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| Paul Halliday, from the Series Close to Nowhere (forthcoming) Courtesy of the artist |
Urban Encounters 2014: Movements / Mobilities / Migrations
Tate Britain, Clore Auditorium
Friday 24 October 2014, 10.30 – 17.00
Saturday 25 October 2014, 10.30 – 18.00
£30, concessions available
A drinks reception follows Friday’s programme
This year’s Urban Encounters symposium looks at the visual manifestations and effects of movement, mobility and migration on the historic and contemporary city. Over two days, an international line up of artists, academics, and researchers reflect on the nature of flow and flux through and between city spaces with a variety of topics including economic mobility, labour movements, borders, and the migration of things and people.
In addition to a series of panels and presentations, this year’s symposium features half a day of workshops, seminars and walks, led by speakers and organisers. Participants will be contacted closer to the event to select from these activities.
The series of panels focuses on the experiences of people and communities, built and architectural environments, urban landscapes, performativity and how material cultures reflect the possibilities and challenges that redefine how we understand the changing faces of everyday urban life. The workshops, seminars and walks provide a more intimate context through which to directly explore and discuss the ideas and themes of the symposium.
This symposium is of particular interest to photographers, artists, film-makers, architects, sociologists, geographers and social researchers whose work addresses notions of social change and the decentring of urban life within an age of expanding globalisation and changing geographic boundaries.
Event schedule
Friday 24 October
10.30 - 12.20
Introduction by Nora Razian, Curator of Public Programmes
Tate Keynote by Xavier Ribas: Nitrate Lia Chavez: On the Art Material of Consciousness: Movement, Duration and the Choreography of Flow Bill Marshall: Parkour and the
Still Image Ben Gidley: Another London: Encountering the Metropolis from the Migrant's Perspective
Panel discussion with all speakers and keynote chaired by Junko Theresa Mikuriya
14.00 - 15.00 Screening & Discussion
This will be an open session with no need to register
Simon Robinson: Estuary England Estuary England is a short film exploring the area around the Queen Elizabeth 2 Crossing at West Thurrock. It is the first part in a wider project exploring the Thames Gateway region and the pull of the contemporary ‘empire of London’ in its surrounding satellite towns.
Helene Kazan: Masking Tape Intervention: Lebanon 1989 Masking Tape Intervention: Lebanon 1989' is entirely generated from a single archive photograph taken in 1989 using a Kodak Instamatic camera, following news of a War of Liberation against occupying Syrian forces during the Lebanese Civil War.
The image was taken not just as a keepsake of the home, but as a record which bears witness to a moment of insecurity regarding the future.
Sunara Begum: Ara’s World (excerpt) Ara is a young woman who grew up in East London and born between two identities of her homeland and the land of her lived experiences, her memories and her present. She questions how she came to be here and asks where her future lies. Somewhere within the milieu of this social, cultural and poetic journey, she finds her inner voice.
Walks
14.00-16.30 Walk to Pimlico District Heating Undertaking and Accumulator Tower led by Bradley Garrett.
On this urban tour, we are going to be opening out an imagination of the vertical city that we often ignore. At first glance, what appears to be a monotonous council estate is in fact a project in experimental urbanism. We ascend an accumulator tower as part of thePimlico District Heating Undertaking and talk about how this estate is connected to one of the most iconic buildings in London, Battersea Power Station. From this height, we are able to watch the behemoth chimneys of Battersea being chewed away as Dr Garrett tells you the story of their final unsolicited ascent.
14.00-16.30 River Walk led by Peter Coles.
From Tate Britain to London Bridge. This riverside walk offers the challenge of photographing some iconic tourist sites from a new angle, as well as the people (tourists, trades people and locals) along the way, looking for the unexpected, the unfamiliar and the ephemeral. We finish at London Bridge, with the possibility of spending time in Borough Market.
14.00-16.30 Parkour walk led by Bill Marshall
Practioners of parkour lead an exploratory walk around Pimlico and Vauxhall encountering buildering and parkour along the route.
Seminars
15.20-16.50 Seminar on Migrating Architecture with Adam Kaasa, Manton Studio
This seminar looks to several examples where architectural ideas travel, move, circulate, migrate - the housing estate, the Olympics, the contemporary urban ferris wheel, for example - to ask questions about those other elements that migrate: aspiration, labour and capital.
15.20-16.50 Seminar led by Jennifer Bajorek, River Room.
This seminar focuses on the history of art and spatial practice in urban Africa, looking at changing infrastructures connected with visual and spatial practice in late colonial and postcolonial cities.
15.20-16.50 Seminar led by Xavier Ribas, Duffield Room
Nitrate is a photographic exploration of the legacies of sodium nitrate, a mineral used in the fabrication of fertilisers and explosives that was at the centre of the relationship between Chile and Great Britain in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It takes the form of a visual essay that traces the route of Chilean nitrate from natural mineral state processed in the oficinas of the Atacama desert through transported commodity and stock market exchange value to become, ultimately, part of the material and symbolic inheritance of mansions and estates in London and the surrounding countryside. Nitrate is part of the AHRC funded research project 'Traces of Nitrate. Mining History and Photography between Britain and Chile'
Crit
15.00-17.00 Open Call Crit led by Paul Halliday, Clore Auditorium.
More information available at:
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/conference/urban-encounters-2014-movementsmobilitiesmigrations
