The Nomadic Image – Notes from The Glasgow School of Art

An 'in conversation' event was proposed for The Nomadic Image conference which took place between artist researchers at The Glasgow School of Art and colleagues at the University of Central Asia. The conversation was partially curated and aimed to explore and open up areas of shared interest for dialogue and exploration.

The participants from The Glasgow School Art presenting papers to open the dialogue were:

· Professor Ross Birrell
Senior Researcher - Interdisciplinary Practice

· Susan Brind
Reader in Contemporary Art – Practice & Events, Department of Sculpture and Environmental Art

· Dr Jim Harold
Visiting staff member and research collaborator

· Dr Gina Wall
Programme Director, GSA Highlands & Islands and artist researcher: Reading Landscape

Presentations and themes for discussion were:

Contemporary nomadisms and transnational imaginaries, in particular through discussion of themes in Birrell’s Transit of Hermès, presented at Documenta XIV and at CCA, Glasgow.

In the paper 'The Nomadic Image: Nomadic Dialogues', Brind & Harold discuss their overarching strategy of engaging in Nomadic Dialogues as a vehicle for learning from others, using examples employed in research groups they are active within, such as the Creative Centre for Fluid Territories and Reading Landscape, to make this approach tangible. They discuss transnational imaginaries, migration, diaspora and non-visual imaging in relation to their research undertaken in the Cypriot buffer zone; using their letter works as specific examples.

Embodiment, performance and the nomadic subject emerged through the work of Wall, in particular recent practice and writing exploring trans-corporeality, photography in the more than human landscape. Earlier work by Wall explores spectrality, through encounters with landscape and photography which invokes the conference theme through its interest in ‘Confounding distinctions between arrival and departure, every return of the image is a phantom’.

Distributed pedagogies, peripatetic research seminars, seasonal schools and the rural campus. GSA Highlands & Islands has an ambition to develop innovative pedagogic research around the thematic of creative pedagogy in rural locations which fosters the development of new learning communities across distributed networks. This concerns knowing and practising from the geographies, ecologies and cultures of place. It also entails particular sensitivity to the hermeneutics of landscape and place, calling for ethical attuned ways of reading landscape.

Conference Programme: Friday 23 September 2022
9.00 – 9.10 KGT: Ceremonial Opening
9.10 – 9.20 KGT: Opening Address Dr Shamsh Kassim-Lakha
9.20 – 9.30 KGT: Opening Remarks Dr Maxim Khomyakov
9.30 – 10.30 KGT: Keynote Paul Thomas
10.30 – 12.45 KGT: Session 1 & 2 - Sic Transit & Travel-In-Itself
13.00 - 14.00 KGT: Lunch
14.00 - 15.00 KGT: Keynote Ulrike Al-Khamis
15.00 - 16.15 KGT: Panel 1 - Role of Museums in Shaping Nomadic Memories
15.00 - 16.00: Film Festival Panel: Portrayal of Nomadic Lifestyle in Kyrgyz Cinema
16.15 - 17.30 KGT: Session 3A - Trauma & Memory
16.15 - 17.30 KGT: Session 3B - Tradition and Hypermodernity
17.30 - 17.45 KGT: Break
17.45 - 19.00 KGT: Session 4A - Documenting the Decolonial
17.45 - 19.00 KGT: Session 4B - Violence and Gender
19.15 - 20.30 KGT: Concert & Dinner

Conference Programme: 24 September 2022
9.30 – 9.55 KGT: Keynote Dominic Mciver Lopes
10.00 - 11.15 KGT: Panel 2 - Innovation from Tradition
11.15 – 12.30 KGT: Panel 3 - Image of the Nomad in the Kyrgyz Creative Industries of the 21st Century
12.30 – 13.15 KGT: Lunch
13.15 - 14.30 KGT: Session 5 - Travel, Memory, and Imagination
14.30 - 16.30 KGT: University of Plymouth, UK
16.30 – 16.45 KGT: Break
16.45 – 18.00 KGT: Panel 4 - Nomadism and Culture in Kyrgyzstan
18.00 - 19.15 KGT: Session 6 - Music, Sound, and Meaning
19.15 - 20.00 KGT: Session 7 - Archaeologies of Performance
20.00 – 21.00: Dinner
21.00 – 22.30: Film Presentation

Conference Programme: 25 September 2022
9.00 – 10.4O: Session 8A - Traditional and Contemporary Nomadism’s, Transnational Imaginaries
9.00 – 10.45 KGT: Session 8B - Emergence, Convergence, and Mobility
10.45 - 11.00 KGT: Break
11.00 - 11.45 KGT: Keynote Altyn Kapalova
11.45 - 13.00 KGT: Session 9A - Trans/National Art
11.45 - 13.00 KGT: Session 9B - Machines, Maps and Movement
13.00 - 14.00 KGT: Lunch
14.00 - 14.45 KGT: Keynote Olga Kiseleva
14.45 – 15.45 KGT: Panel 5 - What Does Movement Do to Images?
15.45 – 16.00: Break
16.00 – 17.00 KGT: Panel 6 - Modernity and Movement
17.00 – 18.00 KGT: Keynote Erin Manning
18.00 – 18.45: Panel 7 - Nomadic Landscape and Readings
18.45 - 19.00: Concluding Address Paul Thomas