+ More

Emilia will introduce us to the issue of analysing and categorising nonhuman animal sounds in film. She will propose a new category of film sound — the call — to provide a multispecies approach, one more mindful of the richness and variety of nonhuman animal expression and intraspecies as well as interspecies communication.

Cliff's work treats the practice of urban bat walking through the lens of the multispecies city. Exploring the entanglement of bats in processes of urban change, and the histories of sonic bat detectors, he details an experiment to reveal the relations created between bats, humans and their environments through urban bat walks.

Emilia Czątkowska is a fourth year PhD student in Film Studies at the University of Kent, where she is working on her thesis, The Call: a cinematic encounter with nonhuman animal characters and their worlds.

Cliff Hammett is a fourth year PhD student in Creative and Critical Practice in the school of Media, Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex. His project, Nightsniffing, uses critical making to reimagine urban bat walking as a way to collectively investigate the systems that shape London and other UK cities.

+ Session outline

This session aims to introduce the CHASE Decolonisaton Network and bring together researchers who share an interest in shaping this space. The event will be loosely structured around three main areas for development: campaigns, research events and social activities. Participants will be invited to contribute their ideas for activities they would like to see the network incorporate and ideas for additional areas to focus on are warmly welcomed. This is intended to be a networking introduction for researchers interested in a Decolonisation Network, with a launch planned for early 2021.

+ Biogs

Jan Asante is founder of curation consultancy #ThinkCinematic by Culture Kinetica that served as a consultant on the BBC/Netflix documentary series 'They've Gotta Have Us' and BBC Two's 'Black Is The New Black.' Asante has curated for BFI and Picturehouse, written for publications including BFI Sight & Sound International Film Magazine, and contributed as a commentator on BBC radio and television.

Dr June Givanni (Hon DLit) FRSA is a film curator specialising in Pan African cinema. Through nearly 40 years in film curation she has worked with a number of film festivals on the African continent, the British Film Institute - where she ran the African and Caribbean Film Unit and founded the Black Film Bulletin with Gaylene Gould - and Toronto International Film Festival, where she programmed ‘Planet Africa’. She currently runs the June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive in London based on her collections throughout her career, which has been exhibited at the Peltz Gallery, London.

Dr Emma Sandon is a senior lecturer in film and television at Birkbeck, University of London. She researches and has published on colonial film archive particularly in relation to Africa. She is on the Advisory Board to the June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive http://www.junegivannifilmarchive.com/ and is on the steering group of the Women’s Film and Television History Network (UK and Ireland), https://womensfilmandtelevisionhistory.wordpress.com/. She was on the core management team of the Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire project, http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk and she is an Associate Researcher of the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative at the University of Cape Town, http://www.apc.uct.ac.za.

+ Bio

Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London. Her books include various studies and translations of Walter Benjamin, as well as Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde (Verso, 2002); Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (Reaktion, 2005); Derelicts: Thought Worms from the Wreckage (Unkant, 2014), Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form (Reaktion, 2016), Deeper in the Pyramid (with Melanie Jackson: Banner Repeater, 2018) and The Inextinguishable (with Melanie

+ Abstract

Feminist research has long concerned itself with the effects of situated knowledges on narratives around trauma. Nonetheless, despite widespread awareness that ‘all categories of analysis’ are ‘contextual, contested, and contingent’ (Scott, 1991, p.796), feminist work around sexual violence and justice continues to engage in an uncritical and unquestioning engagement with the voices of survivors of sexual violence. Through undertaking a comprehensive discourse analysis of academic projects that explore justice from the perspective of survivors, this paper seeks to interrogate the reasons why feminist texts on sexual violence and justice appear unable to critically engage with survivor voice. It is through troubling the ways in which the literature engages with and represents the words of survivors, that I aim to highlight the tension between individualised justice and collective politics. Drawing on Ruha Benjamin’s (2019) expansive understanding of carcerality, I will illustrate that the lack of acknowledgment of this tension obscures the limitations of survivor voice, and more importantly the fact that those who write about sexual violence bring with them their own views, beliefs and investments in carcerality, which in turn produces a carceral analysis of survivors’ voices.

