In conversation with Isaac Julien

23 Mar 2024 4-5pm

Overview

The Stuart Hall Foundation is delighted to welcome acclaimed filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien for the 7th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation at Conway Hall, London, on Saturday 23rd March 2024. Julien’s keynote presentation will be accompanied by a new configuration of his immersive installation Once Again… (Statues Never Die) (2022).
 
Focusing on the current state of the imaginary, and exploring the connection between image-making and political allegory, Julien will draw upon the conversations he had with Stuart Hall over the years to reflect on how ideas, language and narrative strategies can transform within a visual frame to present new modes of the imaginary. He will discuss the connections between his art practice and the “diasporic dream-space” – inspired by the words of the late bell hooks – to think about the different ways in which a poetic critique and counter-imaginary can develop.
 
Since the first iteration of the Stuart Hall Foundation’s Annual Public Conversation in 2018, speakers have included, Linton Kwesi Johnson, David Edgar, Elaine Mitchener, Jacqueline Rose, Roger Robinson, Jay Bernard, Bahia Shehab and Raymond Antrobus. Isaac Julien’s Public Conversation is part of the Foundation’s first full-length annual programme, centred around the theme Catastrophe and Emergence. Examining catastrophes as signals of crises of survival, knowledge, and power, the inaugural programme invites artists, academics, and organisers to examine this conjuncture, trace the histories constituting it, and consider its political and creative possibilities.
 
The event will include a new two-screen presentation of Isaac Julien’s immersive installation Once Again… (Statues Never Die) (2022), projected on a single screen. This will be the first time the piece has been shown in this particular format in the UK. Drawing on Julien’s extensive research in the archives of the Barnes Foundation, the film explores the reciprocal impact of Alain Locke’s political philosophy and cultural organising activities, and Albert C. Barnes’s pioneering art collecting and democratic, inclusive educational enterprise.
 
Following the keynote and screening, Isaac will be in conversation with Stuart Hall Foundation Chair, and Director of the Whitechapel Gallery, Gilane Tawadros.
 
Attendees can either attend in person at Conway Hall in London, UK, or join online via a livestream.

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