Using Phenomenology in Contemporary Arts Reserach & Pedagogy Workshop 2: Phenomenological encounters with non-western and diasporic objects-images-architeves-&-artworlds (Phenomenology, displacement and decoloniality)

This was the second of a two-part workshop entitled 'Using Phenomenology in Contemporary Arts Research and Pedagogy' jointly facilited with colleagues Jeffrey Say and Dr Clare Veal from the Asian Art Histories MA Programme at LASALLE College of the arts, Singapore. While the first workshop was held at LASALLE for LASALLE staff and students, for the second and Goldsmiths LASALLE staff and students travelled to Goldsmiths and were joined by students from Goldsmiths and SOAS (where I'd also run workshops). This workshop developed themes opened up in Workshop One. In our first workshop, phenomenological strategies were introduced in terms of their capacity to help us perceive, apprehend and think ‘from below’ – that is, pre-critically and pre-objectively, from a place in which various personal and cultural presuppositions about meaning and value are being dismantled, and in which differently configured visual/descriptive strategies are foregrounded as ways of maximizing sensitivity to source-materials. In this workshop we explored how phenomenological strategies can help us as we think about objects, images and art-related practices within non-western, postcolonial and diasporic contexts. In Part One, 'Situated Research: Institutional and archival histories and contexts: colonial and decolonising perspectives' we focused on the importance of acknowledging the contexts in which we carry out our research. Therefore, we attended to the colonial and decolonising histories of Goldsmiths itself and of the institutions that preceded Goldsmiths but are now part of our campus (like Deptford Town Hall, where the workshop was held and its naval and colonial associations and as the site in 1916 for WW1 conscientious objector tribunals). Included here was a conversation about this concerns with Natasha Hoare, Curator of Goldsmiths' new Centre for Contemporary Art and we were introduced to an archive of materials of ASEAN origin in Goldsmiths' Textile Collection by GTC curator Jane Cameron and Lesley Ruthven, Special Collections & Music Librarian. In Part Two, 'Working Phenomenologically with Non-Western "Diasporic" Objects' we worked with objects from the GTC and Jeffrey Say and Clare Veal ran workshops related to researching phenomenologically in their own areas of expertise of contemporary Singaporean and Contemporary Thai art and visual culture. In Part Three, 'Phenomenology and Decoloniality' we brought phenomenological perspectives into conversation with scholarship on decoloniality, notably Walter D. Mignolo’s paper ‘Decoloniality and Phenomenology: The Geopolitics of Knowing and Epistemic /Ontological Colonial Differences’ (2018), and explored issues of epistemic violence. With these concerns in mind, we also visited and reflected on Kader Attia's exhibition The Museum of Emotion which was on show at London's Hayward Gallery