Coming up next week at SFU Vancouver:

Thursday, November 6: City Conversations - Why so uptight, Vancouver?
Time: 12:30pm Place: Rm. 1600, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free

That question was irreverently asked by a grandmotherly-type at a City Conversation earlier this year. After the laughter died, the question remains: is Vancouver over-regulated? Does a neighbourhood festival require a single fenced-off street with controlled-entry beer gardens? Why do we need fences around sidewalk tables? Even our landscape can be rigid. Why are clipped lawns and view-blocking rows of trimmed cedar hedges dominant in one of the world’s richest growing climates? Please join Lance Berelowitz, planner, urban designer, and writer on urban issues; and Daniel Roehr, Landscape Architect and Associate Professor at UBC’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, for a provocative challenge to our city’s culture, look, and feel, and the costs to its vitality, creativity and livability. Then it’s your turn to join the conversation, to question, observe, offer your opinions. Please feel free to bring your lunch.

Thursday, November 6: Dr. Christoph Neumann: The Mevlevi Dervishes and the Ottomans: How Did an Intellectual Network Contribute to the Integration of an Early Modern Empire
Time: 7pm Place: Rm. 1400, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free register

The Mevlevi order of dervishes operated as a specifically Ottoman institution, as its affiliates often belonged to the Ottoman elite. Members of Muslim Ottoman elites had often to be mobile as their career required them to change places. The convents of the order, located just outside of many urban centres in the Empire, were open to all Mevlevis and served as a network in this situation. Dr. Christoph Neumann’s lecture examines how this network functioned.

Thursday, November 6: The Saga of Life: Notes from the Front Line of a Magnificent Mass Extinction
Time: 7pm Place: Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue, 580 West Hastings St. Cost: Free

With Dr. Shahid Naeem, Professor of Ecology, Columbia University. 14 billion years ago the Big Bang gave rise to stellar kitchens that would cook up a brilliant menu of over a hundred elements, a few of which would eventually aggregate into a single microscopic life form on Earth. In this presentation, we will consider the saga of life, the biosphere, details of our mass extinction, and what the humanities and natural sciences (the “two cultures”) have to tell us about our options for our future.

Thursday, November 6: Matt Hern: Sports, Creativity and the Radical Imagination
Time: 7pm Place: Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: Free

Often derided as a subaltern opiate, sports need to be understood as containing huge social and cultural power, and possibilities that are condescended to at our peril. For many of us, sports, as both spectators and participants, is the very best site for confronting race, sex, gender and class privileges.

Matt argues for a vastly expanded definition of creativity that includes sports for sure, but also all kinds of everyday and common activities. Radical social change relies on our imaginations, and we need to be nurturing every kind of creative activity, especially material collisions, as we make and remake the world around us.

Friday, November 7: CreativeMornings/Vancouver
Time: 8:30am Place: Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: Free register

Robert Chaplin was born under a lucky star and raised in the Canadian wilderness. Royal Canadian academician, Guinness World Record holder, publisher and hard stone carver. Robert Chaplin has drawn pictures every day since the age of five, works to the trade in abnegation of convention, and builds his nation one handshake at a time.

Friday, November 7: Interesting Vancouver 2014
Time: 6pm Place: Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: $25 online

Catalyzing creativity, community and capacity. More than another "sage on the stage" lecture series, Interesting Vancouver is an event that celebrates the uncelebrated, expands the collective vision of what is uniquely possible, and gives people an opportunity to discover interesting new creative pursuits they can apply in their own lives.

Saturday, November 8: Canzine West & An Afternoon with Mimi Pond
Time: 1pm Place: Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: $5, at the door

A festival of zine culture and independent arts. 200 zines, comics, small press books and more! Pond will discuss new graphic novel, Over Easy, in terms of the era in which it is set - the tumultuous world of the 1970's. 

Monday, November 10:ECM + Generation 2014 – Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal
Time: 8pm Place: Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: $15, $5 students & senior, online

Crossing Canada from West to East for the 8th time since 2000, the ECM+'s Generation 2014 tour is conducted by Véronique Lacroix and hosted by composer Gabriel Dharmoo.

Tuesday, November 11: Speaking of Dance November 2014
Time: 7pm Place: Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: Free, no RSVP required

Local dancer and choreographer Vanessa Goodman of the Contingency Plan will give an illustrated presentation on the work of Sharon Eyal and her company L-E-V: “From foundation to evolution, a look at how movement vocabulary is imbued with a history and linage of the past. Examining traces of what was, that inform the aesthetics of today.”

Wednesday, November 12: Vancouver Mayoral Debate
Time: 7am Place: Studio 700, CBC Vancouver Cost: Free

Join CBC Vancouver & SFU Urban Studies as we team up to present our 2014 Vancouver Mayoral Debate. Rick Cluff, host of CBC's Radio One's "The Early Edition" moderates a morning of passionate political debate with Vancouver mayoral candidates: Gregor Robertson, Meena Wong, and Kirk LaPointe. The debate broadcasts on CBC Radio One 88.1FM/690AM from 7:30am-9:00am live from CBC Vancouver's Studio 700.Watch the action on cbc.ca/bc or arrive by 7:00 am to view the debate live in studio.

