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Join Ather Zia in conversation with with Amir Kaur Aujula-Jones and Trang Dang, as part of the When I Dare to be Powerful conference at Bonington Gallery.

Amir Kaur Aujla-Jones and Trang Dang are in conversation with Ather Zia about writing as a powerful tool to amplify the voices of women active in the Kashmir conflict. Their voices are often ignored in a dominant narrative that fails to give them agency and instead writes them as victims of the conflict.

This event is part of online talks series leading to the in-person conference When I Dare to be Powerful, on 21 June at Bonington Gallery. The international conference will bring filmmakers, artists, writers and activists, together with conceptual thinkers and cultural theorists in order to answer pressing questions relating to voice as an agent of change.

Bio:

Ather Zia, Ph.D., is a political anthropologist, poet, short fiction writer, and columnist. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Gender Studies program at the University of Northern Colorado Greeley. Ather is the author of Resisting Disappearances: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir (June 2019) which won the 2020 Gloria Anzaldua Honorable Mention award, 2021 Public Anthropologist Award, and Advocate of the Year Award 2021. She has been featured in the Femilist 2021, a list of 100 women from the Global South working on critical issues. She is the co-editor of Can You Hear Kashmiri Women Speak (Women Unlimited 2020), Resisting Occupation in Kashmir (Upenn 2018) and A Desolation called Peace (Harper Collins, May 2019). She has published a poetry collection “The Frame” and another collection is forthcoming. Ather’s ethnographic poetry on Kashmir has won an award from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. She is the founder-editor of Kashmir Lit and is the co-founder of Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary network of scholars working on the Kashmir region. Ather is also a co-editor of Cultural Anthropology.

Amir Kaur Aujla-Jones (she/her) has a BA (Hons) in History from the University of Sussex, a MA in Education from the University of Nottingham and a PhD in Sociology from Nottingham Trent University. Dr Aujla-Jones’s research has focused on race and gender equality using an intersectional lens. Her PhD thesis examined the lived experience of Black, Asian, and Mixed-race girls in predominantly white English secondary schools. Dr Aujla-Jones is part of Conscience Collective, an international network based in the UK aiming to extend understanding of climate and social  justice. 

Trang Dang (she/her) is a PhD researcher in literary studies at Nottingham Trent University, funded by NTU Studentship Scheme, and previously graduated from Oxford Brookes University with a BA and an MA in English Literature. Her PhD project focuses on Jeff VanderMeer’s weird fiction, exploring narratives of co-existence between humans and nonhumans and the role of new weird novels in portraying the current climate crisis. Her main research interests are contemporary literature, cli/sci-fi, critical theory, and continental philosophy. She has published on the topics of animal studies, American culture and politics, and the Anthropocene.


ABOUT THIS EVENT

Professor Gus John and poet Yolanda Lear join Jenni Ramone’s Black Writing in Britain students and Formations audiences for a special event on the history of New Beacon Books and its place in the history of Black British publishing, writing, and activism.

Gus John discusses publishing, decolonisation, and the contemporary university. Yolanda Lear reads and discusses her poetry, and both speakers engage in conversation with English and Creative Writing students at NTU.

FORMATIONS is a public events series which foregrounds under-represented artists, writers, thinkers, and activists, run by NTU’s Postcolonial Studies Centre and Bonington Gallery.

Book your ticket

Click here to reserve your spot at this free online event.

Biographies:


ABOUT THIS EVENT

To coincide with Cedar Lewisohn’s solo exhibition earlier this year, Patois Banton, join us for a free online talk by Dr. Joseph T. Farquharson entitled Questioning Language and Knowledge: The Challenge to Creole-speaking Communities. This will be followed by a Q&A with Ramisha Rafique.

This event follows on from an in conversation with Cedar Lewisohn, Ioney Smallhorne and Honey Williams which can be watched here.