Molly Ackhurst has a practice-based background having worked in sexual violence support for many years, and her work is rooted around creative approaches to trauma. This approach feeds into Molly's academic work as a second year PhD candidate in Criminology at Birkbeck, where she explores imaginative blockages regarding justice and sexual violence.

+ Abstract

Very often the State speaks of its efficiency in dealing with child sexual violence cases through numbers. Higher conviction rates in such cases are deployed as a tool to reflect the achievement of the state machineries without much looking into the social and legal processes at play that led to the outcomes. The trauma the parties face, first as child victims of sexual violence, and secondly while navigating through those processes, are either misrepresented, or silenced in these quantitative accounts. Challenging this approach, I engage in this paper with the trauma such children face in the criminal processes and in courtrooms. With the help of an empirical study, and by employing Procedural Justice and Therapeutic Jurisprudence frameworks, I offer an account of how dignity is infused in the legal processes by the courtroom personnel to reduce such trauma by employing courtroom spatiality & linguistics to make the justice delivery process for the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse less painful.

Shailesh Kumar is a UK government funded Commonwealth Scholar currently in the fourth year of a PhD at the School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London. His research work is an empirical study of special courts dealing with cases of sexual violence against children in India.

+ Abstract

Bearing witness to trauma in legal spheres often demands the use of language as the primary means of communication and rests upon an assumption that the ‘truth’ of experiences of violence and atrocity can be adequately conveyed. The advent of new image capturing technologies and the accessibility of camera phones seemed, to those wishing to broaden the representation of trauma, to present an optimistic moment. I’ll discuss how civilian-captured and generated images come to be ‘haunted’, drawing upon the Derridean notion of spectrality, and — as new artefacts — constitute reproductions of historical trauma. This, I argue, may occur through the curation of digital images which had appeared to be imbued with the potential to be emancipated from long-existing hierarchies of representation and threatened with silencing. I consider the implications of this for conveying traumatic experiences online and ask if/how this might be navigated in popular spaces.

Gabriella McGrogan is a third-year PhD student in the School of Criminology at Birkbeck. She previously worked in education teaching English, and has long been fascinated by alternative methods of communication. She is currently teaching in the Criminology and Politics departments at Birkbeck and finds drawing interdisciplinary parallels invigorates her teaching style.

+ Abstract

This paper examines the social space of markets in small towns and fortified villages in papal central Italy. It considers the experience of markets in the built environment of new towns, often populated by rural migrants or synthesised from surrounding villages in the late twelfth century. Using the fragmentary evidence for market exchange in rural centres, I assess the growing documentation of market regulations in the twelfth century across Umbria, Marche and Lazio and consider the relationship between documentary regulation and existing practice. This exercise combines evidence for marketing activity with extant buildings and archaeology as a means to show how commodity exchange engaged with other facets of group activity: dispute, devotion and celebration. It considers how the desire to hold and regulate markets shaped the strategies and practices of farmers, local lords and those claiming central power. Charters and disputes concerning market rights and dues provide a window into the experience of an increasingly complicated rural world, where monetisation and produce markets were changing the character and practices of authority. Produce or craft markets were a component of rural institutions developing in the interstices of larger cities and exchange networks. I argue that rural centres where market, judicial and sacred space overlap linked local agrarian change with new practices of authority shaping larger territorial states.

Jack Watkins: I’m a third-year PhD student, History, at Birkbeck, working on the society and the built environment in medieval Italy. I’m supervised by Caroline Goodson, Antonio Sennis and Filippo di Vivo. I’m actually funded by the ESRC rather CHASE.

