Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 12:30:35 +0100
Subject: Variant 29 Summer 2007?
From: "www.variant.org.uk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Variant 29 Summer 2007
http://www.variant.org.uk
...the free, independent, arts magazine. In-depth coverage
in the context of broader social, political & cultural issues.
text : full issue
http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/issue29.html
PDF : full issue
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/0Variant29.pdf
Content
* Who Are You to tell me to Question Authority?
Radical education in a 'proto-fascist' era
Benjamin Franks
A comprehensive review of Henry Giroux's 'Against the New
Authoritarianism', a well-researched polemic that identifies the
threat of authoritarianism in the nexus of hierarchical institutions
that have formed in the United States, where the images from Abu
Ghraib provide Giroux with a significant set of 'proto-fascist' texts
for discussing the wider social processes that produced them.
text :
http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/Franks29.html
PDF :
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/3Variant29Frank.pdf
* Closed Circuit Tunnel Vision
Tom Jennings
An incisive review of Andrea Arnold's Glasgow-set film, the suspense
thriller 'Red Road'. Jennings posits that Arnold in intending to
question the ramifications of surveillance in Britain "explains the
apparent acceptance of the state's intrusiveness in terms of 'our
national psyche'". A reference which he details as being beyond
current affairs' hysterical hyperbole and the film's erstwhile
critical reception.
text :
http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/jennings29.html
PDF :
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/4Variant29Jennings.pdf
* Comic & Zine Reviews
Mark Pawson
Pawson opens the eclectic pages of: Hitsville UK: Punk in the Faraway Towns,
Duke, Anorak, Okido, Street Play, Tour de Fence, Here, Foie Gras, I
Can't Draw, Your Mum, Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in
All Fifty States...
text :
http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/pawson29.html
PDF :
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/5Variant29Pawson.pdf
* 'Reframing the Poverty Debate' the New Labour Way
Gerry Mooney
"Poverty is back on the agenda, but back on it in particular and very
worrying ways. ... how poverty is defined, understood and talked
about says much about the shape and nature of any policy and
political response to it." Here, Mooney draws "attention to some of
the ways in which the question of poverty is being reconstructed by
New Labour and an assortment of journalists, academics and social and
political commentators today." And rather than a "neo-liberal vision
of social justice premised on a celebration of the market" advances
"an entirely different conception and understanding of social justice
that argues for social and economic equality through an attack on
wealth and vested interests."
text :
http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/mooney29.html
PDF :
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/6Variant29Mooney.pdf
* The Agreed Truth & The Real Truth: The New Northern Ireland
Liam O'Ruairc
"The 'historic' restoration of devolution in Northern Ireland, on 8
May 2007, has been hailed by the media as marking the symbolic end of
the conflict there. ... But is Northern Ireland really 'reaping the
dividend of peace, stability and, it is to be hoped, impending
prosperity' as the media is assuring us? And if so is it going to
last" when "Northern Ireland has the lowest household incomes in the
UK ... the gap between rich and poor is even larger than in the rest
of Britain" and "Sectarianism is supposed to be solved by a system
that institutionalises it."
text :
http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/liam29.html
PDF :
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/7Variant29Liam.pdf
* Multiple Agendas, Impossible Dialogues: Where Irish Studies and
History of Art Meet
Lucy Cotter
Blow-by-blow conference report of 'Irish Studies and History of Art:
Impossible Dialogues?' at the Association of Art Historians 2007
conference, University of Ulster, April 2007: "The main point of
tension in such an interdisciplinary dialogue is the function and
status of the national - which is central to Irish Studies and often
seen as reductive in Art History."
text :
http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/cotter29.html
PDF :
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/8Variant29IrishStudies.pdf
* Loving Art
Tim Stott
Irish art criticism not contracted to the laborious recovery of
meaning, or that puts interpretation in the service of promotion and
general arts management, might engage instead in the intimate
exchanges of lovers...
