“As a child, navigating my way through the world, I built bridges; at first tentatively, almost always painfully. Finding a way through what I felt to be true; what I was told to be true; and what I wanted to be true. Rhythms carried me, different ports. Cadence reverberated in fleeting comfort.

Tactics of survival return when confronted with factual inaccuracies, silent omissions, the troubling of feeling when documents scream back.

The unsubstantiated continues to facilitate a way of making.

Tracing a methodology into the present, this talk will attempt to elucidate different writing strategies in relation to research embedded within political and social histories.” (Alia Syed)

Born in 1964 in Swansea, Alia Syed grew up in Glasgow and now lives in London. Her films have been shown at international institutions such as LACMA, the Moscow Biennale, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Hayward Gallery, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, INIVA, WKV Stuttgart and the Yale Centre for British Art. Her work investigates the nature and role of language in intercultural communication, with a focus on borders and boundaries, translation and the trans-cultured self.  Syed’s films draw from personal and historical realities in order to address the subjective relationship to gender, location, diaspora and colonialism.

“In Focus artist and filmmaker Alia Syed will discuss her practice.”