Autumn Programme

LSautumn2013  (downloadable poster)

Hope to see you all there!

(thanks to Jenny K. for the poster)

PASSENGERFILMS award

Landscape Surgery’s cinema for cultural geography, PASSENGERFILMS, wins its second national award in a row for its work in education and public film curating.

Write off the map

Last night the British Federation of Film Societies held their annual award ceremonies for innovative film exhibition, and I’m excited to say that PASSENGERFILMS – the cultural geography themed cinema which I founded three years ago, and have worked on with a team of other volunteer PhD students since – won the national award for Best Film Education Programme for the second year running. (Above – me on stage at NFT1, accepting the award!) Congratulations to the PASSENGERFILMS committee, Miranda Ward, Mia Hunt, Liz Haines, and Harriet Hawkins. This means our programme of cultural geography themed events over the last twelve months has once again been nationally recognised, thanks in no small part to the fantastic speakers, researchers, and guest curators with whom we’ve been collaborating. Full information on all of our previous screenings is on the blog here, and some photos of recent screenings follow below.

The BFFS…

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Landscape Surgery : Autumn 2013…sneak preview

We are not quite ready to reveal the final final programme for Landscape Surgery over the next few months, but here are the dates for your diary and some taster themes…  final version to follow in a few weeks

We kick off on the 1st October same time same place ( 2pm F3 11 Bedford Square) so bring your news…

15th October: sees a writing themed session convened by Katie Boxall, Liz Haines and Miranda Ward

29th October: “Elements of the Political”  led by Richard Bater and Weiquing Lin

12th November: Veronica della Dora, RHUL’s new Professor of Human Geography will introduce her research

26th November: Landscape Surgery meets Open Space: Discussion on the Futures of Cultural Geography

10th December… TBC… Christmas treats will be involved

For those of you wanting a long range view the dates for the rest of the year are 21/1,  4/2, 18/2, 4/3, 18/3, 29/4, 13/5, 27/5, 10/6… and another year is gone.

Designing the Impossible

Ph.D. candidate Nelly Ben Hayoun was featured in a Radio 4 programme (broadvast on Thursday, 5 September 2013) concerning her work with the International Space Orchestra. You can listen to the episode on BBC iPlayer. The programme’s description follows below.

How would you like to experience a Soyuz rocket launch or a volcanic eruption in your living room? Could you create dark energy in your kitchen sink? Perhaps you dream of becoming an astronaut?

Then enter the world of Nelly Ben Hayoun, acclaimed designer of fantasy experiences, who brings the thrill of cutting edge science within the reach of ordinary people.

Nelly is a graduate of the Royal College of Art’s groundbreaking Design Interactions course – one of a new breed of designers who use immersive experiences to stimulate debates about what sort of future we want for ourselves as the limits of technology and science extend ever further.

She plans her experiences like a circus showman, charting precisely the emotional trajectory through which she wants to lead her audiences. Each project is more ambitious than the last, each seemingly impossible at the outset.

For example, how do you share the high drama of the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing? Nelly’s idea was to create an opera based on transcripts from the mission control room and have it performed by the world’s first International Space Orchestra – made up of NASA space scientists and lunar mission veterans. Astonishingly she pulled it off – the epic Ground Control Opera had its first performance in September 2012. Since then, she has also managed to arrange for a recording of the performance to be broadcast in space.

And Nelly Ben Hayoun’s next impossible project? To become an astronaut, of course.