A collection stories and essays by MA students of the Visual Cultures Department at Goldsmiths’ University of London spawning from a study and research of informal markets in London.

GEO CULTURES Workshop
Friday May 22, 2009
10.30 – 17.00
Ben Pimlott Lecture Hall, Ben Pimlott Building

A ‘ Visual Cultures’ workshop on the relations between arts, cultural practices and globalization.

At stake is how are cultural practices informing processes of globlisation ? Conventionally the arts are seen to represent, to be illustrative, of the realities of globalization. Instead the concept of ‘Geo-Cultures’ attempts to breakdown the binaries of local vs. global and to investigate how the arts are producing unexpected cultural insights, new relations and unexpected knowledges enfolded within the circuits of globalization.

11.00– 12.00 Irit Rogoff Geo-Cultures – Introduction
12.00 – 1.30 Book Launch, Market Tales – A Geopolyphony

The book is written and published by the members of the ‘Geographies’ MA seminar 2009 and will be presented with a panel of contributors and a screening of some of the research materials. Books will be available for a low price at the launch.

1.30 – 2.30 Lunch
2.30 – 5.00 Artist’s talk and discussion Kutlug Ataman

Istanbul based artist and film maker Kutlug Ataman has been making screen based work that takes up local stories and posits them within wide cultural contexts. His characters while seemingly marginal, not only raise issues of international significance, but also write these in languages that are inventive, defiant and refuse categorization. In London he premiered his 40 monitor installation ‘KUBA’ , bringing an army of Kurdish migrants from Istanbul into the heart of the Western Metropolis.

Ataman has had retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery, been shortlisted for the Turner Prize (2005), received numerous international awards for both his feature films and his work as an artist.

At the ‘Geo-Cultures’ workshop, Ataman will premier his new work ‘Journeys to the Moon’ currently showing at Kunsthaus Lentos in Graz.