit that I was secretly searching for slash fics in my spare time. I suppose my embarrassment resulted from the fact that most people assume slash fiction is nothing but porn. Although that wasn't necessarily what I was reading, I didn't like the idea of people assuming that I was, and thereby judging me in some way. There was also the fact that people won't necessarily ship the same characters as you, and even now I am reluctant to publish any of my work on the internet because of this.
So when I came to uni and heard Kathy talking about slash as though it was a normal topic of conversation, I have to admit I was pretty surprised. I found it unusual that people didn't care to hide the fact that they liked it. And when offered the chance to attend a conference on the topic, of course I wanted to go.
My initial thought when I first arrived was that I was surprised to see that the majority of the people in attendance were adults. Of course in hindsight I don't see why that would seem strange, but at the time I felt slightly out of place. However I found it very interesting to hear their perspective on slash fanfiction; it was, as expected, much more insightful than the usual "omg liek he's so gay for that other guy" that one usually encounters.
The talk that I enjoyed most was the first one I attended: Panel Two: True Pairings. Although I can't say I am a fan of SnapeXHarry (or 'Snarry' as it is known in fandom), the first part to the talk, The law of master and servant: officers, batmen, and slash subtext in the context of World War I looked very interesting. The talk itself was split into three sections, with the speaker discussing Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, then PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster novels, and finally JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Unfortunately Kellie Ann Aki Takenaka had to go through her paper very quickly as there wasn't a great deal of time alloted for each talk, however she went into detail about the connections between her chosen novels and the experiences of men during the First World War, with comparisons to fanfiction written about the main characters. Perhaps the reason I enjoyed this part of the conference so much was because I am both a fan of WW1 literature, plus enjoy reading hurt/comfort fics, which were mentioned a lot, particularly concerning Bunter and Wimsey. People with different interests would still have found the talk interesting though, as Kellie Ann gave a talk that was easy to follow, and had plenty of humour to keep the audience both amused and involved.
The second half of this panel was a paper by Vera Cuntz, on The mentor and his disciple: on homoeroticism in the relationship between Harry Potter and Severus Snape. As previously mentioned, this is not a pairing that I ship, however what I liked about the talk was that Vera acknowledged that (obviously) this was not a canon pairing, and that not everyone would agree with her opinions. The use of film clips and a powerpoint presentation also made it different and easy to follow. She compared certain scenes from the Harry Potter movies with scenes from traditional love story films such as Gone With the Wind. Rather than focussing solely on the script, she compared the technical side of filming, for example when the two characters destined to get together first meet, the shot-reverse-shot technique is often used. I felt that the paper was fascinating and also quite convincing in terms of Snape and Harry being a valid couple.
As someone else as already mentioned in a blog, this was the last slash conference being held for Cultural Exchanges, which is a great shame as it was a very interesting day. Hopefully there will be opportunities to attend similar events in the future.
Monday, March 3, 2008
In Review of Cultural Exchanges
Cultural Exchanges was last week and, I have to say, I was less than impressed with the organisation of the week in general. A friend and I booked four events on the internet, but only one of them actually successfully booked. Unusually, this was the Sue Townsend talk, which neither of us had expected to be able to get a place for. However, the E-mail had said to try turning up “in GOOD time” before the event to see if there had been any cancellations. This was precisely what we did.
The first event on the list was Kamilla Elliott on Tuesday at 2pm. We arrived five minutes beforehand and headed towards the door, somewhat sheepishly, expecting to be accosted by the volunteers in charge of this event, asking us to tick off our names on a register. Instead, a man simply said: “Are you here for Kamilla Elliott?” We replied: “Yes.” Just go straight in.” said the man. And so we did. We were quite glad of that; having walked all the way up to the third floor of the Clephan Building, I would have been less than pleased to have to simply turn tail and go all the way back down. Yes I am that lazy. The lecture theatre was quite full, but we found a space. It then became evident that extra people were joining and standing at the back, which seemed a little… odd to me.
