Esther Leslie.
Current position
Professor in Political Aesthetics, Birkbeck, University of London. Employed at Birkbeck since January 2000
Publications
Books
Walter Benjamin, Overpowering Conformism, Pluto Press, London 2000, 298ppHollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-garde, Verso, London, 2002, 344pp
Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry, Reaktion, London 2005
Walter Benjamin: Critical Lives, Reaktion, London 2007
This book has been published in Portuguese. 2009.
Fashion: A Glossary, catalogue to accompany Sharon Kivland’s exhibition ‘The Wind of Revolution Blows’, at Chelsea Space, London 2008
Edited collections
Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture, edited by Ted Curtis, Robert Dellar, Esther Leslie, Ben Watson, Spare Change Books, London 2000Academy Zappa, Proceedings of the First International Conference of Esemplastic Zappology, SAF Publishing, London 2005
As Radical As Reality Itself, edited by Matthew Beaumont, Andrew Hemingway, Esther Leslie, John Roberts, Peter Lang, London 2007
Chapters in books
‘Walter Benjamin: Traces of Craft’ in Obscure Objects of Desire; Reviewing the Crafts in the Twentieth Century, edited by Tanya Harrod, Crafts Council, London 1997, pp21–31‘Drawing the Line: Painting History and History Painting’ in Art, Technology, Technique; Art, Criticism, Theory, edited by John Gange, Pluto Press, London, 1998, pp17–33
‘Souvenirs and Forgetting; Walter Benjamin’s Memory-work’ in Material Memories; Design and Evocation, edited by Marius Kwint, Jeremy Aynsley and Christopher Breward, Berg, Oxford/New York 1999, pp107–122
‘Spectacles and Signs’ in Living in a Material World, collection of conference papers, Coventry University, 2000, pp240–251
‘Elemental: The Arcades Project’ in Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy; Destruction and Experience, edited by Peter Osborne and Andrew Benjamin, Clinamen Press, Manchester 2000, pp304–308
‘Mad Pride and Prejudice’ in Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture, edited by Ted Curtis, Robert Dellar, Esther Leslie, Ben Watson, Spare Change Books, London 2000, pp67–82
‘One Step Forwards, Two Steps Back’ in The Twentieth Century, edited by Keith Flett and David Renton, Rivers Oram Press, London 2000, pp33–53
‘Some Optical Illusion: Colour and Craft’ in The Body Politic: The Role of the Body and Contemporary Craft, edited by Julian Stair, Crafts Council, London 2000, pp51–57
‘Flaneurs in Paris and Berlin’ in Histories of Leisure, edited by Rudy Koshlar, Berg, London 2002, pp61−77
‘Philistines and Art Vandals Get Upset’ in The Philistine Controversy, edited by Dave Beech and John Roberts, Verso, London 2002, pp201−227
‘Murmurs of the Future/Das Murmel der Zukunft’, A Berlin Childhood/Berliner Kindheit, Aura Rosenberg (ed), Steidl, Bonn/DAP, New York, 2002 pp7-11/pp12-15
‘Magical Properties’, in The Uncanny Room, edited by Janice West and Tessa Peters, Luminous Books, London 2002, pp57−63
‘Absent Minded Professors; Etch-a-Sketching Academic Forgetting’ in Regimes of Memory, edited by Susannah Radstone and Kate Hodgkin, Routledge, London 2003, pp172−185
‘Jameson, Brecht, Lenin and Spectral Possibilities’, in Fredric Jameson: A Critical Reader, Palgrave, London 2004 pp195−209
‘Benjamin, Adorno, Brecht on Film’, Understanding Film: Marxist Perspectives, edited by Michael Wayne, Pluto, London 2005 pp34−57
‘Two Worlds of Fortune: Culture and Dying in the Global Zone’, Economising Culture, edited by Joasia Krysa and Geoff Cox (DATA browser collective), Autonomedia, New York 2005 pp89−110
‘Response to Kitty Hauser’ (Wear and Tear), Fashion and Modernity, edited by Caroline Evans and Christopher Breward, 2005 pp171−174
Entry on Karl Marx and Fashion, Encyclopedia of Fashion and Clothing, Charles Scribner's Sons 2005 (unseen - page span not known)
‘Compliment Any Burger You Put On (Centre Hinge Slice); On Kaiser Rolls’, Academy Zappa, Proceedings of the First International Conference of Esemplastic Zappology, SAF Publishing, London 2005 pp157−170
‘Interview’, Londres En mouvement: Effervescences du Quotidien, Yann Perreau, Autremont, Paris, 2005 pp142−149
‘The World as Image and Thing’, Twentieth Century Literature and Photography, edited by David Cunningham, Andrew Fisher and Sas Mays, Cambridge Scholars Press, Newcastle, 2005
‘Ruin and Rubble in Walter Benjamin’s Arcades’, Walter Benjamin and the Arcades, Continuum, 2006 pp87-112
‘Barbara Kruger’, in Diarmuid Costello and Jonathan Vickery (eds.), Art Key Contemporary Thinkers, Berg, Oxford 2007
‘Kracauer and Benjamin’, in Mapping Memory, edited by Bill Schwarz and Susannah Radstone, Fordham University Press, New York, 2007
‘American Splendor’, America First: Film Essays, edited by Mandy Merck, Routledge, London 2007
‘Glass and Hope’, publication accompanying David Crowe’s exhibition Commemorative Glass….. Cornerhouse, Manchester, 2007
‘Image Refusal in Iain Sinclair's Refuse Aesthetics: London Orbital, The Film’, in City Visions: The Work of Iain Sinclair, edited by Robert Bond and Jenny Bavidge, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007
