Saturday, March 26, 2011

Space, Place, and the Production of Knowledge | A Conference at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa | April 8th and 9th, 2011



I am very excited to be jetting west over the Pacific in April to keynote a conference called Space, Place, and the Production of Knowledgeat the University of Hawai'i, Manoa, (April 8th and 9th, 2011).


The presentation there derives from the introduction and internal chapters of Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race.... 


Here's the new working title:
The cultural space of Hawai'i was burned into my synapses as a child growing up in Laredo, Texas--they were etched there by KGNS Television, Channel 8, an NBC (now NBCUniversal) affiliate.  This station owned two or three prints of Warner Brothers' cartoons that they played over and over and over again.  Somehow me and my sister Josie never got tired of Wackiki Wabbit, below, and Racketeer Rabbit.


In Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America, I try to document how these Hollywood-borne versions of Mexicans (Speedy Gonzales, Charlton Heston as Miguel Vargas in Touch of Evil, etc) proxy for "real" Mexicans in the here and now--infecting viewers of these "innocent" entertainments with seductive hallucinations of "alien" subjectivities that resonate through the psyche forever.


In coming to Hawai'i, I want to advance the critical methodology developed in Tex[t]-Mex and apply it to "exotic" space of these heralded Pacific Islands. That's a small part of the talk, a bit of which will include a public screening of the aforementioned Wackiki Rabbit, directed by Chuck Jones in 1943:





The other part of my talk will address the focus of this special conference: Space, Place, and the Production of Knowledge. I just got finished revising an essay on Laredo, Texas, bordertown, as the geocultural space that gave birth to the postmodern.  Really!
Myriam Gurba
So the balance of my talk will look at writers, thinkers, painters, and performers who allow the particular and peculiar resonances of their geography, of their cartography, of their geo-psycho-carto-zeitgeist to "color" their work.  Examples include Algeria and France refracting the work of Jacques Derrida, the lower Rio Grande Valley infecting the work of painter Izel Vargas, maybe New York in the work of Jon Stewart
My guru! Jacques Derrida
Long Beach, California in the short stories of Myriam Gurba, and Laredo warping the mind of yours truly.


{dig Gurba's take on cultural spaces here...}

I really looking forward to working with the cool graduate student and faculty cohorts at the University of Hawai'i, at Manoa.   Aloha!





Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog: Los Bros Hernandez: Jaime Hernandez and Gilbert He...

Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog: Los Bros Hernandez: Jaime Hernandez and Gilbert He...: "I have spent the better part of twenty years writing about the work of Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez--I never get tired of languishing in thei..."

Friday, March 25, 2011

Eyegiene: The Backstory (CULTURE INDUSTRY Conference: Cornell University, 1987 | W. Nericcio, A. Hewitt, and D. Potter

In 1987, two blokes, one Chicano, the other decidedly Brit, conspired together to organize the Culture Industry conference at Cornell University--in addition to graduate students from all over the country, it also featured keynote presentations by some folks you may have heard of: Fredric Jameson, Susan Sontag, Ariel Dorfman, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Alexander Cockburn (who made the most of the conference!).  The "two blokes" were me, Bill Nericcio, and my partner in crime, the former Chair of German at UCLA, Andrew Hewitt.  Whilst me and Andrew manned the decks for the conference, I worked simultaneously on curating a small parallel gallery event, "Pop-Art: Images from Popular Culture" at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art"--my partner for this adventure in curatorial discovery was Daniel Potter.  Looking back, I can see that most of the ideas explored in Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race derive from seeds planted that memorable April, twenty-four years ago.

Here are some artifacts from that magic week!
(click them to enlarge):

The conference program:


period press coverage


Art show catalogue



press release





Thursday, March 3, 2011

“Mextasy” Madness Invades Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan on Wednesday March 9, 2011: William Nericcio's “Reproducing Comparison: Scoptophilic, Mexstatic Meditations on the Naked Eye, circa 2011”



Other news on the Michigan lecture/Mextasy exhibit here....


Next week finds me journeying out to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan for a three-day residency--I will be delivering a lecture composed of parts of Eyegiene, my new book in preparation for the University of Texas Press; additionally (and more importantly), I will be hanging with graduate students (both critical theory-heads and MFAvatos y chicas) talking shop and sharing my West Coast-laced perspectives!   Some info on the chat is here at the Textmex Galleryblog and here, Comparative Literature, chez Wolverine-landia.  I am happy to report also, that MEXTASY, my traveling exhibit based on Tex[t]-Mex, will be joining me in Ann Arbor, MI as well.




the televisual subject... writ large





outing existential sabotage...
spike jonze




"The Music Scene" from Anthony Francisco Schepperd on Vimeo.
Official music video for Blockhead's 'The Music Scene'. An animated mind melt into a post human New York where TV and animals rule. All cast to the sincerely melodic soul of Blockhead's 'The Music Scene.' Directimated by A.F.Schepperd; Commissioned by Ninjatune Records; Music by Blockhead











Assorted Images/Words for the Michigan Lecture!

Don't Peek....

ok, go ahead...





















Ruth Gwily
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Banksy @ BRISTOL MUSEUM








link to more CHIKLE...



story







chris ware





wiki on lucy