Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action: a summary

Author: Dr Stefan Szczelkun
Publisher: Stefan Szczelkun
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 31

Book Description
“Jürgen Habermas argues that we should refocus our efforts to achieve liberation from oppression on our human ability to use languages rather than simply focusing on economic exploitation. Human communications have evolved to give us broad systems of symbolic agreement in our languages and in the sets of symbols we call culture. These were evolved by humans to provide communications media that were to the evolutionary advantage of our species. The underlying social purpose of these symbol systems seems to be to co-ordinate social action for human survival and flourishing. This evolved ability that humans have achieved for communications that enhance survival is inherent in all human languages and cultures. It is a source of wonder that human communities have been able to agree on the meanings of a very complex set of symbols in creating a language and culture.” Excerpt From: “Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action: a summary by Dr Stefan Szczelkun"

Exploding Cinema 1991 - 1997: Culture and Democracy

Author: Stefan Szczelkun
Publisher: Stefan Szczelkun
ISBN: 9781870736046
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Book Description
The Exploding Cinema is a collective of artists that produce what can be described as a hybrid fusion of projection, performance and social space. It began in South London in late 1991. Architectural spaces, transformed with the use of slides and loop film projections are used as an environmental context for a programme of short films and video. A 'master of ceremonies' sets up a dialogue with the audience and introduces the films. He or she encourages filmmakers who are present to speak or be questioned. The audience are encouraged to make films themselves and invited to show them at future Exploding events with a promise that nothing will be rejected. By thoughtful programming this inclusive process of soliciting material, along with a printed programme and the work of members of the group who provide slides and film loops to decorate the space, results in a varied and lively programme which regularly attracted lively audiences of 100 - 300. Using several research methodologies I try to capture a rich body of information about this open artists collective from different angles. The idea is to record the cultural and political value of this groups actvities. Artists collectives are barely represented in mainstream knowledge, so I saw this work as being of use in the inclusion of future study of such complex groups. My assumption was that open collectives offer a platform to those excluded from the establishments more exclusive cultural platforms. There is often a focus on oral traditions of culture as against literary traditions.

Best. Movie. Year. Ever.

Author: Brian Raftery
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1501175394
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
From a veteran culture writer and modern movie expert, a celebration and analysis of the movies of 1999—“a terrifically fun snapshot of American film culture on the brink of the Millennium….An absolute must for any movie-lover or pop-culture nut” (Gillian Flynn). In 1999, Hollywood as we know it exploded: Fight Club. The Matrix. Office Space. Election. The Blair Witch Project. The Sixth Sense. Being John Malkovich. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. American Beauty. The Virgin Suicides. Boys Don’t Cry. The Best Man. Three Kings. Magnolia. Those are just some of the landmark titles released in a dizzying movie year, one in which a group of daring filmmakers and performers pushed cinema to new limits—and took audiences along for the ride. Freed from the restraints of budget, technology, or even taste, they produced a slew of classics that took on every topic imaginable, from sex to violence to the end of the world. The result was a highly unruly, deeply influential set of films that would not only change filmmaking, but also give us our first glimpse of the coming twenty-first century. It was a watershed moment that also produced The Sopranos; Apple’s AirPort; Wi-Fi; and Netflix’s unlimited DVD rentals. “A spirited celebration of the year’s movies” (Kirkus Reviews), Best. Movie. Year. Ever. is the story of not just how these movies were made, but how they re-made our own vision of the world. It features more than 130 new and exclusive interviews with such directors and actors as Reese Witherspoon, Edward Norton, Steven Soderbergh, Sofia Coppola, David Fincher, Nia Long, Matthew Broderick, Taye Diggs, M. Night Shyamalan, David O. Russell, James Van Der Beek, Kirsten Dunst, the Blair Witch kids, the Office Space dudes, the guy who played Jar-Jar Binks, and dozens more. It’s “the complete portrait of what it was like to spend a year inside a movie theater at the best possible moment in time” (Chuck Klosterman).

Adult Themes

Author: Anne Etienne
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501375261
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
Between the late 1950s and mid-1970s, British cinema experienced an explosion of X-certificated films. In parallel with an era marked by social, political, and sexual ferment and upheaval, British filmmakers and censors pushed and guarded the permissible limits of violence, horror, revolt, and sexuality on screen. Adult Themes is the first volume entirely devoted to the exploration of British X certificate films across this transformative period, since identified as 'the long 1960s'. How did the British Board of Film Censors, harried on one side by the censorious and moralistic, and beset on the other by demands for greater artistic freedom, oversee and manage this provocative body of films? How did the freedoms and restrictions of the X certificate hasten, determine, and reshape post-war British cinema into an artistic, exploitational, and unapologetically adult medium? Contributors to this collection consider these central questions as they take us to swinging parties, on youthful crime sprees, into local council meetings, on police raids of cinemas, and around Soho strip clubs, and introduce us to mass murderers, lesbian vampires, apoplectic protestors, eroticised middle-aged women, and rebellious working-class men. Adult Themes examines both the workings and negotiations of British film censorship, the limits of artistic expression, and a wider culture of X certificate cinema. This is an important volume for students and scholars of British Film History and censorship, Media Studies, the 1960s, and Cultural and Sexuality Studies, while simultaneously an entertaining read for all connoisseurs of British cinema at its most vivid and scandalous.

