Symposium: Audio-visual Media and the Global Dream Space

Reacting to planetary permacrisis and the need to collectively imagine new forms of worldmaking, this event analyses the role of audio-visual media in the global dream space.

From the mid-twentieth century, audio-visual media constituted a key site for creating, circulating and debating ideas about an emerging and increasingly interconnected world space. Liberation movements, civil society actors and international organisations such as the United Nations appealed to contested signifiers such as “peace” and “freedom” as they pursued contradictory modernising agendas, ranging from anticolonial worldmaking to liberal-capitalist internationalism and imperial domination. Drawing on and expanding Anna Tsing’s concept, this symposium seeks to chart the audio-visual production and mediation of the “global dream space” that emerged from this historical process.

In the present day, the sizeable archive of this contested “global dream space” is little-known and institutionally and geographically dispersed, but it is also attracting increasing interest in the academic, archival and creative communities. In the face of planetary permacrisis and a collective urgency to imagine new forms of worldmaking, this event seeks to take stock of and analyse the audio-visual project of this global space from multiple perspectives. Through a variety of formats, participants will place an emphasis on presenting diverse audio-visual materials including films, videos, filmstrips, photographs, and television and radio programmes.

The symposium is organised by David Wood (University College London/Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) and Miguel Errazu (Goldsmiths, University of London) with the support of the UK Research & Innovation “Horizon Europe Guarantee” programme (EP/Z001919/1 and EP/Y015088/1), Centre for Visual Anthropology of Goldsmiths, University of London and SELCS-CMII/Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London.

Day 2
Friday, 5 June
Birkbeck Cinema, Birkbeck University of London

13:00h - 14:30h Session 5: Spaces and Ecologies: from Utopia to Revolution (panel)
Alex Bickley Trott (Oxford Brookes University), Sofia Sampaio (Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon) Alejandro Pedregal (Aalto University, Finland)

14:45h - 15:45h — Session 6: Religion and the Global Dream Space (panel)
Anna Cant (LSE), Karl Schoonover (University of Warwick)

16:45h - 17:45h — Session 7: Restitution as a Transnational Collaborative Practice (workshop)
Samar Abdelrahman (University of Liverpool), Erica Carter (KCL), Dan Hodgkinson (Oxford Department of International Development), Eiman Hussein (KCL), Nikolaus Perneczky (QMUL)

18:00h - 20:00h — Session 8: How to Screen the Remains? (screenings)
Moctezuma’s Revenge: Notes for a Creative-Critical Screening Project on UNESCO and Mexican Cultural Diplomacy
David Wood (UCL/UNAM), Rodrigo Carrillo Tripp (Astilla Teatro, Mexico City).

The Uncle of Bolivia: Friction, Loss and Celebration of the Miners’ Film Workshop
Miguel Errazu (Goldsmiths/Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola)

Full programme

Dates & times

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