19.1. What the course is all about and what the metropolis is

Eetu Viren gave an extensive lecture on the metropolis and its function in the global capitalist system.  He discussed the global metropolis as a multinational site of production and we watched a myriad Kanye West images showing how value is produced through creation of brands - and Ricky Martin with Maluma in Miami, the center of global music industry - and Shakira cycling barefoot in a new video underlining the "authenticity" which is such an important image in the global market now...

(I'll ask Eetu if he has some sum-up to publish)

Course idea and (preliminary) schedule

Toni Negri has claimed that “the metropolis is for the post-fordist worker what the factory was for the fordist one". The metropolis has become the most significant site of production and the battleground of global precariat. In some sense, we all live in the metropolis. The course looks at movies that represent or are set in the background of the metropolis, and at texts and thinkers who study the concept or the relevant phenomena of present day global metropolis and its development.
The course will consist of readings, screenings of the films and discussions afterwards, and a final assignment.

Preliminary Schedule. We'll work with this, but are open to suggestions from the students, concerning either films, texts, even topics. (Showing the final program now)

19.1. What the course is all about and Eetu Viren on What a Metropolis is all about.

2.2. Beginning from classics (NOTE: meet Arts House, room 245 2.nd floor)

Walter Benjamin: Some Motifs on Baudelaire (for instance https://langurbansociology.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/benjamin-on-some-motifs-in-baudelaire.pdf)

Fritz Lang: Metropolis

16.2. Big city has its own logic

Jane Jacobs: Death & Life: Introduction and Chapter 2. (Can be downloaded as pdf from internet)

Barry Sonnenfield: MIB I 

2.3. The Global City

Sassen: The Global City 
or Sassen: Women in the Global City - Exploitation and Empowerment. 

Shunji Iwai: Swallowtail Butterfly

16.3. Artificial life

Maurizio Lazzarato : Semiotic Pluralism 

Maurizio Lazzarato: Struggle, Event, Media 

Ridley Scott: Blade Runner

30.3. Precarious life
Precarias a la deriva: Adrift through the circuits of feminized precarious work.

SergioBologna (interview): An Invisible History of Work 

Precarias a la deriva, documentary by the collective 

20.4. Controlling the many as many

Antonio Negri: Multitude and Metropolis
Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri: Empire, esp. chapters 1.2. Biopolitical Production and 4.3. The Multitude Against Empire

Alex Cox (1984): Repoman

27.4. Metropolis and Movie

Thom Andresen: Los Angeles Plays Itself

11.5. Final curtain… assignments ... Discussion.