University of the Underground

📣 Calling all students📣 LETS TALK ABOUT ALTERNATIVE FUTURES AND WHAT YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT!

From Milan to London to Glasgow, Nelly will be in conversation; sharing the making off behind their pluralistic large scale projects with socio- political impact, community engagement and accessibility at their core.

Expect ETs, doppelgangers, moonbounce, humanoids, decentralised platforms and more practical tips on innovation, production, fundraising, risk assessments and experimental practices.... 🚀✨

Here’s where you can catch Nelly in action:

📍 Milan Istituto Europeo di Design 🗓 Wednesday, 16 October 2024 | 10:00 AM 🔗 Link in bio

📍 London Royal College of Art- on experimental practices 🗓 Thursday, 7 November 2024 | 11:00 AM 🔗 Link in bio

📍 London Central Saint Martins (Material Futures) 🗓 Wednesday, 6 November 2024 | 5:30-6:30 PM 🔗 Link in bio

📍 Glasgow Glasgow School of Art 🗓 Thursday, 14 November 2024 | 3:30 PM 🔗 Link in bio

📍 London Chelsea School of Art 🗓 Tuesday, 3 December 2024 | 5:00 PM 🔗 Link in bio

Don’t see your school... too London-centric?!- no worries, email us at [email protected] and coordinate schedule with your teachers.

Let’s make new futures happen! 🌍✨

PLUS, the University of the Underground is back! Yess, that’s right!!! Sign up for our newsletter at universityoftheunderground.org to stay updated on all the exciting news 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

🚀 [OPEN CALL] Ground control to filmmakers!

We invite you to join us on a journey to the cosmos, away from billionaire-owned space exploration and grey CGI renders, and towards infinite colourful futures. 🌌✨

We are looking for submissions for a new short film programme, premiering at the London Short Film Festival 2025 - co-curated by Nelly Ben Hayoun- Stépanian with Frameline Distribution, and Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, in collaboration with the SETI Institute.

We’re seeking short films that challenge narratives of extraction, colonisation, and profiteering—focusing instead on alien territories, SETI (search for extraterrestrial Intelligence) research, utopian or dystopian off-world imaginaries, cosmic glamour, and genderfluid futures. 💫👽

🎬 Selected films will screen at the London Short Film Festival in January 2025 and then tour to San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival in June 2025, with a chance for distribution by Frameline and the University of the Underground.

🎥 Film Requirements:

🎞️Produced within the last 3 years (and should not have screened at the London Short Film Festival or Frameline prior)
🎞️Any budget
🎞️Max length: 15 minutes

📅 Deadline: 10th September 2024, 9am PCT / 5pm GMT Submit via LSFF FilmFreeway using the code ALIENEXTRAVAGANZA (£5 fee). 🌍🎟️

If you do not use the code, your submission will not be recognised as part of this programme.

If your film is submitted using the code but is not on the theme of Alien Extravaganza as outlined above, the film will be automatically rejected and you will not be refunded.

Submit your visionary work and be part of this cosmic journey! For those facing financial barriers, email us at [email protected] for fee waivers.

SHARE IN YOUR NETWORK 💌

RIP our beloved board member and great supporter Hector Roca. Hector met all our students as a part of our programme in New York City in 2019 . The programme was looking at sports and diplomacy and imagining new politics post nation-states.
This loss is immense and we will miss him terribly.
We thank him for all he taught us and we send our love to his family and everyone at 🤲❤️🙏🥊

HELLO LONDON! We are delighted to let you know the Moon Arkestra is in town and will be hosting their final performance FROM 3 - 4 PM 🎉🎉 come on down to 175 Rushmore road, E5 0HD att 2pm for the finale FREE street party!!! You MUST get down to see the show 💌 we will also be live streaming the show - so fear not 💡💡💡💡

HELLO LONDON! We are delighted to let you know the Moon Arkestra is in town and will be hosting their final performance FROM 3 - 4 PM 🎉🎉 come on down to 175 Rushmore road, E5 0HD att 2pm for the finale street party!!! You MUST get down to see the show 💌 we will also be live streaming the show - so fear not 💡💡💡💡

The Horror programme was started as a response to the genre we see it as today, to pick it apart and look deeper than surface level, and it may be over, but the work our amazing students have made will still linger with us for years to come….

This is what Nelly Ben Hayoun had to say about it:

“...we went to hell and back... And if you want the honest truth… we thought collectively that this has been… an ‘absolute nightmare’! It was the kind of nightmare you always remember- for the rest of your life- as being the start of all new beginnings.”

