Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to welcome and present a talk with critic, curator and filmmaker Daniel Jewesbury.

Jewesbury will present Art and Its Publics in ‘Post-Conflict’ Northern Ireland, a researched look at the role art has been expected to play in a city rebuilding itself after years of unrest. He will begin by looking at the term ‘post conflict’ – what it demarcates and signifies when defining a city like Belfast.

Over twenty years, after the peace process in Northern Ireland began, shifting perceptions of public space and what determines the public sphere have formed. Using these basic re-definitions and understandings, Jewesbury will problematise generalized assumptions about the nature of peace-building and social redevelopment, particularly in Belfast. Within these constructs art has been expected to perform a generative role in a redeveloping city, with imposed social, political and economic functions that have often undermined its efficacy and integrity. Jewesbury will focus on alternative artistic approaches to the problems of using, inhabiting and constructing social, public space in the perpetually-regenerating city.

Daniel Jewesbury is an artist, writer, editor and curator. He lectures in Film Studies at the University of Ulster and is himself an experimental filmmaker. Daniel is the curator of the 2016 TULCA Visual Arts Festival in Galway, Ireland. He’s also a researcher of Irish visual and material culture: current studies include explorations of relics of the Easter Rising in 1916; the uses and abuses of public art; and the history of Belfast’s first public artists, the Victorian builders and sculptors known as the Fitzpatrick Brothers. Daniel is currently working on a study of Belfast itself, to be published in early 2017.

This talk is available in our online video archive.

Plug In ICA gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, and we extend gratitude to our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers.

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For media inquiries please contact: Janique Vigier at janique@plugin.org or by phone at (204) 942-1043 ext. 27