Tania Bruguera and Saskia Sassen In Conversation
7pm, Thursday 18th August 2016, LSE Sheikh Zayed Theatre
Theatrum Mundi, in partnership with the South London Gallery, is excited to welcome Cuban artist Tania Bruguera and sociologist Saskia Sassen to the LSE for a public conversation reflecting on Bruguera’s Immigrant Movement International project, in the context of the artist’s current residence at South London Gallery.
Tania Bruguera’s work crosses art and activism to highlight the nature of political upheaval, create real space for freedom of expression within situations of oppression, and seeks new tactics to engender global rights and citizenship for migrants. An attempted 2014 staging of her work Tatlin’s Whisper, a temporary platform allowing citizens 60 seconds of uncensored public speech, in Plaza de la Revolucion in Havana, led to her imprisonment and interrogation by the Cuban authorities.
Bruguera will be in conversation with Saskia Sassen, urban sociologist and long-time Theatrum Mundi collaborator. Sassen’s work on global migration in her recent book Expulsions highlights the devastating socioeconomic and physical conditions under which citizens across the world are literally expelled from their livelihoods and living spaces. Her ongoing interest in the “Global Street” focuses on the capabilities of cities, and particularly everyday streets, to be the spaces in which disempowered migrants can make a history and a culture for themselves.
Bringing together these critical figures working in very different ways on the same urgent issues, Theatrum Mundi continues to foster debate about how and where freedom of expression can be staged, the role of design in creating the conditions for political visibility, and the connections between art, performance and public life in cities. We are also delighted to be working with the South London Gallery.
Tickets are free but must be reserved here. We look forward to seeing you then.
The talk takes place alongside the current exhibition Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today at the South London Gallery, the second exhibition of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, and Theatrum Mundi’s Designing Politics project.