‘Against Cultural Studies’, As Radical As Reality Itself: Essays on Marxism and Art, edited by Matthew Beaumont, Andrew Hemingway, Esther Leslie, John Roberts, Peter Lang, London 2007
‘“The fact of new forms of life, already born and active”: The Interrupted Dialogues of Realism and Modernism’, Adventures in Realism, edited by Matthew Beaumont, Blackwell, 2007
‘Tier, Geschichte und Kunstinstinkte’, (with Ben Watson) in Das steinernde Herz der Unendlichkeit erweichen: Tierrechte und Kritische Theorie, edited by S. Witt-Stahl, Hamburg: Alibris 2007
‘Permanent Waves and Modern Myths’ in catalogue for exhibition Ost Property, curated by Dolores Rocket
‘Mehr Wert für die Inhalte: Die Verwertung der Kultur heute’, Gerald Raunig / Ulf Wuggenig (eds.), Kritik der Kreativität, Vienna: Turia & Kant 2007
‘Walter Benjamin’, Companion to Contemporary Marxism, edited by Jacques Bidet and Eustache Kouvelakis, Brill, 2007
‘Snow Shaker’, Fiona Candlin/Raiford Guins (eds), The Object Reader, Routledge, London 2008
‘Walter Benjamin and the Technological Unconscious’, Walter Benjamin et l’ Architecture, Editions de la Villette, Paris 2009
‘Lossless’, Veer Off, London, March 2009
‘Eliminacion: experi-mental’/’Preclusion: experimental’, Chapter from Hollywood Flatlands, reprinted in English and translated into Spanish, Fantasmagoria: Dibujo en movimento, Fundacion ICO, 2009, pp.28-93.
‘Lines in the Landscape’, Larry Johnson catalogue, Hammer Gallery, Los Angeles, 2009
‘Dust and Dr Johnson’, essay for The House of Words/Dr Johnson House catalogue, June 2009
‘Art’s Displacement’, essay for catalogue The City Gates, Sheffield Hallam University Fine Art Course show, June 2009
‘Walter Benjamin and the Technological Unconscious’, Walter Benjamin et l’ Architecture, Editions de la Villette, Paris 2010
“Liquidation and Shattering: Walter Benjamin’s Aesthetics’, Anca Pusca (ed.), Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Change, Palgrave, 2010
‘Icy Scenes from Three Centuries’, Clare Pajakowska/Luke White (eds.), The Ecological Sublime, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010
‘Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin: Memory from Weimar to Hitler’, in Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz (eds.), Mapping Memory, Fordham University Press, 2010
‘Ben Wilson’, Limited Language: Rewriting Design, edited by Colin Davies, and Monika Parrinder, Birkhauser, Basel, 2010
Shudder, exhibition notes for exhibition at The Drawing Room, in conjunction with Animate, 2010.
‘Benjamin and Catastrophe’, Feedforward. El Ángel de la Historia, Laboral catalogue, Spain, 2010.
‘Recycling’ in Restless Cities, edited by Matthew Beaumont and Greg Dart, Verso, London 2010
Reprint, ‘Its Mickey Mouse’, Animation: Art + Industry; A Reader, edited by Maureen Furniss, John Libbey, London 2010
‘Fanning the Sparks of Hope’, Futurology: Issues, Contexts And Conditions For Contemporary Art Practice Today, edited by Hewitt and Jordan, New art Gallery, Walsall, 2010
‘Economy and Art’, Economy of the Artist/A Economia do Artista, edited by Ligia Paz, Braco de Ferro, Spain, 2010
Articles in journals
‘Pocahontas; a study of Disney’s 33rd full-length animated cartoon Pocahontas’ for ‘History at Large’ in History Workshop Journal, 41 spring 1996, pp235–239‘Wrapping the Reichstag; Re-visioning German History’ in Radical Philosophy 77, May/June 1996, pp6–16
‘Exotic of the Everyday: Critical Theory in the Parlour’ in Things 4, summer 1996, pp83–101
‘Walter Penetrates Deeply into the Web’ in Mute 7, winter 1997
‘Wallace and Gromit: An Animating Love’ in Soundings 5, spring 1997, pp149–156
‘Walter Benjamin; Dreams, Toys and Tales’ in Crafts, Crafts Council magazine, spring 1997
‘On Making-up and Breaking-up: »Woman« and »Ware«, »Craving« and »Corpse« in Walter Benjamin’s Arcades project’ in Historical Materialism 1, winter 1997, pp66–89
‘The Multiple Identities of Walter Benjamin’, New Left Review 226, November/December 1997, pp128–135
‘Professional Faces: Explaining the Shadows; On August Sander’ in Things 7, winter 1997–1998, pp87–96
‘Walter Benjamin: Traces of Craft’ in Journal of Design History, Vol. 11 no. 1, spring 1998, special issue on Modernism and Modernity in Design, pp5–13
‘Drawing the Line: Painting History and History Painting’ in ‘Art, Criticism, Theory’, Art, Technology, Technique; 4, 1998, pp17–33
‘The War on Memory; Disappearances in Soviet Photography’, in Things 9, winter 1998–1999, pp50–69
Introduction and translation of letter exchange between T. W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse on the Frankfurt School and the Student Movement, New Left Review 233, January/February 1999, pp118–123, pp123–136
‘Telescoping the Microscopic Object: Walter Benjamin, the Collector’ in The Optic of Walter Benjamin, De-, Dis-, Ex-, no. 3, March 1999, pp58–91
‘Elective Affinities: the Hunched Man, the Old Man and B.B.’, Revolutionary History, vol.7, no. 2, ‘Culture and Revolution in the Thought of Leon Trotsky’, summer 1999, pp158–184
‘Space and West-end Girls; Walter Benjamin versus Cultural Studies’ in ‘Hating Tradition Properly’, New Formations 38, 1999, pp110–124
‘The Vanishing Commissar: Stalin’s Manipulation of Art and Photography’ in New Interventions, vol. 9, no.4 winter 2000, pp25–31
‘Dreamsleep: Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project’, Things 13, winter 2000−2001, pp48–67
‘Notes on Notes: A Money Montage’, Inventory, vol. 4, no. 2, 2001, p28−47
‘Live to Write, Write to Live’, (co-written with Ben Watson), Quid 8.I, pp16−26
‘Tate Modern: A Year of Sweet Success’, Radical Philosophy 109, pp2−5
‘Die Kunst der Kritik’, Jungle World: Die Linke Wochenzeitung, 17 September 2003
‘Documents of Revolution, Incompetence and Resistance: Harun Farocki and Iain Sinclair’, Film International, July 2004 pp26−37
‘Dung Heaps and Movie Cameras: The Unconscious in Eisenstein and Joyce, Film and Literature’, Scrivere L’Es: Inconscio e Scrittura, edited by Marco Maurizi, Amnesia Vivace, Roma 2004
‘Stars, Phosphor and Chemical Colours: Extraterrestriality in Reading Benjamin’s Arcades, New Formations, no. 54, Winter 2004−2005 pp13−27
‘Comic Marxism: Punk's Day-glo and the Bash Street Kids’ (with Ben Watson), in dot dot dot, no.11, 2006
Kunstklub roundtable discussion with Kerstin Stakemeier and Roger Behrens, June 2006
‘Where Abstraction and Comics Collide: On Kandinsky and Oskar Fischinger’, Tate Etc, Summer 2006
‘Add Value to Contents’, Documenta 12 magazines project, Radical Philosophy 141
‘Aktualisierungsprojekt’, Chto Delat, February 2007
‘Kracauer’s Weimar Geometry and Geomancy’, New Formations, 61, edited by Jan Campbell, 2007
‘Flux and Flurry: Stillness and Hypermovement in Animated Worlds’, Radical Philosophy 152, November/December 2008
‘Walter Benjamin: Politik und Aesthetik’ in Kunst, Spektakel, Revolution: Zum Verhältnis von Kunst, Politik und radikaler Gesellschaftskritik, ACC, Weimar, 2010
A Selection of Digital works
‘THE WORK OF ART...:’ Contributions to a CD-ROM and Website on Walter Benjamin’s ‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’. The website address is: <www.obsolete.com/artwork/>
(This work has been shown in various international exhibitions)One of the essays from this project has also been reproduced at
<www.in-print.org.uk/essays/leslie-pp.shtml>Review of Crossing Borders, the Walter Benjamin conference in Barcelona, September 25–27 2000, published at Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate<www.wbenjamin.org>
Review of Amelia Jones, Irrational Modernism, Metamute online journal
Entry on Walter Benjamin for the Literary Dictionary – <www.litdict.com>
Entry on Georg Lukács for the Literary Dictionary – www.litdict.com
‘Blake’s Lines: Seven Digressions Through Time and Space’, ImageText, Special Issue on William Blake and Visual Culture, edited by Roger Whitson and Donald Ault, online (Spring 2007):
http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v3_2/leslie/Francis, Let Me Feel Your Finger First, Animate, January 2008
http://www.animateprojects.org/writing/essays/e_leslie‘Shudder – Shatter – Shutter’ at Animate
http://www.animateprojects.org/writing/essays/e_leslie_2
Artwork
‘Terrible Facts series’, 14 Stickers responding to the question What’s Wrong, art exhibition at Trade Apartment Brixton, London, 1 October 2001−5 November 2001
<online: www.militantesthetix.co.uk/stickers/stickersfr.htm>‘KX-CTRL’, digital video (26.40 mins), screened at Cecil Sharp House, part of Visionary Landscapes festival, to musical accompaniment, 23 May 2003
Reviews, reports and review essays
Review of Michael Löwy’s On Changing the World: Essays in Political Philosophy from Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin [Humanities Press 1993] for Revolutionary History, vol. 5, no. 2, autumn 1993, pp159−162Review of Bernhard Siegert’s Relais: Geschicke der Literatur als Epoche der Post [1751–1913] [Berlin 1993] for Mute no. 1, November 1994
Review of Jens-Peter Steffen’s Militant Tendency: Trotzkismus in der Labour Party [Peter Lang 1994] for Revolutionary History, vol. 6, no. 1, spring 1996, pp181−184
‘Askant Visions’; a review of Andrew Benjamin’s and Peter Osborne’s edited collection Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy; Destruction and Experience [Routledge 1994] in Parataxis: Modernism and Modernist Writing 8, September 1996, pp75−78
‘The Twilight Zone; Negative Vibes’; a review of Julian Stallabrass’ Gargantua [Verso 1996] in Things 5, winter 1996, pp117−119
‘What’s Cooking; Hausbound’; a review of Erica Carter’s How German is She?; Postwar German Reconstruction and the Consuming Woman [University of Michigan Press 1997] in Things 6, summer 1997, pp148−152
Review of Paul Duro’s edited collection Rhetoric of the Frame; Essays on the Boundaries of the Artwork [Cambridge University Press 1997] in Crafts, Crafts Council magazine, no. 148, September/October 1997
Review of books concerning Walter Benjamin by Bullock and Jennings, Cadava and Brodersen for Historical Materialism 2, summer 1998, pp215−223