As for the talk itself, it got off to a late start due to technical difficulties, in that the music for the Powerpoint presentation was not coming through the sound system of the room. About ten minutes and three technical support types later, we were ready to go. (The cure had been restarting the computer, if you’d like to know, which had been Kamilla’s idea…) Kamilla Elliott’s lecture was entitled Unfilmable Books and dealt with books which have been deemed ‘unfilmable’ and the reasons why so many filmmakers insist on turning such pieces of literature into film. This talk immediately caught my eye in the list of events, as I have often found myself reading a book and then watching the film of it and being horrified by the appalling adaptation which I have been shown. In my experience, Stephen King’s The Shining and Suzuki Kouji’s Ring are prime examples of this, taking books which have more than could possibly ever be successfully filmed and attempting it anyway. And failing.
However, I found the lecture itself to be rather boring and, if I may say so, almost pompous in a way. I know that Kamilla Elliott is an expert in her field, having studied this subject for a long time and written books about it, and that the audience was also made up of a lot of Film Studies or Media students, but I was in neither category. In my opinion, when giving a talk, you cannot simply assume that everyone will be an expert in what you are talking about. In contrast to this, of course you cannot simply dumb down the subject to the extent that you are explaining every little term and idea, as this will quickly grow to be tedious. However, the intricate and overly-long sentences which I often found myself faced with in this lecture took things a little too far. Long sentences filled with complicated words and ideas are perfectly fine to use when writing a literary piece on the subject, but they simply will not do in a talk of this nature. A reader of a book can skip back over what they have read as often as they need to in order to understand what the author is saying, but it is much harder to pick up these things when simply listening to the words. Because of this, I often found myself rather lost in a tangle of words and sentences and therefore unable to focus and concentrate on the talk. This was a shame, as Kamilla had a lot of interesting points buried under all of those long words.
The lecture was interspersed with a lot of various multimedia inserts which broke it up quite well. The talk began with an excerpt from A Day in the Life by The Beatles, illustrated with the lyrics, which appeared projected on the screen as the words came in the song. There were also video extracts from the films Adaptation and Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. From what we were shown and told about these two films, I thought that they were both very interesting and wonderful examples of ‘unfilmable books’, despite having never read them myself. These extracts also made me want to further research these books and films and were rather attention-grabbing when surrounded by the mass of words.
Kamilla was forced to cut out a section of her lecture due to the late start and at the end of the lecture, there was no time for questions from the audience, though we were invited to come down and talk to her on the way out of the lecture theatre if there was anything which we wanted to ask. I gave that a miss.
My friend and I decided to give Mark Clayden a miss later that day and it was a good thing, as I am informed that he didn’t turn up. Though I am not certain on that fact, so please don’t blame me if it’s not true.
Sue Townsend was on Thursday at 1pm. We got there fifteen minutes early and found ourselves in something midway between a crowd and a queue outside the door. We were then informed that the event “was full”. We protested that we had booked it and were met with the reply: “We cannot guarantee you a seat, even if you have booked”… What the hell? So what was the point in booking? We left this group of people in a less than pleased state, with a classmate who had been really looking forward to this event, who had also booked and was really disappointed. I don’t for a second imagine that we were the only ones in this state. Especially as I had a dozen or so people around me grumbling the exact same things that we were about how disorganised and ridiculous it was.
Later that day, we went to attempt to see Mark Thomas and were met with a woman with a clipboard asking if we had booked. People who had booked were told to go straight ahead and have their names checked off and those who had not were asked to queue at the side and would be let in, possibly, once those who had booked had arrived. At last… a sensible system. Which was apparently only discovered on the second-to-last day of the event. Well done De Montfort. Eventually, we were let into the lecture hall and were surprised by how many free seats there were for something which had been ‘fully booked’ when we tried to get our seats for it and been forced to queue outside.
This event was conducted like an interview with a second man sitting at the front with Mark Thomas. I have no idea who this other man was, partly due to the fact that they were both sitting on rather low, comfortable chairs, making it almost impossible to see them over the heads of the people in rows in front. I didn’t really know anything about Mark Thomas when I went into that lecture hall, but learned a lot over the hour about who he was, what he stood for and even, to an extent, events of his childhood. Although it was a lot more politics-based than I was expecting (Admittedly, probably because I didn’t really know who he was) I actually found myself rather interested in what he had to say, though I have no interest in politics at all. I don’t, however, remember a lot of the specifics of what he was talking about, probably because it was not exactly my area of expertise.
