Ninth Class - Intellectual Property and Copyright

Date: 04.05.10

Venue: see your email

Time: 7.00pm - 9.00pm

Host: Paul Noonan & James Konidaris

Topic: Intellectual Property and Copyright

Paul Noonan (Partner) and James Konidaris (Lawyer) are members of the Intellectual Property practice group at law firm Herbert Geer. The firm has one of Australia's leading practice groups in this area and is currently acting for the internet service provider iiNet in relation to groundbreaking copyright litigation brought against the company by a consortium of large film studios.

Paul and James act for publishers, recording companies and musicians as well as technology and communications companies and a range of other 'content' creators, owners and users. Paul has been a lawyer in these fields for 14 years and is also a professional musician who has played on numerous recordings (mostly in the days before digital downloading was possible!). Among the projects has has been working on recently is a contract for delivery of IPTV content by an ISP to its subscribers via the ISP's broadband network. James has been working on the iiNet copyright matter and also practices in the area of telecommunications law.

Eighth Class - Film Screening and Discussion

Date: 27.04.10
Time: Class and film will start at 7.30.
location: TBA
(BYO drinks and snacks)

The Good Women of Bangkok
Directed by Dennis O'Rourke 1991

pre reading for class see attached pdf "Afterward"
Afterword by Dennis O'Rourke, for book to be edited by
Chris Berry, Annette Hamilton & Layleen Jayamanne,
concerning The Good Woman of Bangkok

Notes by the Filmaker

"Like the Brecht play which inspired the title, this film is an ironic parable about the impossibility of living a good life in an imperfect world. It is also an attempt to describe in this form, and to conflate, what is so banal about sex with a measure of what is profound. It is a film about prositution as a metaphor for capitalism, here played out across the borders of race and culture, and about prostitution as a metaphor for all relations between women and men."

"It is also about voyeuristic tendencies which are inherent in all film making and film viewing. It is my hope that, as with Brecht, we are confronted with a vision of ourselves, thus forcing the consideration of how personal sexuality affects political and philosophical beliefs. In this film I have exposed myself in order to force the audience to reconsider the whole nature of documentary film practice. Under the thrall of our separate desires, we are all implicated in some way."

© Camerawork Pty Ltd
http://www.cameraworklimited.com/films/good-woman-of-bangkok.html

Seventh Class - There is not only what there is: Beyond the University Discourse

Date: 20.04.10

Venue: Y3K

Host: Elizabeth Newman

Question: How can art be taught in the University? What follows from this situation, for art and artists?

In the seminar of 1968 called The Other Side of Psychoanalysis Lacan nominated four discourses that structure social relations and thereby produce particular effects: these discourses are that of the Master, the University, the Hysteric and the Analyst. In our current era it could be said that the discourse that dominates is the University Discourse, a discourse fuelled by the conjunction of science and capital to produce a certain kind of knowledge, and certain types of gadgets and technologies. Now that art education is firmly located within this universalizing discourse, where can we find room for singularity, the essential component of creativity and subjectivity? Speaking from the point of view of psychoanalysis, I want to look at the effect of the University discourse upon subjectivity, art education and art practice. Certainly a ‘free school’ is a response to the deadening and alienating effects of this discourse.

The reading I have selected is a paper ‘On Shame’ by Jacques-Alain Miller in which he analyses a comment made by Lacan in the last session of the Seminar, that ‘there is no longer any shame’. Lacan’s comments throughout the seminar - designed to produce a particular effect upon the students - are prescient in their forecasting of current conditions, conditions in which we are compelled to enjoy without limits and to renounce the dignity of our singularity in favour of shamelessness and obscenity.

Lizzy Newman

Reading

Jacques-Alain Miller ‘On Shame’, in Jacques Lacan and the Other Side of Psychoanalysis: Reflections on Seminar XVII, (ed.s) Justin Clemens and Russell Grigg, Duke University Press, 2006.

Elizabeth Newman is an artist and psychoanalyst. After attending art school in the early 1980s, and making art throughout the 80s, she took a detour into psychoanalysis during the 1990s, training as an analyst and developing a psychoanalytic practice. Newman lives and works in Melbourne and is currently represented by Neon Parc.

13 April: Mid Semester Break

no class held this week