‘Craft and Power’, a review of Tanya Harrod’s The Crafts in Britain in the 20th Century [Yale University Press, 1999] Things 10, summer 1999, pp80−88
Conference report on ‘The Body Politic; the Role of the Body and Contemporary Craft’, Crafts, 161 November/December 1999
‘Aching For the Crash’, A Review of The Virilio Reader, edited by James Der Derian, Blackwell, Oxford 1998, Radical Philosophy 99, January/February 2000
‘Elemental’, a review of Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, Radical Philosophy 101, May/June 2000
Review of Howard Caygill’s Walter Benjamin; The Colour of Experience, History Workshop Journal, 49, spring 2000 pp235−242
Review of Ron Mueck’s ‘Giant Boy’ at the London Millennium Dome, Modern Painters, summer 2000
‘Getting Sliced’, a review of Sander Gilman’s Making the Body Beautiful, A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery, Things 12, summer 2000, pp79−83
Review of Index on Censorship’s exhibition of ‘Photographs They Don’t Want You to See’, Things 12, summer 2000, pp108−113
Review of Crossing Borders, the Walter Benjamin conference in Barcelona, September 25–27 2000, published at Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate (www.wbenjamin.org)
‘Walter Benjamin: Tragedy and Progress’, Workers’ Liberty, December 2000
Review of Giorgio Agamben’s Remnants of Auschwitz; The Witness and the Archive and Victor Jeleniewski Seidler, Shadows of the Shoah; Jewish Identity and Belonging, Radical Philosophy 105, January/February 2001
‘The Work of Art in the Era of Serial Unhappiness’, a review of Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Boy on Earth, Mute 20, July 2001, pp58−59
‘Putting the Mode Back into Modernity’, a review of Ulrich Lehmann’s Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity, Things 14, Summer 2001, pp55−59
‘Toontown’, a review of Richard Foglesang, Married To The Mouse: Walter Disney World and Orlando, Things 15 Winter 2001−02
‘Mutinies’, London Socialist Historians’ Newsletter, December 2001
‘Revelation, Half-truth and Rumour’, Review of Anselm Jappe’s Guy Debord and Andrew Hussey’s Game of War, Radical Philosophy 113, May/June 2002
A review of Elizabeth Wilson’s Bohemians, Fashion Theory, Vol.6, issue 3 2002
Review of ‘Siegfried Kracauer: Conference’, University of Birmingham, 13-14 September 2002, Radical Philosophy
Entry on Walter Benjamin for the Literary Dictionary – <www.litdict.com>
Buchbesprechung Michael Opitz/Erdmut Wizisla (Hgs) Benjamins Begriffe, Das Argument, Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Sozialwissenschaften, 247, 44 Jahrgang, Heft 4, 2002 pp578-580
Review of Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche (eds) The Work of Memory; New Directions in the Study of German Society and Culture, Modernism/Modernity, Vol.10, number 1, January 2003, pp196-197
Review of Michael Bracewell’s The Nineties, for New Formations, Summer 2003
Review of Beatrice Hanssen/Andrew Benjamin, (eds) Walter Benjamin and Romanticism, Modernism/Modernity, 2003
Review of Graeme Gilloch, Walter Benjamin: Critical Constellations, Theory, Culture, & Society, Vol. 20, no.3, June 2003 pp147-9
Review of Georg Scheuer, Seuls les fous n’ont pas peur, Revolutionary History volume 8, No.4, 2003
Review of Amelia Jones, Irrational Modernism, Mute Online, 26 April 2004
Conference report: Indeterminate Kommunismus, Radical Philosophy, March/April 2004
Review: Charity Scribner, Requiem for Communism, Radical Philosophy, May/June 2004
Review of Ferneyhough/Bernstein, Shadowtime, Munich Prinzregententheater, 25 May 2004, Radical Philosophy 2004
Review of Steve Mannheim, EPCOT, for Journal of Design History
Review of Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol.4, Theory, Culture, Society, June 2005; 22: 151-156
‘Enough is Enough’, review of books on cultural policy, Variant, Spring 2005
Review of Julian Markels, The Marxian imagination: representing class in literature, International Socialism, 107, 2005
Review of Heimat, Socialist Review, May 20005
Review of Andreas Rausch, Zappaesk, for online journal Idiot Bastard Son.
A three part series for Socialist Worker on Rodchenko, Vertov and Esfir Shub, January and February 2005
Review of Michael Loewy’s Fire Alarm, Radical Philosophy 137 May-June 2006
‘From Stillness to Movement and Back: Cartoon Theory Today’, Radical Philosophy 137 May-June 2006
‘Walter Benjamin and Consumerism’, Socialist Worker, 8 June 2006
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9150‘Imagined Affinities? Benedict Anderson's Pre-History of Globalisation’, Metamute, online at
http://www.metamute.org/en/Imagined-AffinitiesJM Palmier, Weimar in Exile, review in Socialist Review, October 2006
http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=9852Benjamin’s Arcades: An UnGuided Tour, Buse, McCracken et al, Modern Language Notes
Walter Benjamin On Hashisch and Berlin Childhood Around 1900, Modernism/Modernity,
Global Culture Industry, Lash, Lury, Animation: An Interdisciplinary journal, 2008
Sketches of the Nineteenth Century, M. Lauster, Modern Language Notes, 2009.
