Urban Encounters: Routes + Transitions, 2010

Urban Encounters: Routes and Transitions explores the dialogue and practice of visual urbanism to bring together international researchers, academics, photographers and artists concerned with the transitional nature of contemporary urban space. It will be of particular relevance to those engaged with urban image-making, analysis and research. This third annual conference will address how  photographic practices and archives intersect with an understanding of local and global routes as “places”, considering the temporality of place and the cross-cultural juxtaposition of locales.

This conference approaches the city as a palimpsest of routes and its panels will consider local, global and remembered routes through film, photography and other visual urbanisms. Considering the cultural geographies of migration, change, place, identity and the process of making transitions, the conference will facilitate an on-going interdisciplinary dialogue about the growing field of urban visual practice, method and enquiry.

This symposium is the center of the Urban Encounters Festival, which takes place in several UK-based and international locations this spring, including the London-based galleries Photofusion and Viewfinder, and at the events Urban Encounters: City to Sea at Bognor Regis, UK and Urban Encounters at the Festival of the Image, Manizales, Colombia.



Discussants
Paul Goodwin, Tate Britain
Caroline Knowles, Goldsmiths, University of London
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, The New School, New York
Paul Halliday, Goldsmiths, University of London



Programme : Saturday 29 May

10 am:  Welcome
Paul Goodwin, Tate Britain
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, Urban Encounters co-founder / The New School

Keynote : Camilo Jose Vergara
From the Hood to the Kiez: Facades and Portraits
Discussant: Paul Halliday, Urban Encounters co-founder / Goldsmiths

11:40 – 13:00
Panel 1. Global routes : Personal & political
How does global migration create personal urban routes?
What is exile and transition?

Unravelling (2008, 17 mins) – film screening followed by a conversation between
Kuldip Powar (director) and Nirmal Puwar (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Mike Keith, Oxford University – The Political Geography of Migration

Discussant: Caroline Knowles, Goldsmiths, University of London

14:00 –  15:30
Panel 2. Making Transitions : Practice & location
How do migrants and migrant stories inhabit locations?
How is the process of making a part of the movement between nations and neighborhoods?

Michael McMillan – The West Indian Front Room
Manuel Vazquez – BBC Bush House Babel
Lars Johansson [Fugitive Images] – The “I am here” Project

Discussant: Paul Goodwin, Tate Britain

15:50 – 17:20
Panel 3. The Remembered Road : Archives & pasts

What are the roles of photographic archives in understanding cities’ multiple pasts?
What roles do municipal and personal archives play?

Joseph Heathcott, The New School - Shadow Archive: The Trace of Movement in Urban Reform Photography
Yazan Al-Khalili, Goldsmiths, University of London - Area C, the distant landscape: Images from an exiled landscape
Suki Ali, London School of Economics – Memory, migration and the family album

Discussant : Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, Urban Encounters co-founder / The New School

17:20 – 17:50
Plenary discussion
A discussion for the audience and panelists to debate the changing nature of visual urbanism within visual arts and urban research practice and education.

How can art/ research practice build an understanding of the urban sphere?
Can visual urbanism engage public dialogue about the city in new ways?
Do we need to develop new kinds of interdisciplinary languages?
What are the politics of making this work?
What are the possible locales for this work?

5. Post-conference reception and slideshow : 6 – 7pm