Dr Gareth Stanton was in Bangladesh in early April for a conference that marked the conclusion of a three-year collaboration between our Department and the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism at the University of Dhaka (currently having its 50^th anniversary!). The conference was held on the 12^th and 13^th April at that university’s Centre for Advanced Research (CARS).

The focus for the conference was ‘Communication, Environment and Cultural Change’. Over the two days, participants heard papers addressing a wide variety of themes from reactions to cyclone events in Bangladesh to coverage of environmental issues in the local press in the Sundarbans, home of the Royal Bengal Tiger and a unique mangrove-based eco-system. Various environmental pressures on the region mean that important tree species are dying and salinity levels are changing. The historical role of protecting the region’s population from the effects of cyclonic activity has been steadily eroded in a part of the world that is already living on an environmental knife-edge. The Chair of  the Forum of Environmental Journalists of Bangladesh (FEJB), Quamrul Islam Chowdhury, spoke at the conference about the way in which environmental reporting in the Bangladeshi press has become increasingly displaced by political journalism and opinion. This is especially clear in the current political climate where a political stand-off between the two leading political parties, the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP,) has led to a series of national strikes (hartals) and the months of February and March witnessed what some have seen as the equivalent of the ‘Arab Spring’ in central Dhaka’s Shahbag district.

In the wake of the on-going war crimes trials in Bangladesh, thousands of demonstrators have been on the streets calling for the death penalty for ‘razakars’, an Urdhu word for volunteers, but here in Bangladesh the term for those who collaborated with the military forces of East Pakistan during the 1971 War of Liberation.  The Shahbag protestors have often been youthful and techno-savvy using social media and blogging to share their views and messages. After what was seen by some as initial government support, there has been an Islamacist backlash with demands being made for the reintroduction of segregated education at all levels and the death penalty for blaspheming bloggers. The day after the conference was over it was the Bangla New Year, Pahela Baishakh. Amid the joyful crowds and general celebration there was an apparent tension and the theme of the annual parade put on by students of the University’s Arts Faculty was a ‘razakar’-free Bangladesh. Some of this year’s wonderful floats made by the students themselves presented this theme. Behind all the politics, however, the environmental threats remain very real. One paper at the conference presented the results of earthquake modelling for Dhaka based on knowledge of building resilience across sections of both the old and new city. Tremors in excess of eight Richter’s would in all likelihood see many buildings collapse totally and cause casualties in the millions. The news of the terrible tragedy at Rana Plaza in Sava just outside Dhaka gives a terrible intimation of the havoc a large-scale earthquake would actually cause as well as shining a light on the conditions in Bangladesh’s massive garment industry.

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Professor Joanna Zylinska has just launched Photomediations Machine a curated online space where the dynamic relations of mediation as performed in photography and other media can be encountered, experienced and engaged.

Photomediations Machine adopts a process-based approach to image making by tracing the technological, biological, cultural, social and political flows of mediation that produce photographic objects. Showcasing theoretical and practical work at the intersections of art and mainstream practices, Photomediations Machine is both an archive of mediations past and a site of production of media as-we-do-not-know-them-yet. Photomediations Machine is non-commercial, non-profit and fully open access.

Curated by Professor Zylinska and the Taiwanese artist Ting Ting Cheng, Photomediations Machine has an International Advisory Board which includes Katherine Behar, Lisa Cartwright, Alberto López Cuenca, Asbjørn Grønstad, Richard Grusin, Sarah Kember, Max Liljefors, Melissa Miles, Nicholas Mirzoeff, W.J.T. Mitchell, Luiza Nader, Nina Sellars, Jonathan Shaw, Katrina Sluis, Marquard Smith, Hito Steyerl and Bernadette Wegenstein. It is a sister project to the online open access journal Culture Machine, established in 1999.

To find out more click here, or follow them on Twitter: @Photomediations. To find out more about Joanna Zylinska’s work click here.

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April was a very busy month for Professor Aeron Davis, the Director of our MA in Political Communications. He was invited to give a series of lectures and make a substantial contribution to different debates, from the sociology of elites and power to the rationalisation of journalism.

Professor Davis’s research merges elements of politics, sociology and media and communication. His interests and expertise cover a range of different topics, including public relations, politics and political communication; promotional culture, media sociology and news production; markets and economic sociology; elites and power. He has investigated communication at Westminster, the London Stock Exchange, amongst the major political parties and across the trade union movement.

