What is a people, and what does it mean to be a ‘citizen’ in post-Brexit UK, across Europe, and beyond? How are artists, political and cultural thinkers contesting and reframing notions of citizenship? Can citizenship be understood as a form of political and creative practice that is continually remade? Do the consequences of colonialism, and borders, and day to day racism, and new divisions, set the challenges beyond our reach? Or can normative models of citizenship be reconceived and altered to create new frameworks of solidarity, belonging, equality and participation?
This two-day event at the Goethe-Institut seeks to understand citizenship as a set of deeds, acts and practices rather than an institution governed by legal membership[ii].
Speakers (artists, political thinkers, writers, and cultural theorists): Larry Achiampong, Ulf Aminde, Lise Autogena, Dave Beech, Francesca Bria, Heath Bunting, Helen Cammock, Will Davies, Rod Dickinson, Willie Doherty, Ulrike Guerot, Engin Isin, Daniela Ortiz, Tanja Ostojić, Daphne Plessner, Joshua Portway, and Richard Whitby.
Chaired by Helen Nisbet, Bernadette Buckley, Katrin Sohns, Michaela Crimmin
Convened by Bernadette Buckley, Goldsmiths, University of London and Michaela Crimmin, Royal College of Art and Culture+Conflict
This is a free event, but it is essential to book a place.
[i] ‘What is a People’, Alan Badiou, Columbia University Press, 2016. In which Alain Badiou surveys the idea of a people as a productive force of solidarity and emancipation and as a negative tool of categorization and suppression.
[ii] Acts of Citizenship, edited by Engin F. Isin and Greg M. Nielsen, 2008
EDITED BY ENGIN F. ISIN AND GREG M. NIELSEN