“That children learn best in their mother language, has been known for several decades. However, the application has been very slow in societies where the mother language of the majority is a Creole language. This is due to what I refer to as an epistemological blind spot emerging from what colonial and neo-colonial education determine to be (real) knowledge, and how those ideological systems designate the languages that are the vehicles of ‘real’ knowledge.

Given their historic low status, Creole languages like Jamaican, Haitian Creole, Barbadian, are therefore not seen as proper receptacles of knowledge. In an attempt to unpack the philosophy of language that drives this state of affairs, I explore the historical roots of these views, and the ways in which they undermine and stunt the production, dissemination, and development of indigenous forms of knowledge.” Dr. Joseph T. Farquharson, Coordinator, Jamaican Language Unit

FORMATIONS is a public events series which foregrounds under-represented artists, writers, thinkers, and activists, run by NTU’s Postcolonial Studies Centre and Bonington Gallery.

Book your ticket

Click here to reserve your spot at this free online event.

Biographies:


Re-sensitised Symposium re-visits, reflects and re-lives the last seven years of the Sensitive Skin festival.

It brings together a diverse group of artists, all of whom have been part of the festival since its inception in 2000, pondering on the question ‘How has Sensitive Skin evolved over the past seven years and how has Live Art and Performance practice developed during that period?’

Offering talks, presentations, lectures and an “artists in conversation’ panel throughout the day, the event will culminate in a celebration closing this year’s festival, including two performances from Rajni Shah and Harminder Singh Judge.

Speakers:

Angela Bartram

Robin Deacon

Sheila Ghelani

Manick Govinda

Leibniz

Jordan McKenzie        

Daniel Belasco Rogers

About the event

Join Alison, Marina, and Andrew in conversation, discussing materials they have found in their research on European periodicals post-1945. At the heart of the project is a focus upon the practice of translation:

The Spaces of Translation project studies a small collection of important literary and cultural magazines from three countries (Britain, France, Germany) in order to consider how they explore and construct notions of European identity in the period from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1960s. The current exhibition at the Bonington explores a number of these issues and displays a range of original magazines from 1945-65. Alison, Marina, and Andrew will discuss some of the fascinating material they have found in their research so far.

The event will be chaired by Dr Annalise Grice, Department of English, NTU.

Bios:

Alison E. Martin is Professor of British Studies, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz/Germersheim, Germany. She is a specialist in translation studies, travel writing and comparative literature. Her books include Nature Translated: Alexander von Humboldt’s Works in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2018) and Moving Scenes: The Aesthetics of German Travel Writing on England, 1783-1830 (2008), as well as two co-edited volumes, Travel Writing in Dutch and German, 1790-1930 (2017) and Travel Narratives in Translation, 1750-1830 (2012). Before coming to JGU, she taught at the University of Reading, Universiteit Hasselt, the Universität Kassel and the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. She is the German PI for the Spaces of Translation project on European magazines, 1945-65.

Marina Popea is a Research Fellow on the Spaces of Translation project, based at NTU. She specialises in translation and cultural magazines with a broad comparative focus. A Latin Americanist with an interdisciplinary background, she is completing an AHRC-funded PhD at Oxford University on the role of translation in shaping modern poetics in Mexican magazines of the early twentieth century. She is particularly interested in Digital Humanities and the methodological challenges of studying translation in the context of periodical publications.

Andrew Thacker is Professor of Twentieth Century Literature at NTU. He is the author or editor of several books on modernism and modernist magazines, including the three volumes of The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines (2009-13) and, most recently, Modernism, Space and the City (2019). He was a founder member and the first Chair of the British Association for Modernist Studies. He is the UK PI for the Spaces of Translation project on European magazines, 1945-65.

This free, online-in conversation event with writer Gogu Shyamala is part of our Formations series, hosted in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre. This segment of Formations, CADALFEST, relates to the Celebrating Adivasi and Dalit Arts and Literature Festival (CADALFEST) taking place across India and in Nottingham. CADALFEST is the first international festival series dedicated to artists whose work creatively resists caste discrimination and social exclusion in India.

This event will take start at 4 pm (GMT) and 8.30 pm Indian Standard Time.

About this event

Gogu Shyamala will discuss her literary and academic work to mark the republication of her short story collection Father May be an Elephant, and Mother Only a Small Basket, But…, by Tilted Axis Press in March 2022. Her focus on the perspective of Dalit women and children as well as her stories’ celebration of Dalit strength and culture will be explored. Gogu Shyamala will tell us about her choice of, and experimentation with, the short story form, and how she sees her role as writer, academic and activist. We will also discuss land relations and the link to caste, sexual violence, inter-caste love and other key concerns of her fiction and academic writing.

Gogu Shyamala will be in conversation with Sowjanya Tamalapakula, Bethan Evans, Judith Misrahi-Barak and Nicole Thiara and the session will conclude with Q&A with the online audience via YouTube chat.

Tilted Axis is a non-profit press publishing mainly work by Asian writers, translated into a variety of Englishes. Founded in 2015, Tilted Axis are based in the UK, a state whose former and current imperialism severely impacts writers in the majority world. This position informs their practice, which is also an ongoing exploration into alternatives – to the hierarchisation of certain languages and forms, including forms of translation; to the monoculture of globalisation; to cultural, narrative, and visual stereotypes; to the commercialisation and celebrification of literature and literary translation. Tilted Axis values the work of translation and translators through fair, transparent pay, public acknowledgement, and respectful communication. They are dedicated to improving access to the industry, through translator mentorships, paid publishing internships, open calls and guest curation.

This free, online-in conversation event with multimedia artists Subash Thebe Limbu and Osheen Siva is part of our Formations series, hosted in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre. This segment of Formations, CADALFEST, relates to the Celebrating Adivasi and Dalit Arts and Literature Festival (CADALFEST) taking place across India and in Nottingham. CADALFEST is the first international festival series dedicated to artists whose work creatively resists caste discrimination and social exclusion in India.

Book your free place now

This event will be streamed live on Bonington Gallery’s YouTube channel. Book your free place now.

About this event

In recent times, the rapidly changing socio-political, environmental, and technological changes have centralised focus on reimagining and reconfiguring futures. While the Futurism movement, which began in Italy and spread to other European countries, sought to cleave off from the past and prophesized exciting futures through new technologies, futurisms that emerged from the margins were motivated by different urges – to question Eurocentric ideas of progress, development, scientific rationality, and techno futures. Afrofuturism, Latinx Futurism, and different kinds of Subaltern Futurisms have imagined alternate futures through speculative art and fiction by firmly holding on to the past.

In the Indian subcontinent, artists Subash Thebe Limbu and Osheen Siva have conceptualised Adivasi Futurism and Tamil Dalit Futures respectively. This conversation will discuss how they utilise the anti-caste philosophy that guides their multimodal artwork. It will explore how the artists use speculative art to posit alternate futures that resist caste and privilege their identities. The conversation, moderated by Prof. K.A. Geetha and Priteegandha Naik will discuss Dalit and Adivasi futurism and the potential it offers to dream up new and equal futures.

Join Bonington Gallery’s Director, Tom Godfrey, for this hour-long gallery tour of our current exhibition – Social Resource Project for Tennis Clubs.

Free and open to all, gain a unique insight into this exhibition and Stephen Willats’ work. Explore the origins of Social Resource Project for Tennis Clubs (1971/2) through the archival material on display, and how Willats’ early years in Nottingham proved influential to his subsequent career. This walkthrough will also look at the new works the artist has recently made in response to revisiting Nottingham and the original locations of Social Resource Project for Tennis Clubs (1971/2).

BOOK YOUR FREE PLACE NOW

Spaces are limited, and booking is required. Meet in Bonington Foyer (outside the doors to the Gallery) at 12.55 pm for a prompt start.

