UAL Professorial Platform Lecture: Taking Heart in a Time of Hatred

Join us at London College of Communication to hear from Pratāp Rughani and his journey through Film making to Arts Research.

Welcome by UAL's Vice Chancellor, Professor Karen Stanton.

Introduction by Professor Emeritus Jonathan Dollimore.

Presentation followed by an in-conversation with Mark Sealy OBE, Professor of Photography - Rights and Representation, UAL.

Lecture: 5.30pm - 6.45pm

Reception: 6.45pm - 7.45pm

What happens to art and education in a time of heightened polarisation?

As the drift towards ‘toxic othering’ today spills from social media to British streets (echoing the 1970s - hopefully not the 1930s) what can our communities’ artists and creative practitioners; audiences, students and teachers do to tilt our cultures towards reconnection, repair and healing?

At this pivotal moment, Documentarist, Professor Pratāp Rughani, explores how this central challenge animates his practice in film, writing and photography, exploring the dynamics of dialogue in many cultures across forty years.

He unfolds paths out of conflict, with off-ramps that shape the dream of deeper ‘becoming’ and the hard yards of daring to listen more deeply to another, especially when we disagree. The evening includes a first glimpse of the new film installation “Impossible Conversations” asking: what connects us more deeply than what threatens to divide?

Is it by understanding our deeper vulnerability, responding to pain and trauma in self and other, that our shared humanity can be newly revealed?

“Designing storytelling for dialogue has a poetics and politics that is joyfully unpredictable. Looking ahead, I’m asking: what might it take to fashion a new restorative ethics of storytelling, to nurture empathy, rooted in communication ethics and focused on rebuilding the connective tissue of our culture as we are tested anew.”

MATERIAL

To help get ready for the event, here are a couple of ways in:

• Documentary filmmaking and ethics | Pratāp Rughani

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DYn8xOA_N0

• Podcast interview "Impossible Conversations"

https://arts.umich.edu/creative-currents/s3e3

• Design for Dialogue paper. With some practical tips on entering difficult conversations, especially when we disagree:

https://www.lotusfilms.co.uk/portfolio/design-for-dialogue-publication-of-position-paper/

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Pratāp Rughani is an award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker and academic. Many of his films conceive documentary as a crucible in which people of radically different perspectives, cultures and politics come into relation. He is increasingly focused on configuring filming and viewing to enable deeper listening and dialogue. This emphasis centres ‘Restorative Narrative’ that aims to transmute the slide towards toxic polarisation in non-fiction storytelling to enable repair and healing and thus deepen inter-cultural communication.

Communication ethics of documentary practice suffuse his practice and teaching, with free online tools including ‘Ethics for Making’ https://ethics.arts.ac.uk/

Pratāp's documentary work spans broadcast, (BBC 2 / Channel 4) festival and gallery commissions for The British Council, Modern Art Oxford, Stamps Gallery of Art and NGOs. He served on the UK REF Panel 34 (2021) and as editorial board Chair of the Journal of Media Practice & Education and co-edited the New Internationalist magazine. He is a long-standing member of the AHRC Peer Review College, ELIA Executive and led London College of Communication Research for seven years.

He is a trustee of the Himalayan environmental protection charity Pragya and served as photographer and trustee of the Karuna Trust.

https://www.arts.ac.uk/research/ual-staff-researchers/pratap-rughani

BIOGRAPHY

Professor Emeritus Jonathan Dollimore pioneered cultural materialism; then he pioneered gay studies. He subsequently turned his attention to a fresh interrogation of those dark, recalcitrant elements of desire and mortality which resist utopian transformation. His influential books include Radical Tragedy (1984), Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture (1998), Sex Literature and Censorship (2001) and, with Alan Sinfield, Political Shakespeare (1985)."

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/edacs/departments/shakespeare/top/events/2018/radicalmischief/dollimore

SERIES

As the University continues to maintain and develop its profile as a global leader in arts research, UAL launched a series of Professorial Platform lectures in 2008. These lectures are an opportunity for University colleagues and associates, as well as members of the public, to learn more about the research undertaken in the University. The events will enable nominated Readers and Professors to highlight their field of interest and the University, in turn, to recognise and commemorate their successes to date.

Image Credit: Mike Gorski