Current Students Intranet » Forum 2018-19

Ben Lerner, 'Plume'

Martin King — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 15:26:32 GMT

Before the start of today's seminar, it was mentioned by some that the link provided for Ben Lerner's poem no longer works, and that attempts to find the poem using search engines only gave results for a reading of the poem on soundcloud. For anyone who has not been able to read the poem in its written form, I have attached it as an image file.

Attachments (follow link to download)

lerner_plume.png (252 KB)

Digital Vortex, (im)material labour and electronic waste presentation notes

Luke Charnley — Fri, 30 Nov 2018 19:13:48 GMT

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to attach the notes that I took down for the Qui et al. text that I didnt get to present in Monday's seminar since I was ill. Hope they help!

Luke

Attachments (follow link to download)

wlata_digital_vortex.docx (16 KB)

Re: Agony and Ecstasy

Nora Castle — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 14:20:41 GMT

This piece of photographic journalism is an interesting and depressing look into what living in a 'coffin cubicle' (like on p.49 of the monologue) looks like. These photos are no tspecifically from factory dormitories, but still gives you the flavor of that type of living situation.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jun/07/boxed-life-inside-hong-kong-coffin-cubicles-cage-homes-in-pictures

Agony and Ecstasy

Nicholas Lawrence — Wed, 21 Nov 2018 15:01:43 GMT

Some links regarding the controversy over Daisey's play, with resonance for what we've been looking at concerning 'media ecologies' -

To begin, Mike Daisey’s blogsite, where his monologue is available for free download: “With its 2.0 release, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS is now sharper and stronger … and it is ethically made”:

http://mikedaisey.blogspot.co.uk/p/monologues.html

A 2012 CBS story, “The Dark Side of Shiny Apple Products,” on Mike Daisey’s performance piece (with excerpts), positioning it within the frame of investigative journalism:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3445_162-57367950/

The original adapted-for-radio broadcast of Mike Daisey’s piece on This American Life:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory

The subsequent retraction of the broadcast, itself taking up an entire episode of This American Life:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction?act=0#play

A Washington Post ‘opinion blog’ detailing the ‘truth vs. facts’ of Daisey’s performance:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/mike-daisey-truth-vs-facts/2012/03/16/gIQA0T3uGS_blog.html

A New York Times article, “In China, Human Costs are Built into an iPad,” by reporter Charles Duhigg:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all

A handwringing piece by James Fallows of The Atlantic on the fallout from the Daisey affair:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-sad-and-infuriating-mike-daisey-case/254661/

And one of the few critical examinations of the story, drawing attention to some of the contexts for the firestorm over Daisey’s show, including corporate support for National Public Radio shows like Marketplace:

http://theatreideas.blogspot.co.uk/2012_04_15_archive.html

In light of the NPR episode, and in keeping with our focus on the environmental aspect of media communications, a few points for consideration:

- Daisey’s play belongs to a genre of performance monologues that includes the work of writers and actors such as Wallace Shawn and Spaulding Gray, as well as that of activist filmmakers such as Michael Moore. Comparing Daisey with these artists, we might ask what the ‘rules’ of the genre entail.

- Consider the various institutions implicated in the Daisey affair – corporations, journalism outlets, governments, trade associations, NGOs, etc. Exercise: draw a ‘map of the field,’ Bourdieu-style, involving the various players in the story.

- The retraction episode aired on This American Life lays great emphasis on Daisey’s departure from the facts of what he witnessed first-hand during his visit to Foxconn in Shenzen. In both journalist and theatre circles Daisey’s inventions are often referred to as a ‘betrayal.’ What is the nature of this betrayal?

- The Daisey affair has parallels with a famous episode involving the testimonial narrative I, Rigoberta Menchú, the story of a peasant woman recounting her witness of US-supported government killings in 1980s Guatemala. With the Menchú story in mind, it may be useful to discuss the implications of truth-telling as a function of personal life-narrative vs. the accountability of collective testimony.

Media ecology biblio

Nicholas Lawrence — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 13:55:27 GMT

A selected bibliography for this week, attached -

Attachments (follow link to download)

media_ecology-bibliography.docx (142 KB)

Re: The Forgotten Space - links

Nicholas Lawrence — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 10:58:33 GMT

Many thanks for this, Nora - a better quality pdf than mine of this hard-to-locate text.

Nick

Re: The Forgotten Space - links

Nora Castle — Mon, 12 Nov 2018 15:17:46 GMT

Here is a PDF of Fish Story if anyone wants to check it out.

