Mark Fisher Talk at Chisenhale Gallery

Wednesday 17th November 2010

Chisenhale Gallery, London

7 pm Free

Alongside Hito Steyerl's new exhibition at Chisenhale, Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism, known to many as blogger kpunk, presents a talk in which he asks the question: ‘Can anything genuinely new emerge in a political landscape that is clogged with ideological junk?’

London Literature Festival, Southbank Centre, London

The London Literature Festival
Southbank Centre
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX
Tuesday 27 April - Sunday 15 August 2010

Taking place across the Southbank Center for four months this summer, The London Literature Festival brings together a broad range of writers, performers, critics and theorists in what promises to be a lengthy and stimulating series of talks, performances and discussions. Speakers this year include Slavoj Žižek, John Cooper Clark and Bret Easton Ellis.

Alongside this is an exhibition entitled Certificates Of Readership by emerging British artist Sara Mackillop in the Saison Poetry Library.

Tickets have just gone on sale here.

Armando Iannucci Talk, Tate Modern, 17th October 2006

Sorry, your browser doesn't support the embedding of multimedia.Armando Iannucci at Tate Modern
17th October 2006
1 hr 23 mins

Comedian Armando Iannucci talks about the roles and positions that comedy plays in the media today. Insisting that it is not the job of comedians 'to talk about what you can and cannot say and do because, thankfully, by definition [they] are irresponsible', he discusses when it is deemed appropriate to make jokes about serious issues, and the relative failings of our broadcasters to adequately explore them through other means.

There's a few clips he refers to during the lecture - it was a little frustrating not being to see them, so I've done my best to find them for you:

Slavoj Žižek, Maybe We Just Need a Different Chicken

Slavoj Žižek Maybe We Just Need a Different Chicken

2008

My second Žižek post is a talk that was meant to be about his book, Violence, delivered in Portland, Oregon in 2008. Instead Žižek talks, in his usual wandering style, about politeness and censorship and their function in ideology today. In his inimitable style, he extrapolates metaphors from a joke about a psychiatric patient who believes he is a piece of grain, terrified of being eaten by the chicken of the title. Žižek discusses how ideology manifests itself in the media and politics today, while covering cinematic references that span from Batman to Hitchcock's Vertigo to Kung Fu Panda.