The BSR Podcast

Content Warning: This recording contains mentions of racial trauma, violence against Black and Brown people and racial slurs that can be disturbing or triggering.

The second event of the BSR Fine Arts Talks | Talk Justice series will be a conversation between artist Phoebe Boswell (Bridget Riley Fellow 2019) and Dr Angelica Pesarini (NYU Florence). Pesarini, whose research is dedicated to the analysis of the intersections of race, gender and citizenship in colonial and postcolonial Italy responds to Phoebe's visual essay 'Stranger In The Village', which documents her experience of both an artist residency and a growing consciousness within an increasingly hostile Europe. Combining draftswomanship and digital technology, Boswell creates immersive installations and bodies of work that layer drawing, animation, sound, video and interactivity in an effort to find new languages robust yet open and multifaceted enough to house, centre and amplify voices and histories which, like her own, are often systemically marginalised or sidelined as ‘other’.

Phoebe Boswell explores the sense of ‘belonging’ and is anchored to a restless state of diasporic consciousness, combining traditional drawing with digital technology. Her practice draws on her own experiences of belonging, having been born in Kenya and brought up in the Arabian Gulf; she now lives and works in London. Her works are created in an effort to find new languages robust yet open and multifaceted enough to house, centre and amplify voices and histories which, like her own, are often systemically marginalised or sidelined as ‘other’. Her work has been exhibited widely, including Kristin Hjellegjerde, Carroll / Fletcher, and Tiwani Contemporary; and has screened at the Sundance, BFI London, BlackStar, Underwire and LA Film Festivals, British Animation Awards, and CinemAfrica amongst others. She participated in the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art 2015, the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement 2016 at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva and received the Future Generation Art Prize’s Special Prize in 2017, consequently exhibiting as part of the Collateral Events programme at the 57th Venice Biennale. Boswell will unveil a new largescale public moving image work in Geneva in December 2019, and a solo exhibition at New Art Exchange, Nottingham in 2020.

Angelica Pesarini was awarded a Ph.D. in Sociology in 2015 from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at the University of Leeds. She is currently a Lecturer in Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU Florence where she teaches Black Italia, a course entirely dedicated to the intersectional analysis of racial identity in Italy. Angelica previously worked at Lancaster University as a Lecturer in Gender, Race and Sexuality. Her current work investigates dynamics of race performativity with a focus on colonial and postcolonial Italy and she also works on the racialization of the Italian political discourse on immigration. She has previously conducted research on gender roles and the development of economic activities within some Roma communities in Italy and she has analysed strategies of survival, risks and opportunities associated with male prostitution in Rome. She has been published in a number of journals and edited volumes and she is currently writing a monograph of her first book.

A lecture by Nikolaos Karydis (Kent; BSR).

This lecture explores the development of the Ripa Grande, the main river port of Rome during the Early Modern period. This port was destroyed in the 19th century. The lecture, offers an opportunity to visualise its lost phases on the basis of vedutte drawn from the 15th to the 18th century. Comparative analysis of an unprecedented number of engravings, drawings and paintings and their interpretation by reference to coeval maps will help us to retrace the transformations of the port through time. Reconstructed plans and axonometric drawings make it possible to investigate the spatial organisation of the port and the design principles that informed its remodelling. Reconstruction also provides a closer look to key port buildings, such as the Ospizio di San Michele. The latter will be analyzed within the context of institutional architecture in European river ports. This methodology sheds new light on a highly significant if highly neglected aspect of the urban development of Rome in the Early Modern period.

Keynote by Edward Corp (Toulouse) for the conference Alla Corte della Cancelleria: Pietro Ottoboni e la politica delle arti nella Roma del Settecento

Molly Cotton Lecture by Francesco Sirano (Herculaneum)

A lecture by Spencer de Grey (Foster + Partners).

A lecture by Gabriele Cifani (École normale supérieure, Paris). Part of the City of Rome Lecture Series.

