Previously at the ICA - Events

The Performance of Protest: a panel on visual culture and aesthetics

9 Jun 2017

This panel discussion focusses on the relationship between art, protest and performance. Recent years has witnessed a huge increase in the number of protests around the world which have challenged economic institutions and political practices, including the Arab Spring, Occupy movements, pro-women’s movements in the US and beyond, and anti- austerity movements across Europe. Protestors have a range of options open to them in order to get their voice heard and increasingly protestors use aesthetics in order to communicate their ideas to the public. The role of social media in amplifying the performance of protest is considered, especially the production and dissemination of visual imagery.

The aesthetics of protest may include visual, material, textual and performative elements of protest, such as images, symbols, graffiti, clothes, art, but also other elements such as forms of rhetoric, slang, humour, slogans, as well as the choreography of protest actions in public spaces. This panel brings together artists/practitioners and academics to discuss the performance of protest in contentious politics. Whilst panelists will discuss Turkey and the Gezi Park protests in particular it will other explore manifestations of the performance of protest around the world.

This event is chaired by Prof. Catherine Moriarty (University of Brighton) and panellists include Isil Egrikavuk (Performance Artist, Istanbul), Pelin Basaran (Programme manager, Contact, Manchester), Dr. Aidan McGarry (University of Brighton) and Dr. Umut Korkut (Glasgow Caledonian University).

Speaker biographies

  • Pelin Basaran

    Pelin Basaran is a curator and producer with an extensive experience of developing and delivering high-profile contemporary performance projects across Europe. She is currently working as programme manager at Contact, Manchester. She  founded and worked as director of PARC which supported artistic creation and the presentation of the contemporary performance in Turkey. She also founded and worked as the researcher and co-director of the project “Siyah Bant-Freedom of Expression in the Arts” in Turkey.

  • Isil Egrikavuk

    In her regular newspaper column, mock TV shows and other works, Isil Egrikavuk creates absurd situations that highlight the manipulative power of the media. Eğrikavuk studied literature in Istanbul then went to The School of The Art Institute of Chicago for her MFA in Performance Art. She is the creator of a column Güncel Sanat Kafası, in which she writes on contemporary art in Istanbul’s daily newspaper Radikal. Eğrikavuk also teaches media and video art at Istanbul Bilgi University.

  • Dr Umut Korkut

    Dr Umut Korkut is a Reader in International Economics at Glasgow School for Business and Society at Glasgow Caledonian University. His current research focus is broadly social policy, liberalization, religion and gender rights, migration, democratization and Europeanization in Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey. His first book was entitled Liberalisation Challenges in Hungary: Elitism, Progressivism, and Populism by Palgrave. He has published an edited volume entitled The Discourses and Politics of Migration in Europe by Palgrave in Europe in Transition: The NYU European Studies Series. He has received an AHRC research grant for The Aesthetics of Protest: Visual Culture & Communication in Turkey. Dr Korkut is currently a Trustee for Political Studies Association. He has a forthcoming monograph co-authored with Hande Eslen-Ziya, entitled Politics and Gender Identity in Turkey: Centralised Islam for Socio-Economic Control, published by Routledge.

  • Dr Aidan McGarry

    Dr Aidan McGarry is a Principal Lecturer in Politics and the Subject Leader for Politics in the School of Applied Social Science. Since joining the University of Brighton (UoB) in 2008, he has been awarded a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 2010, a University Research Sabbatical in 2012 and a 'Rising Star' award in 2014. In 2011, he conducted research at the European Centre for Minority Issues and in 2013 he spent his sabbatical at Columbia University, New York at the Department of Government as a Visiting Scholar. He chairs the UoB's Social Movement Network which convenes monthly research seminars and is the Principal Investigator of the AHRC funded project 'The Aesthetics of Protest: Visual Culture and Communication in Turkey.

  • Professor Catherine Moriarty

    Professor Catherine Moriarty is Curatorial Director of the University of Brighton Design Archives. Her work engages with issues that lie at the heart of current research in the humanities – cultural memory, inter-textuality, visual and material culture, particularly sculpture, and the research potential of digital content. Moriarty has directed a variety of projects, most recently Exploring British Design in 2014/15, an AHRC-funded collaboration with the Archives Hub. She has written on the history of the Design Council’s photographic holdings, and on the relationship between sculpture and design. In 2007 she curated an exhibition on the work of the designer and sculptor Bernard Schottlander with the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds and, in 2013, an exhibition about Barbara Jones with the Whitechapel Art Gallery.

This event forms part of the Design Culture Salon series that is curated by Professor Guy Julier (University of Brighton/Victoria and Albert Museum).

Supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Brighton

This event is part of Crossings: Stories of Migration, an ICA-led UK-wide film and events programme supported by the BFI using National Lottery funding and in partnership with the Goethe-Institut and the School of Film & Television, Falmouth University.

Crossings: Stories of Migration /// ICA Trailer

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