Professor Davis has published on each of these topics in journals and edited collections and is the author of Public Relations Democracy (MUP, 2002), The Mediation of Power (Routledge, 2007), Political Communication and Social Theory (Routledge, 2010) and Promotional Cultures (Polity, forthcoming 2013).

In April, Professor Davis was an invited guest at the EHESS (École des hautes études en sciences sociales) in Paris. He gave two public lectures on ‘The Sociology of Elites’, and ‘Forms of Media Capital and Mobility in Political Fields’. He was also an invited speaker at a Cambridge University workshop ‘Interogating Economics in the Public Sphere’. He shared a panel with Karel Williams, Maurice Glasman and Daniel Beunza. His paper was entitled ’Media as a Communicative Space for the Cooptation of Non-Financial Stakeholder Elites into Financialization’. He was also an invited speaker at a workshop organised by the Max Weber Study Group of the British Sociological Association. The workshop explored Weber’s thinking on the press and modern applications of this. Aeron’s paper was entitled ‘Hacking and Leveson as the Outcome of Modern Rationalised Journalism’.

To find out more about Aeron Davis research, click here.

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Media Reform has become one of the key issues of our times, and in the last two years with the Media Reform Coalition, and our involvement with the Hacked Off Campaign our Department has made a fundamental contribution to national debates on media reform.

In April, 2013 at the National Conference for Media Reform in Denver, Des Freedman, Reader in our Department, discussed in an interview available online why putting media reform on top of the political agenda has become such an important priority not only in Britain but everywhere in the world.

On the 17^th of June, 2013, our Department will be hosting the Strategies for Media Reform International Conference, which will provide a unique terrain for discussion on these pressing issues. The Conference is organised in anticipation to the International Communication Association Conference (ICA), and will be followed by a rally. To find out more or to register for the conference, click here.

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Next Wednesday the 27^th of March, Professor Sean Cubitt will talk about how the interaction between electronic artists and their technologies creates a distinctive digital aesthetic at the Cybersalon.

Cybersalon is a monthly meeting of minds on how the Internet is shaping society for artists, entrepreneurs, techies, activists, academics and designers. This month Cybersalon is celebrating the past two decades of digital creativity in London and will look forward to the city’s next burst of artistic innovation.

New Media Art in the 1990s was not about a particular art form, but rather about exploring the emerging medium itself. Some have called it techno-deterministic, others saw it as a rise of new digital aesthetics. What is now clear is that the best artworks from this pioneering decade explored how the decentralised and open structure the Net encouraged the development of virtual and real-life communities. It was this artistic avant-garde that would find its home in the rave scene, cybercafes and autonomist collectives. In 2013, learning from this formative experience, both veterans and newcomers are producing many weird and wonderful media artworks for our own times.

Professor Sean Cubitt will be joined by other leading experts and practitioners in the field. Artist William Latham will show and speak about his early experimental work on digital sculptures, developing Mutator and its influence on the aesthetics of the Londonclub scene of the 1990s.

Ivan Pope, the founder of ArtNet BBS and co-director of Webmedia, will show the thinking, creation and impact of his first Web artwork – The Last Words of Dutch Schultz – and it’s implication for today’s Net innovators.

Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett will discuss Furtherfield, its online community, and their physical gallery space, and showcase the latest trends and up-and-coming artists of London’s new media art scene.

The panel will be chaired by Ilze Black, Queen Mary, University of London; co-founder of network media group Take2030; and OPEN art bureau in1990s post-Soviet Latvia.

There will also be exhibits by David John Russell, ‘Puppets of my creations’; and other new media artworks from London 1994-2013. Tunes: Wildlife Display Team.

Come to Cybersalon to discuss the past, present and future of new media art in this vibrant city. London’s greatest contributions to digital aesthetics are yet to come. Entrance is free but please book here.

Venue:
The Arts Catalyst,
50-54 Clerkenwell Road,
London EC1M 5PS

6.30pm: doors open and drinks. Discussion: 7.00 – 9.00 pm. Followed by drinks in the pub: The Slaughtered Lamb.

This event is organised in partnership with the
School of Media & Performing Arts, Middlesex University and
Easynet.

We’re collecting work to create an archive of the past twenty years of digital culture in London. We want your old hardware and software!

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