Intrigued?
visit our website to download the official publication of March 2022 Horror programme

https://universityoftheunderground.org/students/horror-programme

Special thanks to our students:
⚖️🦠
👁🧟‍♂️.alstrup
🦎👀
👃🪦
🫀🧠
🌿💍
💇‍♂️🥸
👃🪦
🦷💋Bianca Schick
🌟🌌Veronika Hanáková

(P.s all the emojis used correspond with the projects!)

Images used taken from the Horror programme 2022 publication

Thank you to all our applicants for your patience, we’re happy to report that we have selected the successful applicants!💫✨Be sure to keep an 👁eye👁 out in your inbox (and spam messages) for an email by us. You might be one of the lucky artists who will:

💥Travel around the UK in a sustainable convoy

💥Put together a series of experiences, and creative interventions involving political theory and musical practice (in a multitude of genres)

💥And together explore: How can whistleblowing (revealing secret information as a part of public institutions) be considered a creative practice and outlet to rethink our world being political, economic and sociological- within and outside of institutions?🌔

Make sure to follow our Instagram and Twitter, to be the first to know whose going to be a part of the Moon Arkestra!

🚲🧠This is IT! You have 12 hrs to get your applications in for the MOON ARKESTRA programme. Deadline at MIDNIGHT GMT!

Join the new *paid* mobile residency programme on Whistleblowing IRL.📯🎷🎺

Get £100 honorarium a day- (during the tour only- expenses provided, travel and accommodation paid for) for 22 days and join the Moon Arkestra as it moves around the UK

This collab with Tour de Moon  will see you travel around the UK on a sustainable convoy. The programme is headed up by Dr. Aditi Jaganathan.
LINK IN BIO. It’s a programme not to miss! 🎺🎷

Deadline for applications: 21st March

Interviews (virtual): 24th and 25th March

Results articulated: 28th March

The programme starts: April 22nd 2022 with Symposium Day

As Moon Arkestra members, you will put together a series of experiences, and creative interventions involving political theory and musical practice (Afrobeat, Rai, jazz, funk, and all genres are welcome). Ideally, you will know how to play the flute and wind instruments but also others.

Together we will explore: How can whistleblowing (revealing secret information as a part of public institutions) be considered a creative practice and outlet to rethink our world being political, economic and sociological- within and outside of institutions?

For this residency you need to be UK based and have the right to work in the UK.

https://universityoftheunderground.org/new-programme-announcement-whistleblowing-residency-moon

☄️☄️🧠Meet the Moon Arkestra Head of Programme, Dr Aditi Jaganathan!🎊🎊

Dr Aditi Jaganathan is a thinker and creator, writer and dreamer. Having worked at the intersections of law, culture and politics in various capacities, Aditi is motivated by a politics of refusal, living in rupture as rapture; turning away from hegemonic worlds of oppression and tuning into something different, beyond the world we live in and moving to the rhythms of an elsewhere. It is this compulsion which guides her pedagogy in the education work she does. Riffing off education for liberation, she creates spaces of (un)learning as a site of radical praxis, using tools of music, film and visual culture, to unpack the ways in which ideologies of oppression and liberation travel through cultural production. She teaches her own course, Rhythm, Race, Revolution as well as courses at different London-based academic institutions.
With a particular interest in creativity as decolonial praxis, she situates the imagination as a radical site of refusal and resistance. Her research work examines the different ways in which Black and Brown cultural production has activated autonomous modes of meaning-making and self-determination in London, through contesting racialised norms and (re)imagining racialised postcolonial subjectivities. And it is through an ethic of jazz that Aditi curates this work.


Deadline for applications: 21st March

Interviews (virtual): 24th and 25th March

Results articulated: 28th March

The programme starts: April 22nd 2022 with Symposium Day
https://universityoftheunderground.org/new-programme-announcement-whistleblowing-residency-moon

🎷🎺Less than a week to go to get your applications in for MOON ARKESTRA. A brilliant new residency programme on Whistleblowing, in both URL AND IRL. This collab with Tour de Moon will see you travel around the UK on a sustainble convoy. The programme is headed up by Aditi Jagnathan! LINK IN BIO. It’s a programme not to miss! 🎺🎷

We are devastated by the news that the University of the Underground original board member, supporter, teacher and inspirational mentor Douglas Trumbull has passed away. Douglas has been key to the funding the the University of the Underground - he has supported us in multiple ways, with his unbeatable knowledge and absolute perseverance. He has inspired many of us to keep going. Douglas contributed to, or was responsible for, the the photographic effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner and The Tree of Life, and directed the movies Silent Running and Brainstorm
RIP Doug the university of the Underground will miss you. We love you and thank you for everything you did.