Intellect Books, IQ Magazine: Autumn 2008

thinking in colour / 2008

iq

Q&A’s, Book Reviews & moRe...

Plus

New musicAl TheATRe

Music & Performance

Art & Design

ART, commuNiTy ANd eNviRoNmeNT

Media & Culture

AN ediToR’s JouRNey

PublisherMasoud YazdaniAssociate PublisherMay YaoEditorMelanie HarrisonDesignerHolly Rose

Intellect Ltd.The Mill, Parnall Rd,Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JGTel: 0117 9589910www.intellectbooks.com

IQ / Thinking in ColourISSN 1478-7350

©2008 Intellect Ltd. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the publisher. Intellect accept no responsibility for views expressed by contributors to IQ; or for unsolicted manuscripts, photographs or illustrations; or for errors in articles or advertisements.

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IQ 2008 | 3

iq06 An editor’s Journeychallenges and rewards of editing a journal

09 Art, community & environmentinteraction between art, practice and community

12 unsung heroesNew musical theatre & the creative industries

16 Peter Thomsonon editing Studies in Theatre & Performance

18 soundtrack interviewJournal editors answer Piers Plowrights questions

22 image critique And the fall of the Berlin wall

28 issues in curatingBook review

contents

Q&A » 04 Ravi Butalia | 27 BFi Filmstore | Reviews » 28-31 Book Reviews |

Intellect publishes books and journals by authors and editors with original thinking they strongly believe in. Our intention is to produce books and journals that have presence, create impact and are affordable for readers. We commission regardless of whether there is an established readership for the ideas: we support our authors comprehensively in articulating their thoughts and then bring them to as wide a readership as possible. We choose authors and editors who in backing their ideas, are willing to be part of our publishing process by investing their energy and resources as needed in cooperation with us. www.intellectbooks.com

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Q&AiQuote » “Books open your mind, broaden your mind, and strengthen you as nothing else can.” – william Feather

4 | Thinking in Colour

Ravi ButaliaiQuote » “wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”– Plato

What kind of journals does Intellect publish?On the face of it, we publish academic journals in the arts and humanities. But it is more than that. I like to think our journals are about creating and sharing the gift of knowledge. They are about knowledge transfer and economy, publications that contribute towards the development of humanity and the progress of civilization. As we grow and mature as a company, we realize that the privilege of publishing cutting-edge academic research goes hand in hand with deep-rooted social responsibility. For instance, scholars in 54 developing countries have free online access to all our journals. We are also committed to green publishing – all our journals and books are printed on FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) paper.

How is Intellect similar/ different to other publishers?Intellect is similar to other publishers in that we cater to the academic market. Apart from that we are completely different in our philosophy. Intellect is a drop in the ocean compared to most other journal publishers. Small boats can manoeuvre faster in the water and are more agile than ships. We embrace change readily and are not afraid of taking risks. There is an Andrew Heiskell (American publisher and philanthropist) quote which pretty much sums up what we do. He says, “A publication depends on a great idea, not there being a market out there. You start with an idea rather than trying to get an idea which goes with that market.” Most publishers begin with the market in mind, circulation figures etc. The pith of the matter is the idea

and how we can make it flourish, not the money. It is an organic process. If the principle is in place, the details will automatically fall into place. That is not to say that we don’t care about the market; we do, but not at any price! After all, what good is a journal if it does not have an audience? There are many other differences but the one major distinction is the high level of service we provide. We listen carefully to editors’ dreams, wishes and expectations, even if we cannot fulfil them all, enabling us to tailor our service to their needs gradually. I’ve often been told that we are more laid back, friendly, accessible, and welcoming than most other publishers.

How do you manage to publish so many new journals when other publishers are shying away from new launches?It is understandable that other publishers are not launching new journals. Much of this has to do with the state of the economy. However, recessions come and go, economies rise and fall, almost like the seasons. There has to be an overarching element that transcends economic barriers if journal publishing is

to be successful. There has to be something that is more enduring than the exchange rate. That is where the philosophy of the company and its business plan

comes in. The Berlin Wall type of business plan, which remains fixed, eventually succumbs to fluctuations in the economy whereas supple models that change and adapt fast to life and circumstances have a greater chance of enduring and being successful. I might add that even this model cannot last long unless it adheres to deeply embedded principles. As long as there are scholars and there is a need for intellectual stimulation, there will be a need for journals and publishers. So, the reason why we launch more and more journals is simply because of the strength and flexibility of our business model. It also has a lot to do with the great intellectual yearning out there, hunger almost, for ideas to take root and be nourished.

What makes a successful journal proposal?Synergy, simply put! It is the kind of chemistry that can be established between the prospective editor and Intellect. The originality of the idea behind the journal proposal is, no doubt, very important. However, it does not automatically guarantee a successful journal. It is only

the starting point. Thereafter, a symbiotic working relationship needs to be established, one that can resonate in the world at large. When an editor shares an idea

with us it is like planting a seed in the soil. There is a lot of nurturing involved on both sides. Essentially, a successful proposal needs to answer the questions: what, why, who, when, where and how. Once these six questions can be answered satisfactorily, we invest value by aligning the proposal to our infrastructure. A successful journal proposal thus becomes so much more than just an idea - it almost becomes a living organism that has a life, movement, direction and destiny of its own.

Tell us more about the process involved in starting a new journal?When a new proposal is received, my journal colleagues and I study it individually. We make notes, stating what we like, what we don’t, what the possibilities are and so on. Next, we get together and decide quite rapidly whether a journal is worth going ahead with or not. If we see possibilities, we get back to the prospective editor and raise lots of questions, some of which can be very challenging. It usually takes 2 to 5 drafts before we approve a proposal.

Some journals develop swiftly, sometimes in a matter of weeks. Other journals may take months, even years to come about. In essence, there are two factors to consider. The first has to do with the subject area, how new or old it is. An emerging discipline may take considerably longer to develop whereas an established one is fairly straightforward to deal with. The other factor has to do with aligning the aims and scope of the journal with practical reality. The two must match; otherwise it is like trying to sow a healthy seed in the desert. Some prospective

editors are shocked as to how many practical and financial factors need to be carefully considered before a proposal is approved.

Once a proposal is formalized, we invite the editor/s to meet with us before the contract is signed. Such meetings, as far as we are concerned, are the cornerstone of the journals process. This is where the journal really gets established. It is all about relationship building.

Once established, what makes a successful journal?Rather than talk about the obvious factors such as subject matter and marketing, I’d like to focus on the human side of what makes a journal successful. A brilliant academic does not necessarily mean that the person has the makings of a successful journal editor. Communication, coordination, planning and organization make all the difference. We regard teamwork to be one of the most essential skills for an editor. One cannot have a successful journal without inspired teamwork - it is just not possible! A successful journal can only be as successful as the team that manages it. A good editor is, in fact, a good leader, one who not only has academic vision but also the skills, abilities and attributes to encourage and inspire the wider community that benefits from a journal. Starting from the editorial team, then the boards, subscribers and the wider academic community, a truly successful editor can enthuse and harness the potential of this group, maybe even change its direction. As Mother Theresa stated, “You can do what I cannot do. I can do what you cannot do. Together we can do great things.”

What are the most challenging/ rewarding aspect of your role and of journals publishing?As the company grows and produces more journals, it is challenging maintaining a rhythm, consistency and a schedule for 150 odd journal issues a year. On the other hand, it is wonderful meeting with prospective editors, listening to their ideas and nurturing a new journal to fruition. No matter how many times you do it, each meeting with a new editor is a fulfilling experience. Instead of just being formal colleagues who email occasionally, we become good friends.

What are the challenges facing journal editors in the future?Perhaps one of the most pressing challenges for Intellect editors is the need to start thinking of ways to take their respective journals to the next level, which is on the Internet. We are working hard to introduce a content management system whereby all submissions and editorial management will be done online. This will happen soon, most probably by 1st January 2009, at the same time as our Web 2.0 site. The introduction of new tools and methods of working reflects the heightened need to change with the times. In fact, we don’t see how a journal can keep progressing purely on the basis of the model we have managed thus far. A new vision is needed and for that a new framework is essential. That is why I am making a point of meeting with all Intellect editors over the next few months to share lots of exciting developments from the business plan that we have just concluded for the coming academic year. {

IQ 2008 | 5

As we grow and mature as a company, we are realizing that the privilege of publishing cutting-edge academic research goes hand in hand with deep-rooted social responsibility.

“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo

Intellect is seeking editors to start new journals. We commis-sion journals that strengthen our existing portfolio in the arts and humanities. We look for editors with exceptional leadership qualities. The most successful editors are those who encourage and inspire their community to submit articles, conduct peer review and help in the day-to-day development of the journal. Committed, passionate editors who dedicate time and thought produce the best journals.

We offer editors a full training in journal publishing. This includes guidelines for the set-up, launch and mainte-nance of the publication. In addition to a journal’s network-ing possibilities, we emphasise the need for teamwork be-tween Intellect and our editors. Publishing a journal is an act of collaboration, negotiation and discussion. We encourage editors to take an interest in the entire process, including production, marketing, sales and distribution.

Launching successful journals is an exciting challenge. The long-term sustainability of your ideas must be planned carefully in order to make an exceptional contribution to academia.

Please visit this link:

www.intellectbooks.co.uk/publishwithus.php

to download a journal editor questionnaire.

Proposing a new journal

Ravi Butalia Q & A with Intellect’s Journals Manager

Film StudiesiQuote » “The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your dreams is you.”–Tom Bradley


WHEN INTELLECT FIRST approached me to become an editor of a new journal focused on Australian film I was really startled. Firstly to discover a publisher taking this kind of initiative with regard to an Australian topic: even in Australia publishers can take some persuading on this front. So we got off to an excellent start; the intellectual value of such a venture already understood. I then began to feel daunted by the task ahead. I was certain there was

a market for such a journal, as Australian film has become increasingly prominent in recent years, with the establishment of international studios in the country and the exchange of workforce between Hollywood and Australia. But more to the point, films by and about Australia’s Indigenous peoples had really begun to challenge traditional forms of Western cinematic storytelling. I felt there was an important role for the journal in bringing critical approaches to these films to

an international audience. I decided that the journal

should also be a forum for discussions of New Zealand films and films from or about the Pacific. There is something arbitrary about bracketing together Australian and other films from the region, something that can irritate some people, and understandably so. While these countries share histories of British colonialism, their cultures are quite distinct, not least because of the extreme diversity of Indigenous cultures

and histories in the region, and the different ways in which film industries have developed there. Still, while turning the proposed journal into Studies in Australasian Cinema, I hoped we could stress this diversity. I also wanted to invite critical discussion about anthropology and film, and the representation in feature films of the peoples and spaces of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, often directed, written and even starring people who were not from there. Studies in Australasian Cinema would also

An Editor’s Journey

embrace the reception of non-Australasian films in the region. My initial ideas, then, settled into three aims for the journal in its first couple of years, a kind of ‘start-up’ motor: SAC would stress the diversity of Indigenous cultures across a broad region and their impact on cinema; invite debate about reception as well as film production in the region; and critically embrace representations of the region from those who do not live there. These goals helped decide the kinds of expertise I needed from an editorial board.

Academic research can sometimes feel overly insular; being an editor of a journal demanded that I come out of my intellectual shell in ways other than I do when teaching, and that has been both challenging and rewarding. I had a ‘thing’ about asking other people to do things for me, partly from outrageous control-freakery (editing forces you out of that), partly from sensitivity to how many tasks other academics already have on their plate. However I was amazed how enthusiastic people I approached to be on the editorial board became about the journal. I soon learned not to hesitate to approach even the most prominent scholars in the field. Even so I think from the beginning I underestimated how much of a team-effort a journal is: that’s its strength, but also something that takes considerable time and energy to manage and make the most of. Having a team, and recognizing

it as such—the editorial board, contributors, referees, guest editors, colleagues and administrators within my institution, and the production team at Intellect—certainly becomes any journal’s (and the editor’s) greatest resource: allowing proper input lightens my load in the end, as well as opening the journal to a broad range of new ideas. I suspect I won’t ever stop learning new and better ways to enable the SAC team; that might well be an editor’s fundamental function and reward. And I have also learned not to limit what the journal can publish and achieve to the ‘traditional’ look or role of an academic series.

The ‘editing’ proper of the journal is also more intellectually rewarding than I expected. There is immense satisfaction in working closely to shape words and let ideas come to the

fore: my respect for the complex art of writing has deepened. Again, this is a team effort, with dialogue between contributors, referees, myself and copyeditors at Intellect. I do put more time than I originally expected into trying to get the best out of other people’s writing, for the readers of SAC but also to enable writers to extract their sharpest ideas. The effort has certainly proved worthwhile, not least for the insights it affords into my own writing, a torturous process of redrafting if ever there was one. Everything considered, the main challenges of being an editor are outwardly-directed team building and inwardly-directed intense work with (other people’s) texts: both tasks were somewhat new to me when I began at Studies in Australasian Cinema and both remain rich sites for further learning. {

IQ 2008 | 7

Ian Henderson, editor of studies in Australasian cinema, considers the challenges and rewards of establishing a journal

Studies in Australasian CinemaEdited by Ian HendersonSubscription: 3 Issues£33 personal / £210 Institutional

ISSN: 1750-3175

Australian, New Zealand and Pacific regions are home to many indigenous nations and immigrant cultures from all around the world, producing a rich cinematic arena. Stud-ies in Australasian Cinema is a journal devoted to refereed scholarly discussion of cinema from these diverse regions. The journal emphasizes this variety with a special inter-est in postcolonial politics and contexts. Articles pay equal heed to independent or ‘local’ films as they do to discussions of global commercial films produced or screened in the region. Independent cinema’s challenge to mainstream views run alongside recogni-tion of the complexity and cultural potency of commercial popular film in Australasia.

FurTher readIng

intellect Journal Focus

Film StudiesiQuote » “Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.” – mark Twain

Ian Henderson

Above. Sam Woolagoodja. Photo courtesy of Michael Edols, ACS.

© Michael Edols, ACS.

War! What is it good for? Q & A with Nikki Cooper, Martin Hurcombe and Debra Kelly

PICTuRE A WARM, sunny after-noon in a café in Poznan, Poland. It was June 2000; two academics met for the first time to share a cof-fee and discuss the art education conference they were attending. This meeting would eventually lead to the book Art, Community and Envi-ronment: Educational Perspectives. The conference was organized by the university of Warsaw through the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA).

In the course of that chance meeting over coffee we discovered

that we share many interests, but the most striking being a passion for environmental and community art, education and the promotion of active participation in the arts. The result was a lasting friendship and strong collaborations between our respective universities. Timo Jokela works in the Art Educa-tion department, in the Faculty of Art and Design at the university of Lapland in Finland and Glen Coutts works in the Department of Sport, Culture and the Arts, Faculty of education at the university of

Strathclyde, Glasgow. The univer-sity of Lapland has an international reputation for environmental and community art and the university of Strathclyde offers the unique four-year undergraduate degree in community arts.

Shortly after the conference in Poland we signed an exchange agreement. To date, many students and staff have benefited from learning and teaching, for a short time in the other institution and country. It was during these periods of exchange that the idea

for an edited book first emerged. We were convinced that the action research and the arts projects being carried out deserved a wider audi-ence. We also knew of many other artists, writers and academics with something worthwhile to say. As we worked together with our students and community partners, we considered the processes and strategies used. What is unique about this work? How do we know when arts interventions, especially temporary ones, are effective? How should they be recorded and dis

Art, Community and Environment: Educational PerspectivesGlen Coutts and Timo Jokela

Above Pallas- Fathers’ sign. Timo Jokela. 2005. Photograph by Timo Jokela.

IQ 2008 | 9

intellect Book Focus

Media & CultureiQuote » “man is a child of his environment.” – shinichi suzuki

 

Film studies intellect publishers of original thinking

Books & journals

Journal of Chinese Cinemaseditor: hong hwee lim

issN 17508061 3 issues per year

Studies in Australasian Cinemaeditor: ian henderson

issN 175031753 issues per year

Alternative Worlds in Hollywood CinemaBy James walters

£14.95 / isBN 9781841502021 224pp/July 2008

Queer Cinema in Europeedited by Robin Griffiths

£19.95 / isBN 9781841500799 160pp / may 2008

Art & designArt, Design and Communication in Higher Educationeditors: linda drew & laura lanceley

issN 1474273X 3 issues per year

Journal of Visual Arts Practiceeditor: chris smith

issN 14702029 3 issues per year

Writing on Drawing: Essays on Drawing Practice and Researchedited by steve Garner

£24.95 / isBN 9781841502007 224pp/october 2008 2008

Art, Community and Environment: Educational Perspectivesedited by Glen coutts & Timo Jokela

£24.95 / isBN 9781841501895

224pp/september 2008

Books and Journals

intellect publishers of original thinkingThe Mill, Parnall Road, Bristol BS16 3JG 0117 9589910 www.intellectbooks.com


Art & DesigniQuote » “Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.” – Albert einstein

Art & DesigniQuote » “The earth laughs in flowers.” – e. e. cummings

seminated? Such questions were the focus of many of our discussions and we needed to find a way of sharing the variety of per-spectives we knew to exist on this area of arts and education practice.An unexpected opportunity arose through the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD), the leading uK authority in art and design education. The Readings in Art and Design Education series, published by Intellect and supported by NSEAD, presented an opportunity to com-pile an anthology with a focus on art education that happens outside the formal sector of schools and colleges. Many editions in the Readings series consist of papers previously published in the Inter-national Journal of Art and Design Education, but this collection is different. Only five of the sixteen chapters have previously appeared in the journal. It is also the first book in the series to be richly il-lustrated in full colour.

