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“Start ‘from that full insertion in the present – in its struggles, its challenges, its dangers – to interrogate the past and to search within it for the genealogy of the present situation’. And from that starting point, begin to construct a possible alternative scenario, an alternative conception of ‘modernity’, an alternative future.”

Stuart Hall, ‘Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left’ (1988) quoting E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, ‘Post-Marxism without Apologies’ (1987)

Catastrophes signal a crisis of survival, knowledge, and power. They simultaneously herald destruction and renewal, political closures and openings, the demise of old ways of knowing and the emergence of new ways to relate to our ever-changing world.

The Stuart Hall Foundation’s first full-length annual programme, Catastrophe and Emergence, draws from these ideas to invite artists, academics and organisers to examine this conjuncture, trace the histories constituting it, and consider the political and creative possibilities that might emerge from what was.

There is no shortage of prescient political questions to consider in 2024. Programme contributors have expressed a desire to think through a handful of those questions: what might it mean for British party politics if Labour win the next general election, breaking fourteen years of Conservative rule, without mass support? How can we make sense of the contradictions between mainstream mediations of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s totalising destruction of the besieged Gaza Strip? What can the current political landscape tell us about the linkages between domestic and foreign affairs more broadly, about how the boundaries separating identities, histories, political realities and imaginaries are constructed and enforced? How are creative practitioners responding to this moment? Can the groundswell of political struggles against the privatisation of public infrastructure, increased police powers, gender discrimination, imperialism and climate change coalesce to articulate a project for societal renewal? Where will the right claim discursive victories in the development of a new common sense?

The Stuart Hall Foundation is dedicating the 2024 programme to nurturing a variety of online and in-person spaces for confronting the present, sharing insights through free and open dialogue, and honing the discursive tools to imagine and articulate alternatives together.


7th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation with Isaac Julien

Saturday 23rd March 2024, 2pm – 5pm GMT
Conway Hall, London & Online

The Stuart Hall Foundation was delighted to welcome acclaimed filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien for our 7th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation at Conway Hall, London, on Saturday 23rd March. Responding to the theme of our 2024 programme, Catastrophe and Emergence, Isaac delivered a keynote presentation focused on the current state of the imaginary, exploring the connection between image-making and political allegory. The event included a new two-screen presentation of Isaac Julien’s immersive installation Once Again… (Statues Never Die), which was the first time the piece has been shown in this particular format in the UK.

View photography from the event here.

In partnership with Conway Hall supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust and Cockayne Grants for the Arts, a donor-advised fund held at the London Community Foundation


Reading the Crisis

May – July 2024
Online

The Reading the Crisis series asks: what kinds of tools and strategies are needed to confront this conjuncture? This series seeks to advance Stuart Hall’s thinking by analysing a curated selection of three essays in relation to present-day political formations.

Watch – Reading the Crisis: ‘The West and the Rest’ with Ilan Pappé and Priyamvada Gopal

Watch – Reading the Crisis: ‘The Neoliberal Revolution’ with Aditya Chakrabortty and Jeremy Gilbert

Watch – Reading the Crisis: ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’ with Gail Lewis and Roderick Ferguson

The conversations are chaired by Senior Lecturer and former BBC Radio Senior Producer, Aasiya Lodhi. Each conversation forms an online teach-in space dedicated to demonstrating how engaging in a conjunctural analysis can enrich artistic practice, deepen organising work, and academic study. 

In partnership with Duke University Press supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust


Stuart Hall in Translation

July – Autumn 2024
Online and in print

The ‘Stuart Hall in Translation‘ series observes Stuart Hall’s ideas in motion by tracing their resonances and transformations as they oscillate between languages, historical moments, and varying socio-political contexts.  The series, produced in partnership with Cultural Studies journal, invites translators of Stuart Hall’s work from across the world to reflect on the following questions:

  • What can be lost and gained when texts are translated into different languages?
  • Can ideas form linkages across difference?
  • How can ideas transcend spatial and temporal boundaries?
  • What are the political implications associated with ideas moving across and between temporal and spatial boundaries?

To initiate the project, in August 2022 we invited Bill Schwarz, co-author of Stuart Hall’s memoir Familiar Stranger, and Liv Sovik, professor of Communication at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, to discuss the nuances of translating Familiar Stranger and Hall’s ideas into Portuguese for a Brazilian audience.

Listen – Stuart Hall in Translation: Brazilian Portuguese, with Bill Schwarz and Liv Sovik

In 2024, the Foundation extended the invitation to other translators of Hall’s work, asking them to write about their own experiences, and addressing the disparities, challenges, and synergies of translating Hall’s ideas into a different language and national context. These new texts are now published in Cultural Studies and shared on the Stuart Hall Foundation website, featuring contributions from Victor Rego Diaz, Natascha Khakpour, Jan Niggemann, Ingo Pohn-Lauggas, Nora Räthzel, Yutaka Yoshida, Eduardo Restrepo and K Biswas.

Read – Introduction – the Unfinished Stuart Hall (K Biswas)

Read – Through a southern prism: translating Stuart Hall into Spanish (Eduardo Restrepo)

Read – Translating Familiar Stranger into German: the particularities of the historical, cultural and political context (Victor Rego Diaz, Natascha Khakpour, Jan Niggemann, Ingo Pohn-Lauggas & Nora Räthzel)

Read – ‘Comrade unknown to me’: colonialism, modernity, and conjunctural translation in Familiar Stranger (Yutaka Yoshida)

Supported by Taylor & Francis, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust. 


Autumn Keynote with Robin D. G. Kelley

Thursday 5th September 2024, 7 – 9pm BST
Conway Hall, London & Online

The Stuart Hall Foundation was thrilled to welcome internationally renowned historian and writer Professor Robin D. G. Kelley to our third Autumn Keynote at Conway Hall, London. Professor Robin D. G. Kelley was invited to respond to the theme of our 2024 programme Catastrophe and Emergence. He delivered a keynote which examined this current conjuncture, traced the histories constituting it, and considered the political and creative possibilities that may yet emerge from what was. Following the keynote, interdisciplinary writer, artist, editor and curator Imani Mason Jordan chaired a discussion with Professor Kelley, as well as an audience Q&A.

View photography from the event here.

In partnership with Conway Hall Ethical Society supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust, Cockayne Grants for the Arts, a donor-advised fund held at the London Community Foundation, and Words of Colour.

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Assets designed by Richard Harrington and Jess Hall