About
This event is part of the Being Human Festival 2017. Come along between 12pm and 5pm on November 25th 2017 to see artefacts, photography, film, art, performance, and poetry on the theme of 'lost and found.' Each exhibit will be accompanied by the artist so visitors can discuss the art with the creators.
Exhibition
This unique ‘pop-up’ exhibition uses creative work to reflect on what it means to live within urban spaces problematized by constant design, dereliction, and rejuvenation. Join students as they interact with art, photography, film, artefacts, performance, and poetry to explore city ruination in exciting ways. Whether you have a few spare minutes or a few hours, join us and talk with the artists behind the work. You can even contribute to a public exhibit in this highly interactive event!
Inspiration
Ruins are often monuments to history and the destructive event which rendered them ruined, like Pompeii. But, what does it mean to live with ruination that has been created through abandonment? This event engages with the theoretical work of Anthony Vidler, Tim Edensor and Jonathan Veitch on ruination as well as the work on urban and public space by Liam Murphy Bell, Gavin Goodwin, Dikmen Bezmez, Daniel R. Kerr and others. On the theme of ‘Lost and Found’, this event encourages visitors to consider the spaces around them and how sites and buildings have become ‘lost’ due to various political and economic pressures. London is an area ripe with dereliction and restoration and along with contemplating what is means to live amongst ruins, we also think about what it means to live with renovation and rejuvenation. By combining numerous disciplines including art and geography, this event offers something for everyone.
Relevance
Focus on city living and the politics and economics of abandoned spaces gives the exhibition contemporary relevance. The exhibition will help visitors rethink the spaces they inhabit when working, living, and travelling in London. With related issues of homelessness, austerity and so forth, an investigation of ruined and discarded buildings will be of particular interest. The theme of ‘Lost and Found’ is at the heart of the exhibition. When thinking about ruination we are contemplating loss. However, the ruin is also present in some form and thus is both lost and present simultaneously. Often, we see ruined spaces reconceptualised as monuments and memorials; but, we also see these spaces renovated as alternate spaces (for example, a ruined bank into luxury apartments). The exhibition seeks to tease apart what ‘lost’ and ‘found’ means when urban ruins form part of the city but are also divided from contemporary living.
Organiser
Ruin and Rebuild is organised and hosted by Dr Grace Halden, a lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London. Grace’s work in the field of contemporary literature and culture extends to examine international crises and apocalyptic narratives in both fiction and non-fiction with particular interest in the representation of displacement, migration, and life-changing injury with its personal and communal consequences. Themes of urban ruination following conflict-based catastrophe are at the centre of her current research project. The Ruin and Rebuild event intersects with Grace’s research interests and is designed to provide creative students the opportunity to display their own related research.
Research Background
Photographs taken during Grace Halden’s Ruination research (2014-2017). This project directly inspired the theme of the Ruin and Rebuild exhibition.
Ruination will form part of a larger research project. Find out more here.