The book contains sixteen chapters that explore the complex relationship between art practice, community participation and the environment, built or natural. The theme of this volume is the broad educational potential of environmental and community art, explored from the personal perspectives of authors from the uK, Finland and Australia. To fully explore these emergent dimen-sions in art education would require at least two volumes, one on the environment and the other on community. The formal sector of education in art and design, in the uK at any rate, has been subject to constant review and reform, but informal contexts such as com-munity centres and local projects

have managed to escape the levels of prescription bemoaned by art educators in schools. Because many of the projects discussed in this book are community driven, happening outside of school, college or university walls, they oc-cupy an educational ‘twilight zone’ free of attainment targets, league tables, national tests and other such constraints.We have chosen to take a broad view of art and design education, embracing the informal sectors of society and the tricky and often elusive concept of community art. What is going on in differ-ent countries and in the different sectors of education there? When does art practice cross the line into pedagogy? What do artists and art educators mean when they talk about ‘ownership’, ‘empowerment’ or ‘agency’? What can school-

based art educators learn from people working with community groups outside the school curricu-lum and vice versa? These are just some of the questions addressed by contributors to this edition. Readers reflecting on their own experiences will no doubt think of many more.

The book is divided into three sections, with the general themes of ‘Environments’, ‘Communi-ties’ and ‘Education’, which the contributors explore from their personal perspectives as artists, academics or authors. Inevitably, however, there are many points that transcend the boundaries.

In Environments, three authors focus on arts practice and its impli-cations for education. Jokela offers an account of his background as an artist and art educator, explaining how his art is inextricably linked

with his identity as a Laplander, and with the wilderness of Finnish Lapland. McWilliam outlines an ongoing project with outdoor edu-cation and community art students at the university of Strathclyde, us-ing a vignette of the students’ own reflective writing to describe how they are challenged to consider the relationship between art, environ-ment and aesthetics. Miles shifts the focus from wilderness and rural to urban environments, argu-ing that education has a responsi-bility to investigate the problems of urban sustainability and changing notions of ‘the city’.

The next section, Communities, contains four chapters with the recurrent themes of participation, ownership and empowerment. using examples of local projects directly involving community participants, Dawes considers the

changing role of the artist in the light of recent political shifts in Scotland on community and cul-tural policy. Huhmarniemi takes us on a very different journey. Teachers and students in Finland are engaged in various community art projects in towns and villages all over the country, but are often unable to meet face to face for debate or tutorial support. This chapter describes how virtual learning environments might lead to the creation of effective educational communities. Another Finnish author, Hiltunen, argues that community art enlivens and energizes through the notion of ‘agency’. She describes the inclu-sive approach of some remarkable projects, in which representatives of every sector of even the most isolated village were encouraged to participate. Bennett, in the final

chapter in this section, describes a collaborative project called ‘Window Sills’, which explores the notion of ‘territories’ and the in-terface of public and private space within a specific community.

The third and largest sec-tion contains nine chapters. In both her own chapters, Adams examines the potential educa-tional benefits of study in, and through, the built environment. Her collaboration with Chisholm describes a small-scale project where student teachers focus on the built environment as a formal educational resource. By contrast, Austin succinctly outlines a unique undergraduate programme for community artists training to work in the informal sector. She considers the essential ingredients of a degree programme, asking what areas need to be addressed

to provide graduates with the range of skills necessary to work in community arts. Coutts examines the relationship between ‘public’ and ‘community’ art in Glasgow, asking where there might be points of overlap, distinction or tension. He questions the purpose of community art and asks how we should gauge its effectiveness. Jokela offers a similar account of a programme for trainee art teachers in Lapland, arguing that a ‘project-based’ approach has much to commend it. McKenzie takes a fascinating look at whether public sculpture might have played a didactic role in the nineteenth-century Glaswegian education sys-tem; while from Australia, Hooper and Boyle outline a project entitled ‘Living City’. Inviting young people to work on urban design projects with artists, designers

and planners; they argue that the project’s ‘workshop’ approach can be seen as ‘laboratories of urban literacy and empowerment for young people’. In the final chapter, Coutts reflects on a project that used multimedia techniques to encourage Glasgow’s students to consider the role and function of public art and urban design.

The chapters in this book range from descriptions of specific proj-ects to polemics on the purposes and efficacy of public and commu-nity art. We hope that the personal and theoretical perspectives of the artists, writers and academics who have contributed will play a fruitful part in the debate about the educa-tional potential of environmental and community art. {

Art, Community and Environment: Educational PerspectivesEdited by Glen Coutts and Timo Jokela

Part of the Readings in Art and Design Education series £24.95 / $60ISBN 9781841501895Published September 2008

Art, Community and Environment investigates wide-ranging issues raised by the interaction between art practice, community participation and the environment, both natural and urban. This volume brings together a distinguished group of contributors from the united Kingdom, Australia and Finland to examine topics such as urban art, community participation, local empowerment and the problems of ownership. Featuring rich il-lustrations and informative case studies from around the world, Art, Community and Environment addresses the growing interest in this fascinating dimension of art and education, forming a vital addition to Intellect’s Readings in Art and Design Education series.

FurTher readIng

Above elderly people create snow sculptures in the schoolyard. Photograph by Maria Huhmarniemi.

Above Teams at work - mapping responses to the site. Photograph by Peter Boyle.

IQ 2008 | 11

 



Music & TheatreiQuote » “man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” – Andre Gide

THE NEWS THAT LONDON’S West End experienced its best year at the box office has been her-alded as a sign of hope in the face of the economic downturn. The Society of London Theatre (SOLT) reported 2007 attendances to be 13.6 million, a 10 per cent rise from 2006. Gross receipts rose 18 per cent from 2006 to a total of around £470 million. This is big business, and it is in no small part a reflection of London’s buoyant musical theatre scene.

Of course, this is not really big news: this is the third year in a row that SOLT have announced ‘unparallelled growth’ in West End theatre-going, and a decade ago the publication of the Wynd-ham Report revealed that West End shows ‘consistently outper-form’ Hollywood blockbusters. The Phantom of the Opera, we were told, had outgrossed the movie Titanic.

Musical theatre, then, for all of its frothy charm and carefree whimsy, is the star pupil of the creative industries: industries which, according to the Depart-ment for Culture, Media and

Sport, “have their origin in indi-vidual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”. On the other hand, whilst the type of musical theatre that registers in the SOLT statistics certainly hits the ‘wealth’, ‘job creation’ and – arguably – ‘exploitation’ buttons, and no doubt profits from significant skill and talent, its claim to ‘creativity’ might be called into question. Still, this is exactly the dilemma that is central to the creative industries, where – as one report puts it – ‘market value’ insistently trumps ‘art-for-art’s sake’.

The success of the recent outpouring of musical theatre hits has been attributed to their high profile marketing through televi-sion reality shows such as How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? (BBC1 2006), Any Dream Will Do (BBC1 2007), I’d Do Anything (BBC1 2008) and Grease is the Word (ITV1 2007). These shows and international equivalents, such as Grease: You’re the One that I Want

(NBC 2007), and a Canadian version of How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? (CBC 2008), offer unknown performers the chance to find fame and fortune as stars of this glitter-ing economy: and the appetite of both audiences and contes-tants for this type of entertain-ment seems insatiable. Not that this is anything new either: it replicates the age-old theme of many a Hollywood movie musi-cal or Broadway show, from Babes in Arms (1937) to A Chorus Line (1975), where a rags-to-riches storyline convinced us that – in the words of John Lahr – ‘the commonest citizen could rise by pluck, luck and talent into the aristocracy of success’.

That all of this points to a thriving industry is unquestion-able, but the issue of ‘creativity’ is still something that keeps cropping up: these shows, after all, are all revivals of tried and tested commercial products. Other staple elements of the

current West End musical scene are either revivals themselves (Carousel, Gigi, West Side Story), spin-offs from the film, TV or music industries (Hairspray, Eurobeat, or Never Forget - the ‘Take That’ Musical), or such long-running shows that they have become institutions them-selves (Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera) – as much a part of the tourist itinerary of London as Madame Tussauds or Covent Garden.

The SOLT statistics raised interesting questions about whether musical theatre re-ceives privileged treatment in relation to ‘straight’ West End theatre – on this subject Kevin Spacey of the Old Vic has been particularly vocal; but perhaps we can frame this question slightly differently, and focus on the resources that are fed into supporting new work for the musical stage – work that, we might argue, shows the real creativity that the ‘creative in-

dustries’ should support. I’d Do Anything might offer unparal-leled broadcast time to promot-ing the latest incarnation of Oliver! in the West End, but do shows like Oliver!, Grease or The Sound of Music need introduc-ing to the theatre-going public in the way that unfamiliar and innovative new musical theatre needs promotion?

Of course, the commercial theatre is competing against the subsidised sector, and this in itself has created significant controversy. until recently this involved the simple distinction between commercial and sub-sidised venues – the National Theatre, the Almeida, the Don-mar, the Young Vic, etc. – none of which are major musical the-atre venues (notwithstanding the Donmar’s excellent support of new-ish (1998) work such as Jason Robert Brown’s Parade). Where several high profile venues and institutions support new playwriting admirably

and have done for many years now (The National, The Royal Court, The Soho Theatre), pre-cious little work is generated that can be called ‘musical the-atre’. The Royal Opera House is the closest thing we have to a subsidised platform for new musical theatre.

Before being brought to task we should recognise some of the exciting projects that are pro-actively encour-aged by mainstream though small-scale (and sometimes subsidised) theatres: Battersea Arts Centre’s regular Scratch productions; the Greenwich Theatre’s Musical Futures; the Tête à Tête festival at Riverside Studios; new venues such as the Menier Chocolate Factory and the Trafalgar Studios; provin-cial venues such as the Water-mill in Newbury (much of John Doyle’s work) and the Theatre Royal, Plymouth (Buddy when it really was new work, and this season’s ‘ghetto’ musical

IQ 2008 | 13

Music & TheatreiQuote » “sometimes questions are more important than answers.” – Nancy willard

 

Unsung Heroes: New Musical Theatre & the Creative Industries Dominic Symonds and George Burrows, University of Portsmouth

“Innovative musical theatre as show-

cased by SharpWire in Battersea Arts

Centre’s Scratch series. SharpWire’s

most recent work has been seen as

part of the Tête à Tête festival at the

Riverside Studios, London.”

Imagine This); supportive com-munity frameworks such as Mercury Musical Developments, set up to nurture new musical theatre writing; and the Edin-burgh Fringe, which this year opened its new venue dedicated to musicals, Musical Theatre @ George Square – actually four different spaces showcasing over 40 new musicals as part of the festival. But these venues and festivals – important as they are – offer only limited seasons of new musical theatre, and sadly, some of the other initia-

tives that had been championing new musical theatre work until recently have collapsed: notably the Cardiff International Festival of Musical Theatre and the Vivi-an Ellis Awards. Buoyant though musical theatre may appear, the SOLT figures actually repre-sent a total of just 45 different musicals produced throughout 2007 (including the old chest-nuts), compared to 108 commer-cially presented plays. Add in the many new plays presented by subsidised venues, and you get an idea of the imbalance.

The rub is, of course, that musical theatre is an expensive proposition, and that on-costs for a new musical with the usual production costs, plus live musi-cians and creative costs that are usually trebled (composer/

lyricist/librettist; director/chore-ographer/musical director), will amount to well in excess of what it costs to stage a play. Some reports claim that the West End minimum price tag is £3 mil-lion, so there is no surprise that producers need to safeguard their investment with a tried and tested product (though need it cost quite that much?).

When the government decided to offer tax breaks to the film industry for work produced in the uK, the subsidy controversy grew more complex:

if a commercial sector indus-try comparable to the theatre industry could get tax breaks, then why couldn’t commercial theatre producers? After all, Arts Council England’s Economic Impact Study of uK Theatre (2004) revealed that theatre in London generated upwards of £1.5 billion to the economy in related activities, and a further £1.1 billion throughout the rest of the uK. But if commercial theatre was to receive public subsidy, what are the chances that it would be the old gang (Oliver, Joseph and Maria) creaming off the spoils rather than the new faces, the un-knowns and the experimental? In any case, SOLT has already staked a claim to £250 million of public funding to ‘bring the 40

commercial theatres in the West End up to date’. Olly, Jo and Maria will fare very well from a new lick of paint, but under-neath the arches the new work will struggle on with unpaid per-formers playing profit-share to a handful of mates.

But if the West End is gen-erating almost £500 million per annum, and if two-thirds of this income is derived from musical theatre, the claim to ‘dire straits’ seems hard to justify, especially with top-price West End tickets now commonly costing over £50 each; indeed, we might ask where the industry is directing its research and development funds, its support for new initia-tives, its championing of the in-dustry specialists of tomorrow? To be fair, these things are hap-pening: Olivier Bursaries for ac-credited drama school students support upcoming performers, Mousetrap Theatre Projects encourages young audiences and the Theatrical Management Association supports managers. Stage One, formerly the Theatre Investment Fund, offers bursa-ries to new producers and some support for new productions, and the proposed National Skills Academy is set to deal with the shortfall of trained workers in ‘backstage and technical live music and theatre’.

It all seems impressively geared up to keep the industry going for a long time into the future, and seems to have re-sponded to the ‘warning signs’ of the Wyndham Report from ten years ago: ‘slowing growth, too few new productions, too few young theatre-goers, and a regional network which has for some time been chronically

under-resourced’. The industry is safe, then, and looks set to be continually reborn: in its own image.

But that troublesome spectre of ‘creativity’ still keeps disturb-ing the water, and meanwhile we are left scratching our heads about whether ‘creative indus-tries’ really is an oxymoron. {

Dominic Symonds and George Burrows are editors of Studies in Musical Theatre.


Music & TheatreiQuote » “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” – saint Augustine

Studies in Musical Theatre Edited by Dominic Symonds and George BurrowsSubscription: Three Issues

£33 personal / £210 Institutional

ISSN: 1750-3159

Studies in Musical Theatre is a refereed journal which considers areas of live performance that use vocal and instrumental music in conjunction with theatrical performance as a principal part of their expressive language.

FurTher readIngThe success of the recent outpouring of musical theatre hits has been attributed to their high profile marketing through television reality shows

Free Journals Onlineintellect now offers bona fide universities and educational institutions in developing coun-tries free online access to its journals portfolio. This initiative was inspired by the work of the world health organisation, which has worked together with a number of leading publishers to offer full electronic access to their biomedi-cal journals via the internet.

Recognising the many financial and other obstacles faced by academic institutions in de-veloping countries, intellect aims to broaden the areas of access for academics by dissemi-nating quality academic writing in creative media and popular culture free of charge, and we hope that this initiative will also encourage debate and research in these fields on a truly global scale.

Who Can Participate?This offer is open to academic institutions that reside in the eligible countries. The list of eli-gible countries has been drawn up based on a study of less economically developed countries published by the world Bank.

Afghanistan, Guinea, Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, Guinea-Bissau, Rwanda, Benin, honduras, são Tomé, Bhutan, iraq, senegal, Burkina, Faso, kazakhstan, sierra leone, Burundi, Republic of kenya, solomon islands, cambodia, kyrgyz Republic somalia, central African Republic, lao, PdR sudan, chad, li-beria, Tajikistan, comoros, madagascar, Tan-zania, congo, dem Rep malawi, Timor-leste, côte d’ivoire, mali, mauritania, Togo, eritrea, mongolia, uganda, el salvador, mozambique, uruguay, ethiopia, myanmar, uzbekistan, Gambia, Nepal, yemen, Rep Ghana, Niger, Zambia, Guatemala, Palestine, Zimbabwe.

To make an application see ‘how to apply’

1. First visit our website: http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/online-access/online-access3.php to see the list of countries eligible to receive this offer.

2. A senior librarian/member of staff at an institution will need to complete the registration form and be willing to manage the online access for the institution. students and other individuals must not apply.

