What is Research Now? July Festival Dates
- 21 May 2025
Following the success of our May What is Research Now? festival, our July iteration of the festival begins on Wednesday 2 July and runs until Friday 4 July 2025.
In July, we will explore three interconnected strands:
Artificial Futures is about art and AI in relation to how we work, our relationship with alterable histories and realities, and the ethics (environmental, social, emotional) of our collective artificial futures. Talks include ‘The Minor Feelings of AI (A Satire)’ with Maya Indira Ganesh (University of Cambridge); ‘Towards Anti-Capitalist AI Art and Post-Abundance Computational Practices’ with artist Wesley Goatley and ‘The Post-Truth Museum Film’ with artist Nora Al-Badri.
Artists on Research features a series of conversations with artists reflecting on research-based practice, including Alberta Whittle and Grace Ndiritu.
Seeing in the Dark asks how the acts of seeing and looking must go beyond the visible world as we grapple with our entangled colonial and capitalist presents. Talks include ‘Autopsy: To See the Self and the Social in the Dark’ with Nicholas Mirzoeff (New York University).
Confirmed speakers across all strands include Nicholas Mirzoeff, Ayesha Hameed, Alberta Whittle, Sria Chatterjee, Grace Ndiritu, Ekow Eshun, Nora N. Khan, Nora Al Badri, Maya Ganesh, Tega Brain, Sam Lavigne, Wes Goatley and others.
What is Research Now? presents a year-long programme of events around interconnected strands that ask us to think more curiously, critically and open-endedly about the role and practice of the arts. It is led by the question: can research in the arts enable us to live and better inhabit the world together? The programme brings artists, curators, writers, scholars and thinkers from a range of different backgrounds to think together through lectures, performances, conversations and hands-on workshops at the Paul Mellon Centre in London.
Free tickets are available now.
Image: Alberta Whittle, Lagareh – The Last Born, 2022 (film still), co-commissioned by Scotland+Venice and Forma Arts, London; film produced by Forma Arts. Courtesy of the Artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow.