Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind will discuss the works featured in the exhibition In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain with academic, editor and writer Anthony Downey.

In this ambitious show, Sansour and Lind create a vision of a futuristic world where the excavation of the past is a battleground. They offer a poetic and charged reflection on the politicisation of archaeology where the material past is used as a tool to justify territorial claims and assert historic entitlement. This is in particular reference to Israel/Palestine but is also reflective of other contested spaces and histories.

The discussion will offer compelling insight into Sansour’s practice which often explores the crossover between the fictional and the factual, interrogating personal and political issues.

Larissa Sansour was born in East Jerusalem, Palestine and now lives and works in London. Her work is interdisciplinary, utilising video, photography, sculpture and installation. She describes the central theme of her work as exploring ‘the tug and pull of fiction and reality in a Middle-Eastern context’, and has recently used both science fiction and comic books to explore this. Her work has been exhibited at Tate Modern, London; the Centre Pompidou, France; the Istanbul Biennial; Sharjah, UAE; and the Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark.

Søren Lind is a Danish author. He writes children’s books and literary fiction. With a background in philosophy, Lind has written books on mind, language and understanding before turning to fiction. He has published a novel, collections of short stories and children’s books. In addition to his literary production, Lind is also a visual artist and writes short film scripts.

Anthony Downey is an academic, editor and writer. His research focuses on global forms of cultural production and their relationship to the politics of contemporary art practices; new media, collaborative and participative art practices; human rights, bio-politics and migration; and contemporary cultural production the Maghreb, the Middle East and Global South. Recent and upcoming publications include Future Imperfect: Art Institutions and Critical Practices in the Middle East (Sternberg Press, 2016); Dissonant Archives: Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2015); Art and Politics Now (Thames and Hudson, 2014); Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practice in North Africa and the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2014); Slavs and Tatars: Mirrors for Princes (JRP Ringier, 2015). He holds a Ph.D from Goldsmiths College, London; is the Director of the Master’s Programme in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, and the Editor-in-Chief of Ibraaz.

FREE, rsvp@mosaicrooms.org