Mapping of the Political Imaginary (2025-2027)

This project seeks to describe the range and diversity of the ways in which ideas of the political imaginary are deployed with research processes across artistic and other research traditions. Rather than produce a singular finalised definition of the political imaginary this project seeks to provide an account of the lines of development for the divergent usage of the construct, and a comparative description and analysis of the affordances of these different construction across a range of disciplines and research undertakings. Activities conducted within this project include  the construction of an extensive bibliography and list of sources as a basis for the mapping process; convening an international seminar group comprising scholars across a range of disciplines and artists: generating a series of internal working papers and reports; and a range of conference and exhibition contributions. The seminar series is employed to build a constituency around these different actions, and as a means to ensure a multiplicity of perspectives intersecting and informing the mapping process. Regular participants and contributors to the Mapping Seminar include: Dr. Nick Aikens, Dr. Michel Masucci, Vladislav Shapovalov (PhD Cand.), Emiliano Battista (PhD Cand.), Prof. Andrea Phillips, Dr. Arash Dehghani, Dr. Åsa Sonjasdotter, Prof. Catalin Gheorghe, Dr. Eva la Cour-Nielsen, Florin Bobu (PhD Cand.), Giulia Menegale (PhD Cand.), Dr. Glenn Loughran, Kerstin Bergendal, Livia Pancu, Petra Johansson, Andrea Catherine Steves (PhD Cand.), and Reyhaneh Mirjahani among others.

Other actions include the convening of research intensives bringing early stage and seasoned researchers together to inform the mapping process through learning from the experience and needs of researchers at different stages in their professional development. One of the major research outputs of the project will be an anthology (provisional title Mapping the Political Imaginary) co-edited by E.Battista, K. Guinan and M. Wilson that aims to address a range of constructions produced by artists, theorists and other researchers: from concepts explicated in academic sources to those proposed or implicit within different activist and artistic strategies and practices. The book will describe genealogies, methodologies and conceptual trajectories that have informed and shaped some of the diverse usages of the political imaginary across arts practice, the humanities and social sciences. Another book project in development looks at the different imaginaries of internationalism operative within the contemporary art field—including the contested proposition that the network of contemporary art events such as international shows and biennales constitutes a form of transnational public sphere—through weaving a series of critical reflections across the intersections of the three nodes of the exhibition, the imaginary and the international.