Mark Thomas spoke in an interesting, colloquial manner, as though having a discussion with the audience, most likely helped by the interview style of the event. It was easy to follow what he was saying, even with my limited political knowledge, if a tad uninteresting in places, for me at least. There was a fair bit of humour in this hour, which was pleasant, and a lot of ground was covered.
My main problem with this event was the fact that it ran over. The ‘interview man’ had suggested finishing the talk at 5:45pm so that there was plenty of time for questions, as “a lot of these talks have been running over, leaving us without time for questions”. This seemed like a good idea, until the first question took the best part of ten minutes to answer. Admittedly, it was a very interesting and fascinating answer, which I very much enjoyed hearing, but the following questions, also hand-picked to require extremely long answers, meant that the lecture ran over quite a bit. When a lecture is already five minutes over its supposed ending time, you really shouldn’t say: “Okay, just a last two questions now”. But that was exactly what the ‘interview man’ said. It was gone 6:10pm when it eventually ended, but as there were so many people about, it was near 6:20 when I managed to leave the building.
In conclusion really, I felt that the range of subjects covered in the Cultural Exchanges programme weren’t varied enough for the interests of most of the students I spoke to and that the entire event itself was poorly organised. This isn’t exactly the first time Cultural Exchanges has been put on, but apparently they have yet to work out the best way of going about the whole thing. Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of staff and guides around and loads of helpful signs with arrows on, but it just plain wasn’t what I was expecting it to be.
Roll on next year…
The first event on the list was Kamilla Elliott on Tuesday at 2pm. We arrived five minutes beforehand and headed towards the door, somewhat sheepishly, expecting to be accosted by the volunteers in charge of this event, asking us to tick off our names on a register. Instead, a man simply said: “Are you here for Kamilla Elliott?” We replied: “Yes.” Just go straight in.” said the man. And so we did. We were quite glad of that; having walked all the way up to the third floor of the Clephan Building, I would have been less than pleased to have to simply turn tail and go all the way back down. Yes I am that lazy. The lecture theatre was quite full, but we found a space. It then became evident that extra people were joining and standing at the back, which seemed a little… odd to me.
As for the talk itself, it got off to a late start due to technical difficulties, in that the music for the Powerpoint presentation was not coming through the sound system of the room. About ten minutes and three technical support types later, we were ready to go. (The cure had been restarting the computer, if you’d like to know, which had been Kamilla’s idea…) Kamilla Elliott’s lecture was entitled Unfilmable Books and dealt with books which have been deemed ‘unfilmable’ and the reasons why so many filmmakers insist on turning such pieces of literature into film. This talk immediately caught my eye in the list of events, as I have often found myself reading a book and then watching the film of it and being horrified by the appalling adaptation which I have been shown. In my experience, Stephen King’s The Shining and Suzuki Kouji’s Ring are prime examples of this, taking books which have more than could possibly ever be successfully filmed and attempting it anyway. And failing.
However, I found the lecture itself to be rather boring and, if I may say so, almost pompous in a way. I know that Kamilla Elliott is an expert in her field, having studied this subject for a long time and written books about it, and that the audience was also made up of a lot of Film Studies or Media students, but I was in neither category. In my opinion, when giving a talk, you cannot simply assume that everyone will be an expert in what you are talking about. In contrast to this, of course you cannot simply dumb down the subject to the extent that you are explaining every little term and idea, as this will quickly grow to be tedious. However, the intricate and overly-long sentences which I often found myself faced with in this lecture took things a little too far. Long sentences filled with complicated words and ideas are perfectly fine to use when writing a literary piece on the subject, but they simply will not do in a talk of this nature. A reader of a book can skip back over what they have read as often as they need to in order to understand what the author is saying, but it is much harder to pick up these things when simply listening to the words. Because of this, I often found myself rather lost in a tangle of words and sentences and therefore unable to focus and concentrate on the talk. This was a shame, as Kamilla had a lot of interesting points buried under all of those long words.
