Migration, the flows of materials, and gentrification are pressing areas of interest to artists and filmmakers working with participatory practices in a globalised, neoliberal context. Common to these practices is a concern with spatiality, acknowledged as a key register of politics and social inequality. This one-day symposium aims to bring practitioners together to open a dialogue on approaches to the spatiality of the movement of peoples, materials, and communities in moving image and photography.

Responding to the gentrification of Lower Manhattan in the 1990s, the art historian Rosalyn Deutsche suggested that space is “political, inseparable from the conflictual and uneven social relations that structure specific societies at specific historical moments.” (Deutsche 1996 cf Lefebvre 1992) For Doreen Massey, space is constructed by narrative and the unfolding of personal and community identity (Massey 2005). More recent analyses have explored the data of spatiality. (cf Forensic Architecture; Kurgan 2013; Paglen 2018) Artists and filmmakers have used all these approaches and more in their work. This symposium aims to share practices that encounter and engage with fluid contemporary space.

This one-day symposium at UCA seeks 20-minute contributions from artists and filmmakers. We encourage a diversity of practices and presentation forms.

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