News

Forging festival links

Published 3 May 2011
Events 7–29 May 2011

The University of Brighton is this year strengthening its links with the Brighton Festival by co-staging the first UK show by Lynette Wallworth, the world-renowned Australian media artist.

Evolution of Fearlessness will be staged in a new working collaboration between the University of Brighton's Faculty of Arts and the leading arts agency Lighthouse at the University of Brighton Gallery, from 7 May to 9 June 2011.

Wallworth's work interweaves science and technology with intense and intimate human stories. Her work explores evolving relationships between visual art and cinema specifically the creation of immersive installation environments that engage the viewer into a conversation.

Anne Boddington, dean of the Faculty of Arts said: "This growing partnership between the university and the Brighton Festival opens new windows of opportunity for connections with the university's many creative communities and for them to contribute by providing a series complementary activities and events that respond to the Art of Peacemaking."

A free talk by the artist will take place on Sunday 8 May at 3.30pm at the University of Brighton Gallery at Grand Parade.

The faculty's collaboration with Lighthouse also extends to this year's Burt Brill and Cardens Graduate Show, with work by graduating Photography BA(Hons) students on show at Lighthouse's exhibition space in Kensington Street, Brighton. The main show of over 500 students' work at Grand Parade, which will transform the campus into the biggest gallery in the south-east of the UK, runs from Saturday 4 to Thursday 9 June.

The university will also be supporting the installation of a new work by Turkish-born artist and filmmaker Kutlug Ataman. Housed in the nearby Old Municipal Market, Mesopotanian Dramaturgies is an installation that responds to the subject of modernism with the dynamics of its relentless advance into the Middle-East and its often violent history.

Through a collection of stand-alone artworks and films Ataman focuses on marginalised individuals, exploring issues of politics and environmental tensions across the region.

The exhibition runs from Saturday 7 to Sunday, 29 May. Opening times are Monday to Friday 5–9pm, and Saturdays and Sundays 12 noon–7pm.

Festival Fringe events

The University of Brighton is also staging or supporting a number of events on the Festival Fringe:

A world of sport

Tuesday, 3 May at 7pm
Jam, 9-12 Middle Street, Brighton, BN1 1AL
Entry is free.

University of Brighton's Professor Alan Tomlinson launches his beautifully-designed and fully-illustrated atlas profiling the world's major competitive sports, their political uses and abuses, and the profits that flow from their commercial development.

From American football to Sumo wrestling, Alan Tomlinson paints sports' big picture—the commercial sponsorship that underpins it, the million-dollar gains to be made from it, and the successes and failures of its celebrity superstars. He maps international sporting events and issues, and charts the economic structures within which sports operate.

Topics include: Olympics - Paralympics - Gay Games - drug abuse - sports for development - media coverage - sponsorship - merchandising - spectators - gambling – tourism.

See rolling images of the Atlas spreads, and join in a quiz to win your own signed copy.

This unique atlas will also appeal to anyone with an interest in the multi-faceted and all-embracing world of sport.

Talk sport

Thursday, 5 May at 6.45pm
Huxley Building, University of Brighton, Lewes Road, BN2 4GJ
Entry is free.

Professor Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht asks, 'what is it in the spectacle and performance of sports that continues to attract performers, fans, investors, politicians?'

Sports continue to attract individuals, peoples and societies in a variety of ways. They offer, respectively, the promise of individual fulfillment, collective identification, and national pride.

With huge worldwide media audiences and an intensifying internationalization of events and personalities, sports have also spawned profitable global industries.

With its uncertainty of outcome, inbuilt dramatic narratives, and celebration of human physicality in performance, how prominent is sport's cultural profile? What was the place and profile of sports in different historical times? Have sports always been an unpredictable balance between the ethics of competition and performance?

In a time when states stake much on national achievement at events like the Olympic Games, and continue to covet the hosting role for events such as the World Cup, Professor Gumbrecht asks whether sports have any particular relation to history at all. And if they don't, what is the continuing attraction in the spectacle and performance of sports

Tickets are free (booking required) and available online from: www.brightonfestivalfringe.org.uk or by phoning the Brighton Festival Fringe box office on 01273 917272.

A Tale of Two Peters

Thursday 12 May at 7–8.30pm
Sallis Benney Theatre, University of Brighton, Grand Parade, BN2 0JY
Tickets £5 Tel: 01273 917272. Pay bar.

Best-selling crime writer Peter James, author of more than 18 novels including Dead Like You and Dead Tomorrow, takes part in a wide-ranging conversation on crime, criminals and the justice system with University of Brighton's Professor of Criminology, Professor Peter Squires.

Professor Squires has undertaken research and consultancy work with Sussex Police, East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service and the Youth Justice Board. In 2003 he was co-opted onto the Home Office Firearms Consultative Committee as a result of his work in the field of firearms and crime.

The conversation and following question-and-answer session will be chaired by the university's Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart Laing.

Are you where you live? Software, space and social class
University of Brighton Annual Social Science Lecture

Wednesday 25 May at 7pm
Venue: Checkland Building, University of Brighton, Falmer Campus, BN1 9PH
Free entry.

Professor Roger Burrows argues that we are witnessing an increasing 'spatialization' of social class. The idea that rather than occupation and the sphere of work being the main determinant of social class, place of residence is increasingly the most important factor. The spatial clustering of people with similar socio-economic and cultural characteristics into what might be thought of in terms of 'class places'.

Burst Radio

Students from University of Brighton's broadcast media course will stage a live event as part of the Great Escape weekend. Further information on the Great Escape website.

Dr Katy Shaw

Dr Katy Shaw will be hosting discussions with The Men Who Stare at Goats author Jon Ronson, novelist Louise Doughty and Man Booker-shortlisted author Philip Henshaw. You can book on the Brighton Festival website.

Dr Shaw will also be taking part in a panel discussion on "the unsayable language of comedy" after the performance of "And the Horse you rode in on" at the Pavilion Theatre on 21 May, 5.30pm.