The lecture was interspersed with a lot of various multimedia inserts which broke it up quite well. The talk began with an excerpt from A Day in the Life by The Beatles, illustrated with the lyrics, which appeared projected on the screen as the words came in the song. There were also video extracts from the films Adaptation and Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. From what we were shown and told about these two films, I thought that they were both very interesting and wonderful examples of ‘unfilmable books’, despite having never read them myself. These extracts also made me want to further research these books and films and were rather attention-grabbing when surrounded by the mass of words.
Kamilla was forced to cut out a section of her lecture due to the late start and at the end of the lecture, there was no time for questions from the audience, though we were invited to come down and talk to her on the way out of the lecture theatre if there was anything which we wanted to ask. I gave that a miss.
My friend and I decided to give Mark Clayden a miss later that day and it was a good thing, as I am informed that he didn’t turn up. Though I am not certain on that fact, so please don’t blame me if it’s not true.
Sue Townsend was on Thursday at 1pm. We got there fifteen minutes early and found ourselves in something midway between a crowd and a queue outside the door. We were then informed that the event “was full”. We protested that we had booked it and were met with the reply: “We cannot guarantee you a seat, even if you have booked”… What the hell? So what was the point in booking? We left this group of people in a less than pleased state, with a classmate who had been really looking forward to this event, who had also booked and was really disappointed. I don’t for a second imagine that we were the only ones in this state. Especially as I had a dozen or so people around me grumbling the exact same things that we were about how disorganised and ridiculous it was.
Later that day, we went to attempt to see Mark Thomas and were met with a woman with a clipboard asking if we had booked. People who had booked were told to go straight ahead and have their names checked off and those who had not were asked to queue at the side and would be let in, possibly, once those who had booked had arrived. At last… a sensible system. Which was apparently only discovered on the second-to-last day of the event. Well done De Montfort. Eventually, we were let into the lecture hall and were surprised by how many free seats there were for something which had been ‘fully booked’ when we tried to get our seats for it and been forced to queue outside.
This event was conducted like an interview with a second man sitting at the front with Mark Thomas. I have no idea who this other man was, partly due to the fact that they were both sitting on rather low, comfortable chairs, making it almost impossible to see them over the heads of the people in rows in front. I didn’t really know anything about Mark Thomas when I went into that lecture hall, but learned a lot over the hour about who he was, what he stood for and even, to an extent, events of his childhood. Although it was a lot more politics-based than I was expecting (Admittedly, probably because I didn’t really know who he was) I actually found myself rather interested in what he had to say, though I have no interest in politics at all. I don’t, however, remember a lot of the specifics of what he was talking about, probably because it was not exactly my area of expertise.
Mark Thomas spoke in an interesting, colloquial manner, as though having a discussion with the audience, most likely helped by the interview style of the event. It was easy to follow what he was saying, even with my limited political knowledge, if a tad uninteresting in places, for me at least. There was a fair bit of humour in this hour, which was pleasant, and a lot of ground was covered.
My main problem with this event was the fact that it ran over. The ‘interview man’ had suggested finishing the talk at 5:45pm so that there was plenty of time for questions, as “a lot of these talks have been running over, leaving us without time for questions”. This seemed like a good idea, until the first question took the best part of ten minutes to answer. Admittedly, it was a very interesting and fascinating answer, which I very much enjoyed hearing, but the following questions, also hand-picked to require extremely long answers, meant that the lecture ran over quite a bit. When a lecture is already five minutes over its supposed ending time, you really shouldn’t say: “Okay, just a last two questions now”. But that was exactly what the ‘interview man’ said. It was gone 6:10pm when it eventually ended, but as there were so many people about, it was near 6:20 when I managed to leave the building.
In conclusion really, I felt that the range of subjects covered in the Cultural Exchanges programme weren’t varied enough for the interests of most of the students I spoke to and that the entire event itself was poorly organised. This isn’t exactly the first time Cultural Exchanges has been put on, but apparently they have yet to work out the best way of going about the whole thing. Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of staff and guides around and loads of helpful signs with arrows on, but it just plain wasn’t what I was expecting it to be.
Roll on next year…
I never knew...
I went to the "women in the music industry" talk on the Wednesday and let's just say that it was full of surprises. Clearly the music industry is sexist and I have never been so assured of that as when Louise Smith commented about it. I have realised I have a new admirer. She has a family and is running a successful record company... woah! She has recorded albums with Kylie, Madonna and others... she was responsible for the massive hit of 2007 called "The Creeps"... bloody hell!
