Cultural Copyright

Join Vivien on Thursday, March 14, 2019, 7 pm, at London’s South Bank Centre.

A panel will discuss the treatment and display of non-Western objects in Western museums in relation to the exhibition Kader Attia: The Museum of Emotion. Join curator and researcher David Dibosa, musician and journalist Vivien Goldman and writer and academic Chibundu Onuzo for a discussion on this subject and on cultural copyright more broadly.

For much of his career, Attia has made art that explores the politics of Western museums. In many of his sculptures and installations, he ironically invokes the display methods and subject matter of a typical 19th-century natural history or ethnographic museum in order to explore the ways in which colonialism continues to shape how Western societies represent and engage with non-Western cultures. Click for tickets.

“Babylon” at Brooklyn Academy of Music

Banned from the New York Film Festival for “being too controversial, and likely to incite racial tension” (Vivien Goldman, Time Out) and never released in the US, Franco Rosso’s incendiary 1980 film follows a young dancehall DJ (Brinsley Forde, frontman of landmark British reggae group Aswad) in Thatcher-era South London as he pursues his musical ambitions while battling fiercely against the racism and xenophobia of employers, neighbors, police, and the National Front. Written by Martin Stellman (Quadrophenia) with beautiful, smoky cinematography by two-time Oscar winner Chris Menges (The Killing Fields), Babylon is fearless and unsentimental, tempered by the hazy bliss of the dancehall and set to a blistering reggae, dub, and lovers rock soundtrack anchored by Dennis Bovell. World Premiere at Cannes Critics’ Week.

Mar 8 at 7:30pm: Q&A with Brinsley Forde and Dennis Bovell, moderated by writer and NYU professor Vivien Goldman. See more at BAM.

Goldman’s sixth book, “Revenge of the She-Punks: A Feminist Music History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot” (University of Texas Press April 2019,) will be a springboard for speaking engagements as it tracks the liberating impact of punk on girl musicians (including Goldman herself,) from 1970s London and New York, through to its global profile today.  

“Any documentary with Vivien Goldman in it is awesome by default,” said Complex magazine of Netflix Bob Marley documentary, “Who Shot the Sheriff.” See Goldman in documentaries including: “The Public Image is Rotten” on the band PiL; the Slits film, “Here To Be Heard”; and “Tales from the She-Punks,” about British women in the original punk movement. 

Lectures & Courses she devised and teaches include:

Seattle MoPOP Conference, Museum of Pop, 2019: David Bowie Life After Life, Death After Death. 

BERLIN, GERMANY: PopKultur Festival 2018. Women and Punk

NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, Tisch School of the Arts. Island Records. Punk. Post-Punk. Reggae. David Bowie. Dub Nation (Jamaican Dub into reggaeton/electronica). Bob Marley. Fela Kuti.  2005-present 

Berklee Performance Center AND Berklee College of Music, Boston: The Exodus Suite; So Much Things To Say: write and perform two original shows around Bob Marley:  Lecture on Women & Punk. 2015 & 2016

Museum of London, UK AND  South by Southwest Music Festival, Texas, US: Punk’s 40th Anniversary. Commissioned by the Greater London Arts Council.  2016

City University of New York:  Lecture on David Bowie & John Donne “Perform Death.” 2016 

Rutgers University, New Jersey: Artists & Industries: History of Popular Music; AND Music Journalism. 2015-16

UK: Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club AND The Cube, Bristol, UK:  PUNKY REGGAE PARTY SHOW.  One-woman multimedia performance/lecture. 2014

UK: London Jewish Book Week. Assemble & moderate panel, Jewish Roots of Punk, 2014

The Shrine, Lagos, Nigeria: Bob Marley & Fela Kuti: - Felabration.  2013

Loyola Marymount University, LA. A Conversation with Nobel-Prize Winner Wole Soyinka. 2013

MUSEUMS at which Goldman has lectured include: New York’s Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum; the Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Other favorite PUBLIC SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS include:  NYU Public Interview, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga, 2012; Bob Marley & Exodus Calabash Literary Festival, Jamaica, 2012.  Bob Marley & Exodus Rototom Reggae Festival, Benicassim, Spain, 2011; Bob Marley & Exodus at Medgar Evers College, Brooklyn, NY, 2007. Bob Marley & Exodus, University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. 2007.

COURSES

PANEL DISCUSSIONS & LECTURES