There’s No Place Like Home: Detention, Activism & Art
Panel Discussion & Screening Event
Tuesday 21 May, 5pm – 7pm
Free, booking required
A panel discussion around the growing practice of detention worldwide and the impact on civil liberties, social cohesion and human rights. The panel will take place in the context of a presentation of photographs that explores the ways in which male refugees and asylum seekers experience detention.
The panel will consist of a mix of academics, activists and artists including Deirdre Conlon (University of Leeds), Stuart Crossthwaite (SYMAAG), Natasha Davis (Artist), Tom Martin (University of Lincoln) and Lisa White (University of Lincoln) and will be chaired by Ben Hudson (University of Lincoln), a specialist in human rights law.
This panel discussion is sponsored by the Lincoln Institute for Advanced Study in collaboration with the Mansions of the Future and the Centre for Culture and Creativity.
Tom Martin:
Tom is a photographer, participatory project practitioner and academic, specialising in creating meaningful images about humanitarian issues through photography and video. Although he works with large organisations and donors, his interest is primarily in the people and communities he collaborates with.
Tom’s academic research practice explores participatory photography projects in post-conflict environments, working towards creative approaches that address both the roots of conflict and the inherent power relationships in the development sector.
Natasha Davis:
Natasha Davis is a performance and visual artist with over 40 solo and collaborative projects in a range of media including live performance, installation, film and publication. Her work has been shown in the UK (National Theatre Studio, Tate Modern, V&A, Birmingham Rep, Rich Mix London, Barbican Plymouth, Playhouse Derry, Capstone Liverpool, Colchester Arts Centre and many others) and internationally in Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Serbia, USA, Canada, Australia, India, China, and South Africa (at venues such as Power Station of Arts Shanghai, Project Arts Centre Dublin, Point Centre for Contemporary Art Nicosia, Theatre Works Melbourne etc).
Her performance Internal Terrains heads the British Library’s online digital performance collection and is used as its banner and twitter icon. She collaborates with artists, scientists, academics and people from all walks of life, most recently with the University of Ottawa, VCA Melbourne, DDL Toronto and Science Gallery London.
Her work is featured in Traces, a public project about migrant artists significantly contributing to UK arts, alongside artists such as Lucien Freud, Mona Hatoum and Frank Auerbach.
Natasha’s work has been funded by Arts Council England, British Council, Tower Hamlets, Humanities Research Fund, Hosking Houses Trust, Transatlantic Fellowship, Future Arts Centres and numerous commissions and residencies.
She holds a doctorate from Warwick University and delivers lectures, talks and workshops across the world, from Buffalo to Tokyo to Grenoble to New Delhi. A monograph about her work, including texts by Natasha and other artists and scholars, is available via Live Art Development Agency’s Unbound.
Stuart Crosthwaite:
Stuart is an activist and writer and Secretary of the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group, a group of international activists campaigning for the rights of all migrants. SYMAAG opposes the immigration detention system and have organised many protests at Morton Hall detention centre just 10 miles from here.
Deirdre Conlon:
Deirdre Conlon is a critical human geographer at the University of Leeds. Trained in the US, currently based in the UK, Conlon has worked for over a decade on immigration and detention issues in the US, UK and Ireland. Her research examines immigration enforcement and governance and their impacts on migrant experience and everyday life. Current work examines detention economies, in other words, the minute ways that migrant experiences in detention are shaped by money, markets, commodification, and privatisation.
Deirdre is co-editor (with Nancy Hiemstra) of Intimate Economies of Immigration Detention: Critical Perspectives (2017, Routledge https://www.routledge.com/Intimate-Economies-of-Immigration-Detention-Critical-perspectives/Conlon-Hiemstra/p/book/9781138900660). She has published 25+ academic journal articles and book chapters. Her public scholarship includes an opinion piece in The Hill, a leading U.S. politics and policy news website https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/393684-the-danger-of-building-detention-economies as well as contributions to the UK’s Refugee Weeks events.
She is a member of national and international advocacy and collaborative/community focused research networks including Detention Watch Network (DWN https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org) in the US, Carceral Geography network https://carceralgeography.com/ and the Detention and Asylum Cluster of the Refugee Research Network http://refugeeresearch.net/ms/detention/
Please contact info@mansionsofthefuture.org or 07494 344352 with inquiries.
Image. Courtesy Manuch. SYMAAG. Looking into Morton Hall.