The International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) is a worldwide organisation in the field of media and communication research that promotes global inclusiveness through critical research in the field. Its objectives include strengthening and encouraging the participation of new scholars, women, and those from economically disadvantaged regions.

This year, IAMCR Gender and Communication Section announces a call for papers for its next annual conference which will be held in Mexico City next July - Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico and Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades
.The proposed theme for 2009 is "Human Rights and Communication", which will include at least one keynote relating the conference topic to gender and equality issues. Further, the organization will also consider any papers addressing the relationship between gender and media or communication.
Complete panel proposals are encouraged, although individual papers are welcome.
Deadline for submission of abstracts: January 31st, 2009
For more information […]

The Space where you can leave suggestions and ideas for a new music, a new sound, new concepts. News and Energy from the new world of Italian-American Bands!Take a look at: http://hardcuterock.blogspot.com

CHRISTOPH RÜTIMANN
‘Handlauf - Handrail’
1st - 14th January 2009 www.tank.tv
In 2009 tank.tv will embark on an ambitious series of solo shows. New exhibitions will open online every two weeks before being made available in our growing archive. This programme of solo shows represents an opportunity to examine a plethora of approaches to the moving image whilst allowing in-depth insight into each individual artist’s practice.
We are pleased to announce that the first artist in this series will be Christoph Rütimann.
Rütimann’s ‘Handlauf’ series leads us on an endless camera ride through the world. Beijing, Skopje, Spullersee, Piccadilly Circus, Fuerteventura and back.
Railings and handrails serve as camera tracks in these remarkable and hypnotic works. The special perspective of the rolling camera and the constant view of the ‘tracks’ pulls on the spectators eye as the field of vision is drawn into the camera’s lens. As the central perspective is recreated continuously before […]

Ever wondered what European Capitals of Culture really attain? Why all the competition to get the title and what is the lasting impact? LabforCulture and Trans Europe Halles have been thinking through these questions and as a result bring to you a collection of resources exploring the European Capitals of Culture and the communities around the cities.
Our specific interest was to discover what impact is made on the local community: the artist, the shopper and the man walking his dog. The results are available in the new Research in focus, “Capitalising on Culture: The impact of the European Capitals of Culture on the local independent cultural sector.
The Research in focus comprises of a series of interviews with Trans Europe Halles members who have often been directly involved in the process of application or producing European Capitals of Culture. Additionally alongside the interviews, research mapping has been carried out on […]

Hello everyone,
I am currently working on conceptualizing a new project titled "Campfire" which will be a tribute to the art of storytelling with universal themes related to Egypt in the past (Ancient Egypt), present (personal accounts), and future (a not-yet written horror novel).
One of the main themes that will be tackled in the stories is FIRE: physical fire, the element, and the symbol (the Sun, a deity, and energy).
The aim of the project is the revive the art of storytelling in a friendly Campfire context.
The world of the performance is post-apocalyptic, therefore, mysterious and vague, but full of positive messages.
The performance will be interactive. So audience participation is a MUST.
And it will be largely improvised with only some scenes pre-written.
There shall be live music (mixing oriental music with electronica), live visual arts (possibly painting), and live dancing (or movement).
There will also be media projected behind the […]

the molecular unconscious, on the contrary, knows nothing of
castration, because partial objects lack nothing and form free
multiplicities as such; because the multiple breaks never cease producing
flows, instead of repressing them, cutting them at a single stroke—the
only break capable of exhausting them; because the syntheses constitute
local and nonspecific connections, inclusive disjunctions, nomadic
conjunctions: everywhere a microscopic transsexuality, resulting in the
woman containing as many
men as the man, and the man as many women, all capable of entering—
men with women, women with men—into relations of production of
desire that overturn the statistical order of the sexes. Making love is not
just becoming as one, or even two, but becoming as a hundred thousand. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus
“I love you.”
In so far as love has an "I", this book is about identity. To broaden the concept of love and compassion requires a loosening of this "I", […]

