Spiral jetty, thirty seven years later: the cinematic time of James Benning

This article considers cinematic time in James Benning’s film, casting a glance (2007), in relation to its subject, Robert Smithson’s 1970 earthwork Spiral Jetty, and his film of the same name. The radicalism of Smithson’s thinking on time has been widely acknowledged, and his influence continues to pervade contemporary artistic practice. The relationship of Benning’s films with this legacy may appear somewhat oblique, given their apparent phenomenological rendition of ‘real time’. However, closer examination of Benning’s formal strategies reveals a more complex temporal construction, characterized by uncertain intervals that interrupt the folding of cinematic time into the flow of consciousness. Smithson’s film uses cinematic analogy to gesture towards vast reaches of geological time; Benning’s film creates a simulated timescale to evoke the short history of the earthwork itself. Smithson’s embrace of the entropic was a counter-cultural stance at the end of the1960s, but under the shadow of ecological disaster, this orientation has come to appear melancholy and romantic rather than radical. Benning’s film returns the jetty to anthropic time, but raises questions about the ways we inhabit time. His practice of working with ‘borrowed time’ is particularly suited to the cultural and historical moment of his later work.

Chaos, culture and fantasy: The television plays of Howard Schuman

The single plays of American ex-pat playwright Howard Schuman produced for British television between 1973 and 1983 have received little critical attention. Written in a distinctly un-British madcap, non-naturalistic and often pulpy 'B movie' style, they centre around caricatured, hysterical and/or camp characters and make frequent references to popular culture. This article provides a general survey of Schuman's plays and analyses his sensibility as a screenwriter, drawing extensively on material from interviews with the writer. The article's particular focus is how and why different cultural forms including music, film and theatre are used and referred to in Schuman's plays, and how this conditions the plays' narrative content and visual and aural form. It also considers the reception of Schuman's plays and their status as non-naturalistic dramas that engage heavily with American pop culture, within the context of British drama. Finally, it explores the writer's relationship to style and aesthetics, and considers how his written works have been enhanced through creative design decisions, comparing his directions (in one of his scripts) with the realized play to reflect on the use of key devices.

Effort and affect: engaging with film performance

In order to consider our emotional and physical involvement with film this chapter explores the rapport between camera and performer and how this impacts on the construction of engagement, drawing on critical approaches across the disciplines of film, dance and philosophy to describe our spatial, emotional and sensuous relationship to characters and bodies on-screen. Concern with the relationship between what is happening on screen and the shaping of our engagement is developed through attention to the effort of a particular performance, using close analysis to make sense of the affect invited by qualities of movement and how they are presented in moment from Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski, 1968).

Visceral behaviours and leadership: a dark side of boardroom life?

Purpose – Characteristics of leaders whose behaviour is visceral include taking action based on instinct rather than intellect and exhibiting coarse, base and often negative emotions. Despite the challenge of precisely defining the nature of visceral behaviour, the purpose of this paper is to provide insight into this less attractive side of boardroom life. Design/methodology/approach – Following a literature review of the research into the negative behaviour leaders exhibit, the paper highlights four forms of visceral behaviour based on focused and intimate qualitative case studies involving the experiences of those on the receiving end of that behaviour within a boardroom context. Findings – Based on interviews with an international sample of five chief executive officers (CEOs), plus three subordinates with substantial profit and loss responsibility, the study reveals a distinctly human experience from which no one is exempt. The idiosyncratic nature of the visceral behaviour experienced resulted in each study participant's unique experience. The authors conclude that leaders need to adopt specific measures in order to control and reduce the darker human tendencies. Research limitations/implications – The experiences of study participants are presented in four case studies, providing insight into their experiences whilst also protecting their identity. The study participants were drawn from a sample of companies operating globally within a single sector of the manufacturing industry. The concepts the authors present require validating in other organisations with different demographic profiles. Originality/value – The paper presents a model based on two dimensions – choice and level of mastery – that provides the reader with insight into the forms of visceral behaviour to which leaders succumb. Insight enables us to offer managers strategic suggestions to guard against visceral behaviour and assist them in mitigating its worst aspects, in both those with whom they work and themselves.

'Hey little rich boy, take a good look at me': punk, class and British oi!

This article looks at the controversial music genre Oi! in relation to youth cultural identity in late 1970s and early 1980s Britain. By examining the six compilation albums released to promote Oi! as a distinct strand of punk, it seeks to challenge prevailing dismissals of the genre as inherently racist or bound to the politics of the far right. Rather, Oi! – like punk more generally – was a contested cultural form. It was, moreover, centred primarily on questions of class and locality. To this end, Oi! sought to realize the working-class rebellion of punk’s early aesthetic; to give substance to its street-level pretentions and offer a genuine ‘song from the streets’.

Intertextuality, authenticity, and gonzo selves in Anya Ulinich’s 'Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel'

This article traces the intertextual relationships between Anya Ulinich’s graphic novel Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel, Bernard Malamud’s short story ‘The Magic Barrel’ and a number of works by Philip Roth. Through these relationships and her construction of a number of variations on what Miriam Libicki has called a ‘gonzo self’ Ulinich explores the tensions between life and art, fact and fiction, and autobiography and the novel, mediating the aesthetic imperatives of what Roth has called the ‘written world’ and the ethical obligations of the ‘unwritten world’ in order to arrive at an authentic sense of herself as an artist and writer.

