Culture Wars online review covers public talks, debates lectures and conferences in and around London, and beyond, in order to get to grips with the ideas behind the headlines.

Transformative dance

Destino – A Contemporary Dance Story. Film screening and panel debate at the Royal Society of Arts, Monday 12 July 2010

The cities of London and Addis Ababa were shown to be so similar yet contrasting.  Interviews revealed similar levels of background traffic, low-rent rehearsal spaces and prestigious performance venues.  Yet, children face death everyday on the streets of Addis.

Where’s the beef?

Manchester Question Time organised by Total Politics, City Inn, Manchester, February 2010

Although Total Politics and these Question Time formats are responding to this depoliticisation, the overly posh approach that emphasises style over substance, with politicians rather desperately trying to win approval through self-flagellation, isn’t going to solve it. Alas it will need some real politics and a sharp and critically honest assertion of self interest and how best we can achieve it.

Secularism and Multiculturalism: an encounter with Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor, University of Westminster, 15 January 2010

As compelling a speaker and thinker as Taylor is, there seemed to be something rather muted and unsatisfying about his account. One was left with the impression that his experience holding public hearings on cultural integration in Quebec had left him slightly fazed by what the anthropologist Robin Fox called ‘ethnographic dazzle’ and, with it, a movement towards an understanding of social integration which over-estimates the need for social unity and under-estimates the real tensions which stand as obstacles to it.

Don’t look on the bright side – it’s positively fatal

Barbara Ehrenreich at Conway Hall, London, Sunday 10 January 2010

‘Crayons?!!!’ she asked incredulously, ‘what are they for?’ ‘So you can express your feelings’ she was told. As an established writer and author of fourteen books, including the bestselling Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch she was incensed. This infantilisation of adults in the face of what was for her a frighteningly traumatic experience made her want to throw up.

Protest as performance

Eloquent Protest, Duke of Yorks Theatre, Sunday 8 November 2009

It was a shame we didn’t see the Shirleys again, as their upskittling shenanigans had us laughing, then in true Brecht/Frisch style, asking ‘Why are we laughing at this; and why are we laughing at it here?’ They made us uncomfortable. Shouldn’t we feel uncomfortable? Isn’t that, to some extent, the point?

Why doesn’t listening to modern classical music matter any more?

A talk given at, 'A cultured ear: why does listening to music matter?', at the Battle of Ideas, London, Saturday 31 October 2009

Like every art form, music should continue to provoke and explore different ways of getting under our skin, but though I would hate to have a world without dissonance, I believe that rock music stole classical music’s thunder when it took over the role of providing society’s songs and dances, not least by absorbing the power of electricity to provide the level of energy that an increasingly sex and technology obsessed society needed.

Science against the law

'Science Fact: science journalism and libel law', City University, 15 October 2009

The problem with the libel laws isn’t their abuse by evil corporations, but the idea that the state has the right to regulate what we’re allowed to say.

The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education

Brighton Salon, Thursday 24 September 2009

Ben, a teacher, was the first to get passionate: ‘I disagreed with everything you said. I can feel myself getting angry!’ he said. ‘I think that what you’re saying shows an absolute lack of compassion.’

Deposing the Art Establishment?

Public art and the public

What united the three panellists who argued against public consultation was their impassioned support for the autonomy of the artist. They defended the freedom of the artist to create their art without the meddling of politicians or, more to the point, the need to answer to the public. In doing so, they framed the debate not in terms of a tired establishment versus the public stance but in terms of being pro-artist.

Historicising the therapeutic turn

Changing the Subject: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Emotional Well-Being and Social Justice, Seminar 5: Perspectives from History, Oxford Brookes University, 7 July 2009

Durkheim’s warning against expecting education to be a magic wand capable of resolving social problems seems especially apt today, as the government loads ever greater responsibilities onto schools – nutrition, emotional well-being, citizenship, environmental awareness – without seeking to transform the social and economic problems that give rise to the problems these initiatives are naively expected to resolve.

Adapting to alienation

Changing the Subject: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Emotional Well-Being and Social Justice, Seminar Four: Perspectives from Psychology, Canterbury Christ Church University, 10 June 2009

The nineteenth century viewed the mind as a machine, reflecting the Industrial Revolution; the late twentieth century saw it as a computer, expressing the Information Revolution. The view of the human mind operating through instinctive emotion prior to reason is perhaps no less specific to today’s ‘therapy culture’.

The bigger economic picture

Post-G20 Public Summit: The Battle for the Economy, Goodenough College, London, 16 May 2009

The financial crisis taught us that it is dangerous to leave decisions about our economy to self-appointed ‘experts’. To hold politicians and business leaders accountable, the public needs to be educated, informed and engaged in a high level of economic debate. It’s time to take the battle of ideas out of the conference hall, and on to the streets. 

The art of democracy

Mobile Conference, London, 15 March 2009

The conference was a fringe event of Tate Britain’s Tate Triennial, and asked questions such as: can contemporary art provoke democratic participation? How can contemporary art reclaim the public realm through play?

Energise! Power to the people

Brighton Salon, Tuesday 28 April 2009

’We realised that we had to look much more carefully at energy and its uses and production. The politicisation of climate change is a serious issue because it stands in the way of solving problems and stifles debate,’ said Joe.

The idea that drives the music

Through Venezuelan Eyes and Not If But How, Southbank Centre, London, April 2009

Projects that involve children in learning how to be a DJ or how to write rap and dance to hip-hop are no doubt enjoyable for the children involved, but will not transform their reality. In many instances, this is the only reality they know. The El Sistema approach, by contrast, would have forced them to engage with a different more rigorous tradition than the one they have grown up with