by Noemi Gunea, MA Performance Design and Practice
at Central Saint Martins
Passagens – Session 3 with David Roberts and Elam Forrester
Reporting back on Passagens Reading Group – Session Three: Moving
The third session of the Passagens series took place at Chelsea College of Arts. Our guest speakers were David Roberts, who teaches at Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and Elam Forrester, London based filmmaker. Together with Andrea Zimmerman, they form the artistic collective Fugitive Images.
David started the discussion introducing John Dewey’s concept of moral imagination; implying on the one hand empathy, the possibility of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, and one the other hand ‘dramatic rehearsal’ – rehearsing all possible outcomes that your actions would generate. We debated how necessary dramatic rehearsal is in rethinking the architecture of the future, and how far removed this concept is in most cities nowadays.
Passagens – Session 3 with David Roberts and Elam Forrester
The session continued with a presentation of their work – showing us excerpts from their film ‘An estate, reverie’, installations, public art projects and the artists’ book Estate. Elam talked about her work in El Salvador and the photo and film exhibition ‘Stories of El Salvador’ that she curated.
The main themes discussed were how urban planning, especially in London, is turning a blind eye to people and encourages segregation, and the effects of gentrification and pushing low income people out of the city. Two examples of social initiatives that fight this phenomenon are Concrete Action and Architects for Social Housing.
The subject touched a cord with many participants, whether they’ve lived in London their whole lives and feel the city is now rejecting them, or they are ‘young nomads’.
Finally, I’ll leave you with a little bibliography suggested by David – ‘Utopian theatre’ by Gill Dolan and ‘Fair play’ by Jen Harvey.
About Fugitive Images
Fugitive Images was founded in 2009 by Andrea Luka Zimmerman and Lasse Johansson, and since 2013 is run by Andrea Luka Zimmerman and David Roberts.
Fugitive Images platform grew out of a desire to capture the peculiar moment of the place where they lived and work immediately prior to it being demolished. Haggerston Estate was suspended somewhere between it first being occupied in the 1930’s and demolition in 2014, a place in transformation, in wait.
http://www.fugitiveimages.org.uk/
More about David Roberts:
David Roberts is part of collaborative art practice Fugitive Images and of architecture collective Involve, Architectural History & Theory Tutor and Research Ethics Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. His research, art and cultural activist practice engages community groups whose homes and livelihoods are under threat from urban policy. He co-wrote and co-produced the documentary/fiction film, Estate, a Reverie; co-curated the exhibition Real Estates around issues of spatial justice; and co-coordinated the successful campaign to list Balfron Tower at Grade II*. His PhD thesis in Architectural Design, Make Public: Performing public housing in regenerating east London, explored the history and future of two east London housing estates undergoing regeneration and won a RIBA President’s Award for Research 2016. He has exhibited, lectured and published work on performance, poetry, public housing and site-specific practice.
More about Elam Forrester:
Born in London, Elam Forrester is a young filmmaker and photographer who has worked on a number of film projects and exhibitions both in the UK and in Central America, focusing on social issues such as housing, London’s vanishing markets, issues affecting young Londoners and Women’s Rights in El Salvador.
In 2015 she produced her own film and photographic exhibition called Stories of El Salvador, which included her short films and photographs that she made while volunteering there. Elam is also a graduate of University of the Arts, London College of Communication.
http://www.elamforrester.co.uk/
About Passagens:
With the aim of interrogating dialogues about a cross-disciplinary subject Passagens (a Postgraduate Community Reading Group) is a response to increased anxiety amongst students at UAL, to address the meaning and the issues surrounding the act of migration. Passagens takes its meaning from the linguistic variables of the Portuguese ‘passagem’, which implies a number of different journeys: from one period in life to another, from one country, language culture and conviction to another, from being home to being a foreigner, from student to professional, child to teenager to adult, but also from one geological epoch to another, and allows for diverse perspectives to interweave.
This event is the third in a series of four events, organised by Professor Lucy Orta, Chair of Art and the Environment -UAL Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF) Research Centre , in collaboration with CSF Associate Curator Camilla Palestra, and is supported by the UAL Postgraduate Community.