L’economia romana tra l’VIII e il IV secolo a.C. è generalmente ricostruita in termini marcatamente primitivisti, con un ruolo preponderante attribuito all’agricoltura e con ridotte attività di produzione e di scambi commerciali. Tale vulgata, tuttora presente in particolare nella manualistica anglosassone, mal si concilia con le scoperte archeologiche avvenute a Roma e nel Lazio negli ultimi quaranta anni che obbligano a riconsiderare il ruolo della città nell’ambito delle interazioni commerciali mediterranee.
Oggetto della conferenza saranno pertanto le produzioni ed importazioni a Roma tra l’Età del Ferro e la prima età repubblicana e le loro possibili implicazioni storiche e sociali.

A lecture by Ginette Vagenheim (Rouen-Normandie) as part of the City of Rome lecture series.

After the catastrophic Tiber flood of 1557, control over the river and repairs to the aqueducts represented the major urban issues that needed to be resolved in the context of Rome’s renovation. Massive public works were commissioned, namely around Castel Sant’Angelo and for the reconstruction of the aqueduct named “Acqua Vergine”. These projects produced numerous discussions and writings by a series of individuals of varied backgrounds, like the physician Andrea Bacco (1524-1600), the engineer Antonio Trevisi (d.1564), the jurist and Roman magistrate Luca Peto (1512-1581), and the antiquarian Pirro Ligorio (1512c.-1581), all of them being eager to attract the prestigious patronage of the Papacy. In his antiquarian works called “Roman antiquities”, Ligorio produced the only extant illustrated treatise on the renovation of the Acqua Vergine. In my talk I will focus on this treatise to try to describe how Ligorio faced problems of urbanisation and hydrology which were linked to the most impressive ruins of Roman civilisation.

A lecture by Ania Kotarba-Morley.

The Red Sea region is hostile to long-shore nautical activity as it lacks natural topographic features that could be used as harbours; only a few suitable bays for landing, where the wadi mouths allow the break in the reef, are located on its coasts. However, experiencing seasonally variable winds and currents parts of the Red Sea constituted favourable ground for maritime voyaging, contact and trade for millennia. Berenike Troglodytica was one of the most important harbours on the Egyptian Red Sea during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods – a major hub connecting trade between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. Its geographical position was chosen due to its extraordinarily propitious characteristics owing partly to its natural harbour, protected against the prevailing northern winds, as well as its location in the vicinity of an ancient viewshed – the large peninsula of Ras Benas. This seminar will collate different strands of evidence and compare the seafaring traditions in the region and the recent findings from the port area of Berenike with other key ports of trade on the Red Sea and around the Indian Ocean rims.

A lecture by Nicholas Purcell (Oxford). Part
of the City of Rome Lecture Series

A lecture by Paolo Liverani (Firenze). Part of the City of Rome lecture series.

Il progetto di ricerca sul Laterano antico fino alle soglie del medioevo vede insieme le università di Newcastle e Firenze con il determinante sostegno della British School di Roma, dei Musei Vaticani e la collaborazione dell’Istituto per le Tecnologie Applicate ai Beni Culturali del CNR italiano. I rilievi dell’area lateranense strettamente intesa sono terminati e sono molto avanzati gli studi per la ricostruzione delle varie fasi edilizie, storiche e urbanistiche. Qui alle domus di I e II secolo d.C. si sovrappone prima la caserma dei cavalieri scelti di Settimio Severo (Castra Nova Equitum Singularium) con le adiacenti terme, quindi la basilica costantiniana con il suo battistero. Il rilievo sta proseguendo nell’area adiacente dell’ospedale di Giovanni in Laterano con le domus di personaggi chiave del II secolo dell’impero: i consoli Quintilii e Domizia Lucilla, la madre di Marco Aurelio. Su di esse sorgeranno fondazioni tardoantiche legate alla chiesa dei primi secoli.