Friday 11 May 2018 at 2 – 5.30pm

ICA, The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH

in the Studio

Following rich and stimulating sessions on Mallarmé, Bataille and Blanchot, Maladies of the Book continues with an afternoon symposium on Samuel Beckett, the great prose-poet of cosmic textual exhaustion. We will begin with a reading of the crucial late text Company, led by Dani Caselli, and be followed by meditations from Derval Tubridy and Andrew Renton on Beckett’s complex and variegated relationship to the visual arts and other matters.

The event is free, but please reserve a place with Eventbrite:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beckett-and-the-maladies-of-the-book-tickets-45659593072

Organisers: Michael Newman, Art (m.newman (at) gold.ac.uk) and Josh Cohen, ECL (j.cohen (at) gold.ac.uk)

Reading and talks

Daniela Caselli (University of Manchester)

A reading of Company (1979, collected in Nohow On 1989 – please bring a copy with you)

Andrew Renton (Goldsmiths)

“Like something out of Beckett”: Beckett in his own image

Derval Tubridy (Goldsmiths)

Samuel Beckett and Moving Image Art

 

And in the evening for those who wish:

London Beckett Seminar, with wine, 6 – 8pm

Institute of English Studies Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU, second floor, room 243

Dr Sinéad Mooney (De Montfort University) “Delirium of Interpretation”: Beckett and Outsider Art

https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/events/research-seminars/london-beckett-seminar

Biographies

Daniela Caselli is Professor of Modern Literature at The University of Manchester, specialising on modernism, critical theory, and gender. Among her numerous publications are many on Beckett, including the books, Beckett’s Dantes (2005) and Beckett and Nothing (2010), and articles on ‘Beckett and Italian Literature’ (2013) and ‘Beckett, Dante and the Archive’ (2014). Dani is President of the Beckett Society (2017–2020) and sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Beckett Studies.

Andrew Renton is Professor of Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London.  He holds a PhD from University of Reading on Beckett’s later work and is a patron of the Beckett International Foundation.  He has curated many shows internationally, including the first Manifesta in Rotterdam 1996, Walter Benjamin’s Briefcase, Porto 1994, Browser in Vancouver 1997 and London 1998, Total Object Complete with Missing Parts, Glasgow, 2001, Stay Forever and Ever and Ever at South London Gallery, 2007, Come, Come, Come into my Worldat the Ellipse Foundation, Lisbon, 2007, Front of House at Parasol Unit, London, 2008, and the first ArtTLV biennial in Tel Aviv, 2008.  Between 2012 and 2017 he was the founding  Director of Marlborough Contemporary Gallery in London, where he mounted more than thirty exhibitions.  He is author and editor of many articles, books and monographs on art.

Derval Tubridy is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London and co-director of the London Beckett Seminar at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She works on modern and contemporary literature, performance and the visual arts with a particular focus on the intersections between language, materiality and process. Recent publications include articles in the Journal of Beckett Studies and Contemporary Theatre Review, and chapters in Staging Beckett in Great Britain and in Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Art. Her monograph Samuel Beckett: The Language of Subjectivity is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in June 2018.