Across two days this May, UCL Urban Laboratory will explore how performance cultures help shape transnational urban narratives, with a set of lectures, panels and performances. RSVP now for this exciting season.
Commencing with our annual Cities Imaginaries Lecture on Thursday 16 May, we will then take over the Bloomsbury Theatre on Friday 17 May for an afternoon and evening of performance and discussion considering how performance forges ties between communities dispersed across historic transnational networks, and creates shared urban histories and heritage between cities.
Take a look at the programme below and book for the three events individually:
Cities Imaginaries Lecture 2019: Sonjah Stanley Niaah Thursday 16 May, 18.30 - 20.00
Free entry, RSVP essential
Sonjah Stanley Niaah (The University of the West Indies) is one of the foremost experts on Black Atlantic performance geographies and Caribbean cultural studies. She is a leading author on Jamaican popular culture, including 2010's Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto. Her lecture will use boundarylessness as a theoretical point of departure, considering the phenomenon of the ‘videolight’ (video camera) in the making of dancehall celebrities, and the evolution of the dancehall performance aesthetic, both inside and beyond urban Jamaica.
Afternoon of panels at the Bloomsbury Studio. Panel 1 invites leading thinkers to consider the event’s key question of how performance culture shapes urban narratives, through presentations of their own innovative projects. Includes: Richard Bramwell (Loughborough University); Julian Henriquez (Goldsmiths); Mykaell Riley (University of Westminster); and Joy White (author and researcher). Through collaborative discussion the second panel provides a forum for PhD researchers to discuss their work on music and the relationsip to the the city as socio-cultural, economic, historical, and political object/agent.
This event presents artists working across different mediums for an evening of performance and discussion relating to their creative influences, inspirations, and approaches to creating and performing music and poetry which consider questions of identity, mobility and migration. Hosted by Nicole Logan (Transmission Roundhouse), performers include Melz (grime MC), Natalie Hyacinth (dub), Shama Rahman (sitar singer-songwriter), and poetry from Nacheal Catnott, Derrick Kakembo and Munesu Mukombe.