Audio/visual invites conversations about the significance and impact of visual communication (art, design, imagery, media, advertising, maps) and audio communication through music, but also the impact of language choice, and conversation. Events in this segment foreground meaning conveyed by music and art, and invite attention to global artists working in experimental ways with sound and the visual arts.

The Formations programme is an online series of free, public events led by the Postcolonial Studies Centre at Nottingham Trent University in collaboration with Bonington Gallery. The series foregrounds the work of underrepresented writers, academics, artists, intellectuals and activists worldwide who address inequalities of all kinds, often bringing people from different places and working practices together for important conversations.

Explore the craft of film making with Andrew Graves

Friday 6 May 2022, 7 – 8 pm

Ever wondered how you might increase your understanding of cinema? This one-off workshop will offer you the chance to examine films and their content more clearly, giving you the tools to analyse movies and their messages. Including plenty of clips, case studies, and discussion, we will deconstruct imagery, character and visual metaphor affording you the opportunity to appreciate Hollywood and beyond with a deeper understanding of the film making craft.

This workshop is online via Microsoft Teams, spaces are limited.

Listening with our feet… Kate McMillan in Conversation with Sophie Fuggle

Wednesday 11 May 2022, 7 – 8 pm

In this online event, artist Kate McMillan will be talking about various projects exploring the postcolonial legacies of former penal colonies, prison islands alongside the ongoing use of extraterritorial detention by countries such as Australia and the United States. We will be talking about of the notion of ‘listening with my feet’ – listening as a decolonial tool on contested ground, and the influence of indigenous thinking on McMillan growing up in Australia. We will also explore McMillan’s collaborative work with Cat Hope considering ways in which systemic silencing of those both displaced and detained as part of colonial and neocolonial modes of government might be listened to differently.

Watch this event on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

An evening of Sound and Conversation with The Venus Bushfires

Wednesday 15 June 2022, 7 – 8.30 pm

Join us for an evening of music with The Venus Bushfires, interluded with a conversation with Bethan Evans.

The Venus Bushfires is a creative collective of one and many, of which Helen Epega is the only constant member. The Nigerian-British singer-songwriter, composer and performance artist explores the ethereal sounds of the ‘hang’, the power of the talking drum and the quirks of children’s toys cross-fertilising multiple visual and musical styles.

This event will take place at Bonington Gallery.

Watch this event on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Reading: This One Sky Day by Leone Ross

Friday 24 June 2022, 7 – 8 pm

Join us to hear Leone Ross read from her latest novel, This One Sky Day, in discussion with Bethan Evans.

Leone Ross is a novelist, short story writer, editor/copy-editor, and reviewer of fiction. She was born in Coventry England, and when she was six years old migrated with her mother to Jamaica, where she was raised and educated. After graduating from the University of the West Indies in 1990, Ross returned to England to complete a Master’s degree in International Journalism at City University, in London, where she now lives. Ross’s writing is genre-bending and world-tilting, revelling in the magical realist and surrealist.

10 randomly selected people signed up to the event will receive a free copy of This One Sky Day. This event will be online via YouTube Live.

Watch this event on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is delighted to invite Giorgio Sadotti to speak as part of the 2017 Fine Art Live Lecture Series.

(b.1955, Manchester) Sadotti lives and works in London. He gained his MFA at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA, 1981; MA Sculpture at Manchester Polytechnic, Manchester, Britain, 1978; BA Hons at Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham, Britain, 1977.

Sadotti will be exhibiting at Bonington Gallery from Friday 24 February until Friday 31 March 2017, in his current solo exhibition, SHAPELESS IMPACT NOT TIME SLOW IS (FLITS BY).

Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include:

Recent group exhibitions include:

ABOUT THE FINE ART LIVE LECTURE SERIES

The Fine Art Live Lecture Series is an initiative by Nottingham Trent University’s Fine Art course, whereby creative practitioners are invited to deliver a lecture to current students. The lectures are also open to staff, alumni and the general public.

The lectures take place during term-time only.