“Structurally, perversion such as I have delineated for you on the imaginary plane,can only be sustained with a precarious status which, at every moment is contested, from within, for the subject. It is always fragile, at the mercy of an inversion…The fundamental uncertainty of the perverse relation, the fact that it can find no way of becoming grounded in any satisfying action, makes up one aspect of the drama of homosexuality.” Jacques Lacan
I want to suggest that my project to live online as a young gay man is profoundly perverse, it doubles so many losses that within a phallocentric economy, it can only be understood as a form of masochism.
The fact is that I do not experience this as masochistic, for I see my double identity as a performative feminist act that questions the very idea that feminine identity is formed through a masquerade that serves heterosexual male desire. […]

For a few weeks now, I have been living on-line as a not quite out of the closet, 19 year old gay man residing in the Midwest with my parents and attending community college.
I have proclaimed my first love on line. I picture him dark, longish hair, side-burns, cleft chin, leather jacket, clever, not smart and charming as a dancing cobra. I’ve wrote the end of the affair today, inspired by reading Genet’s The Thief’s Journal on the elliptical at the gym this morning. (thanks for this, Mark Amerika) It’s hot and dirty, what else? I already had the youtube video in mind before I wrote the post: S. in teary drag (he’s been dressed by his lover in an act meant to humiliate) slow dancing with his beloved. It’s going to be lovely: tender and strange. Sartre writes in the introduction that in Genet’s work, he uses a double […]

Gediminas Taranda! He is not just a ballet dancer-one of the many! He is not just a dancer like everyone else! No, he is a miracle! A bubbling turbulent vitality! An unforgettable ballet fascination! A fascinating ballet charm! Memorable! A volcano of feelings-a real rainbow emotional palette, wrested out of a soul of an artist!Gediminas Taranda, it seems he has come to this world only to perform with magnificence exactly this role! Seems he was born for it. Inspired, sincere, amazing; a person in love which has not been created as such in any other ballet performance!
Gediminas Taradna! A divine talent! A magic influence! Sparkling, impressive influence from the ballet stage. Stunning in the turbulence of his extraordinary mobility. A performance with a fantastic plasticity, combining each musical moment in itself!

Gediminas Taranda! A promineht ballet gift! Combining in itself the potential of opportunities for magnificence and darkness.! A power […]

The turbulent and historically challenged 2008 is already in the history. We start the new year with shared hopes for peace, health and prosperity.

The European Year of Creativity and Innovation will be officially launched very soon - on 7 January in Prague:
http://www.create2009.europa.eu/
The agenda of the year is already full of diverse and promising events:
http://www.create2009.europa.eu/agenda_of_the_year/eu_events.html
http://www.create2009.europa.eu/agenda_of_the_year/national_events.htmlhttp://www.create2009.europa.eu/agenda_of_the_year/partner_events.html
Here is our selection of key conferences planned throughout the year:

Lugares de cultura : Places of culture, creativity for development
Xunta de Galicia
21 January 2009 to 24 January 2009Spain
http://www.inscripcionweb.net/Gesconet/Portal/inicioPortal.asp?ConID=31&NombreC=Lugares%20de%20Cultura&Idioma=I&Apartado=Congress&SubApartado=&Pagina=PagPers:Program

British Council and ICoCo International Conference 2009 - Communities in Action: People and Practice
28-29 January 2009
Manchester, UKhttp://www.britishcouncil.org/governance-events.htm

AEC Launch Event for EU Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009
29th January 2009
Brussels, Belgiumhttp://www.elia-artschools.org/creativity-innovation

Conference: Places of Culture
21-24 January 2009
Santiago de Compostela, Spainwww.inscripcionweb.net/lugaresdecultura/

The Creativity and Innovation in Cultural Cooperation Projects
ENCATC Seminar
January 26th 2009Barcelona, Spain
http://www.encatc.org/pages/index.php?id=94

bassac 2009 Conference - Collaborating for Stronger Communities
25-26 February, 2008
Leicester, UKhttp://www.bassac.org.uk/members/conference

European Congress for a World Culture […]