Foucault Seminar Series, Nottingham Contemporary, November-December, 2008.

Free Talks and Seminars organised by Nottingham Contemporary. Monday 10th November 2008, 6 – 8 pm "Meaning, Truth and Prisons: The Legacy of Michel Foucault" David Macey, Foucault’s biographer, will discuss the astounding contribution of this very “uncomfortable thinker.” Although he died over two decades ago, his work continues to inform contemporary life and culture, whether that is our understanding of madness, prison as a model for many modern institutions, or the self-constructed individual who still relishes the audacity of this activist-philosopher today. Monday 17th November, 6 – 8 pm "Michel Foucault and art after Minimalism" Lisa Le Feuvre “A glance, stare or gaze is a function of power,” states Lisa Le Feuvre. “Looking involves taking, giving and refusing permissions – a process predicated to control.” In this lecture she relates Foucault’s theories of surveillance to the concerns of art after Minimalism, revealed particularly in the work of Dan Graham, Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman. Acconci’s attempted invisibility, Graham’s investigations of the politics of vision and architecture, and the conflict with regulation in Nauman’s work are all explored. Their work attempts to revoke the dominating authority that determines bodies in time, space and ultimately, what we see. Monday 24th November 2008, 6 – 8 pm "Stranger in a Strange Land: Michel Foucault in the Business School" Ken Starkey Foucault is regularly cited in business management literature. At first sight, says Professor Ken Starkey, this might seem “strange”. However, his investigations included prisons, schools and hospitals, now seen by managers as potential business opportunities. However, the complicated workings of modern corporations shouldn’t be simply seen as replicating the all-controlling ‘panopticon’. In the current economic crisis we need to escape from our own intellectual prisons, drawing on Foucault’s thoughts to prise open possibilities. Monday 3rd December, 6pm - 8pm "The Architecture of Occupation in Israel/Palestine" Eyal Weizman and Alessandro Petti Weizman and Alessi are currently researching a masterplan that exposes the hidden intention of Israeli planners after the ending of occupation and the settlers’ evacuation. Here architecture appears to collude with oppression, while ghettoising both Israelis and Palestinians. “The landscape has become the battlefield on which power and state control confront both subversive and direct resistance,” Weizman writes in the introduction to his acclaimed book A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture. Planning and the built environment have become blatant political tools, the speakers argue, dominating and determining different life courses as effectively as Foucault’s “biopower.” Monday 8th December, 6 pm – 8 pm "Prison Today" Erwin James Prisoners today are as marginalised and silent as they were when Foucault organised his Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons to give them a voice. Possibly the one exception has been Erwin James, who wrote a regular column for The Guardian while still serving his sentence. He is uniquely placed to understand the prison debate from both inside and out. Tonight he will question the causes of crime, the role of punishment within our society, and whether prison works. To book a place please email info@nottinghamcontemporary.org. Further information may be found here: http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/programme/current/events/.