Contemporary Culture Courses in London

From pub crawls to punk rock, via comic books, action painting and Hegelian philosophy; hear the unlikely tale of the Situationists: international artist-revolutionaries who tried to change the world itself into a work of art.

Come and join us at the Eco Ciné-Club, where you will have the opportunity to view and discuss the work of innovative filmmakers whose work uses visual culture as a means of re-framing our relationships with changing landscapes, climates and more-than-human beings. A development from our existing Cultureplex Ciné-Club courses and taking its cue from the famous Parisian Ciné-club set up by the celebrated critic and writer, André Bazin, this incarnation of the film club will allow for the viewing of a different film each week, followed by detailed discussion and debate. The film will be introduced, and placed in both its cinematic, cultural and historic context. In sharing our viewing in City Lit’s premier screening room, the Cultureplex, we will approximate the experience of watching film in the cinema, one that is intense and fully focussed in a way that other modes of viewing often are not. After the screening we will devote the rest of the class to a collective exploration of the film, led by the tutor, but involving everyone in a participatory discussion that will allow all to express their responses, their views, their thoughts on the film screened.







Please note that the first class on Wednesday 11th June will be in Room 106 and will begin at the slightly earlier time of 14:45, finishing at 17:45. Subsequent weeks will take place in the Cultureplex at the normal time of 15:00 - 18:00.

Explore the role of critical theory within the field of art history, and learn new ways of thinking about art by focusing on how recent authors have been rethinking our understanding of nature.

Explore and discuss contemporary art on show in London. Each week we’ll visit 1-2 commercial galleries or a public gallery and examine specific exhibitions of contemporary art across a range of media including painting, works on paper, photography, new media and sculpture.

Explore the work of Chinese artists and filmmakers between the turn of the 20th century to the turn of the 21st as they try to make sense of a world caught on the cusp between the old and the new. What place did art and cinema have in socio-political movements, and how did visual culture reflect the hopes and anxieties of the time?

Underground passions and radical imagery have defined so-called fanzines for over 80 years. From the earliest examples to today, we explore their content, technique and the relation of DIY culture to wider artistic practices.

This Culture course will give you an opportunity to explore the variety of ways that embodiment has been thought and theorised. Across six weeks we will cover a variety of influential approaches to embodied life in the twentieth and twenty-first century, including biopolitics, psychoanalysis, posthumanism, affect theory, science and technology studies, feminism and queer theory.