Explore female masculinity and create manga this June

Leiden University’s Political Arts Initiative (PAI) and the Honours Academy are happy to host a series of masterclasses by PAI’s artist-in-residence Dr. Lien Fan Shen in June 2014.

A triptych of Dr. Shen's work

Lien Fan Shen, a manga artist and Assistant Professor in the division of Film Studies at the University of Utah, will share the political contexts, analytical frameworks, and artistic practices which shape her award-winning comic books and academic inquiry into gender identity, digital culture, and creative expression over three masterclasses.

The series is free of charge, with all texts and art supplies provided, and welcomes students from all disciplines. While each session can be taken separately (N.B. pre-requisites for Masterclass III), active participation in all three masterclasses and the final residency exhibition (on Monday 30 June 2014) will be recognised with 1 EC granted by the Leiden University Honours Academy.
Please register your interest before 1 May 2014 at the very latest, after which you will receive a full syllabus.

More information on the masterclasses is here: http://spotlighttaiwanleiden.weebly.com/masterclasses.html

The 48hr Flash Fiction Challenge 2014

Sci-Fi London (The London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film) and UrbanFantasist.com are setting you an exciting challenge: a 48 hour flash fiction competition on a sci-fi or fantasy theme.



How it will work:
- Entry is free and open to anyone who writes or would like to dip a toe in the literary water.
- The story must be between 1000 and 1500 words (excluding title and author’s name and contact details).
- Entrants can take part by registering below and receiving the elements to base their story on by SMS message and email.

On Saturday 12 April (sometime between 10am -1pm) Sci-Fi London will send you:

1/ The TITLE for your story
2/ A piece of DIALOGUE that must be incorporated somewhere into the story
3/ An optional SCIENCE THEME for the story.

You then have 48 hours to write your story. The deadline for submission is Monday 14th April at 1:00pm

More information is here: sci-fi-london.com/flashfiction

GOOD LUCK!

Asiascape's Spotlight Taiwan Film Festival 11&12 April

Asiascape is delighted to host the 'Spotlight Taiwan Film Festival' on 11 and 12 April at Leiden University College The Hague.

announcement for the Spotlight Taiwan Film Festival

Over the past 30 years, Taiwan film has had an outstanding record of achievement at major film festivals, particularly those in Europe. Our Taiwan film festival under the title ‘Performing Taiwanese Identity’, to be held on 11th and 12th April 2014, follows up on this success. It has two objectives. The first objective is to introduce the Leiden University Students and the general public in the Netherlands to Taiwanese cinema. The second objective is to have these film screenings as a key platform for understanding modern Taiwan, especially the issues of Taiwanese identity.

Over the course of 2 days (actually one evening and a day) we will introduce you to 4 blockbuster films that directly and indirectly relate to the performance of identity from different standpoints. The films touch upon the triangular relationship between Taiwan, China, and Japan. Each screening will feature a follow-up Q&A session with invited scholars and film critics.
All films are free of charge.

We start the festival with a festive opening -with drinks and snacks- to which you are all invited (registration is advised)

More info and registration for the opening event is here: www.spotlighttaiwanleiden.weebly.com/film.html

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.

International Conference: Revisiting the Emancipatory Potential of Digital Media in Asia

Join us on Friday 24 and Saturday 25 January at Leiden University (the Netherlands) to discuss the transformative role of digital media in Asia in all its complexity. 


 

Image (c) F. Schneider / Tagxedo.com 2013

Over the past decade, new forms of information and communication technologies have shaped the way people relate to each other, engage in social activities, conduct commerce, and participate in political processes. The inception of so-called Web 2.0 services such as Facebook in 2004, Youtube in 2005, and Twitter in 2006, has introduced a degree of interactivity to communication processes that surpasses that of previous technologies. Numerous companies from around the world have since imitated the success of these large networking, video-sharing, and micro-blogging sites. The popularity of such interactive digital media has meanwhile generated much debate regarding the emancipatory potential of these tools – a debate that has largely focuses on American and European experiences, and that in its extreme revolves on the one hand around the arguments of liberal scholars like Clay Shirky or Yochai Benkler, who emphasize the potential of such technologies to empower citizens, and on the other hand around the concerns of cultural critics like Evgeny Morozov or Sherry Turkle, who see these innovations as exploitative, domineering, and potentially damaging.

This international conference moves such debates to Asia, and confronts them with the realities of digital media usage in this vibrant region.
There'll be contributions on e.g. China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, India  and a special panel dedicated to digital media in Taiwan.


With a keynote speech by Professor Richard Rogers, Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam, Director of the Govcom.org Foundation and the Digital Methods Initiative, and author of book such as 'Information Politics on the Web' and 'Digital Methods'

The academic journal Asiascape:Digital Asia (DIAS), in collaboration with the Goto-Jones VICI project Beyond Utopia funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and the Spotlight Taiwan project, welcomes all those interested to this international conference on digital media in Asia.


More information and free registration