Wednesday, November 12: FACTS: Climate Change and Solutions from Innovation
Time: 6pm Place: Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: Free register online

Building up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be hosted by France in December 2015 (COP21 - Paris Climate 2015), FACTS (French Ameri-Can Climate Talks) is a public free conference series organized by the French Embassies both in Canada and the United States, involving renowned scientists, civil society representatives, NGOs, political figures, journalists, and entrepreneurs. 

The talks in Vancouver will focus on green innovations and how they can curb the negative impacts of climate change and become an economic driving force.

Wednesday, November 12: Information Session: SFU's Applied Business Analysis Certificate @ SFU Vancouver
Time: 6pm Place: Rm. 7000, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free register

If you're pursuing or wish to pursue a career in business analysis, this program will provide a solid foundation. Likewise, it will appeal to experienced business analysts requiring formal recognition through certification. The program is also suitable for professionals from many other fields.

Wednesday, November 12: Interactive World Disclosure (or, an Interface is not a Hammer)
Time: 7pm Place: Rm. 1600, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free

Drawing primarily from Heidegger’s analysis of technics in Being and Time, combined with more recent work in human-computer interaction (HCI), Dr. Roy Bendor will suggest that the responses players have to Passage are indicative of the way interactive new media position users in the relational contexture Heidegger calls “world”. Bender will further argue that interactive media’s capacity for world disclosure derives from the way they evoke intermittent experiences of flow and disruption.

Dr. Roy Bendor’s research explores the cultural and political significance of digital media.

Thursday, November 13: BMO Public Lecture: Rethinking Housing Bubbles
Time: 5:30 pm Place: Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings. Cost: Freeregister

Why do housing bubbles foreshadow some recessions? Vernon Smith, Nobel Laureate, explains the effects of housing bubbles and how we can pull out of the most recent recession.

Friday, November 14:Beyond the Global Development Crisis: Possibilities of Labour-Centred Development
Time: 6pm Place: Rm. 7000, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free

In this talk Benjamin Selwyn challenges this way of thinking and provides a new way of thinking about development. In contrast to much development thinking, which portrays ‘the poor’ as reliant upon benign assistance, Selwyn advocates the concept of labour-centred development. Here ‘the poor’ are the global labouring classes, and their own collective actions and struggles constitute the basis of an alternative form of non-elitist, bottom-up human development.

Friday, November 14: Conversation with the Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell
Time: 6:30pm Place: Rm. 1900, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free register

Shari Graydon in conversation with the Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell, discussing women’s voices and the differences they make.

November 7-November 8:Public Conference – Media Democracy Days 2014
Time: Various, online Place: Rm. 1400, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free, RSVPonline

Media Democracy Days is a free, public event that creates a space to discuss how citizens can become better represented in the media. This year the conference begins on the 7th with a film screening: Preempting Dissent, followed by a discussion with the filmmaker. On the 8th we have a fantastic line up of speakers, panel discussions, and workshops available. Including Michael Geist, our opening keynote speaker; as well as panels and workshops ranging from environmental issues to citizen representation in the democratic process, and how to use social media for social change.

October 30-November 21: Directing Projects Fall 2014
Time: 7 & 9pm Place: Fei & Milton Wong Experimental Theatre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: Free

Directing projects by students from FPA 453. Including:

Two Iphigenia Plays
by Ellen McLaughlin 
directed by Ashley Aron
October 30 & 31, 7 & 9 PM

The Governor of the Dew
by Floyd Favel
directed by Deneh Thompson
November 6 & 7, 7 & 9 PM

16670
by Erik Ehn
directed by Dan O’Shea

Sganarelle
by Molière
directed by Cathy Falkner
November 13 & 14, 7 & 9 PM

The Love Talker
by Deborah Pryor 
directed by Keely O’Brien
November 20 & 21, 7 & 9 PM

October 15-December 13: Ricardo Basbaum: The Production of the Artist as a Collective Conversation
Time: Gallery hours Place: Audain Gallery, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: Free

Since the early 1990s, Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum has incited artistic encounters by inviting people to engage with and respond to systems of symbols and rules embedded in objects, scripts, diagrams, maps and games. In his projects, Basbaum quotes artistic and graphic communication tactics that are both vernacular and abstract, thereby easy to learn, interpret and memorize. Through interaction with these fluid sets of visual and linguistic terms for the production of an artwork, Basbaum seeks to collectively consider the material, social and spatial membrane between artist, contemporary art system, art object and participant. The Production of the Artist as a Collective Conversation is an emerging exhibition that frames the gallery as a critical site of pedagogical and artistic production.