What Is Research Now? May festival

“What is Research Now?” presents a full year of programming around interconnected strands that ask us to think more curiously, critically and open-endedly about the role and practice of the arts.

The theme is led by the question: Can research in the arts enable us to live and better inhabit the world together? It will bring artists, curators, writers, scholars, activists, and thinkers from a range of different backgrounds to think together through lectures, performances, conversations, and hands-on workshops at the Paul Mellon Centre in London.

Join us for talks, conversations, and performances by: Tina Campt (Princeton University), Premesh Lalu (University of the Western Cape), Kitso Lynn Lelliott (University of the Witwatersrand), Nida Sinnokrot and Sahar Qawasmi (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sakiya), Avinòam Shalem (Columbia University), Huda Tayob (Royal College of Art), and Solveig Qu Suess, (NYU Shanghai), Tiara Roxanne (Scholar, Artist, Practitioner).

In May, events will explore interconnected strands: “Ongoing Colonial Worlds” asking what research is under conditions of occupation and unrest. “On Looking” show us that how we look changes how we understand the world around us.

Programme highlights
Day one 
–Afterimages and the Art of Grieving with Tina Campt (Princeton University)
–Unconfessed Architectures with Huda Tayob (Royal College of Art)
–Aesthetics After Apartheid: Racism’s Last Word and the Work of Art with Premesh Lalu (University of the Western Cape)

Day two
–“Disclosing Nature, Rethinking Landscapes” with Avinòam Shalem (Columbia University)
–I Cannot Decolonize My Body: The Decolonial Gesture, performance by Tiara Roxanne (Scholar, Artist, Practitioner)

Day three
–“A Bridge, a Seesaw, a Möbius Strip: On the Making of an Autoethnographic Film” with Solveig Qu Suess
–Performance and Q&A with Kitso Lynn Lelliott and Huda Tayob

Find the full programme for the May festival on our website.