Attachments (follow link to download)

fish_story.pdf (28 MB)

The Forgotten Space - links

Nicholas Lawrence — Fri, 09 Nov 2018 11:13:05 GMT

To get a sense of Sekula and Burch's film, you can watch this 18-minute segment, on container shipping -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbDyD40-cyk

Two commentaries as follow-up -

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comment/world-sea-forgotten-space

https://www.afterall.org/online/material-resistance-allan-sekula-s-forgotten-space#.W-ILRVKYTR0

On Allan Sekula, whose photographic book Fish Story is the precursor text for the film -

https://monoskop.org/Allan_Sekula

Water Wars + Fear the Walking Dead

Nora Castle — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 14:19:45 GMT

The third season of Fear the Walking Dead is set partly at the (fictional) Gonzalez Dam. (Episodes 3, 4, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16.) There's a lot about control of water, as it turns out the woman in charge of the dam operations has been allowing the people in the nearby village to siphon off water, which causes an issue with the cartel operating the dam. The season ends with the destruction of the dam. Here's a link to the fandom page about it: https://walkingdead.fandom.com/wiki/Gonzalez_Dam

It would definitely be fun to read/watch it alongside with The Water Knife as it deals with a lot of the same issues.

Attachments (follow link to download)

ftwd-dam-explosion.jpg (141 KB)

Re: Donald Worster, “Water in the Age of Imperialism – and Beyond”

Nicholas Lawrence — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 12:53:24 GMT

Thanks, Martin - I'm attaching here a brief bibliography on water resource issues, plus another essay of Worster's comparing US and Chinese imperial water control.

Attachments (follow link to download)

water_wars__bibliography.docx (122 KB)
2011_5_the_flow_of_empire.pdf (1.4 MB)

Donald Worster, “Water in the Age of Imperialism – and Beyond”

Martin King — Tue, 30 Oct 2018 00:57:15 GMT

First attempt at using the forum -- hopefully this should be the right pdf for next week's Worster reading.

(edit: I have just realised that this pdf doesn't contain a full bibliography. Sorry about this, unfortunately these pages are all I have.)

Attachments (follow link to download)

worster_water_in_the_age_of_imperialism.pdf (13 MB)

Burtynsky's Anthropocene

Nicholas Lawrence — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 16:16:10 GMT

The photographer Edward Burtynsky, perhaps best known for his aerial shots of the Alberta tar sands, has a show (The Human Signature) at the Flowers Gallery in London currently - a preview in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2018/oct/18/the-human-signature-edward-burtynskys-anthropocene-in-pictures

Tony Harrison

Nicholas Lawrence — Sun, 14 Oct 2018 19:02:03 GMT

A few links for this week’s focus on Harrison’s “V”:

A BBC Radio 4 documentary, “Exploring ‘V’ (2013)” -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW49WJ0F2HM

and another one, on the Bookclub series -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/play/b07dk0y1

Harrison wrote and directed a follow-up of sorts to “V” in Prometheus, a 1998 film-poem on the international decline of the working class -

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119956/

Presentations schedule

Nicholas Lawrence — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 15:44:28 GMT

Week 2: Contesting the Anthropocene – Izy

Week 3: Energy – Neil

Week 4: Sixth extinction – Maxim

Week 5: Sacrifice zones – Maria

Week 6: Resource wars – Sandy / Martin

Week 7: The forgotten space – Elise

Week 8: Strange weather: media ecologies – Josh

Week 9: Digital vortex, (im)material labour, electronic waste – Luke

Week 10: The poems of our climate change – Amelia / Anni

Robert Macfarlane’s “Generation Anthropocene”

Nicholas Lawrence — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 17:14:05 GMT

Two years ago the literary environmentalist Robert Macfarlane published an influential essay in the Guardian, “Generation Anthropocene: How Humans Have Altered the Planet Forever” -

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/01/generation-anthropocene-altered-planet-for-ever

and a followup roundtable was convened by the Open Library of Humanities, available here -

https://olh.openlibhums.org/articles/10.16995/olh.153/

Welcome to the EN9B5 forum

Nicholas Lawrence — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 14:42:47 GMT

This is the space for exchanging notes, readings and links to items of interest for the module.

Current Students Intranet » Forum 2018-19

Ben Lerner, 'Plume'

Digital Vortex, (im)material labour and electronic waste presentation notes

Re: Agony and Ecstasy

Agony and Ecstasy

Media ecology biblio

Re: The Forgotten Space - links

Re: The Forgotten Space - links

The Forgotten Space - links

Water Wars + Fear the Walking Dead

Suggested essay topics

Re: Donald Worster, “Water in the Age of Imperialism – and Beyond”

Donald Worster, “Water in the Age of Imperialism – and Beyond”

Burtynsky's Anthropocene

Tony Harrison

Presentations schedule

Robert Macfarlane’s “Generation Anthropocene”

Welcome to the EN9B5 forum