text :
http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/stott29.html
PDF :
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/9Variant29Stott.pdf
* Art School and the Old Grey Cardigan Test
Mick Wilson
There is a "topicality to the question of art education even within
the mainstream of the international art world." But "within art
education institutions established patterns of low-level conflict
fail to pass over into open, critically accountable debate, dialogue
or exchange. ... Many of the self-avowed bearers of the art school
'tradition' have been absorbed into an old grey cardigan kind of
comfortable though miserable institutionalisation. The painful irony
is that rehearsing matters in this way risks closing down the very
discussion one is demanding..."
text :
http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/wilson29.html
PDF :
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/10Variant29Grey.pdf
* The Critique of Everyday Life and Cultural Democracy
Alex Law
An unfolding review of John Roberts' study of the possibilities for
cultural democracy 'Philosophizing the Everyday: Revolutionary
Practice and the Fate of Cultural Theory', sixty years of critical
theorising between 1917 and 1975 about everyday life and a conflicted
reality, a more activist sense on which to hook a democratic cultural
politics for today. Markedly, Law concentrates on Roberts' deepening
excavation on the submerged figure, at least for cultural politics,
of Henri Lefebvre.
text :
http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/law29.html
PDF :
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/11Variant29Law.pdf
* Killing Culture (Softly)
Stephen Dawber
The draft Culture (Scotland) Bill was not negligible. It marked a
dramatic recomposition of the relationship between the Scottish state
apparatus and its cultural agencies: stronger centralised state
control of cultural policy; mounting bureaucratisation across the
sector; the branding of national culture for promotional gain; an
insidious instrumentalisation of cultural practice and erosion of
creative freedoms; and a commitment to declining state funding and
increased privatisation. Dawber sets out the key tasks for cultural
workers to recover cultural policy from the miasma of technocracy in
which it has become lost...
text :
http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/dawber29.html
PDF :
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/12Variant29Dawb.pdf
* O Rose, thou art sick!
Outsourcing Glasgow's Cultural & Leisure Services
On April Fools' Day , Glasgow City councillors rushed through the
removal of the City's entire Cultural and Leisure Services and staff
from the control of the people and delivered them into the hands of
bankers: the Charitable Trust and Trading Company 'Culture and Sport
Glasgow'. Drawing on UNISON and activist sources this is an otherwise
missing public account of the hiving off of Glasgow's common good.
text :
http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/commons29.html
PDF :
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/13Variant29Common.pdf
* Adult Educators, Adult Education and Progressive Social Movements
Gordon Asher interviews Stephen Brookfield, one of the pre-eminent
writers and thinkers in the field of adult and continuing education
and active participant in social movements. "When you create
democratic space, which means that you as the teacher are not the
sole source of authority, you're starting to question the power of
certain individuals in the college or the university to make
judgements about whether the learning is valuable or not. Then you
come right up against the issue of power and who has the right to
make these judgements, which brings you up against the issue of
social structure..."
text :
http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/edu29.html
PDF :
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/14Variant29AdultEd.pdf
* Front cover
Jonathan Owen and Neil Grassie
PDF :
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue29/1Variant29cover.pdf
-----------------------------
Call for articles:
Creative Industries
...to develop critical understanding and to broaden public discussion
about 'Creative Industries' as a key aspect of contemporary policy
that is presumed to address inequality. Full details:
http://www.variant.org.uk/CI.html
-----------------------------
Associated Events:
* Radical Independent Book fair project - Glasgow
NEXT event:
Sat 4th August, Kinning Park complex, next to Underground, 11am onwards
http://www.ribproject.org
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
* Document 5 : International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival
Call for Submissions - Deadline : 1st July 2007
http://www.docfilmfest.org.uk
-----------------------------
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Variant, ISSUE 30 - Winter 2007
Advertising Copy Date: Friday 14th September
Publication Date: Monday 1st October
Covers: October '07 to and including January '08
For details of advertising in the magazine please see:
http://www.variant.org.uk/ads.html
To advertise contact Luke Collins, Dan Monks or Alice Hodge
Advertising & Marketing on: +44 (0)141 333 9522
or email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------------------
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