Logan Center for the Arts
Screening Room 201
915 E 60th St
Day two of a two-day conference
Free and open to the public
Food and beverages served
REGISTER
*See below for full day one schedule and presenter bios*
*Click here for day one schedule and presenter bios*
Beyond the toll of US-backed “forever wars,” recent years have cast the MENA region into unprecedented turmoil—from the devastating ethnocide and genocide of Palestinians across Gaza and the West Bank, to the current attacks on Iran and Lebanon, the genocide in Sudan, the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime in Syria, the collapse of the Lebanese state and economy, and the military coup in Egypt. We have also witnessed the promise of revolutions sweeping the region following the 2010 Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia that catapulted the Arab Spring. While moments of catastrophe, crisis, and collapse may seem antithetical to imaginaries of the future, the capacity to dream or speculate is essential to undoing to sites of epistemic and ontological violence, while also charting possible paths forwards. Moreover, speculative acts of world-building can realize the critical potential of impossible acts of imagination that empower us to envision entirely new archeologies of the future.
This two-day symposium brings together contemporary artists from the Arab world and diaspora—in conversation with curators and scholars—to reflect on the importance of speculation “in the construction of alternative states of becoming” (Sulaïman Majali, 2015). Interrogating the possibilities and limits of futurity amidst ecological, territorial, existential, and ideological states of crisis, these artists turn to sites of historical and present rupture to envision alternate, possible, or impossible worlds. These speculative projects can be understood as critical modes of reading the assemblages of bio-politics, colonialism, capitalism, and environmental collapse that theorize other ways of being, knowing, and imagining. Disrupting the geo-spatial logics of the past, present, and assumed future, these artists not only “write alternative histories but also articulate counterfuturisms as imaginaries of times-to-come” (Jussi Parikka, 2018).
SCHEDULE FOR DAY TWO
1:30 pm
Doors Open
2:00 – 2:20 pm
Introductory Remarks from Hoda El Shakry
2:20 – 4:00 pm
Screenings (in order of presentation)
Space Exodus (5min 53 sec)
Nation Estate (9 min 2 sec)
In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain (28 min 30 sec)
In Vitro (27 min 44 sec)
As If No Misfortune Had Occurred in the Night (20 min 31 sec)
4:00 – 4:15 pm
Brief Intermission
4:15 – 5:30 pm
Roundtable Discussion followed by Q&A: Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind in conversation with Curator Dr. Nat Muller and Scholar Dr. Hoda El Shakry
5:30 – 6:30 pm
Reception outside Logan Screening Room
Larissa Sansour is a Palestinian artist working primarily with film, photography and installation. She was born in East Jerusalem and studied fine arts in London, New York and Copenhagen. Central to her work is the dialectics between myth, documentary and historical narrative, often explored through the lens of science fiction. In recent years, Sansour has been examining the role of nostalgia, memory and inherited trauma for personal and national identity. Her films and installations have garnered critical acclaim for their cinematic visuals and subversive storytelling. Sansour’s work is included in major collections and shown in galleries, museums and film festivals worldwide. In 2019, she represented Denmark at the 58th Venice Biennial. In 2020, she was the shared recipient of the prestigious Jarman Award (UK). She has shown her work at Tate Modern, MoMA and Centre Pompidou. Recent solo exhibitions include Amos Rex in Helsinki, Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, Gothenburg Konsthall in Sweden, Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, KINDL in Berlin, Gifu Museum of Contemporary Art in Japan and EMST in Athens. Sansour currently lives and works in London, UK.
Søren Lind is a Danish author, artist, director, and scriptwriter. With a background in philosophy, Lind wrote books on mind, language and understanding before turning to art, film and fiction. He has published novels, shorts story collections. His children’s books are translated into several languages. Lind screens and exhibits his films at museums, galleries and film festivals worldwide. His work was shown at the Danish Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennial. Other recent venues and festivals include the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, Kunsten in Denmark, KINDL in Berlin, International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL) and BFI London Film Festival (UK). He lives and works in London.
This rare screening brings together the three films in Larissa Sansour’s science fiction trilogy—A Space Exodus (2009), Nation Estate (2013) and In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain (2015)—along with her two-channel science fiction film In Vitro (2019), commissioned for the Danish Pavillion of the 58th Venice Biennale, and the three-channel Arabic-language opera, As If No Misfortune Had Occurred in the Night (2022), produced in collaboration with Søren Lind. These films showcase the impressive aesthetic and conceptual range of Sansour and Lind’s filmic practice.
The screening will be followed by a roundtable discussion and audience Q&A moderated by scholar Dr. Hoda El Shakry (UChicago) and curator Dr. Nat Muller, who recently curated Sansour’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands, Larissa Sansour: Rogue Agents of History, which just opened at the Wereld Museum in Amsterdam.
Sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Division, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, The Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at The University of Chicago, The Department of Comparative Literature, and the University of Chicago Divinity School.