3. contact details will be required, which includes a valid email ad-dress that uses the domain name of the institution. Private email addresses such as Gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc, will not be accepted.

4. online access is provided via Atypon link and is controlled using the iP addresses of an institution’s internet server. All iP addresses are fully validated and if your claim is accepted, it will be processed and online access via Atypon link set up.

How to apply

intellect journals

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intellect publishers of original thinkingThe mill, Parnall Road, Bristol Bs16 3JG 0117 9589910 www.intellectbooks.com

be an amateur is one thing, to be amateurish probably another.

The big shift came in 2000, un-der the editorship of Lesley Soule and Jane Milling. It was the move to Intellect, and the consequent transformation that established Studies in Theatre and Performance as a professional scholarly journal. The change of title was significant, too. The tracing and redefining of performance has become a matter of academic urgency, beside which ‘theatre’ struggles to make itself heard. There is no longer a short-age of submissions from across the world. STP has become, in the twenty-first century, a much bigger business than any of us predicted. There is real privilege in editing it, and a danger that my own prefer-ences will have too large a part in

its development. I dislike essays in which the writer avoids speak-ing in her/his own voice. Garbled gobbets from Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze, Foucault etc. do less to form an argument than to cloud it. If there’s a point to be made, the great theorists won’t make it for you. I like to give room to young scholars, and I love receiving work from regular contributors. I shamelessly exploit my editorial right to publish off-beat pieces under the heading of ‘Notes and Queries’. But it’s probably time for me to move on. For the last six years, and for a variety of reasons, I have edited the journal single-handed. It’s beginning to feel like my journal. I have to remind myself that the readership, not the editor, should determine the content. In

May 2008, SCuDD advertised for assistant editors. By the time this is published, one or two of the ap-plicants should be in place, and not long after that I’ll be able to hang

up my wicket-keeper’s gloves.Come to think of it, a wicket-

keeper is too important to the field-ing side to provide a safe analogy with an editor. {


Studies in Theatre and PerformanceEdited by Peter ThomsonSubscription: Three Issues£33 personal / £210 Institutional ISSN: 1468-2761

Studies in Theatre and Performance (STP) is an academic, refereed journal for scholars, teachers and practitioners to share the methods and results of practical research, to discuss issues related to theatre practice and to examine experiments in teaching and performance.


Theatre & MusiciQuote » “let your performance do the thinking.” – h. Jackson Brown, Jr.

IQ 2008 | 17

Peter ThomsoniQuote » “Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Non performance can always be explained away.”– harold Geneen

THE DECISION TO GIVE uP bowl-ing and take up wicket-keeping enabled me to prolong my cricket career into my seventies. Good wicket-keepers go almost unno-ticed because they do an unobtru-sively effective job. If you’re lucky you’ll take a spectacular catch down the leg side or, better still, a leg-side stumping. But that doesn’t happen very often. The routine is to take whatever comes your way and start the ball on its way back to the bowler. Editing a journal is much the same. You receive an article as gracefully as you can, setting in motion the processes that will return it to the author, with sugges-tions for improvement. An experi-enced wicket-keeper will advise the bowler on line and length without damaging their self-esteem; and writers are just as sensitive. An edi-tor has to act as a buffer between a peer-reviewer and a fledgling con-tributor. ‘To be honest, this is utter crap,’ becomes, in editorial transla-tion, ‘Our Reader found much to recommend in this piece, but…..’. Inside the temples of academia, truth is couple-coloured.

My first serious breaching of the iron gates of publication came when I was asked to prepare an edition of Julius Caesar. Within a week of its publication, I received communication from the British

National Bibliography. There were two handwritten lines of queries on the letter. The first read ‘Thom-son, Peter William (editor) JULIUS CAESAR’. The second read ‘Are you also author of THIS WONDER-FUL WORLD OF GOLF?’ I hadn’t realised that the winner of the British Open Championship had exactly the same name as mine, but it was with a diminished sense of self that I answered, ‘No, but I wouldn’t mind the royalties’. Who remembers editors? Addison and

Steele for their first run of Spectator; Francis Jeffrey of Edinburgh Review; Boris Johnson (regardless of what he did with a later run of Spectator); Richard Schechner at the Tulane Drama Review. But none of these men would wish to be remembered only as editors.

Studies in Theatre and Performance (STP) began as a response of British Drama Departments to the new rigours of the Research Assess-ment Exercise. It was demonstrably the case that our academic status

was being judged exclusively on what we wrote (by a panel that included no drama specialists). ‘Practice’ – like self-abuse – was assumed to be something you did in your spare time, and it stood to reason that the research qual-ity of such practice was nothing whatsoever to do with the Profes-sors of Architecture, Music and Old English who were our judges. Apparently, in 1981, one member of the Advisory Panel suggested that the decline in applicants for

Anglo-Saxon might be stemmed if a few Drama Departments were to be closed. (If I remember rightly, that panel settled for inviting seven universities to discontinue Drama – which would have left no more than five at a time before polytechnics were universities.) It beggars belief that the academic community yielded so quickly to Thatcher’s determination to sub-ject universities to the stultifying rules of engagement of the market economy. In the prevailing circum-

stances, Studies in Theatre Production (its original name) was a mixture of snook-cocking and desperate defence.

The first tentative issues were printed by a man I’d met playing cricket. He was a terrible cricketer and a homespun printer, a gentle-manly sharer in a D-I-Y venture. Chris McCullough and I battered staples through the loose sheets to make them into something approx-imating a journal and then posted off copies to the Standing Confer-ence of university Drama Depart-ments’ (SCuDD) sixteen member institutions. We’d taken on the job because we were doing our turn as Chair and Secretary of SCuDD at a midpoint between RAEs. But there was no flood of articles, and some-times no trickle. Shamefacedly, I resorted to writing pieces to fill up the space, and it wasn’t until issue six (contributions from Sue Smith and Lib Taylor, David Ian Rabey, John Wesley Harris, Amanda Price, Elaine Aston – and, to get it up to 60 pages, Peter Thomson and Jérard Poulet) that we moved from stapling to binding. It must be admitted that Studies in Theatre Pro-duction, until first Olga Taxidou and then Lesley Soule took on editorial responsibilities, was presented much as the better undergraduates present their essays these days. To

An experienced wicket-keeper will advise the bowler on line and length without damaging their self-esteem; and writers are just as sensitive.

Peter Thomson on editing Studies in Theatre and Performance

Above history of the Journal (1990 – 2008) from Studies in Theatre Production to Studies in Theatre and Performance with Intellect.

FurTher readIng



The Soundtrack InterviewiQuote » music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul.” – Plato

The Soundtrack InterviewiQuote » “music is the art of thinking with sounds.”– Jules combarieu

media, so film teaches sound one way, radio teaches sound another way. What we’re focusing on at the School of Sound, and in The Soundtrack, is that most of our work involves images in one way or another. Very seldom do we listen to sound without looking at something. So it’s very hard to teach sound on its own, except in a very academic way. As Stephen said, we’re trying to present some-thing in a way that people are used to dealing with. And the sound-track is becoming an art form in our culture.

PP: Dominic, what’s your per-spective on this? You obviously share those feelings.DP: My interest started through film music, but I’ve become aware that when I recall a particular film, I’m recalling the timbre as much as the image. Part of the function of The Soundtrack is to explore the aesthetics of sound, which has not always been done. As Stephen and Larry said, it’s always secondary to the image.

PP: Are you planning to give room to other voices?SD: We’ve encouraged people to write, we’ve even encouraged people to send their own ques-tions to the board. Our editorial board contains some of the most eminent names in sound and mu-sic: Walter Murch, Randy Thom, Rick Altman, Claudia Gorbman, Elisabeth Weis, Michel Chion. In this next issue we put a ques-tion to the board: can you name a film in which sound and music work particularly well. Claudia Gorbman and Liz Weis and Randy Thom responded. Walter Murch wrote a beautiful little article on

Barton Fink.LS: The current issue says a lot about what we’re trying to do through the style of writing; we hope you come away feeling that you’ve learned something, that you’ve entered new territory. A number of the people who read this journal are experts in their field. So, to actually get behind the scenes, and not just in a techni-cal way, but in a theoretical or conceptual way about how sound works with image, and just come away with new insights, that’s what we’re aiming for.