Review of The Baader Meinhof Complex, Radical Philosophy, 2009
Review of John Roberts’ The Intangibilities of Form: Skilling and Deskilling in the Age of the Ready-Made, New Formations, 2009
Review of Julian, Bourg, 1968, in The Journal of Intellectual History, 2010
Major translation
Georg Lukács, A Defence of History and Class Consciousness; Tailism and the Dialectic, Verso, London, 2000, 182ppWalter Benjamin’s Archives, Verso 2007
Editorial activities
Editor, with Mike Wayne, of a book series − ‘Marxism and Culture’ − for Pluto PressCo-editor (and production manager of issues 2, 3 and 4) of Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory ongoing
Co-editor of Revolutionary History ongoing - special responsibility for Mutinies: Disaffection and Unrest in the Armed Forces, vol.8, no.2, 2002
Member of editorial collective of Radical Philosophy ongoing
Editorial board member of Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, ongoing
Editorial board member of Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture, a book funded by a MIND Millennium Award 1999–2000 (published by Spare Change, reprinted by Handsell
Association with the Centre for New Ethnicities’ Research at the University of East London 1995–1999
(The Party and Class symposium in Historical Materialism 3 was translated into Korean and produced as a book, E-Who Publishing House 2000)
Other writings
EPICENTRE INTERNATIONAL, a volume of poetry [together with Out to Lunch], We Don’t Care publications, London 1995Various translations from German into English – including Willy Brandt’s 1937 memoirs relating to his experience in the Spanish Civil War [available from Socialist Platform Archive, and on the Internet]; an academic text on Chinese ethnography; a paper on South African archaeology; Waldemar Bolze’s diary of his activities on the Huescan front in the Spanish Civil War, published in The Spanish Civil War: A View from the Left [ed. Al Richardson, Socialist Platform, London 1992]; translation of Oskar Lafontaine’s speech to SPD conference in December 1997, published in New Left Review 227, translation of Karl Radek on war and socialism and Karl Kautsky on 'the oriental question' and Rosa Luxemburg on 1905 for Revolutionary History. Rosa Luxemburg on Mehring’s Schiller for Revolutionary History.
Major translations
Georg Lukacs, A Defence of History and Class Consciousness, Verso, London 2002Walter Benjamin’s Archives, Verso, London 2007
Plenary, Keynote and invited conference papers
‘Translations: Walter Benjamin and the Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility’, Camerawork Gallery, London, 26 October 1996‘Walter Benjamin and Authenticity’, ‘Obscure Objects of Desire?: Reviewing the Crafts in the 20th Century’, University of East Anglia, 10–12 January 1997
‘Spies and Art’, ‘Threats and Containments’, Byam Shaw School of Art, London, 12 March 1997
‘Clement Greenberg, Walter Benjamin and a Different Use of Flatness’, ‘Endings and Transformations; Cultural Studies at the Millennium’, Trent University, Ontario, Canada, 19–24 August 1997
‘Space and West-end Girls; Walter Benjamin versus Cultural Studies’, ‘The Legacy of the Frankfurt School in Cultural Studies’, Salford University, 31 March−1 April 1998
‘Souvenirs and Forgetting; Walter Benjamin’s Memory-work’, ‘Material Memories; Design and Evocation’, V & A/R.C.A, 16–18 April 1998
‘The City and Everyday Life’, ‘Cities at the Millennium’, UEL/University of Bristol at RIBA 17 December 1998–19 December 1998
Plenary paper and panel discussion on ‘The Optic of Walter Benjamin’, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, 24 March 1999
Plenary paper and panel discussion on ‘Art and the Everyday’, the 1999 Association of Art Historians conference in Southampton, 9–11 April 1999
‘Live to Write, Write to Live: Trading Ideas in Academia and Journalism’, (with Ben Watson) at a conference jointly organized by the Marxist Cultural Network and the Raymond Williams’ Memorial Trust, Nottingham Trent University, 8 May 1999
‘Benjamin, Stars and Stamps: The Politics of the New’, ‘What’s New?’, ICA/Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, ICA, 23 May 1999
‘Spectacles and Signs’, ‘Living in a Material World’, Coventry School of Art and Design, 25 June–27 June 1999
‘Zero-city: Modernist Work and Modern Time’, ‘Time, Work and the Everyday: Raymond Williams Memorial Conference’, University of London, 17 November 2000
‘A Cool Breeze, a Broken Spell: Aura After Aura’, ‘Returns of the Avant-garde …Postwar Art Movements’, University of Westminster, 24–25 November 2000
‘Material Culture and Modernist Vandalism’, ‘Material Cultures’, Birkbeck Graduate Mini-Conference, Birkbeck College, 8 December 2000
‘Modernism and Movement’’, Research Seminar on ‘Modernism and the Moving Image’ at Tate Modern, 15 February 2002
‘Traces, Outlines and Shadows: Between Mickey Mouse and Hitler’, Animation department, Surrey Institute, Farnham, 29 May 2002
‘Live to Write….’, Return(s) to Marx?, Institut Français, London 31 May 2002
‘Within Spitting Distance: Punks, Professors and Philistines’, Return(s) to Marx?, Tate Modern, 1 June 2002
‘Komischer Marxismus: Punk und die Bash Street Kids’, Hochschule der Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig, FRG, 4 June 2002
