This week in BLOC: 24-30 June 2024
This week free public lecture by Dr Lorraine Sim: "Virginia Woolf and Happiness" tomorrow and a live music performance with film by Nossa Voz Vocal Group celebrating Brazilian movie songs on Sunday.
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This week in BLOC
Tuesday 24 June 2024
Public Lecture: Dr Lorraine Sim: "Virginia Woolf and Happiness"
6-8.30pm
While Virginia Woolf is commonly viewed in the public imagination as a melancholic figure, this paper, which is drawn from Dr Sim’s current project Happy Modernisms, proposes that Woolf was deeply interested in ideas of happiness. Mapping out some of the ways in which Woolf imagines happiness in her non-fiction and fiction, the talk focuses on the inter-relationship between Woolf’s ‘moments of being’ (as a form of secular-sacred epiphany), happiness, and the good life. Focusing on the short story, ‘Happiness’, and Woolf’s unfinished memoir ‘A Sketch of the Past’, the paper considers how Woolf offers a modern(ist), Aristotelian account of happiness as not only, or principally, an affect, but a state of being involved with the good, and one where that idea of the good and the good life is informed by experiences of the secular-sacred.
Lorraine Sim is an Associate Professor in Modern English Literature at Western Sydney University, Australia. She is the author of Virginia Woolf: the Patterns of Ordinary Experience (Ashgate, 2010) and Ordinary Matters: Modernist Women’s Literature and Photography (Bloomsbury, 2016). In recent years her research has been published in The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth and Religion (eds. Radford and Hobson, 2023), Photography and Culture (2022), and Modernism/modernity (2021) and she has essays forthcoming in Modernism/Modernity (2024) and The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf, Modernism and Religion (eds., de Gay and McIntire). She is currently writing a book entitled Happy Modernisms, which examines concepts and the aesthetics of happiness in modernist literature and art.
Sunday 30 June
Nossa Voz Vocal Group presents Songs on Screen
7.30-9.30pm
The show will feature songs from Brazilian films from all eras, with original and very lively musical arrangements.
Every two years NV has a new theme.
In the past we have had "Tropicália", "Songs of the Sea", "Rhythms of Brazil" and several others.
This time, the theme "Songs on screen" is amazing, due to the richness of films and their variety.
This show will feature guest musicians, who will be part of the supporting band.
Also as part of the show, excerpts from the films in which NV sang the songs will be shown, so that the audience feels even more interacted with the theme.
A memorable show, for all ages.
Also this week…
Screening of Maqbool for MA English Literature Students.
Recordings for School of Law, The Cockney Yiddish Podcast and Get Spotted Podcast.
Saturday 29 June BLOC is closed.
Book a Space in BLOC from September 2024
Our spaces are reopening after summer in September. Please do book your event soon.
We have four main spaces:
Cinema (60 capacity) - Dolby ATMOS sound, Laser 4K projection, Foldable Tray Tables, 4 Wheelchair Spaces, Voice Lift Audio System - no mics required.
Production Studio (30 capacity) - Black Box Space suitable for filming, small events, motion capture and exhibitions.
Gallery (30 capacity) - White Box space with wrap around projection and surround sound for audio-visual exhibitions.
Post-Production Suite (3 capacity) - Editing suite and recording studio for podcast, audio and video with a 2 person voiceover booth.