New Manga Competition - Interpreting Kurama Tengu

Following on the success of Asiascape’s first manga two competitions Asiascape.org is proud to announce its third competition 'Interpreting Kurama Tengu'.

We invite manga artists, cartoonists, students and scholars to offer graphic interpretations of the classic Japanese Noh play Kurama tengu.
Contributors may interpret this task as creatively, expansively, or parsimoniously as they like: style, genre, and length may all be freely chosen. Contributors are encouraged to give the Kurama tengu a Science Fiction twist but this is not a requirement.

The text (or part of the text) of the original Noh play may be used if desired but is not necessary. The purpose of this manga competition is to explore the expressive potential of manga.

Euro 1000 in prizes, plus the best artist will be considered for commission for a follow-up project

Deadline: 1 June 2014

The text of the Kurama tengu play as well as details on how to submit, can be found on the Asiascape site: http://asiascape.org/competition.html

Symposium 'Gaming the City'

The quality and character of urban space has long been the concern of city-planners and architects, striving to make versatile, functional, or even beautiful environments for people to work, shop, and live. Increasingly, urbanites have sought to re-appropriate these spaces for themselves, re-imagining and re-tasking structures, buildings, and layouts in creative or radical ways, transforming the city into a site of play.

The Political & Philosophical Arts Initiative (PAI) based at Leiden University, is delighted to welcome Iain Borden (Professor of Architecture & Urban Culture at University College London) and Dan Edwardes (Director of Parkour Generations) to offer keynote talks at the official opening of PAI's geo-caching photo-exhibition at The Nutshuis in The Hague on Wednesday 16 April 2014. Iain and Dan were recently part of the team that designed the Southbank Centre re-development in London to better facilitate skaters, freerunners, graffiti artists and other urban players. 


The full programme and info on how to register is here: http://cachingthehague.weebly.com/symposium.html

Asiascape:Digital Asia inaugural issue out - limited open access

On 24 & 25 January, Dr. Florian Schneider, editor of the Asiascape:Digital Asia, invited leading scholars to join us at Leiden University to revisit the emancipatory potential of digital media in Asia and discuss the digital turn in Asian studies.
Read more about the discussions and ideas that accompanied this Asiascape:Digital Asia conference  on Florian's 'Politics East Asia' blog. In case you are also interested in pictures of the event, they are here.

Some of the papers presented at that conference also appear in the inaugural issue of Asiascape:Digital Asia which is out now.
Brill is offering open access to individual users until the end of 2015.
All the information is available here:  http://www.brill.com/products/journal/asiascape.