‘Mutinies: Past, Present and Future’, Revolutionary History seminar, Lucas Arms, London, 22 June 2002
‘Stars, Phosphor and Chemical Colours: Extraterrestriality in the Arcades’, ‘Benjamin’s Arcades’, King Alfred’s College, Winchester, 13 July 2002
‘Artifice, Colour and Kracauer – On Film and Nature’, ‘Siegfried Kracauer: Conference’, University of Birmingham, 13-14 September 2002
‘Art and Politics, Some Theses’, 25 Years After Stammheim, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 13 October 2002
‘Two Worlds: Culture and Dying in the Global System’, Globalization and its Discontents 2, University of Brighton, 3 November 2002
Respondent at ‘Fashion and Modernity’ symposium, Central St. Martin’s, 31 January 2003
‘On Waste. Marx and the A13’, at Ad Hoc, Spatial Studies Symposium, London Metropolitan University, 4 April 2003
‘Two Worlds and Fortune: Culture and Dying in the Global Zone’, (Anti) Globalica, Symposium at the Media Arts Biennale, Wroclaw, Poland, 1 May 2003
‘Modernism/Cultural Studies’, Panel member, Modernist Studies Association, Birmingham, 24 September 2003
‘Represent! Represent’, Indeterminate! Kommunismuskongress, Frankfurt, 7-9 November 2003
‘Compliments Any Burger You Put On (Centre Hinge Slice); On Kaiser Rolls’, International Conference of Esemplastic Zappology, Teatro Technis, London 16 January 2004
‘Glass and Hope: The Degeneration of Utopia’, Futurology, Walsall New Art Gallery, 9 February 2004
‘Colour and Synthetics’, Comics/Film Symposium, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1 April 2004
‘Dung Heaps and Movie Cameras: The Unconscious in Eisenstein and Joyce, Film and Literature’, Scrivere L’es/Writing the Id, La Sapienza University, Rome, 19 April 2004
‘Words, Copying, Reproduction, Postscript’, Artist’s Talk, Hatton Gallery, Philosophy Unit, Knossos, and Fine Art, at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.Newcastle, 6 May 2004
‘Hornsey: Students, Theory, Practice’, re-occupied Hornsey School of Art, art event organised by Jamie Wagg, November 2005
‘Time and Stillness in Animation: cartoon theory today’, Cine-Club of Faro Film Festival, University of the Algarve, 9 December 2005.
‘Hollywood Flatlands: Then and Now’, Flatpack Film Festival, Birmingham, 20 January 2006
‘Animals, history and art instincts’, Tierrechte und Kritische Theorie, TAN, University of Hamburg, February, 2006
Panel discussion of Synthetic Worlds, with John Emsley (Cambridge), Philip Ball, Becky Shaw (artist) and Len Massey (RCA), Birkbeck 4 June 2006
‘Take Your Skin Off When You Dance: Dialectical Materialism Zappa-style’, Second International Conference of Esemplastic Technology, Rome, 9-10 June 2006
‘Add Value to Contents: the Valorisation of Culture Today’, Critique of Creative Industries seminar and workshop, KIASMA, Helsinki 31 August - 2 September 2006
‘From Childhood to Hell: Image-Text in Blake, Benjamin and Alan Moore’, Scrapbooks and Albums, ‘Nineteenth Century Seminar, Institute for English Studies, London, 4 November 2006
‘The Aberrant Physics of the Animated City’, Topos, Bartlett/UCL, 5 December 2006
‘Liquid Animation and the Freezing of Reflection’, conference on Pervasive Animation, Tate Modern, London 2-4 March 2007
‘Snow Globes, Modern Myths and Updating’, Symposium for the Aktualisierungsraum, Hamburg, 16 March 2007
‘Glass Society’, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, 24 March 2007
'Writing Breaking Chains: Anti-Writing in the Age of Global Expressivity', Globalisation and Writing, Bath Spa University, Bath, 31 March – 2 April, 2007
Respondent to Prof. Caroline Jones at the launch of the Research Centre on Material Digital Culture, University of Sussex, 21 May 2007
‘Too Late: After Dada, After Walter Benjamin’, Delayed Encounters: Dada and Surrealist Filmic Legacies, University of Manchester, 25 May 2007
‘Walter Benjamin: Craft and Art’, Postgraduate conference, Warburg-Haus, Hamburg, 20 June 2007
‘Political Conditions’, On the conditions of politics, organized by the Serpentine Gallery, Conway Hall, London 28 June 2007
8th International Utopian Studies Society conference, Plymouth – 12-14 July 2007‘The Politics of Magazines’, Participant in panels, Documenta 3-9 September 2007
Kurt Schwitters Herbstschule, Langdale, 28-30 September 2007
‘The Sublime Now’, Tate Britain, 19 October 2007
‘Slumberland and the Technological Unconscious’, The Technological Unconscious, ENSAPV, Paris, 12-14 November, 2007
‘Animation and Commodity Fetishism’, Memory, Narrative and History Symposium, William Kentridge Project, University of Brighton, 17-18 November 2007
‘Aesthetics and Politics’, Royal College of Art theory lecture, 28 January 2008
Chair of panel at British Library: ‘A Slap in the Face of Public Taste: On Manifestoes (with Gustav Metzger, Stephen Bury and Lee Scrivner)’, 18 February 2008
‘Liquidation and Shattering: Aesthetics and Politics in Cold Climates’, Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Change, University of Birmingham, 22 and 23 February 2008
Walter Benjamin and 1968, Housmans, 21 May 2008
‘On Peter Kennard’, Gimpel Fils Gallery, London , 10 June 2008
Ice and Artifice: The Filming of Nature and the Nature of Filming in Late Weimar Germany’, Geographies of European Film Theory, Birkbeck, 27/28 June 2008
Walter Benjamin’s Marxism, Marxism 2008, 5 July 2008
