NOMAD UNIVERSITÉ is a virtual forum for the exchange of ideas on the spectacle of imagery in society.We meet anytime, anyplace, anywhere. We reclaim the positive power of the dragon as a symbol of the harmony of the meeting of minds.
Nomad is an amalgam of influences on the moving image: new film theory, radical (post)feminism, architecture, dance, choreography, cybernetics, cyberpunk,queer perspectives, postcolonial theory, feminine écriture, testimonials, non-narrative and narrative film treatment, the situationists, (post)modernism and alchemy.
An anagram of ideas that transect these influences includes the work of: Gilles Deleuze, Laura Mulvey, Gregory Bateson, Guy Debord, Luce Irigaray, Barbara Hammer,Helene Cixous, Yvonne Rainer, Georg Gugelberger, Fulcanelli, Judith Butler,Maya Deren, Peter Weibell, Sandy Stone,Stan Brakhage, William Gibson, Sadie Plant, and Trinh Minh Ha. We are interested in conducting a dialogue on both the theory and practice of the moving image.
At times we will arrange to meet in different places for Spectacular Situations. Our next meeting is being planned for San Francisco Summer 2022.
Membership is selective and based on the quality of work done at Nomad Université . We are not interested in the usual credentials. Instead, we welcome creative minds for a spirited exchange on images.
Courses consist of submitting papers on the various 'classes', which will be assembled into an ebook and published on this site (password required). A "hypertext" will be made of the selections and composed in a structure similar to the work of Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch. This is an example of a hypertext novel where the writer/reader jumps from scene to scene, chapter to chapter. Guidelines for papers on request. Please submit a one page bio for consideration. Spring courses commence March 21 and run through May 31, 2022.
Spring Courses 2022
Derek Jarman’s Allegories of Spectacle: Inter-Artistic Embodiment
"Jarman creates a work of many layers which, in part, functions outside the conventions of traditional cinema while working from within it. While working with the established language and conventions of film, he uses this language in a non-traditional way, creating a work which can be seen to operate on several levels-within the context of the film, as a larger social/cultural critique, and as a critique of film and filmmaking itself".
Laura Mulvey:Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
"Mulvey goes for a very round target, Alfred Hitchcock: 'the satisfaction and reinforcement of the ego that represent the high point of film history hitherto must be attacked'. She gazes herself, at Hitchcock's hero, caught helpless from the moment he first sees both the women he will love and murder."
“Authorising” Jane Campion: Jane Campion by Deb Verhoeven
"Starting from the probably unarguable premise that Campion is the most successful woman working in the contemporary film industry, Verhoeven highlights a press photograph of Campion at Cannes in 2007, a lone woman in a sea of suits, as drawing attention to the way in which the director has become emblematic of the female auteur in contemporary filmmaking: “a figure to be celebrated and criticized for what she has come to represent as much as for what she does”.
Studies on Cultural Imperialism Texts
"But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness."(Feuerbach).
NEW! Study of the 1974 text: We Demand New Sex Organs "Generalized sexuality, like generalized self-management, will not exist until there are no longer sexual locations on the body, sexual ghettoes or sexual sanctums, sexual concentration camps or sexual power-bosses. We must abolish all separate sexual power. Power to the imagination, and to the body — for they are one and the same."
Sources that Impact the Ideas of Nomad
The Fourth Dimension And Non-Euclidean Geometry In Modern Art
Gregory Bateson and Cybernetics
The Hybrid Yvonne Rainer: Avant-Garde Aesthete, Utopian Activist
Laura Mulvey:Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
stan brakhage:underground cinema
Underground Film from Skala Eressos, Greece
Gilles Deleuze:Image-Movement and its Three Varieties
Post-Colonial Women and the Interlocking Questions of Identity and Difference - Trinh T. Minh-ha
An Interview with Peter Weibel
Of Saints, Sinners and Companeras Internationalist Lives in the Americas Today
Helene Cixous: "The Laugh of the Medusa"
Judith Butler and Gender Bending
The Society of the Spectacle, text by Guy Debord
An Interview with Julio Cortazar
Fulcanelli and the Mystery of the Cathedrals