PP: Presumably you also hope that you’re bringing together the dif-ferent disciplines in the journal, which may also encourage greater bringing together within film-making. LS: It has to do with integration and the bringing together of what seem to be opposites: theory and practice, the practitioner and the academic, art and entertainment. There’ve been some strides made within film education to do that, but it is very hard in the current climate where education is about jobs; academia and professional practice rarely mix and in the pro-fessional world analytical thinking is thought to be ‘not what we do’. This is partly true and partly untrue. The idea is to try and bring together the best of both kinds of thinking.

PP: And also make it something that the general reader can have a bit of fun with?SD: I hope so. That’s one of the issues with any journal like this because it’s within the stable of academic journals, and one of the difficulties that academic journals

often have is that writers contrib-ute to them and they go on a list of journal articles written for their universities, and it’s immaterial whether anybody ever reads them. DP: There is a problem with a lot of hard academic writing; it can be hermetic. At it’s worst it can be incomprehensible, written with-out a sense of communication. And I think that’s a danger in an academic journal - it means that this stuff is printed but not read. SD: What we’re hoping for is to have a journal that people want to read and enjoy reading.

PP: So someone like Marina Warner in your second edition, for example. She’s an academic but she’s actually also a novelist and a poet.LS: The examples that she uses in her paper would be relevant for a lot of people working in film or TV. What she says would make them think “I can relate to that, and that makes me think about what I do in a more interesting, off-the-wall sort of way.” After she delivered that paper at the School of Sound I remember looking at

the people she was talking with, and I was astonished, because these were people who were not academics, not art critics, and they seemed to be touched by what she said. SD: What sort of journal is this? What is it for? It’s to engender en-thusiasm among people who find there isn’t a constituency to share their enthusiasm, but not just on a fan mag level, but on a deep level where we can enter into a debate about some very important issues.

PP: I think you’ve made a great start. Shall we have a one liner from each of you, for your hopes for the future of The Soundtrack? SD: I hope we’ll get a big reader-ship, who enjoy it, and who’ll contribute as well.DP: I’d like us to produce some-thing that has the widest possible readership, and that I’d like to go back to and reread, as I do with the best magazines and journals.LS: I would like to see The Sound-track have an effect both on the teaching and the practice of film-making and to create a dialogue between the two. {

Founded by Stephen Deutsch, Larry Sider and Dominic Power, the inten-tion of The Soundtrack is to deal with sound as a whole. The editors come from different disciplines: Stephen Deutsch is a composer, responsible for a number of television scores, as well as the writer of a number of television plays. He is Professor of Post-Production at Bournemouth university; Larry Sider is an editor and sound designer, Head of the School of Sound and lecturer on Sound and Post-Production; Domi-nic Power is Head of Screen Arts at The National Film and Television School, Lecturer in the History of Film Music at Kingston university as well as being a BBC radio dramatist.

The editors of The Soundtrack were interviewed on the eve of the pub-lication of the second issue, at The National Film and Television School by well-known broadcaster, lecturer and radio producer, Piers Plowright.

This edited version of their conversa-tion discusses the issues surround-ing a journal that creates a forum for an inclusive discussion of the film soundtrack.

PP: So why do we need a journal called The Soundtrack? SD: The notion of the soundtrack is, at least from the point of view of this journal, fairly new. It assumes that everything which emanates from the speaker is a coherent unity, which tends to favour the spoken voice, but coherent nonetheless, because the audience hears it that way. Most writing on the subject of film music and sound treats their subjects as separate areas, so you have a lot written about film music that doesn’t take into account anything going on in the rest of the soundtrack. Similarly with film sound - music is regarded as something to be fought or dealt with, but not part of the

whole world.

PP: Larry, when you started the School of Sound, were you con-scious of the same thing that Stephen is talking about, that this gap between various different sound practitioners needed to be closed? LS: I’d worked in sound for many years – on documentaries, anima-tion, experimental films – and then began teaching sound and editing in the mid-nineties. This showed me that sound wasn’t being considered seriously within film education. All anybody wanted was clear dialogue and nice music. But, when you think about it, half of your film is happen-ing in the soundtrack and very few filmmakers know how to work with that. Now sound has become more of an area of study in its own right and that has to do with technology evolving in the last twenty years. But it is separated within different

The Soundtrack Edited by Stephen Deutsch, Larry Sider and Dominic PowerSubscription: Three Issues

£33 personal / £210 Institutional ISSN: 1751-4193

This journal focuses its attention on the aural elements which combine with moving images. It regards the sounds which accompany the visuals not as a combination of disparate disciplines, but as a unified and coher-ent entity. It assumes that irrespective of the industrial determinants, the soundtrack is perceived as a continuum by the audience.

Stephen Deutsch, Larry Sider and Dominic PowerInterviewed By Piers Plowright

Left to right

Larry Sider, Stephen deutsch,

Piers Plowright & dominic Power

FurTher readIng

IQ 2008 | 19

Average length of phone conversation (in minutes)

4.3

Average time spent in meetings per day (in minutes)

30.1 Y

Average number of cups of tea/coffee consumed per day

3.1 o

Average time spent listening to music per day (in minutes)

46 X

1985 1987 1988

The first issue of Artificial Intelligence Review,

Intellect’s first journal, was co-published with Blackwell

Scientific Publications.

1986

Intellect was formed as a Limited company in England and Wales by

Masoud Yazdani and two other university academics, initially offering advice and

running seminars.

Intellect published its first three books in a co-

publishing deal with the US publishers, Ablex.

1984 1989 Intellect rented a small

office on the Exeter campus of Plymouth University and employed its first full time

staff member. Publishing 10 books and 3 journals.

Website launched.

1993

Intellect granted trade mark for newspapers periodicals;

books and leaflets; all relating to the acquisition of knowledge. Publishing seven books and two

journals without any full time employees!

1992

Intellect relocated its office to Bristol and employed its second full time staff

member. Published eighteen books and five journals.

1999

Intellect moved to a former paper mill in the Fishponds area of Bristol, redeveloped

especially for its needs. Publishing twelve books and

eight journals, employing three full time staff.

2001

Intellect granted Investors in People recognition

for its human resources management. Publishing 25 books and 21 journals,

employing five full time staff.

2006

Publishing 35 books and 37 journals, employing eight full

time staff.

2008

Expanding into North America

From January 1st 2009, Intellect will have a base in North

America as well as our main offices in Bristol, England.

Visit our website for further details!

2009

The launch of our new interactive website.

Future

Intellect to publish directories of world cinema.

Future

the

the

1990 1991 1997 2000 2002 2004 2007

intellect by numbers

Average time spent stuffing envelopes, photocopying

and other essential but dull tasks

20%Average time spent

communicating with authors/editors

26%

Average time spent sharing ideas with colleagues

28%Average time spent doing other random elements

26%

61 countries that our authors/editors/contributors come from:

Numbers in dates

Law of Averages Law of Averages Law of Averages

109,107 Visits to the website, 00:02:57 Time spent on website 78.11% New Visits to our website Visits to our website came from 190 countries/territories Google Analytics 11 Oct 2007 - 6 Jun 2008 Google Analytics 11 Oct 2007 - 6 Jun 2008 Google Analytics 11 Oct 2007 - 6 Jun 2008

intellect Book Focus Image Critique & the Fall of the Berlin WallWITH THE SAME FAMILIARITY of a nursery rhyme the simple phrase ‘the fall of the Berlin Wall’ remains with us. It is a chapter heading, a footnote and of course a turning-point in the flow of an argument or indeed the contest of political ideologies: after the fall … it all changes. It denotes a time, a place and a sense of change. It marks a new begin-ning, as well as an ‘end of his-tory.’ We live in a post-Wall era and that carries with it certain responsibilities, not least how we choose to respond and relate to the media news events that the fall of the Wall prefigures.

In November 2009 it will be twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Whilst the event it-self may seem for some a distant memory, its global importance as a political symbol, marking the wholesale collapse of commu-nism and the purported victory for liberal democracy worldwide, remains a significant feature of our recent history. One of the reasons why this event has had such resonance is that a host of television cameras were on site to beam the pictures of celebration around the world. At some level we all shared in the occasion. Indeed the event can be situated in a growing chronology of ‘news

events’, the out crop of a consoli-dated 24-hour news production process. Yet, interestingly, for all their historical, social and politi-cal significance there has been very little critical attention given specifically to the images of the fall of the Wall. It is as if those television (and newspaper) pic-tures – as some form of ‘Instant History’ – were too self-evident a portrayal as to require any further explanation or examination.

