"Whose Freedom? Worksites of Freedom & The Aesthetic of Solidarity” International Symposium

The term “freedom” is widely deployed across contemporary public discourse—from politics and philosophy to psychology and self-help. Yet contested notions of freedom underpin some of the most urgent issues of our time: hyper-imperialism (Prashad), cannibal capitalism (Marx, Fraser), genocide, perpetual war, displacement, and the climate emergency. These conditions raise fundamental questions about how freedom is framed within liberal capitalist systems that prioritise free markets over collective needs, and how it is often understood as an individual right detached from solidarity. As Wendy Brown suggests, we may be witnessing an “existential disappearance of freedom from the world,” as anti-democratic forces increasingly mobilise its language to advance exclusionary agendas while casting progressive commitments as repressive.

In this context, how we act politically—through institutions, art, activism, or everyday life—is shaped by how we conceptualise and enact freedom, as well as by the privileges and constraints that structure it.

Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s understanding of freedom as the raison d’être of politics—requiring a public “stage” on which to appear—the symposium asks how freedom emerges as a situated and embodied practice. Rather than isolating political rights or artistic expression, it explores how freedom can be rethought politically through artistic means, and artistically through political ones.

We invite contributions—historical and contemporary, academic and artistic—from a range of disciplines and cultural contexts.

Guiding questions:

How does freedom take shape in bodies, voices, and gestures? Where does it occupy space, and how is it performed? In what dramaturgical modes does freedom appear? Who are the protagonists of these performances across socio-cultural contexts? Who benefits from freedom, and who bears the burden of its limitations? What are the entanglements and contradictions of freedom?

Areas of contribution include:

Colonial & Decolonial Freedoms · Solidarity & Collective Action · Migration, Displacement & Refuge · Gender, Sexuality & Embodied Freedom · Urban Space & Architecture of Resistance · Ecological Freedom & Multispecies Solidarity · Theatre, Performance & Political Imagination · Digital Publics & Algorithmic Freedoms · Language, Voice & the Right to Be Heard · Law, Human Rights & Political Philosophy · Peace, War & Freedom from Violence

Keynote Speakers:

Dr Rami Salameh, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies & Director, Women’s Studies Institute, Birzeit University, Palestine. Dr Salameh’s work examines the intersections of coloniality, violence, and subjectivity in settler-colonial contexts, with a particular focus on Palestine within broader Global South struggles — asking how colonial power is inscribed on bodies and spaces, and how resistance, imagination, and political struggle function as practices of becoming.

Mai Al-Battat, Architect and Researcher, PhD Fellow, Université libre de Bruxelles, and Research Assistant, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies, Birzeit University. Al-Battat explores radical imagination as a method for investigating urban spatial politics and practices of resistance, employing participatory, research-by-design methodologies that challenge militarised mentalities and rehearse emancipatory futures.

Yoko Ono, Add Colour (Refugee Boat)