“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, gestures of solidarity and temporary cultural commons as manifestations of freedom
Dragan Todorovic, “Auto-censorship: The Happiness Pill”
Mirdul Kaintura, “Freedom through erasure? Iconoclasm and the contested Himalayan imaginary”
Jovana Karaulic & Jelena Knezevic, “Reassembling the Festival as a Temporary Cultural Commons – The Case of Ne: BITEF”
11.05-11.20 Break
11.20-12.40 Panel II: Performing Worksites of Freedom: Singing, Listening, Moving
Iona Szeman, “Music, Performance and Resisting Unfreedom: Roma Musicians at the 1889 Paris Universal Exhibition”
Omid Mashhadi, “Singing Across the Sonic Shibboleth: Necrosonic Governance and the Solidarity of Listening in Iran”
Jisha Menon, “Feminist Performance and the Solidaristic Subject”
12.40-13.30 Lunch
13.30-14.50 Panel III: Aesthetics of Solidarity: from the individual to the collective
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)
14.50-15.00– Break
15.00- 15.45 Workshop with Adrian Kear & Theresa Nelson:
Missing Actors: Aesthetics of absence and the politics of disappearance
15.45 – 16.00 Break
Public Event:
Dialectics of Freedom: Embodiments, Worksites and Solidarities
16.00 – 17.20 Keynote Session
Rami Salameh: Embodied Resistance: Palestinian Violence and the Dialectics of Becoming Free in the Global South
Mai Albattat: Spatial Geographies that Defy Erasure: Infrastructures of Violence, Memory, and the Politics of Imagination
17.20-17.30 Break
17.30 - 18.50 Cinema and Solidarity Presents: Films from the UK Student Encampments (film screening 73 min)
18.50 - 19.30 Worksites of Freedom and the Aesthetic of Solidarity (discussion)
20:00 Dinner
Day 2: Friday, May 15, 2026
9.30-10.50 Panel IV: Spaces of Freedom
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”
10.50-11.00 Break
11.00-12.20 Panel V: Decolonising Freedom(s)
Jigisha Bhattacharya, “Political Incarceration, Decolonization and Internationalism in 20th Century Indian agit-prop genres”
Kishan Katira, “Pan-Asianist Anatta: 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”
12.20 – 13.15 – Lunch
13.15 -14.35 Panel VI: Limits and Possibilities of Solidarities: Testimony, Care, Pedagogy and Agency
Hind Sabah Bilal, “Impossible Freedoms: Performing Survival, Testimony and the Limits of Agency in Heather Raffo’s Noura”
Reka Polonyi, “Towards an aesthetics of everyday solidarity: rethinking what constitutes political performance in time of crisis”
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”
14.35 – 14.45 Break
14.45 – 15.30
Anuj Deshpande & Jigisha Bhattacharya,
Songs, Incarceration, and Freedom: A Performance Lecture on Prison Songs from postcolonial India
15.30 – 16.00 Closing reflections/ discussion