Image Critique & the Fall of the Berlin Wall obviously seeks to redress this situation. Yet, in writing this article I find myself wanting to argue against my own book. Not against the content, but against the image of the book that potentially goes before it (compounded perhaps by the various images which accom-pany this article and ‘anchor’ its meaning further). It is symp-tomatic of the very nature of the images I write about that they easily override what one really wishes to say. The book does not seek to provide any straightfor-ward analysis of visual represen-tations of the fall of the Wall. Instead, the primary interest is to present an idea of what I term ‘image critique’: a double procedure of both a critique of images and their critical engage-

Sunil Manghani

Media & CultureiQuote » “i shut my eyes in order to see.” – Paul Gauguin

ment. In broad terms, I have sought to remain faithful to the tradition of critical theory, but more specifically I engage with the contemporary issues and

dilemmas that visual culture and image studies have helped bring to attention (a chapter-length overview is given in the book).

The book begins with a layered reading of what I term ‘in-stant history’. Recent mediated

events reflect a new immediacy of knowledge and informa-tion, which have a levelling effect – the critic and expert becoming as much a spectator

as anyone else. The consump-tion of instant history events can be said to screen (out) history in various ways, which relates particularly to a new kind of transparency of the media, evident, for example, with the

rise in televisual 24-hour news reporting (which in turn has led to the very mechanisms and logistics of live reporting itself becoming newsworthy). There is a potential flattening out of ideological differences in con-temporary journalistic practice, but this does not necessarily lead to a more complex report-ing or picturing of events. Added to which, we can consider an event such as the fall of the Wall as a form of instant replay. Not only is its form of history to be thought of as a specific moment in time, as an event, but it also refers to an inherent repetition and circulation of meaning, the event being instantly available for citation and re-circulation. In effect, this creates an ever-present and malleable con-

tinuum of history. Nevertheless, the dominant interpretation of the fall of the Berlin Wall is one of celebration and the victory of capitalist, liberal democracy (neatly captured and promul-gated by Francis Fukuyama’s thesis of an ‘end of history’). Any ‘other’ story seemingly remains unknown (perhaps even un-knowable). What is apparent, for example, is a one-sided perspec-tive; a ‘greying’ out of the East as either a mere object of the past or place of the mundane, with the effect of always placing the East aside as some ‘perpetual abroad.’ It is a line of argument I follow up with an analysis of two film comedies, Helden wie wir and Goodbye Lenin! Both films present alternative and some-what surreal accounts of

22 | Thinking in Colour IQ 2008 | 23

east Side gallery, Mülenstrasse, Berlin, 2002.

Media & CultureiQuote » “it is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” – oscar wilde

We live in a post-Wall era and that carries with it certain responsibilities, not least how we choose to respond and relate to the media news events that the fall of the Wall prefigures.

Wall painting showing trompe l’oeil effect, Berlin, 2002.

Bernauer Strasse Wall Memorial, 2002.

Media & CultureiQuote » “success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.”– Jim Rohn

the event of the fall of the Wall. Whilst neither of these films is necessarily entirely successful, I suggest elements of them help to more concretely illustrate what an image critique of the fall of the Wall might actually look like.

Overall, the book should be understood as thematic (and not systematic) in approach. Adopting a blend of scholarly and personal prose, the book weaves its way through the case-study of the fall of the Berlin Wall in exploration of the issues and debates of visual culture. A recommendation of the philoso-pher Simon Critchley is kept in mind: in viewing philosophising

today we should not necessarily be looking to ‘import the next grand Continental paradigm … but of doing something … do-ing creative, inventive thematic work’. Crucially, the idea of an image critique put forward and ‘performed’ in the book is not about making final, resolute arguments through pictures – nor about advocating a collec-tion of better, more ‘truthful’ ones. Instead it refers to a more open-ended and on-going critical reflection; a thought-image to be, as it were, a critical space in which to discover and wrestle with the full complexity of ideas, things and events. {

Image Critique & the Fall of the Berlin WallBy Sunil Manghani£19.95 / $40ISBN 9781841501901Published June 2008

Taking the fall of the Berlin Wall as a key marker in recent history, the book presents a new critical concept of image critique: a double proce-dure of both a critique of images and the use of images as a means to engage with our contemporary mediated culture for new critical purposes. Topics range from Francis Fukuyama’s End of History thesis to metapictures, contemporary East German film and the notion of the public sphere/screen. In staking out a new critical visual theory, the book seeks to present the fall of the Wall as a means to situate a complex interactive account of his-tory, politics, freedom, the media and visual culture. Check out Sunil Manghani’s blog for more information: http://imagecritique.wordpress.com/image-critique/

FurTher readIng

Theatre & musicintellect publishers of original thinking

Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performanceeditors: Richard J. hand & katja krebsissN 17536421, 3 issues per year

Studies in Theatre and Performanceeditor: Peter ThomsonissN 14682761, 3 issues per year

Russia, Freaks and Foreigners: Three Performance TextsBy James macdonald£14.95 / isBN 9781841501864 224pp / August 2008

Sex on Stage: Gender and Sexuality in Post-War British TheatreBy Andrew wyllie£14.95 / isBN 9781841502038

160pp /Feb 2009

media & cultureJournal of African Media Studieseditors: winston mano, monica chibita & wendy willemsissN 17517974 3 issues per year

International Journal of Media and Cultural Politicseditors: katherine sarikakis & Neil BlainissN 17408296 3 issues per year

Finding the Right Place on the Map: Central and Eastern European Media Change in a Global Perspectiveedited by karol Jakubowicz & miklós sükösd£19.95 / isBN 9781841501932302pp / August 2008

European Media Governance: The Brussels Dimensionedited by Georgios Terzis£29.95 / isBN 9781841501987216pp / 2008



Books and Journals

Books and Journals

IQ 2008 | 27

027 film»featureexclusive interview living alone

The BFI Filmstore is a stockhold-ing bookshop for Intellect’s film books and journals.

Contact the BFI Filmstore:Belvedere Road, South Bank, Waterloo, SE1 8XTT: 0207 815 1350 E: [email protected] W: www.filmstore.bfi.org.uk

Q&A: BFIiQuote » “A home without books is a body without soul.” – marcus Tullius cicero

How did you get into the booksell-ing industry?I started out working in librar-ies and then in 1997 – 1st April strangely – I started a part time job with Books Etc. The BFI shop opened last March.

What kind of collaboration is there between the bookshop and the BFI?On a basic level the shop is part of the BFI. All profits made by the Filmstore go back into the BFI and the work it promotes. We get a lot of support from all the different departments. For example, the Programming and Events teams have been really good in helping promote the Filmstore by encour-aging guests to either take part in signings, or by opening doors to suppliers and distributors of interesting books and films. Hav-ing access to the more independent and interesting releases allows us to stay attractive, and helps set us apart from other outlets. Another department that has played a key role in our success is education. People tend to think of the BFI as purely a place to go see films but it invests a lot of effort in campaign-ing to raise the significance of film to schools and colleges.

Can you describe some of the key differences between working di-rectly with independent publishers compared with big multinational publishers?To be honest for me there’s been little difference between the two. Perhaps I have a slightly skewed experience in this area. Whilst at Books Etc I built strong relation-

ships with the reps from the larger publishers and I’ve been fortunate enough to bring these with me. I suppose this is my chance to champion the role of the rep no matter whom they work for, be it the large multinational or the small independent. I’ve found them all to be extremely helpful and open to ideas. If I were to give any advice to small independent shops it would be to make sure you work with your rep, make the most of them as they have a lot to offer. In the current climate they need us as much as we need them.

What are the biggest challenges facing independent bookshops in the future?In one word ‘Amazon’. I under-stand that Amazon can work on the basis of a 15% margin but it doesn’t help when a customer can buy books cheaper from Amazon than I can buy them from the publisher. This isn’t just large multinational publishers offering Amazon huge discounts – small independent publishers are just as guilty. I’m in a privileged position where I am; the BFI is a destination in itself, my customer base has a certain amount of disposable income and they are passionate about film. Psychologically this is important for me as it means they don’t neces-sarily look for the cheapest option. In my opinion what publishers have allowed with Amazon is a complete undervaluing of their product. The most common question/accusa-tion I get is that we’re overpricing our books and DVDs – the ‘I can get it cheaper from Amazon’ line.

It’s difficult for us with all these advantages so I really feel for the small booksellers out there. It’s not all bad though – Amazon does have its ‘Achilles heel’, which is its size. It has too much to choose from. The role of a good bookshop is to siphon out the rubbish and offer the products that the customer is looking for. Also, it lacks the personal aspects that a lot of people find important.