Pasolini and Third World hunger: an approach to Cinema Novo through 'La ricotta'

Among the links between Pier Paolo Pasolini and Brazilian Cinema Novo, one of the most inspiring is the political approach to hunger and consumption. In this text, I analyse this topic to look at how some of the aesthetic ideas in Pasolini’s La ricotta (1963) can also be found in some of the most important films of Cinema Novo. In 'La ricotta' (1963), the irresistible need to eat of a subproletarian interacts and clashes with his responsibilities as an actor in a movie version of the Passion of Christ, so that the film creates a complex network of relations between film shooting, social differences, art, hunger, consumption, time and light, which turns the film set into a space for displaying political relations, differences, exploitation and revolution. The correspondences between these concepts and some aggression techniques of Cinema Novo are numerous and confirm the capacity of Pasolini’s film to project ideas on cinema and politics beyond its particular production context.

Alfabetização de crianças e jovens: superando desafios da inclusão escolar

This work has its genesis in the life of a teacher. It contemplates the report of a great story that expresses the political will of anonymous people who sought/seek to overcome challenges and prejudices, a joint effort to make real the right to literacy. The reported story was developed in the Pedagogic Clinic Teacher Heitor Carrilho, Natal-RN which, concerned about the sentence of 'unable to learn the written language' attributed to children and young public school students, decided to invest in overcoming prejudices and fight against school failure of these underprivileged. The problem that motivated the study was thus set up: What particularities characterize a pedagogical practice which aims to teach literacy to children and youth from public schools, considered not capable of learning the written language? What theoretical and methodological procedures are shown as a boost to literacy in the development of a pedagogical practice systematically targeted to reflect the perspective of educating those students in public schools? Aiming to answer these questions, we conducted a qualitative research having as methodology, Life Stories and Research/Formation. For the construction of the data, it was decided to use the participative observation, semi-structured interviews and document analysis. Guided by the principles of content analysis the data analysis was built, from which emerged two categories: theoretical and methodological procedures aligned to the major axes of literacy and Procedures of the specific theoretical and methodological fundamentals of literacy. As subsets of the transverse procedures others were seized: didactic-pedagogic procedures; social affective procedures. Regarding these ones, the research shows the importance of the teacher to build a relationship of listening to the students and their families in order to organize the pedagogical work, looking at multiple dimensions of the subject: the intellect, the creative, the affective, moral, noting that between the methodology and didactics or as part of it, the links built represent great opportunities to promote literacy. Regarding the specific procedures, others were built: procedures that emphasize oral communication, procedures that favor writing and procedures that privilege reading. Under these procedures, the results of research show that you can only promote literacy if the teacher provides the students effective conditions of understanding the principles of alphabetical notation from the use of various kinds of texts, leading them to comprehend and use them in different contexts. Therefore, instructors must meet the learners' prior knowledge, their language, and the learning real needs that will bring new challenges consistent with their possibilities. The research confirms the importance of the Educational Support extra school. However, it is essential to emphasize that it is a function of the school to promote literacy for all students in the early years of schooling. It is recorded, however, that for the implementation of this desire, we must break the school model characterized by a rigid tradition, in which there is only room for those who learn the content taught in a minimum time. Unfortunately, despite the discourse of inclusion and ensuring the right to education, the school remains exclusive and selective separating the school learning of interpersonal relations and social integration and performance. On the one hand, research showed the difficulties of conducting studies and/or strategies that address the particularities of children and young people believed not capable of learning. On the other hand, the political commitment and motivation have increased the perception that it is possible to mitigate the existing deficits in the educational context, beginning with the everyday teaching practice, in which new knowledge can be learned, methodologies can be improved and, despite everything, the educational success can be built

Nexus: da relacionalidade do princípio à metafísica do inominável em Nicolau de Cusa

We indicate the idea of nexus or conexio, thought of as intelligible connection with the intelligent, the foundation on which the reason why you can understand and name, even if inadequately, what the intellect sees incomprehensible and unnameably. Thus, it opens a way for our research: we will take the idea of nexus as fundamental to the interpretation of the divine names and the "metaphysics of the unnameably" and we show how the divine names, mainly in possest, mirrored in the Trinity, relatedness of the principle and therefore also the nexus. For that you need to think some preliminary questions: we will place Nicholas of Cusa in the tradition of medieval Christian Neoplatonism, we resume some discussions on the problem of naming and the philosophy of language in his thinking, we will reflect such thinking is molded from active dialogue with the tradition and how it is your speculation is founded upon the dynamic and dialectical relationship between philosophy and theology to be thought of in our text using the relationship between faith and understandig (intellectus). After introductory clarify these issues we will come to consider introductory understanding of the Trinitarian Beginning and speculation about the nexus taking as its starting point from where the De venatione sapientiae nexus or conexio is designed as a hunting field of wisdom and the First Book of De docta ignorantia where the maximum is now thought of as one and triune. From the Second Book of the same work and the Idiota. De mente we will show in what sense the universe and men, as imago dei, imitate the eternal Trinity. Finally, we will resume the notion of the scientia aenigmatica of De beryllo and some information that will clarify that Nicholas assumes the divine names as enigmas. Finally, we will try to show that the enigmatic or symbolic names also mirror the triune Beginning principle. So, before we return some traces of this aspect in some divine names and texts of the "late period" and then conclude with that which in itself already indicates the nexus and therefore the trinity: possest

A propriedade intelectual no mundo contemporâneo no contexto geral das relações de propriedade

Pós-graduação em Ciências Sociais - FFC

Caminhando no dia a dia de uma escola: um estudo analítico-descritivo

Pós-graduação em Educação Escolar - FCLAR