Conorthoughts

Damn, forgot to send those presents

Have you sent those Xmas presents? Damn, I've forgotten to, and now I am in the middle of France and they are in my flat on Lupus and it is already the 8th December. Please note the sign for the post office in the background of the photo. I am whizzing in my rented car - well, ambling - through the village of Catus, 12 klms north-east of Cahors, in the Lot. "Get a move on, sleeping citizens of Catus (it is early morning) at least it is probably not too late for you to get them posted, if you get them wrapped and down to La Poste today. Damn about those presents!

Pricks cunts I have known

Squatting

There is a fine piece by Laurie Penny in the New Statesman about squatting, shelter and the attack on dissent in the UK: http://bit.ly/vEVndT .

Window

What's in a window? What's in a lamp-post? Do you see the window on the right on the top row? Of course you see it! What I mean is 'Could you please look at the window on the right on the top row?'. Now, do you notice anything unusual about it? Does anything distinguish it from the windows to its left, or from those underneath? Responses please on a card to ... No, respones please here!

 

                                                                        (To be continued, hopefully) 

Wanted: a plan to save Europe

 

"From the recent conversations I have had with European ministers and officials," [on the future of the Euro and the Eurozone] "the passenger on the Berlin U-Bahn or Athens Metro is just as likely to be right as the multitude of pundits and experts."

Philip Stephens, Chief Political Correspondent, Financial Times, Thursday 22 September 2011 (The photo is my - CJ's - addition. I was unable to steal Ingram Pimm's wonderful cartoon illustrating Mr. Stephen's article. Apologies, Mr. Pimm!)

Angry of Tunbridge Wells and Pimlico

This is Oliver Goldsmith, drawn by a certain Gilbert and engraved by a J. Linton. He looks splendidly grumpy which is how I think I sound below, browned off this evening by his college.

Dear Professor Besson,

could you please explain to me - or get a colleague to explain - what happened to the presentation under the auspices of the anthropology department of Jean Rouch's work that was scheduled for Tuesday 1st December? I had found a notice for it on the college website, and paste it at the bottom here.

The event did not take place in the location that was given. There was no sign announcing a change of venue or cancellation, not did the person holding a seminar in the room at that time have any knowledge of the event or of its whereabouts. The college porter's office knew nothing about it. One of the other half dozen people I met in search of the event went to the anthropology department to enquire but the administrative staff there knew nothing about it.

As a member of the public, I am appalled and angry that a department in a college of Goldsmith's standing could announce a public event and then apparently give no further notice about it or its cancellation. I wasted my evening as a result travelling from Pimlico and back.

If I do not receive a satisfactory response, I will make it my business to lodge a complaint with the pro-chancellor of the college - or whoever its most senior officer is – and with the body which funds the department.

I have also written to some of your colleagues and have dropped an email to someone I happen to know at the college, Nick Couldry of the Department of Media Studies, to ask him whether this kind of apparently shoddy behaviour is a regular feature of academic life at Goldsmith's.

Yours Sincerely,

Conor Joyce

Joram Ten Brink-on the African cinema of Jean Rouch
Goldsmiths Anthropology Society:
Discovering Jean Rouch work- early works in Africa and their impact on film making in Europe (including screening of extracts from Rouch's major film productions in West Africa)
Joram ten Brink is a filmmaker and a Professor of Film at the University of Westminster. He works as a writer/director of documentary and experimental films in the UK and Holland. His films have been broadcasted and theatrically released in the UK, USA, Holland, Israel, France, Germany and Spain. His work has been screened at the Berlin and Rotterdam film festivals and at MOMA in New York. Prof. ten Brink heads the practice based PhD programme in Arts and Design at the University of Westminster and is the director of Centre for Production and Research in Documentary film. In 2004 he organised a major international conference and a programme of screenings on the work of the French anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch. In 2007 he edited the first major book on Rouch's work in English – Building Bridges- the cinema of Jean Rouch (Wallflower Press, London). http://www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/page-1163

Event Information
Location: RHB 137 Cost: Free to attend Website: www.calamma.net/anthropologysociety Department: Anthropology Time: 1 December 2009, 17:00 - 19:00

Leaf

A leaf came through the door, well, under it, from the school opposite. I brought it up to my flat, after some days. It was all on its own. Now we're together.

Toes

A postscript to my last blog. Here are the man's toes blown up (His fingers are holding up better.):

Holding hands

I was in the Mesopotamian rooms in the Louvre the week before last. Many people were holding hands but I was on my own. Here are some hands I came across in the Sumerian section:

 
 

Here they are blown up:

The fingers look to me like they might be in need of sucking not just holding. Do you think I am right in imagining that they are anxiety-filled? They must be the hands of a nobleman or a king: they are not those of anyone who has ever done much manual work. Here is the sculpture in full (well, almost):

 

A word for John Bull

Here is my quote of the day, of the week in fact (Why not throw in the month?):

"Many people in the world say that the English are racists. I don't agree."

Ali Farka Touré the late Malian musician in conversation with the BBC music journalist Andy Kershaw in 2003 north of Timbuktu.