Do you feel that the development of the ebook industry will affect booksellers significantly?I could write pages on how I see the ebook impacting upon booksell-ers. I think that publishers should look to the experiences of the music industry – especially when it comes to the dissemination of digital media. There’s bound to be sites like Napster etc springing up. There’s a generation of people who see no problem in download-ing digital media and not paying for it. To me this is a continuation of the devaluation of artistic and academic materials. I do wonder how publishers in the future will justify charging people £10 or £15 pounds for an ebook when people

perceive that all they are getting is ‘just a downloaded file’. Everything is not all doom and gloom though. The book is as near a perfect piece of hardware as you can get. It’s flexible, long lasting, won’t need a new bit of kit to play/read it in a few years time, can be dropped, drawn on, left on the bus etc etc. Also people like to own books. They’re an outward expression of themselves. Who doesn’t go round a house and look at what books are on a person’s shelves?

Could I take this opportunity to quickly thank all the staff at the BFI Filmstore. Without their hard work, knowledge and, most impor-tantly input, it wouldn’t be as good as it is. {

www.filmint.nu

openyoureyesfilmint.

passionin motion(pictures)

filmint.

DebateDiscussDiscover

filmint.

BFI FilmstoreAn Interview with the BFI Filmstore Manager, Ian Ryan

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THE QuESTIONS OF which roles curators do and should play are becoming more pressing. The increase in the number of museums (the Guggenheim “franchise” and new institutions in Asia and the Middle East, among others) and a burgeoning biennale culture has required a new class of curators. These curators (many of them artistes manqués) claim, explicitly or implicitly, not just a status comparable with artists but to be artists on the basis that they recontextualise works of art. Appropriation has been an artistic strategy since Duchamp’s readymades. Imagine librarians, on the basis of organising books, claiming to be authors and you have a good idea of the situation. Curators are not artists. They are transient patrons who act as instigators, enablers, commissioners and gatherers of art. In effect, curators are temporary Medici, however, the actual Medici admitted their patronage had politic aims: to glorify their state and themselves.

In this book of twelve essays, academics, writers and curators examine different aspects of curating. The scope of the texts ranges from case studies in curating to examination of the basis for this contested practice.

The field is controversial and new. As JJ Charlesworth points out here “‘curating’ is a neologism so recent that dictionaries have not yet caught up”.

The self-effacement in Catherine Elwes’s discussion of the dynamics behind Anglo-Canadian video projects comes from her egalitarian background in Feminist co-operatives in 1970s London. The style of her text serves her and her subjects well. Chris Dorsett’s elliptical approach, using personal association to the viewing experience, proves effective in drawing together multiple strands. Charlesworth takes a broad view of curating and clearly summarises the problems of legitimacy that it faces.

Some essays focus on specific projects. While this provides practical examples of curatorship, length restrictions sometimes mean the implications cannot be fully followed up. One exception is Richard Hylton’s piece examining Autograph, a Black photographers’ collective, and the politics and power behind funding. His engrossing discussion is a study of how self-defined groups unite to struggle for representation yet lose important facets of identity once they are co-opted by the establishment. It is deftly written and engaging.

Two topics (computer-generated

Book ReviewsiQuote »“enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creativity.”– Bo Bennett

art and dance/performance) are touched on only lightly in single essays. Perhaps these subjects deserve dedicated publications in future where they might be examined in greater depth.

There are essays here that perpetrate crimes against logic and the English language. “Disjunctive” is not the same as “disjointed”, “privilege” is not (yet) a verb and “normative” instead of “normal” (or “normalising”) is plain wrong. Such examples should shame

any professional writer, though they are no worse than one finds in the typical gallery press release. All professional writers on art should be required to study classic prose and fiction.

Fortunately, these aberrations are in a minority and most texts here are informative and thought-provoking. The lucidity and reasonableness of some of these authors are in danger of giving curators a good name.

Alexander Adams is an artist and writer living in Berlin. {

28 | Thinking in Colour IQ 2008 | 29

Book ReviewsiQuote » “if you only do what you know you can do- you never do very much.” – Tom krause

In this book of 12 essays academics, writers and curators examine different aspects of curating. The scope of the texts ranges from case studies in curating to examination of the basis for this contested practice.

Above Penelope haralambidou, ‘3 John Street: 1:50’, Spatial Imagination, The Domo Baal Gallery London, 2005. Photograph: David Cross of Cornford & Cross

Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance

Edited by Judith Rugg and Michèle SedgwickISBN 9781841501628 hb £29.95 Published Dec 2007 Reviewed by Alexander Adams.

Above The work of Jan Peters (foreground) and Martina Schmid (far wall), ausland, The domo Baal gallerry, London, 2003. Photograph: The Domo Baal Gallery

Intellect books are also available in ebook format for both libraries and individuals to purchase. All new and forthcoming Intellect ebooks are just £10 each.

INdIVIduALsProviders: EBL, Ebooks.com and Ellibs. Search for a particular Intellect ebook by title, ISBN or au-thor and then buy and download a whole book or part of a book.

LIbrArIesProviders: EBL, Ebrary, Netlibrary, Myilibrary, Ellibs and dawsonera.

Libraries can purchase individual ebooks from the above providers or discounted subject-focused ebook bundles can be purchased from EBL and Dawsonera. Each of the four collections – film, media, theatre and art – includes the unlimited purchase of twenty Intellect ebooks.

Visit the ebooks area of our website for further information:www.intellectbooks.co.uk/ebooks.php

ebooksALL New TITLes £10


Book ReviewsiQuote » “There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them.” – Tom krause

John Berra’s academic discussion of American independent cinema has the best of intentions. Independent cinema’s relationship with mainstream films and the studio system is complicated and merits intense scrutiny. From the beginning, Berra is optimistic, but does not always seem able to decide which aspect of study deserves the most focus. He states his objective is “to disprove the popular assumption amongst commercial journalists and consumers of popular culture, that cinematic works that have been declared as, or critically assigned the status of, ‘independent,’ are autonomous of corporate sponsorship, or influence, from other forms of popular media,” but has much more in store for the reader (10). Berra would also like to “redefine what can be meant by the term ‘modern American independent cinema’” and to “establish whether creative autonomy can actually exist within the system of mass production” (10-11). The author addresses these objectives by examining how specific independent films and film-makers relate to the studio system. In doing so the author sets

himself quite a tricky task as there is so much to include in such a short book.

Berra assumes his audience knows little about Hollywood’s system of mass production so the bulk of his initial discussion focuses on the studio system and its relationship to and acceptance of independent film. He raises some interesting, fleeting points, such as suggesting that independent cinema has taken the place of foreign film in America. The fact that the studios’ stranglehold on marketing and distribution prevents a true independent cinema from ever existing is discussed at great length, however. Even in his analyses, Hollywood encroaches upon the discussion. While no study of American cinema can

ever completely avoid mentioning the Hollywood machine, it has been analyzed many times before, overlooking independent films.

For once, Hollywood could take a backseat to the independents, but the book seems to keep it very much the centre of attention. Perhaps in its inclusion, the author is commenting on its power and omnipresence in the industry. Berra also includes other theorists and academics in his study. The negative side of this technique is that he admits in the introduction that critical discussion of independent cinema is severely lacking. Therefore, his attempts at finding other theorists’ views to support his own are perhaps not always helpful. However, he very wisely includes references to the cultural changes and societal upheavals that allowed the most important independent films such as Easy Rider to have such impact. Berra is at his best in these

instances and when discussing specific directors and films. Rather than simply working from the exterior to the interior, as stated in

the introduction, the study actually benefits from jumping into the in-depth analyses that are its heart and soul.

In his acknowledgements, Berra welcomes any discussion that arises from his book’s publication. Since generating discussion is one of independent cinema’s aims, it feels particularly appropriate and appreciated. The author is clearly invested in this topic and a follow-up book would be more than welcome as there is plenty left to discuss. A close study of American independent cinema is long overdue, and this painstaking inquiry gets the ball rolling. Christine Carr York is a recent graduate of the Film Studies Department, University of North Carolina Wilmington. {

Declarations of Independence: American Cinema and the Partiality of Independent Production

By John BerraISBN 9781841501857 pb £19.95 Published March 2008 Reviewed by Christine Carr York.

The author is clearly invested in this topic and a follow-up book would be more than welcome as there is plenty left to discuss.

IQ 2008 | 31

send us your letters and feedback as we’d love to hear from you.intellect, The mill, Parnall Road Fishponds, Bristol Bs16 3JG [email protected]

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Oliver Wendell Holmes

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