Flux and Flurry: Stillness and Hypermovement in Animated Worlds, Society for Animation studies, Arts Institute Bournemouth, 18-20 July 2008
‘Suitcase Cultures: Kurt Schwitters and Walter Benjamin’, International Kurt Schwitters Conference, Elterwater, UK, 3-5 October 2008
‘Animation’s Re-assemblage’, The Intertwining Line exhibition, gallery talk, Cornerhouse, Manchester, 13 November 2008
‘Frog Animation’, Simon Martin exhibition gallery talk, Chisenhale, London, 8 December 2008
‘Snowglobalism: Kitsch and Terror in Capitalist Cosmography’, Environmental Politics Workshop, University of California at Berkeley, 19 February 2009
‘Blind Ornament’, a response to Ruth Claxton, Lands End, Spike island, 12 March 2009
‘Splinter in your Eye’, Insight, University of Sussex, 2009
Walter Benjamin’s Politische Aesthetik’, Bildungskreis Erfurt, ACC Gallerie, Weimar, July 2009,
Walter Benjamin and Catastrophe’, Feedforward: The Angel of History, Laboral, Gijon, October 2009
‘Fluorescence and Phosphorescence’, Aglow, Materials Research Group, University of London, Slade, 3 November 2009
‘Constellations and Comradeship’, Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, Story of a Friendship?, Birkbeck, London, 6 November 2009
‘We call it recuperation’, Who is Recuperating Who?, symposium at Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, 26 November 2009
‘Animated Radicalism’, Radical Art, Radical Aesthetics, Loughborough, 17 February 2010
‘The Material Image’, The Material Image symposium, RCA, London, 4 March 2010
‘Walter Benjamin and Anthropological Materialism’, Symposium on Walter Benjamin and Anthropological Materialism, Sorbonne, Paris, 6 March 2010
‘Oscillation and the Tremble of Nature’, for the Animism exhibition, MuKHA, Antwerp, 11 March 2010
‘Paper’, Respondent for ‘On Paper’, Senate House, London, 30 April 2010
‘Time’ at ‘Time: A Response to Eva Hoffmann’, Psychoanalysis and History seminar, Freud Museum, London, 5 May 2010
Conference papers
‘Modernity, Furnishings, Interiority; Critical Theory in the Parlour’, ‘Clutter; Disorder in the Spaces of Design, Text, and Imagination’, a conference held at The Art Workers’ Guild in London on 2nd February 1996.‘Drawing the Line: Painting History and History Painting’, ‘Discipline; An Interdisciplinarian Conference’, 30 November 1996, October Gallery.
‘Colour and Craft; Some Optical Illusion’, ‘The Body Politic; The Role of the Body and Contemporary Craft’, organised by Julian Stair, at University of Northumbria at Newcastle, 14–16 September 1999
‘The Absentminded Professor: Etch-a-sketching Academic Forgetting’, ‘Frontiers of Memory’, Institute of Education, London, 17–19 September 1999
‘Leni, Walt and Walter: Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaften’, ‘Rethinking Disney; Private Control and Public Dimensions’, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, 9−12 November 2000
‘The Misery of Sociology: Or a Punker’s Guide to Refusing Recuperation’ (with Ben Watson), No Future? Punk 2001, University of Wolverhampton, 21 September−23 September 2001
‘Synthetix’, Association of Art Historians, University of Liverpool, 5-7 April 2002
‘Image Refusal in Iain Sinclair's Refuse Aesthetics: London Orbital, The Film’, City Visions: Iain Sinclair, Greenwich University, London 19 June 2004
‘Superheroes and Superpowers’, Globalisation and Representation, 3rd International Conference on Globalisation and Resistance, University of Brighton, UK, 12 March, 2005
Guest papers
‘Riefenstahl’s Olympia, Disney’s Snow White, Aesthetics and Politics 1936’, Communications Department Research Seminar, London Guildhall University, 6 December 1996‘Violence and Animation’, Heretic Theory Seminar, University of North London, 1 March 1997
‘Collecting His Thoughts, Walter Benjamin and the Object’, MA History of Design Research Seminar, Royal College of Art/Victoria and Albert Museum, 21 April 1997
‘Benjamin In Memoriam; Making History, Making His Story’, Historical Materialism Seminars in Critical Marxist Theory, Linacre College, Oxford University, 6 November 1997
‘Benjamin In Memoriam; Making History, Making His Story’, University of East London, December 1998
‘Benjamin In Memoriam’, European Studies Graduate Seminar, University of Wolverhampton, January 1999
‘Memory, History and Germany’, MA Art in Architecture, University of East London, 4 March 1999
‘Benjamin In Memoriam’, Theory, Culture & Society Seminar series, Nottingham Trent University, 15 April 1999
‘Walter Benjamin, Traces, Mimesis’, Psychoanalysis and History seminar, Institute of Historical Research, London 4 November 1999
‘The Arcades Project in Ruins’, MA Modernism Seminar, University of York, 13 December 2000
‘Dreamsleep: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades’, Literary Theory Seminar, University of Sheffield, 21 January 2001
‘The Poetry of Coal: Adorno, Benjamin, Chemistry’, Research Seminar, Royal College of Art, 5 February 2002
‘Mutinies’, London Socialist Historians Group, Senate House, 18 February 2002
‘Coal, Gold and Poetry in Industry’, Social and Political Thought Graduate Seminar, University of Sussex, 24 May 2002
‘Traces, Outlines and Shadows: Between Mickey Mouse and Hitler’, Animation department, Surrey Institute, Farnham, 29 May 2002