+ Abstract

The Queer and Feminist Archives Research network is organised by researchers Hatty Nestor (Birkbeck) and Lily Evans-Hill (Goldsmiths), and is supported by the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership. The network is made up of researchers who work with archives and primary materials through a feminist and/or queer lens, as well as those dealing with feminist, queer and archival theory. The activities of the network include reading groups, sharing writing and research, and archival visits. We meet monthly, and are open to all artists and researchers engaging in queer and feminist methodologies, and primary research methods.

Lily Evans-Hill is a doctoral researcher at Goldsmiths where she is working on feminist organising techniques in art of the 1970s and 1980s. She has a background in feminist organising and DIY archiving.

Hatty Nestor is a cultural critic and writer, published in Frieze, The White Review, The Times Literary Supplement and many other publications. She is currently completing a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London. Her first book Ethical Portraits is forthcoming from Zero Books in 2021.

+ Abstract

This presentation takes you on a journey through the creative-political material that was produced with, by and for local residents in Deptford, south-east London, in order to highlight their lived experience of gentrification processes in the area. The material was produced through a variety of creative and participatory research methods such as photography, drawing, building models, writing, workshops and walks, as well as interviews, focus groups and discussions. Participants were able to choose their way of collaborating and dictate the uses of their contributions and the direction of the project. Participants were given free access to all the materials, which was used for campaigning (e.g. resisting the destruction of social housing, the destruction of a community garden, etc.), raising awareness, publicity materials and other local causes. This project has worked with children, young adults, adults, elderly persons, homeless people, people with disabilities and mental health issues, housing campaigners and activists, from a variety of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. As such, the project tells gentrification stories from a variety of perspectives and voices, which often remain unheard in gentrification literature. The generated stories and creative output form the data for my academic research, which investigates the violence of gentrification — the existential impact neoliberal urban change is having on those unable to enjoy the benefits of regeneration. This presentation will provide some insights into the impact of gentrification on my participants by paying attention to their stories and creative materials, but it will mainly talk about the radical agenda of creative methods that help generate (political) stories and active resistance. The hope is to stimulate thought and discussion around (political) participation in creative research methods and how a radical research agenda can make research participants into co-researchers, co-creators and co-producers.

Anita Strasser: I am a photographer / visual sociologist / writer based in Deptford, south-east London. My PhD researches the impact of gentrification on Deptford’s (working-class) population and in January 2020 I published the book Deptford is Changing: a creative exploration of the impact of gentrification the outcome of a 2-year community arts project which worked with over 160 residents. I also write a research blog where I post findings of my research or stories connected to the changing face of Deptford.

+ Abstract

At midnight on 15 August 1947, India announced its Independence from colonial rule. The new government under Prime Minister J. Nehru had to direct public consciousness from a state of crisis left in the aftermath of the colonial rule, to a belief in a new future that was going to be different from the present. Visually, this marks an important phase in the history of South Asia because of concerted attempts to re-organize national vision and establish a new way of seeing – as a post-colonial, now independent nation on its way to ‘achieve’ modernity. The decade of the 1950s saw an initiation of several rural re-development projects in India, which hoped to alter the image of villages from ‘primitive and backward’ to modern and futuristic, thereby changing the global image of India from an underdeveloped to a modern nation.

In this context, my paper will look at one specific photograph album gifted to Nehru by the engineers working on a rural re-development program in the Ganga Khadar region, to explore the visual markers of development and re-construction as they emerge in the discourse of post-colonial modernity. What is the existing image of the village that the developmental planners are trying hard to alter? Is there an ideal image of a 'modern' village, as suggested by these photographs? My paper will hope to address these questions. In doing so, it will also attempt to examine the production of the photographic album for cues of internal dissonances and divergences as the makers of the album grapple with a state enforced definition of modernity.

Krupa Desai: I am a fourth year full-time PhD student in History of Art, at the School of Art, Birkbeck. My thesis looks at photographic practices in Nehruvian India, especially in the post-colonial decade of 1950s, and is being supervised by Prof. Steve Edwards.

