Friday 21 November. ‘1979 Revisited’: The Cultural Production of ‘Structures of Feeling’ under Thatcherism

‘1979 Revisited’: The Cultural Production of ‘Structures of Feeling’ under Thatcherism

Friday 21 November 2014 | 1.00 – 5.00pm | Keynes Library, Room 114, 43 Gordon Square

This working seminar will explore the mass ‘democratization’ of cultural production during the late 1970s and 1980s, from radical printshops and writers’ workshops to film co-operatives and community art projects, all of which contributed to a lively, alternative, and oppositional, culture under Thatcherism.

The seminar will also draw upon Raymond Williams’s concepts of ‘structure of feeling’ and ‘alternative’, ‘oppositional’ and ‘emergent’ cultures, as a means for recovering the ‘lived experience’ of others under Thatcherism. A range of ‘grassroots’ creative practices and cultural forms will be discussed (e.g. community radio, film and video, print ephemera, badges, arts, graphic design, music).

As a ‘working seminar’, it is designed to maximise participation in discussion to explore the connections between grassroots cultural production and the ‘structure(s) of feeling’ of people’s lived experiences under Thatcherism.

Facilitators: Herbert Pimlott (BISR Visiting Research Fellow) and Sophie Hope (Birkbeck)

Contributors include: Jim McGuigan, Jess Baines, Pat Holland, Anne Robinson and Patrizia diBello

Outline Reading Available: An introduction to Raymond Williams’s concepts will be available prior to the seminar: e-mail hpimlott@wlu.ca

This event is free and open to all, but booking is essential – book your place here

This event is followed by the listening launch of Sophie Hope’s audio project ‘1984: Art and Politics’, 6-8pm, room G10, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD

Everyone welcome, no booking required.

Listening Launch – 1984dinners.net

Drinks will be served and sounds will be heard!

Join us for the launch of 1984dinners.net, a website that hosts an ongoing project that takes a slice in time to gather collective memories of art and politics in the year 1984. Practice-based researcher, Sophie Hope, has been co-hosting dinners around the world with people who were active artistically and politically in 1984. The website documents the recorded audio conversations of dinner guests in the UK, Singapore, Australia and South Africa. This event celebrates the launch of the website and acts as a listening event for attendees to experience an audio collage of voices reflecting on art and politics of this period.

The website has been partly funded by The Hub at Birkbeck.

If you would like to find out more about the project, have any feedback or are interested in co-hosting a dinner, please contact Sophie: s.hope@bbk.ac.uk