I was amazed to see that so many women were in this talk, who all wanted similar careers. I am NOT a feminist but I am very passionate about women and men having an equal status in the music industry- my main passion in life. So all I can say is good on Louise and I would love to talk to her again soon.
Pix
xxxx
p.s she must be awesome- one of her heroes is Tony Visconte (the producer of David Bowie and Mark Bolan!)
I was amazed to see that so many women were in this talk, who all wanted similar careers. I am NOT a feminist but I am very passionate about women and men having an equal status in the music industry- my main passion in life. So all I can say is good on Louise and I would love to talk to her again soon.
Pix
xxxx
p.s she must be awesome- one of her heroes is Tony Visconte (the producer of David Bowie and Mark Bolan!)
Woah....
It was a Wednesday night and I went to see the music technology concert in the PACE building... on my own... in the pitch black... with some annoying buggers sitting behind me talking all posh and knowledgeable about music and lighting... with the only source of light being the green spec coming from the speakers which surrounded the room. There were to be 4 pieces performed- all done digitally with one accompanied by a live piano with a woman called Sarah who had won prizes for this.
The pieces scared me shitless... everything about them scared me shitless! However, they were amazing and I really could get a picture of where this kind of music could be played. With my eyes closed I imagined something like "Hex" at Alton Towers, or the middle of a horror scene, or possibly the build up to some sort of battle in a science fiction film. Whatever the scenario may have been, rarely have I had shivers from such music. At one point, the music seemed to travel over your head and it gave my complete right side a shudder!
Overall it was amazing and I really wish it would have been a longer concert. Bring them back- don't let the partnership they have with this uni disappear! Please?!
Pix
xxxxx
The pieces scared me shitless... everything about them scared me shitless! However, they were amazing and I really could get a picture of where this kind of music could be played. With my eyes closed I imagined something like "Hex" at Alton Towers, or the middle of a horror scene, or possibly the build up to some sort of battle in a science fiction film. Whatever the scenario may have been, rarely have I had shivers from such music. At one point, the music seemed to travel over your head and it gave my complete right side a shudder!
Overall it was amazing and I really wish it would have been a longer concert. Bring them back- don't let the partnership they have with this uni disappear! Please?!
Pix
xxxxx
Tony Garnett
It was quite comforting to know that this man whose career has been much longer than my life stated one of the theories I've been saying for years- that drama (be it TV, film or theatre) is all about entertainment and education (sounds rather simple now I type it, but I'm sure it's quite deep).
Tony Garnett is a producer who is mostly linked to films and TV shows about social realism- such as 'This Life', 'Cathy, Come Home', 'Kes', 'The Cops' and 'Law and Order'. As a producer he does want the audience to be educated and entertained, as with 'The Cops' he wanted to show the darker side of Tony Blair's Britain where poverty still exists, as well as the effect of power on ordinary people. 'The Cops' lasted for two series before Garnett decided to move on. He said that, in being true to life, 'The Cops' had no real ending- plot threads weren't tied up neatly, characters still had problems and so on. Clips where shown from that show and 'This Life', which caused the lecture to overrun and question time was cut short.
What the lecture did leave me thinking about notions of education and entertainment in drama- how do you balance between the two, like how true to life should a piece be before it becomes dull? Should truth be sacrificed for entertainment?
Tony Garnett is a producer who is mostly linked to films and TV shows about social realism- such as 'This Life', 'Cathy, Come Home', 'Kes', 'The Cops' and 'Law and Order'. As a producer he does want the audience to be educated and entertained, as with 'The Cops' he wanted to show the darker side of Tony Blair's Britain where poverty still exists, as well as the effect of power on ordinary people. 'The Cops' lasted for two series before Garnett decided to move on. He said that, in being true to life, 'The Cops' had no real ending- plot threads weren't tied up neatly, characters still had problems and so on. Clips where shown from that show and 'This Life', which caused the lecture to overrun and question time was cut short.
What the lecture did leave me thinking about notions of education and entertainment in drama- how do you balance between the two, like how true to life should a piece be before it becomes dull? Should truth be sacrificed for entertainment?
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