‘Gold and Coal: Transformation and Exchange in German Chemistry and Romanticism’, department seminar, Queen Mary’s, University of London, 13 February 2003
‘On Celluloid: Modernist Colour and Modernist Transparency in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s’, Bahktin Centre, Sheffield University, 3 February 2004
‘On Celluloid: Modernist Colour and Modernist Transparency in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s’, London Modernism Seminar, 7 February 2004,
‘Synthetic Chemistry and the Fate of History in the Third Reich’, London Socialist Historians Group, Senate House, London 24 May 2004
‘Synthetic Colour and German History’, Postgraduate Research Forum, Goldsmiths, 16 June 2004
‘Dung Heaps and Movie Cameras: The Unconscious in Eisenstein and Joyce, Film and Literature’, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Senate House, London, 18 June 2004
‘Synthetic Worlds: Chemistry, Art and Nature’, Research forum, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 14 March 2005
‘Synthetic Colours’, research seminar, Loughborough University, 20 April 2005
‘Comic book Heroes and Failures’, American Studies seminar, Senate House, 22 April 2005
‘Cartoon Rainbows in Synthetic Worlds’, Research Seminar, Royal College of Art 30 November 2005
‘Walter Benjamin’s Writing’, Research lectures, RCA, 1 March 2006
‘Walter Benjamin’s Aesthetics of Life’, University of Nottingham, 25 April 2006
‘Synthetic Worlds: On Colour’, MA group, Chelsea School of Art, 27 April 2006-
‚Walter Benjamin im Umfeld der (IG) Farben’, JW Goethe Universität, Frankfurt, May 2006
‘New York doesn’t need Dada: Animation and the European Avant-Garde’, JW Goethe Universität, Frankfurt, May 2006
‘Ghosts in the Modern’, Industrial Design postgraduates, RCA, 17 November 2006
'Glass, Entanglement and Kracauer’s Ghostbusting', German Theory Group and Social Theorists, Warwick, 7 December 2006
Interdisciplinarity panel, MA History of Art, Birkbeck, 14 December 2006
Panellist on ‘America First: Screening the Nation in US Film’, Screen Studies Association workshop, Senate House, London 2 February 2007
‘Marxism Against Cultural Studies’, Research Seminar, University of Cambridge, 22 February 2007
‘Collapsing New Buildings’, Research Seminar, Wolverhampton University, Art School, 9 May 2007
‘Walter Benjamin and Surrealism’. V&A Research Day on Surrealism, 15 May 2007
“Benjamin and Methodology’, University of Plymouth, Research Student Workshop, Exeter, 16 May 2007
‘Utopia in a Snowglobe’, Queen Mary, University of London, 23 November 2007
2 lectures on modernism18 January at the Royal Academy, 11 January 2008/
On Touching and Not Touching Things Under Glass’, SAS
“Theory Now’, Graduate Theory Seminar, Birkbeck, 17 January 2008
‘The Comic Unconscious’, undergraduate theory lecture, Wimbledon School of Art, 25 February 2008
‘On Snowflakes and Walter Benjamin’, PhD theory seminar, Central St Martins, 27 February 2008
‘Snowglobes and touching’, Theory seminar, Kingston University, 21 May 2008
‘Ice and Artifice: The Nature of Filming and the Filming of Nature in Weimar Germany’, Salford Film seminar, University of Salford, 8 October 2008
‘A Critical Theory of Tiny Frozen Worlds - or Gazing at Snow Globes’, Critical Theory seminar, University of Nottingham, 12 November 2008
‘An Icy Touch: Critical Theory and Snowflakes', Institute for Cultural Theory, University of Manchester, 26 November 2008
‘On Cold Climates and Crystal Chains: Ice and Snow in the Built Imagination’, London Group of Historical Geographers, Senate House, 3 March 2009
‘Imagineering the Future’, Postgraduate Forum Chelsea School of Art, 23 March 2009
In Discussion with Chad McCail, Sackler Gallery, Kingston University, 25 March 2009
‘Sublime’, Royal Academies, February 2010
Materialist Aesthetics, Oslo College of Applied Art, 5 February 2010
‘Critical Theory, Crystal Tearing’, RCA PhD research Group., 19 February 2010
Chair of the Politics and Film discussion: reflecting on mid-1970s film culture, Raven Row, London, 9 March 2010
‘Words Rise Up’, Reading to Attention strand, organized by Sharon Kivland and Forbes Matlock, Association of art Historians Conference, Glasgow, 17 April 2010
‘Petrified Unrest’, Literary Theory seminar, Cambridge English Faculty, 29 April 2010
Media work
Interviewed on the Open University t.v. programme ‘Displaying Modern Art’, for the new Art History course, designed by Dr. Steve Edwards.Interviewed on Chicago Public Radio, Odyssey programme, theme − The Politics of Popular Culture, 18 December 2003
The Verb, speaking on Walter Benjamin’s Archive, Radio 3, 16 January 2008
Interviewed and appeared in Flannery’s Mounted Head, a DVD film by Cathal Coughlan/Johnny Grogan, Eire/UK 2008
‘Thought Cloud’, Head in the Clouds series, Radio 3, 26 February 2009
Interviewed on Walter Benjamin for Against the Grain, Pacifica radio, 24 March 2009
In Our Time, On The Frankfurt School, Radio 4, 14 January 2010
Numerous radio broadcasts for the London Musician Collective’s radio station Resonance 104.4 FM. These broadcasts, which take the form of musically illustrated lectures, are titled Twinkle, Day-glo, Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend, Dreams, Rockets, Recycling, Junk, Spam and Leftovers, and Valentine. I have also participated in other shows on themes including madness, punk and pollution.
