Urban Encounters: Photography and The Practice of Walking 

and A Here and A There photographic exhibition

Walking through the city allows a particularly unique type of engagement with the urban space and permits one to experience the city at its most personal level. Traversing the city is crucial to creating its space. This event will explore how photographers combine their photographic practice with the engagement of moving through the city.

Urban Encounters: Photography and The Practice of Walking
3rd June 2010, 2pm-5pm
Ben Pimlott Lecture Theatre
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross Gate, London SE14 6NW

An Urban Encounters event, an annual conference and associated events exploring visual urbanism.

Co-directors and curators: Gabrielle Bendiner–Viani and Paul Halliday
Organization Assistant: Rachel Jones
Beatriz Véliz Argueta co-organizer of the Urban Photography Summer School

Urban Encounters: 'Photography and The Practice of Walking' and 'A Here and A There' photographic exhibition co-curated by David Kendall and Lanis Levy

Tate Britain and the Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR), Goldsmiths, University of London are supporters of Urban Encounters. This event and exhibition exhibition are supported by Openvizor

Speakers

Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani (The New School, New York)
Rut Blees-Luxemburg (Royal College of Art, London)
Ben Gidley (COMPAS, University of Oxford),
Paul Halliday (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Rachel Jones (Goldsmiths, University of London)
David Kendall (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Lanis Levy (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Alison Rooke (Goldsmiths, University of London)

SPEAKER INTRODUCTIONS

Gabrielle Bendiner–Viani (The New School, New York)
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani is a photographer, curator and Visiting Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at the New School in New York. Co-founder of the Urban Encounters conference, she works across and between disciplines, and strives to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue. She explores the experience of everyday life in public and home spaces through photographic, ethnographic and narrative work and has worked on projects in London, Buenos Aires, San Francisco and New York. She has exhibited and curated at institutions including the Center for Architecture New York, MIT and UC Berkeley. Gabrielle received her PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths, University of London. She is co-founder of the interdisciplinary practice on dialogue, place and design, Buscada. Her work can be seen at www.buscada.com

Rut Blees Luxemburg (Royal College of Art, London)
Rut Blees Luxemburg is an artist who works with photography. She explores cities and their complex relationships to modernity via the potential of the public space. The cities she has worked in range from London, Paris, Dakar, Swansea to Santiago. Her work has been exhibited internationally and included in key publications and exhibitions on contemporary photography. The opera Liebeslied/My Suicides, based on her photographic series Liebeslied, and made in collaboration with the philosopher Alexander Garcia Duttmann and the composer Paul Clark, premiered at the ICA in London and has been shown subsequently as a video work. She has recently made a public art installation Piccadilly's Peccadilloes commissioned by Platform for Art, which is sited at Terminal 4 Heathrow Airport. Her work can be seen at www.rutbleesluxemburg.com

Ben Gidley (COMPAS, University of Oxford)
Ben Gidley is a Senior Researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), primarily working on projects in the Citizenship and Belonging, Urban Change and Settlement, and Welfare clusters. He has a PhD in Sociology from the University of London. His research has included ethnographic and policy-focused research on contemporary urban multiculture, and historical research on Jewish migrants in East London. His research interests include the impact of new forms of diversity on local contexts in the UK; both new and old forms of intolerance and conviviality; and the politics of migrant citizenship and belonging, both today and historically.

Paul Halliday (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Paul Halliday is a photographer, filmmaker and sociologist based at Goldsmiths, University of London. He studied social anthropology and art history at Goldsmiths and Oxford University. He originally trained in photojournalism and fine art film at the London College of Communication, and Central Saint Martins Art College. His professional experience includes having directed a Channel Four TV documentary, freelance photographic projects for The Guardian and Independent Magazine, along with various media and arts consultancies. He is also a former media advisor for the British Refugee Council. He completed a twenty-year photographic project in 2006, about London’s street cultures, on which he gave a talk at Tate Modern, and is currently completing a photographic project about global cities. Paul is the course leader of the MA in Photography and Urban Cultures, a Director of Photofusion, and co-founder of the Urban Encounters conference. Further details about his London work are at www.paulhalliday.org

