11-12 and 14th of November, 2019

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Polarising and populist movements relying on “us vs. them” and the “fear of the other” have been underway, a seismic activity shaking the liberal democratic principles of our Western megapolis.

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This week only, we have seen protests erupting from Barcelona to Beirut, to Hong Kong, to Chile and to Haiti. In this explosive canvas of questions, lament and absence of tangible solutions, how do we rethink, break, build, and repair? And during recent years, the rise of terms like decolonization and radical pedagogy along with names like Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire has appeared in various spheres from militant, to academia and the cultural world. Such phenomena has been translated in this year's Holberg prize, awarded to the well-deserving Paul Gilroy and by the invitation of Achile Mbembe to publically lecture in Norway. Once the subversive excitement has dissipated, how are those terms, thinkers and their work reflected in the communities we live in? Does it just remain university jargon removed from any societal engagement?

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Against this background, The Dead Are Restless, They Speak!, will bring together leading scholars, their public and practitioners to critically engage with the writings of Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire. Frantz Fanon once wrote that "literature increasingly involves itself in its only real task, which is to get society to reflect and mediate" and Paulo Freire envisioned cultural action as “a clear invitation to all who wish to participate in the reconstruction of society”. In today's world where the politics of Brexit and Trump have become sounding gong our ears that our diseased with, how do Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire's work evolve in their real task to mediate and to transform?

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The Dead Are Restless, They Speak! is the third episode of the Mini-Lab co-organised by Anawana Haloba (University of Bergen) and Romeo Gongora (Goldsmiths, University of London). Through their respective research projects, Gongora and Haloba engage with the writings of two prominent thinkers. Whilst Anawana Haloba´s PhD project Subtle Encounters investigates the ideas of Frantz Fanon, Romeo Gongora PhD project entitled Awaken Dreams investigates Paulo Freire work. Fanon and Freire's works interrogate the politics of decolonization, the relationship between the colonised and coloniser whilst investigating the meaning of freedom. As research fellows, they are interested in examining processes of art production against research with the emphasis on Visual Culture and critical thinking. It is part of the Arts Research Centre In Cultural Diversities series and is funded by Goldsmiths' Mountain of Art Research (MARs) and Université du Québec à Montréal.

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The workshop and public discussion will be recorded.

Food will be served.

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Francisco Carballo joined the Politics Department at Goldsmiths in 2012. Since 2014, he has held the position of Deputy Director of The Centre for Postcolonial Studies. His formal training is in sociology, political theory and cultural studies. He previously taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. His current research addresses three different yet interconnected areas of inquiry: 1) Latin American politics from below (especially in Argentina, Bolivia and Mexico). 2) Decolonial and postcolonial theory. 3) Rough politics. This is understood as an effort to trace the murky contours that separate politics from lawlessness, political activism from sheer violence, and social bonds from criminal complicity in certain areas of the Global South.

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Ros Gray is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Critical Studies in the Art Department at Goldsmiths. Her research currently has two main trajectories. The first explores networks, aesthetics and impact of militant filmmaking, particularly in relation to liberation struggles and revolutionary movements in Mozambique, Angola, Portugal, Guinea-Bissau and Burkina Faso. This research informs her forthcoming monograph Cinemas of the Mozambican Revolution: Anti-Colonialism, Independence and Internationalism in Filmmaking, 1968–1991 (James Currey, 2020). The second focuses on artistic interventions in the fields of soil care, cultivation and decolonial ecologies more broadly. Ros co-edited with Shela Sheikh a special issue of Third Text entitled 'The Wretched Earth: Botanical Conflicts and Artistic Interventions', and she is a member of the Critical Ecologies research stream. She is also on the Editorial Board of Third Text and she is a member of the Critical Ecologies research stream.

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Susanne Winterling is an artist and professor at Trondheim Academy of the Arts based and born in Rehau/Oberfranken.. Working across a variety of media including film, photography, sculpture and performance, Winterling is primarily known for her time-based installations which critically engage the representation of reality. Prevailing modernist concepts, power structures and hierarchical historiographies are captured and investigated in her work in the form of spatial constellations. With an emphasis on enhancing our perceptual and critical consciousness, Winterling undertakes affective and material-based research that highlights the subjective interaction between producers, viewers, materials and species in our ecology. Recent exhibitions include ICA Philadelphia, MIT List Center Boston, Contour Biennale, Empty Gallery HongKong, TBA21 Vienna, MoMa Dubrovnik, etc.

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Anawana Haloba is PhD fellow with University of Bergen (KMD). She was educated at Evelyn Hone College of Applied Arts in Lusaka, Zambia. Haloba completed her BA at the National Academy of Arts in Oslo 2006, graduate of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and an alumnus of the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in Washington DC. Haloba’s work has featured in both solo and group exhibitions, including, National Museum of African Arts Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, USA; the Rauma Biennale, Finland; ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe,Germany; Museum Berardo Collection, Lisbon, Portugal; la Biennale di Venezia, 2009; Sydney Biennale 2009, Australia; Manifesta 7, Bolzano, Italy, the Sharjah Biennial 08, 11 and edition 14, curated by Zoe Butt, UAE as well as the biennales in Sao Paulo (2016), Shanghai (2016) and Lyon (2017).

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Romeo Gongora is an artist, professor of Critical Approaches to Cultural Diversities at the École des arts visuels et médiatiques of Université du Québec à Montreal and PhD fellow in the Art Department at Goldsmiths, University of London (UK). Since 2008, he has conducted major collaborative arts projects that interact with the social sphere, integrating politics and pedagogy in the practice of performance. Gongora has shown his work at, amongst others, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Canada), HISK (Belgium), Centre of Art Torun (Poland), Centre Makan (Jordan) and Leonard&Bina Ellen Art Gallery (Canada). www.romeogongora.com

 

This Public Event is run as part of the Art Research Programme at Goldsmiths College and supported by the Mountain of Art Research (http://m-a-r-s.online) as well as by Université du Québec à Montréal.

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