A Glimpse of Hell

Author: Charles C. Thompson
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393047141
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 430

Book Description
Probes the explosion of the center gun on the USS Iowa, a disaster that killed several sailors onboard instantly, and the fouled investigation that took followed, resulting in a large-scale cover-up that almost ruined forever the reputation of innocent men.

Dark Alliance

Author: Gary Webb
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609802020
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 817

Book Description
Major Motion Picture based on Dark Alliance and starring Jeremy Renner, "Kill the Messenger," to be be released in Fall 2014 In August 1996, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News reporting the results of his year-long investigation into the roots of the crack cocaine epidemic in America, specifically in Los Angeles. The series, titled “Dark Alliance,” revealed that for the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and funneled millions in drug profits to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras. Gary Webb pushed his investigation even further in his book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Drawing from then newly declassified documents, undercover DEA audio and videotapes that had never been publicly released, federal court testimony, and interviews, Webb demonstrates how our government knowingly allowed massive amounts of drugs and money to change hands at the expense of our communities. Webb’s own stranger-than-fiction experience is also woven into the book. His excoriation by the media—not because of any wrongdoing on his part, but by an insidious process of innuendo and suggestion that in effect blamed Webb for the implications of the story—had been all but predicted. Webb was warned off doing a CIA expose by a former Associated Press journalist who lost his job when, years before, he had stumbled onto the germ of the “Dark Alliance” story. And though Internal investigations by both the CIA and the Justice Department eventually vindicated Webb, he had by then been pushed out of the Mercury News and gone to work for the California State Legislature Task Force on Government Oversight. He died in 2004.

Aural/Oral Dramaturgies

Author: Duška Radosavljević
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000755940
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age focuses on the ‘aural turn’ in contemporary theatre-making, examining a number of seemingly disparate trends that foreground speech and sound -- ‘post-verbatim’ theatre, 'amplified storytelling' (works using microphones and headphones), and ‘gig theatre’ that incorporates live music performance. Its main argument is that the dramaturgical underpinnings of these works contribute to an understanding of theatre as an extra-literary activity, greater than the centrality of the script that traditionally dominated many historical discussions. This quality is usually expressed in terms of the corporeality in dance and physical theatre, but the aural/oral turn gives an alternative viewpoint on the interplay between text and performance. The book's case studies draw on the ways in which a range of theatre companies engage with the dramaturgy of speech and sound in their work. It is further accompanied by a specially curated collection of digital resources, including interviews, conversations, and presentations from artists and academics. This is a key text for scholars, students, and practitioners of contemporary performance, and anyone working with dramaturgies of orality and aurality in today’s performance environment.

Krakatoa

Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141926236
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Book Description
Simon Winchester's brilliant chronicle of the destruction of the Indonesian island of Krakatoa in 1883 charts the birth of our modern world. He tells the story of the unrecognized genius who beat Darwin to the discovery of evolution; of Samuel Morse, his code and how rubber allowed the world to talk; of Alfred Wegener, the crack-pot German explorer and father of geology. In breathtaking detail he describes how one island and its inhabitants were blasted out of existence and how colonial society was turned upside-down in a cataclysm whose echoes are still felt to this day.

History of Soybeans and Soyfoods in Iowa (1854-2021)

Author: William Shurtleff; Akiko Aoyagi
Publisher: Soyinfo Center
ISBN: 1948436469
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 1800

Book Description
The world's most comprehensive, well documented, and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive subject and geographic index. 325 photographs and illustrations - many color. Free of charge in digital PDF format.

Mysticism in the Theater

Author: Tom Block
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000543781
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Book Description
Mysticism in the Theater introduces theater makers to the power and possibility of using historical mystical ideas to influence all aspects of a production. Historical mysticism represents ideas developed by recognized spiritual thinkers in all religions and time periods: individuals who stilled their ego, and perceived the unity of all, hidden within the apparent multiplicity of existence. This unique manner of spiritual inlay allows theatrical presentations to find the height of artistic expression: art at the intersection of our historical moment and the eternal. This study introduces theater makers to the history of mystical inspiration within performance work and develops strategies for inserting mystical ideas into their productions. The book ties this model into theatre’s history, as mystical ideas and quotes have been inserted into productions from Greek theatre through Shakespeare and into the present day. This book explores how teachings and ideas of specific historical mystical thinkers might influence all aspects of contemporary theatrical productions including writing, directing, acting, stagecraft/set design, lighting design, costume design, sound design, and choreography.