CBS Seminar and Book Launch

Friday 3^rd May I was at Copenhagen Business School, where I had arranged (with colleague Ian King) a seminar to launch our edited book. CBS is such a great place, and is probably the only university (not just a ‘business school’) with a critical mass of researchers who work across creative practice, aesthetics and management and organization theory. CBS has been a guiding light in some of our past projects, particularly our friend and mentor Pierre Guillet de Monthoux.

The book – called Experiencing Organisations: new aesthetic perspectives – was officially published a few days before, and a number of people who contributed to the book were there (with extraordinary serendipity, two contributors from the US were visiting CBS along with friends from York, Portugal, Paris and Stockholm). We decided, given the distance, that the book launch should be more of a seminar than a drinks and book sale. We therefore arranged six of us to speak and I previewed some video footage I had shot as part of the last Art of Management and Organization conference (York University, last September). Our purpose for the launch was to consolidate our small network, through which information about the book can travel into the market; so we only planned for about 30 people maximum. The day started at 11am when people started to arrive, and finished around 4pm.

The presence of Stephen Linstead from York was significant. He was combining the book launch with a meeting with CBS, who are hosting the next Art of Management conference in September 2014. In the last few months, the conference, along with the journal Organizational Aesthetics (run by playwright and management prof. Steve Taylor from the USA) has become incorporated as a non-profit company. I have been asked to be the Chair. This venture is satisfying given that it has effectively emerged as the new incarnation of The Aesthesis Project ran by Ian, me and another colleague, the first conference starting in 2002. It is going to be very interesting how this new venture will expand internationally.

The day started with Ian narrating the historical of the development of the Aesthesis Project and how the book emerged from that. I then gave my address, which was partly an account of the book and partly a reflection on my chapter: [which I will post on my research page.]. We then had a short talk from the publisher’s MD, Paul Jervis, who demonstrated his commitment to the book by being present on the day. The next talk was Chris Poulson, management professor emeritus as well as photographer, whose animated talk worked his way through the thirteen photographs he published in our book. Steve Taylor, who both announced a few things about the journal and gave an overview of his theory of leadership, reflecting on his own chapter (written with artist, Barbara A. Karanian). A CBS prof, Per Darmer, along with Steve Linstead gave a short talk on the development of the AMO conference, at CBS in 2014. I then concluded the day by showing an edited series of clips from the AMO at York last September. I returned to one of the themes of the York conference (on using documentary film as a research tool), but in the context of disseminating knowledge of the conference beyond the usual formats of proceedings and/ journal articles. How can documentary be used to disseminate the knowledge acquired, learned or accumulated, at a conference? I shot the film simply as a way of experiencing the problems of documentary film in a research conference context, particularly where research involved creative practice. The conference has a theme, but constructing a narrative from footage as I walked through dozens of streams and parallel seminars, was very difficult and I don't think I managed it. We are now thinking of a more serious and strategic approach to the CBS event in 2014. And for the book, I am going to put together a short promotional video, using some of the footage.

Jonathan Vickery : 06 May 2013 18:42 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem