Research Laboratories

18 April & 13 June 2018

Brunel University London, Artaud Performance Center

Institute of Environment, Health and Societies:

Over the past two years, a few researchers at Brunel University London formed a working group – Transcultures-Survival (Hosts and Guests) – and began to network with others equally concerned with survival politics and a critical understanding of migration and hospitality.

The 2018 research workshops want to incite debate and knowledge exchange between fields – theatre, social works, education, human geography, political science, ethnography, media arts – on pressing questions regarding notions of imagined communities/immunities during the current resurgence of ethno-nationalism, exemplified by xenophobic hostilities, divergent responses to the so-called refugee crisis, Britain voting to leave the European Union, the election of D Trump, the rise of right wing populism on the European continent. During two symposia-workshops in April and June 2018, participant researchers and practitioners will consider interlaced thematic focal points that deal with community and immunity.

• Natural History of Migration/Immunity and Biopolitics/Racism and Patriotism
• Security, Nationness, Ethno-futurism, and the Theatre of Resistance,

The planned activities include scholarly presentations (papers), shorter provocations, workshops and practice-based performances or fieldwork demonstrations (film) to be presented over the two symposia in April and June 2018. 

guests include:

• Rite of Exile by Iraqi Bodies, directed by Anmar Taha and Josephine Gray (Gothenburg, Sweden)
•      Goran Sergei Pristas, Tomislav Medak, BADco., Zagreb (Croatia) “Institutions need to be constructed”
• Mark Neocleous (Political Science, Brunel University London) "Immunity, Security and the Politics of Auto-immune Disease"
• Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths) "End of Man"
• Maria Kastrinou (Anthropology, Brunel University) The guests of Lesbos: Hospitality among Syrian refugees in Greece
• Caridad Svich (playwright, New York) and Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso (director, London): on theatres of resistance, 
• Film: Olga Danylyuk (Ukraine): Letters to the Unknown Friend in New York 
•  Interactive Sound Art Performance -Lambros Pigounis (Greece):