Rachel Jones (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Rachel Jones is a photographer currently working on her PhD in Visual Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work combines both still and moving images in an exploration of the perception of urban temporality. After graduating from Central Saint Martins College of Art, her work was chosen for the Future Map 2004 exhibition showcasing University of the Arts London’s emerging new talent. Since 2004 Rachel has exhibited her work in New York, Glasgow, and Washington, DC, including participating in the ColorField Remix festival in conjunction with the Kreeger Museum. Rachel received her MA in Photography and Urban Culture from Goldsmiths in 2007 and also holds a BA in Sociology from Columbia University which she received in 1998. Her work can be viewed at www.rachelsarahjones.com

David Kendall (Goldsmiths, University of London)
David Kendall’s photography and research explore how spatial, economic and design initiatives, as well as participatory practices, combine to encourage social and spatial interconnections or conflict in cities. His photographs, spatial research and collaborative projects have been exhibited and presented internationally including Tate Britain, the South Bank Centre London, Københavns Universitet, Denmark, Jüdisches Museum Berlin and University of Oxford, UK.

Kendall is a visiting fellow within the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2010 he curated with Lanis Levy the symposium ‘Photography and the Practice of Walking’ and exhibition A Here and A There as part of the 2010 Urban Encounters Festival, in partnership with the CUCR, Goldsmiths, University of London and Tate Britain. In 2011/12 he is curating ‘City to Sea’ with Rebecca Locke. This project brings together artists, photographers and social scientists to present visual projects and sociological research, which explore how regeneration and planning processes, tourism, migration, collective memory, visual archives and arts interventions can transform social perceptions and geographical links between cities, coastal towns and surrounding regions worldwide. Website: www.david-kendall.co.uk

Lanis Levy (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Lanis Levy is a photographer whose work and practice are firmly grounded in the 'urban'. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she has lived and worked in London for many years. She was an avid photographer of both the neighbourhood and the city in which she grew up, but went on to study Russian, alongside international maritime law.

Working in the fields of immigration and prisoners’ rights, she subsequently qualified as a solicitor, whilst continuing to maintain her photographic practice. Her work has been presented, published and exhibited internationally, most recently at the Festival Internacional de la Imagen in Manizales, Colombia, co-curating with David Kendall ‘Photography and the Practice of Walking’ and exhibition A Here and A There as part of the 2010 Urban Encounters Festival, and City to Sea, Goldsmiths, University of London. Having given up her legal practice entirely, she has returned to her photography full-time. Her lifelong commitment to issues of social justice continues to be evident in much of her work.

Alison Rooke (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Alison Rooke is a visual sociologist based in the Sociology department at Goldsmiths, University of London. Alison’s teaching and research interests span issues such as visual methodologies, citizenship, visibility, embodiment and belonging in urban settings. The possibilities on multi-modal methodologies and art-based practice is central to Alison’s research. She has conducted on a variety of participative visual research projects including Sci:dentity: a project which worked with young transgendered people exploring the science of sex and gender through creative practices, and Signs of the City, a European arts project which employs photography and web2 technology to investigate young peoples right to the city. Alison has also has conducted evaluative research concerned with socio-cultural impact of creativity (with TrinityLaban) and the social dimensions of arts based interventions (with The Serpentine Gallery).

EXHIBITION

A Here and A There

3rd-27th June 2010
Private view: 3rd June, 7-9pm
Viewfinder Photography Gallery
Linear House, Peyton Place
London SE10 8RS

Utilising the city of Berlin as site for exploration, ‘A Here and A There’ is a photographic exhibition exploring how fourteen photographers affiliated with the Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR), Goldsmiths, University of London combine their photographic practices with the activity of ‘walking’ in the city.

Holly Gilbert, Paul Halliday, Marjolein Houben, Santiago Escobar Jaramillo, Rachel Jones, David Kendall, David Killeen, Lanis Levy, Rebecca Locke, Holly McGlynn, Estelle Vincent, Francesca Weber-Newth, Laura Wester, Lorenz Widmaier

‘Photography and The Practice of Walking’ and ‘A Here and A There’ are part of Urban Encounters 2010, an annual conference and associated events exploring visual urbanism.

DOCUMENTARY CREDITS

Camera and Sound by Tijmen Veldhuizen, Camila French, Andrew Hewitson
Edited by Tijmen Veldhuizen
Produced by Abbas Nokhasteh
Directed by Tijmen Veldhuizen