“Whose Freedom? Worksites of Freedom and the Aesthetic of Solidarity”, Symposium Programme
Day 1: Thursday, May 14, 2026
9.00-9.30 Registration
9.30: 9.45 Welcome and Introduction of the research project (Silvija Jestrovic)
9.45 - 11.05 Panel I: Ethical provocation of censorship, everyday solidarity and temporary cultural commons as manifestations of freedom
(Chair Silvija Jestrovic)
Dragan Todorovic, “Auto-censorship: The Happiness Pill”
Jovana Karaulic & Jelena Knezevic, “Reassembling the Festival as a Temporary Cultural Commons – The Case of Ne: BITEF”
Reka Polonyi, “Towards an aesthetics of everyday solidarity: rethinking what constitutes political performance in time of crisis”
11.05-11.20 Break
11.20-12.20 Panel II: Performing Worksites of Freedom: Singing, Listening, Moving
(Chair Adrian Kear)
Ioana Szeman, “Music, Performance and Resisting Unfreedom: Roma Musicians at the 1889 Paris Universal Exhibition”
Jisha Menon, “Feminist Performance and the Solidaristic Subject”
12.20-13.20 Lunch
13.20-14.40 Panel III: Aesthetics of Solidarity: from the individual to the collective
(Chair Jovana Karaulic)
Babatunde Allen Bakare & Gbenga Emmanuel Adeboye, “Whose Freedom? Whose Road? Performing Collective Liberation and the Aesthetic of Solidarity in Femi Osofisan’s Red is the Freedom Road”
Konrad Szczebiot, “Freedom at Sea and in Revolt: Staropolska Republicanism and Contemporary Polish Stagings of Classical Drama”
Alessandra De Martino, “On the Wings of Freedom” (performance lecture)
14.40-14.55– Break
15.00- 16.00 Workshop with Adrian Kear & Theresa Nelson:
Missing Actors: Aesthetics of absence and the politics of disappearance
16.00 – 16.15 Break
Public Event:
Dialectics of Freedom: Embodiments, Worksites and Solidarities
(Moderator Silvija Jestrovic)
16.15 – 17.15Keynote Session 1
Mai Albattat: Spatial Geographies that Defy Erasure: Infrastructures of Violence, Memory, and the Politics of Imagination
17.15-17.30 Break
17.30 - 18.45 Cinema and Solidarity Presents: Films from the UK Student Encampments (film screening 73 min)
18.45 - 19.30 Worksites of Freedom and the Aesthetic of Solidarity (discussion)
20:00 Dinner
Day 2: Friday, May 15, 2026
9.00-10.00 Keynote 2:
Rami Salameh: Embodied Resistance: Palestinian Violence and the Dialectics of Becoming Free in the Global South
10.00 - 10.10
10.10-11.30 Panel IV: Spaces of Freedom
(Chair Ioana Szeman)
Dominika Fleszar, “Performing Freedom in Transit: Polish Military Theatre and the Embodied Politics of Exile, 1940-1946”
Olivia Lamont Bishop, “Freedom, Distance, and the Politics of Place in The Land’s Heart Is Greater Than Its Map”
Michele Aaron: "Cinema and Solidarity: harnessing the ‘liberated spaces’ of student encampments for Gaza through film”
11.30-11.45 Break
11.45 -13.05 Panel V:Decolonising Freedom(s)
(Chair Dragan Todorovic)
Jigisha Bhattacharya, “Political Incarceration, Decolonization and Internationalism in 20thCentury Indian agit-prop genres”
Kishan Katira, “Pan-AsianistAnatta: Nishida, Sōseki, Gandhi, and the pursuit of freedom from the mortal binds of British unilinear historicity”
Xueting Luo, “Freedom in Relation: The Circulation of Energy in Chinese Embodied Aesthetics”
13.05-14.00 Lunch
14.00 -15.20 Panel VI: Limits and Possibilities of Solidarities: Testimony, Pedagogy and Agency
(Chair Jisha Menon)
Hind Sabah Bilal, “Impossible Freedoms: Performing Survival, Testimony and the Limits of Agency in Heather Raffo’s Noura”
Manuel Henriques, “If I could sink my teeth into the whole earth:A performance lecture based on theatrical experience in Carregueira Detention Centre in Lisbon and Paulo Freire’s The Pedagogy of the Oppressed”
Anuj Deshpande & Jigisha Bhattacharya, Songs, Incarceration, and Freedom: A Performance Lecture on Prison Songs from postcolonial India
15.20 – 15.30 Closing reflections/ discussion