Earlier this year I gave a seminar at the Centre for Cultural Research (CCR) at the University of Western Sydney, a video of which is now available in the ‘virtual seminars’ section of the CCR website. To access the video you’ll need to navigate through to the clips from 1 July 2010 (there are two separate clips – one for the paper and one the Q and A). The paper – ‘Communicative practices and the city: the mediated phenomenologies of urban life’ – is a joint endeavour between myself, Clive Barnett and Allan Cochrane, stemming in significant part from the Mediapolis workshop we co-organized in June 2008. In the paper, we critique the functionalist and effects-oriented approach still implicit in most approaches attempting to join media, politics and cities, and argue for thinking in the register of ordinary political practices. I won’t say anything further at this point: the video speaks for itself (and, I hasten to add, makes me cringe; not because of the content mind you, but rather the repetitively gesticulating speaker on show, namely me); and more importantly we are midway through revising the paper for submission, and will focus thinking/writing efforts there for the moment. But more to come…