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DANGEROUS IDEAS

3RD - 7TH JUNE 2019 | ANNUAL POSTGRADUATE CONFERENCE | PARIS SCHOOL OF ARTS & CULTURE

Reid Hall, 4 Rue de Chevreuse, 75006, Paris

DANGEROUS IDEAS

“All extremes are dangerous. It is best to keep in the middle of the road, in the common ruts, however muddy.” 

 

—  Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader

Monday 03 June

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LOST IN FRENCLATION | 

Cléo de 5 à 7 at Le Brady (39 Boulevard de Strasbourg, 75010 Paris )|
20:00 pm 

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Whether you’ve heard of the nouvelle vague, or new wave, or not, the 60s film movement was and still is extremely influential to not just French cinema, but to cinema around the world. However, Agnès Varda, one of the key influencers on the nouvelle vague, is often overlooked when surveying the history of the movement. In order to celebrate the broad and diverse work on Varda and her continuing influence on artists today, we will be partnering with Lost in Frenchlation to screen one of her most famous films, Clèo de 5 à 7, at the Le Brady (39 Boulevard de Strasbourg, 75010 Paris )| with English subtitles. If you already know a lot about the new wave, this is a chance to look at the movement from a new perspective. If you don’t, Clèo will be the perfect introduction to French cinema. And if you already love Varda, then this is a chance to see one of her films on the big screen.

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The Film will be introduced by Isidore Bethel, a French-American Filmaker who screened work as editor and producer at Cannes (Official Selection). RSVP Here.

Tuesday 04 June

POSTGRADUATECONFERENCE

9.30AM - 20.00PM at Salle de Conference in Reid Hall (4 Rue Chevreuse, 75006)

This is your chance to participate in an annual, one of its kind conference where great minds come together to challenge, explore, and discover the different facets of dangerous ideas.

 

Sarah Churchwell (Behold America: A History of America First and the American Dream) and Lauren Elkin (Flâneuse: Women Walk the City) will be joining in on the conversation on the development of dangerous ideas and concepts, the heritage of language, and many more. Through the conference, our main aim is to be able to access ideas through a range of disciplines and present them in different forms and modes of thinking -- through not only non-fiction, but poetry, fiction, and other art forms.

 

From Le Siecle des Lumieneres to the Gilets Jaunes protests, Paris' history has been paved on the demolishment of old ideas and the reorganization of new ones. Danger stands for discomfort, uncertainty, disquietude. Danger is to be balancing on the threshold, to have and to have not, danger is disruptive, unsettling. Therefore, this conference will be tackling issues that are closest to home. Submissions for Call for Papers are now open -- read the conference programme here snd RSVP here.

Wednesday 05 June

WOMEN OF PARIS  WALKING TOUR
11.00 - 14.00

 

MENTEUR LAUNCH

18.45 - 21.00

Walking Tour: 
Thanks to Lauren Elkin’s book Flâneuse, more women are identifying themselves with the observant street wanderer. Walking the streets of Paris provides the modern flânuese with an abundance of women from literature, music, politics, and cinema. However, knowing where to look, and knowing what or who you’re looking at, can be overwhelming. So, to guide the rookie flâneuses and flâneurs of Paris, we have created thus walking tour around the left bank. In collaboration with Women of Paris, the tour will take us through the influential but underrepresented women of Paris. 
Limited availability -- RSVP & more details here

 

The Menteur Launch:

To celebrate the launch of the University of Kent’s Paris School of Arts and Culture Literary and Arts Magazine, Reid Hall will be hosting a launch party in the beautiful building’s airy salle de conference. There will be art, film screenings, music, literature and poetry readings. We will also be providing free copies of the latest issue of The Menteur! (RSVP here)
 

Thursday 06 June

DANGEROUS DISCUSSIONS PANEL

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Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3 (Department: Monde Anglophone - 5 Rue de l'École de Médecine, 75006)

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18.00 - 20.00

Join us on June 6 at Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3 (Department: Monde Anglophone - 5 Rue de l'École de Médecine, 75006) at 18.00 for a bilingual, interdisciplinary discussion on bodies and representation verbally, historically, musically, artistically, and otherwise.

 

We are delighted and very honoured to be welcoming three brilliant minds coming together to explore three different facets of contemporary life inexplicably linked to the past, with the body, womanhood, and different modes of experience (and expression) being at the forefront of the endeavour.

 

Prof. Claire Davison, Prof. Christelle Taraud, and Yelena Moskovich all join forces in this dynamic conversation on dangerous ideas, banned books the autonomy of the woman body in the west and the east throughout the ages, musically, verbally, artistically, historically, and otherwise.

 

Prof. Claire Davison will be exploring ’Tingling toes and twanging arms – Woolf, Ethel Smyth and their Disruptive Sapphonics', drawing from Woolf's transgressive book, Orlando, Davison will be looking at some of the powerfully transgressive yet playfully disguised eroticism in the book, and the language games Woolf used to defy censorship, thus evoking Smyth's musical 'gunpowder' and the lessons in militant sapphonics (borrowing a term coined by Elizabeth Wood) that an old 'Wrecker' and a 'blaster of paths' shared with an apprentice protester who was beginning to plot Three Guineas.

 

Novelist Yelena Moskovich will be talking about "The Defiant Body: Describing the Indescribable". Moskovich's novels are often described as "indescrible", which for Moskovich is an attempt that is at the heart of this experience of defiance. As Joseph Brodsky described poetry as "language negating its own mass and the laws of gravity", so for Moskovich, the dislocation and alienation of the characters, semantics, and dramatic structure is an exertion towards this weightlessness, in both the subjugated physical body and body of fiction.

 

Last but not least, Prof. Christelle Taraud will be delivering her talk in French, drawing on her previous research and books (see «Amour interdit». Marginalité, prostitution, colonialisme). She will be exploring "Colonial Sexuality, Prostitution, and the idea of the body in Dangerous Books".

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Each talk will last approximately 20' minutes, followed by an open discussion chaired by Dr. Derek Ryan, senior lecturer at the University of Kent.


RSVP Here.

Friday 07 June

DANGEROUS INSTRUMENTS

OPEN MIC

 

The Bootleg Bar

55 Rue de la Roquette, 75011 Paris

DANGEROUS INSTRUMENTS - 19.30 
Spices were used to disguise rotting meat. Perfumes to disguise the odours of the body. What then is the purpose of music? In an era of divisive political agendas, music retains the power to unify and rally, protest and comfort, call to arms and advocate for peace. Throughout history, musical instruments and arrangements have been utilised and vilified by individuals and collectives, from the avant-garde performance of Le Sacre du Printemps causing a near-riot in 1913 Paris, to the 2012 arrest of Pussy Riot.

 

Instruments have been classed as dangerous, from the banned bagpipes to the murderous glass harmonica.

 

Join us for an evening of Dangerous Instruments and Dangerous Music, with a selection of pieces from musicians located in Paris, and judge for yourself whether music and musical instruments have the power to change the world. (RSVP)

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OPEN MIC - 20.30 

Throughout the week, speakers have shared and you have discussed dangerous ideas within art, film, and literature. But sharing parts of yourself can feel just as dangerous and scary as anything else. For this event, we invite you to join us for an open mic night, and express something you would like to, whether it be through music, poetry, or another form. If you don't want to perform, please come along to listen to and show your support for others, and celebrate the closing of our week of dangerous ideas! 

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