Presenters:Emily Artinian, Fawn Daphne Plessner, Matthew Fluharty, Emelie Chhangur
Organized by Emily Artinian and Fawn Daphne Plessner, Street Road
Selected via Open Call
The field of art is framed by a normative belief that urban spaces constitute a ‘center’ and rural spaces a ‘periphery’. This imaginary is increasingly challenged by concepts that ambiguate conventional understandings of the ‘urban’ and the ‘rural’, as well as other framings such as 'suburban' or 'exurban'. Such designations don’t capture today’s variegated social and cultural spaces, comprised as they are of axes of relationships and mobilities amongst multiple places, including online spaces. This limited terminology reifies place through colonial vocabularies and concepts and thereby reinforces the racialization and industrialization of space, also leaving out important indigenous concepts and relations to place. Further, it can sustain immobilities, even as mobility and access are increasingly assumed. This session draws out speakers' and attendees' perspectives to examine working in multiple in-betweens, aiming to raise new questions about the cogency of claims to centrality and marginality.
Read the Session Notes here.