What is Research Now? May Festival.

What is Research Now? presents a full year of programming around interconnected strands that ask us to think more curiously, critically and open-endedly about the role and practice of the arts.

The theme is led by the question: Can research in the arts enable us to live and better inhabit the world together?

It will bring 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.

In May, events will explore interconnected strands:
'Ongoing Colonial Worlds' asking what research is under conditions of occupation and unrest

'On Looking' show us that how we look changes how we understand the world around us

All day events across the festival:

Drop in to visit:
Kitso Lelliott Video Installation
To Dream a more Liveable Place... A Performance in Anticipation of...(2023-ongoing)

What is Research Now? Reading Room: A space to sit, read, reflect, talk

14 May 2025
16.00-16.15 – What Do We Do Now?, Sria Chatterjee (Paul Mellon Centre)
16.15-16.55 – Unconfessed Architectures, Huda Tayob (Royal College of Art)
16.55-17.05 – Comfort break
17.05-17.45 – Aesthetics After Apartheid: Racism’s Last Word and the Work of Art, Premesh Lalu (University of the Western Cape)
17.45-18.15 – Huda Tayob and Premesh Lalu In-conversation + Q&A
18.15-19.15 – Refreshments and a light dinner provided
19.15-19.55 – Afterimages and the Art of Grieving, Tina Campt (Princeton University)
19.55-20.15 – Q&A
20.15-21.00 – Reception

15 May 2025
16.00-16.05 – Welcome and introduction: Ongoing Colonial Worlds
16.05-16.45 – Title TBC, Nida Sinnokrot (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sakiya) Sahar Qawasmi (Sakiya)
16.45-17.15 – Q&As: Chair: Cooking Sections (Alon Schwabe & Daniel Fernández Pascual)
17.15-17.25 – Comfort break
17.25-18.10 – ‘Disclosing Nature, Rethinking Landscapes’ Avinòam Shalem (Columbia University)
18.10-18.30 – Q&As: Chair: Sussan Babaie (Courtauld Institute of Art)
18.30-19.30 – Refreshments and a light dinner provided
19.30-20.15 – I Cannot Decolonize My Body: The Decolonial Gesture, Performance by Tiara Roxanne (Scholar, Artist, Practitioner)
20.15–20.45 – Respondent & Chair: Lee Douglas (Goldsmiths, University of London)
20.45–21.30 – Drinks Reception

16 May 2025
13:00-14:30 – Join us over lunch for "A Bridge, a Seesaw, a Möbius Strip: On the Making of an Autoethnographic Film" with Solveig Qu Suess.
17.00–18.15: Performance and Q&A | Chair: Huda Tayob (Royal College of Art)
18.15-18.30: What is Research Now? Final Thoughts
18.30–19.30: Drinks Reception

For more information: https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk