Rikowski Point: Utopia

Showing posts with label Utopia. Show all posts

Friday, March 13, 2015

THE GLASS FORTRESS

THE GLASS FORTRESS

Presented by the Rémi Orts Project and Alan B

A free adaptation of Zamyatin’s prospective novel “We”, this concept album will take you in the wake of D–503 and I–330, two freedom-and-passion loving people.

A Dystopia tinged with Revolutionary Romanticism, first of its kind.

Album available from January 15^th 2015

Rémi Orts

Brave New World, 1984, The Wall, Equilibrium and more recently The Hunger Games: modern culture is haunted by the spectre of extremely well-organized societies whose apparent perfection conceals dark dictatorial worlds.

If this formal exercise is known to all, what is the intimate origin, the true source of its inspiration?
In fact, everything comes from a small Russian sci-fi novel published in 1920 by Yevgeny Zamyatin, "We ".

Rémi Orts Project and Alan B wish to pay tribute to this counter-utopia, first of its kind, by revisiting it in their concept album, “The Glass Fortress”.

Let yourself be taken in the wake of Daniel and Iris, two human beings opposed in every way, that nonetheless will rejoin in the same destiny, the choice of Life, even at their own peril...

Adapted from this album, a short film, innovative and moving, will be released in April 2015 with the collaboration of the talented photographer, Fanny Storck.

Lyrics : Alan B
Music : Rémi Orts
Photos : Fanny Storck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPuAwNUSLI8&list=PL5KtMvKvWwKDcTibMWVLeKg5YoHuCsZZ-&index=1

See:

http://www.remiorts.com/index.php/albums-remiorts/41-remi-project/96-the-glass-fortress

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Friday, February 21, 2014

Capitalist Markets in Higher Education

CAPITALIST MARKETS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE)

Capitalist Markets in Higher Education: Utopias or Possibilities

Date - Wednesday, 16 April 2014: 14.00-16.00

Venue - University of Bath, Bath, UK

Network - South West Regional Network

Speaker: Professor Simon Marginson, Institute of Education

For more than two decades, governments around the world, led by the English-speaking polities, have moved higher education systems closer to the forms of textbook economic markets. Reforms include corporatisation, competitive funding, student charges, output formats and performance reporting. But, no country has established a bona fide economic market in the first-degree education of domestic students. No research university is driven by shareholders, profit, market share, allocative efficiency or the commodity form. There is commercial tuition only in parts of vocational training and international education. At the most, there are regulated quasi-markets, as in post-Browne UK. This differs from the experience of privatisation and commercialisation of transport, communications broadcasting and health insurance in many nations. The article argues that bona fide market reform in higher education is constrained by intrinsic limits specific to the sector (public goods, status competition), and political factors associated with those limits. This suggests that market reform is utopian, and the abstract ideal is sustained for exogenous policy reasons (e.g. fiscal reduction, state control, ordering of contents). But, if capitalist markets are clearly unachievable, a more authentic modernisation agenda is needed.

BIOGRAPHY

Simon worked as a Professor of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne in Australia prior to starting at the Institute of Education in October 2013. His research and scholarship draw broadly on the social sciences and political philosophy, and are focused primarily on higher education policy, systems and institutions. Most of his projects are in comparative and international higher education. In the last decade he has conducted extended inquiries into higher education and globalization, and higher education and research in East Asia. His current research includes a comparative project on the role of higher education in constructing public good, which examines the intersection between on one hand state traditions and political cultures, on the other hand educational practices. In 2014 Simon will deliver the biannual Clark Kerr lectures on higher education in the University of California system. He is Joint Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Too book a place please email Rajani Naidoo at R.Naidoo@bath.ac.uk

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'Cheerful Sin' – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: https://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Sunday, September 22, 2013

The Communism of Capital?

THE COMMUNISM OF CAPITAL?

Ephemera Volume 13 Number 3 (August 2013)

Ephemera is at: http://www.ephemerajournal.org

ISBN 9781906948207

Current Issue

The communism of capital? What could this awkward turn of phrase mean, and what might it signify with regards to the state of the world today? Does it merely describe a reality in which communist demands are twisted to become productive of capital, a capitalist realism supplemented by a disarmed communist ideology? Or does the death of the capitalist utopia mean that capital cannot contain the antagonism expressed by Occupy and other movements any more, and therefore must confront communism upfront?

The 12 contributions to this latest issue of ephemera explore the valances of the paradoxical and seemingly incoherent expression that is ‘the communism of capital’. Collectively they stake out new territory for the theorisation and organization of political struggle in a context in which capital has become increasingly aware that its age-old nemesis might today be lurking at its very heart.

You can order a print copy of the whole issue now at your local bookstore!

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editorial

The communism of capital?

Spectre of the commons: Spectrum regulation in the communism of capital

Rachel O’Dwyer

article

Infecting capitalism with the common: The class process, communication, and surplus