+ Abstract

Ādiśeṣạ, the primordial snake supporting the cosmos, is gendered male. Kuṇḍalinī, the esoteric serpent energy coiled at the base of the yogic body, is female. What role does the gender of kuṇḍalinī play in premodern Haṭhayoga?

This paper interrogates the gendered presentation of kuṇḍalinī in Sanskrit texts on Haṭhayoga. Kuṇḍalinī is the coiled, snake-like energy, synonymous with the female pole of the godhead, śakti. The reception history of this concept, refracted through psychoanalysis and New Age thought, has articulated a sexually, socially and psychologically liberating interpretation. By contrast, in the early Haṭha corpus, 11th–15th centuries, kuṇḍalinī is manipulated through physical and meditative techniques to realise gnoseological and soteriological empowerments. This paper delves into the textual record in Sanskrit texts such as the Gorakṣaśataka, Yogabīja and Khecarīvidyā to outline first how kuṇḍalinī is gendered feminine, and second, why.

This presentation notes the sexual and at times violent imagery deployed and asks what role a gendered duality plays in the technology of Haṭhayoga. Is the gendering of the yogic body purely accidental, conforming to antecedent gendered theistic worldviews or should the gendered duality of the yogic body be understood in terms of praxis — a duality that is amenable to physical and ritual manipulation regardless of its place in the history of ideas? Further, what are the ontological implications of a feminine principle interiorised within the bodies of, at times, celibate male practitioners?

Approaching this material through a feminist lens exposes the instrumentality of kuṇḍalinī that is at once violent, erotic, and reverential. The material suggests glimpses of the social and material world of premodern haṭha practitioners without, however, clarifying the status of women — whether practitioners or not.

Ruth Westoby is a doctoral candidate in the South Asia department of the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at SOAS, University of London. Her thesis is provisionally entitled ‘Bodies in Haṭhayoga: Gender, Materiality and Power’. Ruth has an article in press with Religions of South Asia on ‘Rajas in Haṭhayoga and Beyond’.

+ More information, how to join and bios

Using drag as a queer and analytic tool, my practice-led research examines the performance – or drag - of being and having a human body in a digitally-mediated world. I apply the term ‘drag’ to ‘physicality’ to explore the potential of the physical body to feel at once like a performance (dragging up) and/or a burden (dragging down). I am also considering what it is to drag away from one’s usually lived subjectivities (through dis/guises or gestures that can render a person untraceable or un-trackable), and to drag across (by playing with identities across a group), through the use of media and performance. In a technological present of machine learning, artificial intelligence, tracking and surveillance, I want to see how and where, both with and without technology, the physical body can still be a site and node and tool of resistance. I am examining this in three ways: through creative encounters with a few contemporary artists whose work resonates on this theme; through archive-based research on a decade of live ‘netcast’ performances produced via Franklin Furnace in New York 1998–2008, and my own online/offline digital/physical (drag) performance as #Sergina - a multi-bodied drag persona who, in one place or several at once, online and offline sings songs about love, lust and loneliness in the digital age.

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Elly Clarke is an artist interested in the performance and resistance of the physical body in a digitally-mediated world, which she explores through video, photography, music, community-based projects and #Sergina - a multi-bodied, border-straddling drag queen who, across one body and several, sings and performs songs online and offline about love, lust and loneliness in the mesh of hyper-dis/connection.

Kaajel Patel is a London-based visual artist, set designer, dancer & actor. She has training in Bollywood and Indian Classical dance and is in the professional troupe LPL Productions & teaches for Bollyfemme. Kaajel also works as a theatre and film set designer, teaches painting classes with an all-female start-up called ‘Brush & Bubbles’, and moonlights as a cabaret performer and choreographer.

Kaajel first worked with Elly Clarke on a community-based project for Camden Council in 2015 and came to the #Sergina project this summer, performing HOW ARE YOU with both Elly and Shiva Raichandani as part of #Sergina's online residency at The Knot in Ottawa, Canada, October 2020.