What is Research Now? July 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, 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.  

In July, we will explore three interconnected strands:  

Artificial Futures is about art and AI in relation to how we work, our relationship with alterable histories and realities, and the ethics (environmental, social, emotional) of our collective artificial futures.  

Artists on Research features a series of conversations with artists reflecting on research-based practice.  

Seeing in the Dark asks how the acts of seeing and looking must go beyond the visible world as we grapple with our entangled colonial and capitalist presents.  

Join us for talks, conversations, and performances by:  
Ekow Eshun (writer and curator), Shiraz Bayjoo (artist), Alberta Whittle (artist), Sria Chatterjee (Paul Mellon Centre), Grace Ndiritu (artist, filmmaker and writer), Sophia Yadong Hao (Cooper Gallery), Emilija Škarnulytė (artist and filmaker), Anne Barlow (Tate St Ives), Nora Khan (critic, essayist, curator and educator), Nick Mirzoeff (New York University), Ayesha Hameed (Goldsmiths, University of London), Maya Indira Ganesh (University of Cambridge), Sam Lavigne (artist and educator), Wesley Goatley (artist and researcher), Pedro Oliveira (artist and researcher) and Nora Al Badri (artist).   

Programme highlights  
Day one: Artists on Research  
Trauma, Land, and Reparations, Shiraz Bayjoo in conversation with Ekow Eshun 
Feeling the Way (Breaking and Unbreaking Practices in Resistance), Alberta Whittle in conversation Sria Chatterjee  
Being Together: A Manual for Living, Grace Ndiritu in conversation with Sophia Yadong Hao  

Day two: Seeing in the Dark  
Emilija Škarnulytė in conversation with Anne Barlow 
On Discernment with Nora Khan   
Autopsy: To See the Self and the Social in the Dark with Nick Mirzoeff. Respondent: Ayesha Hameed   

Day three: Artificial Futures  
The Minor Feelings of AI (A Satire) with Maya Indira Ganesh  
Towards Anti-Capitalist AI Art and Post-Abundance Computational Practices with Wesley Goatley. Respondent: Pedro Oliveira  
The Post-Truth Museum, Nora Al Badri in conversation with Maya Indira Ganesh  

Book tickets on our website now.