How to Be Both: A Celebration of Multiple Belongings and Creative Trajectories, in Europe and Beyond

Description

Debates about the political future of Europe are increasingly shaped by nationalist and nativist resentment, but also by the contrasting idea of Europe as a single cultural space, defined by a shared heritage and a common set of values and traditions. Against the binary, we wish to uphold the creative and enabling power of cosmopolitan diversity and multiple belongings. Artists, filmmakers and writers will share their own singular perspectives on a continent which which they call home - but not their only home. Heterogeneity and undecidability, in sharp contrast with dominant discourse, emerge as the crucial values that can form and inform our collective struggle for meaning, and our shared journey into an uncertain future.       

Speakers will include the screenwriter and director Nasheed Qamar Faruqi, the novelist Yara Rodriques Fowler, and the filmmaker and artist Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen, among others.

The event will be chaired by Dr Florian Mussgnug (Comparative Literature), the academic director of the UCL Cities partnerships Programme in Rome.

Organised by Cities partnerships Programme, with UCL European Institute and UCL’s Grand Challenge of Cultural Understanding European Voices initiative.

Image credit: © Pablo Bronstein, 'Chinese Bridge in Landscape', printed wood, meadow arts commission, Weston Park, 2017.