This is no Longer That Place: A Public Discussion
To what extent can art affect change when addressing issues of migration, displacement, and access?
Join us for events that explore the capacity of artists and arts institutions to intervene in the current geopolitical climate.
Tuesday 5 March 2019, 6.30–8.30pm, The Showroom
Book Launch | Bouchra Khalili: The Tempest Society
Screening and conversation
Free, booking essential
Bouchra Khalili, The Tempest Society Commissioned for documenta 14. 2017. 60'. Color. Sound. Courtesy of the artist
Bouchra Khalili, The Tempest Society Commissioned for documenta 14. 2017. 60'. Color. Sound. Courtesy of the artist
Bouchra Khalili: The Tempest Society
A screening of the film The Tempest Society followed by a conversation between the artist and The Showroom’s Director Elvira Dyangani Ose. This event launches Bouchra Khalili’s new artist book The Tempest Society published by Book Works, which gathers together interviews, essays, rare archival material and translations, to revisit and resuscitate the forgotten heritage of ‘Al Assifa’ – a politicised theatre group born out of the struggles of the Mouvement des Travailleurs Arabes (MTA), Palestine, anti-colonialism, and workers’ and immigrant labour rights.
Thursday 7 March 2019, 10.30-18.30pm, The Showroom
Global citizenship, socio-politics and arts
Free, booking essential
The Showroom. Image credits: Arturo Bandinelli
The Showroom. Image credits: Arturo Bandinelli
MORNING
10.30 – 10.40
Introduction, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Director, The Showroom and Michaela Crimmin, Reader in art and conflict, Royal College of Art; co-director, Culture+Conflict
10.40 – 10.45
Chair: Yaiza Hernandez Velazquez, Central Saint Martins, with research focused on art institutions understood in a broad sense as sites of political import.
10.45 – 11.30
Gurminder Bhambra
Professor Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex. Author of Connected Sociologies; and Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination.
11.30 – 13.00
Oliver Ressler
Artist, produces installations, projects in public space, and films on issues including democracy, migration, forms of resistance and social alternatives.
Daniela Ortiz
Artist, generating visual narratives to critically understand structures of colonial, patriarchal and capitalist power.
Lunch 13.00-14.15
AFTERNOON (1) 14.15-16.15
Art, art institutions and frameworks of representation
Chair: Elvira Dyangani Ose
Natasha Marie Llorens
Curator and writer, with current projects including Children of Violence, a cycle of exhibitions, texts and symposia devoted to the representation of violence in contemporary art
Ane Rodríguez Armendariz
Cultural Director, Tabakalera, Spain, programming international residencies, commissions, and bringing special attention to education programmes
Alicia Chillida Ameztoy
Curator working in both public and private space, including Bestea Naiz/El Otro soy yo. Migraciones políticas y poéticas [The Other is me. Political and poetic migrations].
Tea break 16.15-16.30
AFTERNOON (2) 16.30-18.30
Making sense of culture and identity politics in the context of Brexit
Chair: Michaela Crimmin
Dámaso Randulfe
Artist, architect, and co-editor of Migrant Journal, a 6-issue publication exploring the circulation of humans, matter, goods and ideas, and their impact.
Kathrin Böhm
Artist, focusing on the collective making and culturing of public space, both urban and rural, where shared and collectivised everyday practises are foregrounded.
Friday 8 March 2019, 18.30 – 20.30, Tate Britain
This Is No Longer That Place: A Public Discussion
Oliver Ressler, Emergency Turned Upside-Down, film still, 2016
Oliver Ressler, Emergency Turned Upside-Down, film still, 2016
The debate features contributions from Professor Gurminder Bhambra, Oliver Ressler, and Justinien Tribillon, co-editor of Migrant Journal. Chaired by Elvira Dyangani Ose.
Professor Gurminder Bhambra
Professor Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex. Author of Connected Sociologies; and Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination.
Oliver Ressler
Artist, produces installations, projects in public space, and films on issues including democracy, migration, forms of resistance and social alternatives.
Justinien Tribillon
Writer, co-editor, Migrant Journal, a 6-issue publication exploring the circulation of humans, matter, goods and ideas, and their impact; and researcher at Theatrum Mundi.
Chair: Elvira Dyangani Ose, Director, The Showroom
For more information please visit The Showroom website.
Access: The Showroom has a step-free entrance on Boscobel Street to the ground floor Gallery space and a platform lift to its first floor Studio space. The first floor is not suitable for wheelchair users, as currently safe evacuation cannot be ensured.
Please if required contact the gallery in advance of your visit for more access information on 020 7724 4300.
Filming: Please note that the events will be filmed.
With nine speakers and three chairs – artists, academics, and curators from countries including Algeria, France, the US, Morocco, Austria, Spain and the UK – the events were an opportunity to see different modes of engagement with migration, displacement and access. Programmed by Elvira Dyangani Ose, Director of The Showroom, working with the Royal College of Art’s Michaela Crimmin, the range and complexity of responses were an example of the insights and different perspectives that are being brought both to these subjects and their geopolitical context, and to the 4Cs’ agenda. Further animated by the audiences, many of whom were students and artists, the week included a screening of Bouchra Khalili’s ‘The Tempest Society’ and a book launch in partnership with Bookworks; clips from films by Oliver Kessler; and Professor Gurminder Bhambra’s account of the misrepresentation of the UK’s colonial past. The events took place in the final few weeks before the UK's anticipated secession from the EU, following a referendum during which issues of migrancy, cultural and national identities, and the social role of the nation-state came to the fore. This context gave the week's sessions an added poignancy as well as urgency.
Some pictures of the events. Image credits: Arturo Bandinelli
Bouchra Khalili in conversation with Elvira Dyangani Ose.
Bouchra Khalili in conversation with Elvira Dyangani Ose.
Professor Gurminder Bhambra.
Professor Gurminder Bhambra.
Audience at The Showroom.
Audience at The Showroom.
Ane Rodriguez Armendariz, Natasha Marie Llorens, Alicia Chillida Ameztoy, Elvira Dyangani Ose.
Ane Rodriguez Armendariz, Natasha Marie Llorens, Alicia Chillida Ameztoy, Elvira Dyangani Ose.
Dámaso Randulfe.
Dámaso Randulfe.
Kathrin Böhm.
Kathrin Böhm.
Richard Martin at Tate Britain.
Richard Martin at Tate Britain.
Michaela Crimmin at Tate Britain.
Michaela Crimmin at Tate Britain.
Oliver Ressler, Gurminder Bhambra, Justinien Tribillon, Elvira Dyangane Ose, at Tate Britain.
Oliver Ressler, Gurminder Bhambra, Justinien Tribillon, Elvira Dyangane Ose, at Tate Britain.
Please visit here to see this workshop handbook.
This is No Longer That Place is part of the European Cooperation project 4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture co-funded by Creative Europe, with UK activities co-funded by the Royal College of Art.
4Cs seeks to understand how training and education in art and culture can constitute powerful resources to address the issue of conflict as well as to envision creative ways in which to deal with conflictual phenomena. This is a partnership of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa; Tensta Konsthall; SAVVY Contemporary; Fundació Antoni Tàpies; Museet for Samtidskunst; Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs; Royal College of Art; and Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Art.
