Book Launch: Transnational Diaries
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Central
Transnational Diaries is a book emerging from “Globalisation from Below: Livelihoods, Trade and Transnationalism in the Brazilian Informal Economy” a research project focusing on the lives, livelihoods and transnational connections of Chinese migrant traders in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
First presented in Belo Horizonte as an exhibition, Transnational Diaries brought ethnographic research beyond academia and into the museum space. Co-created with first- and second-generation Chinese migrants who run family-owned shops in Belo Horizonte, the exhibition combines images, texts and field-based narratives to create a topography of transit: tracing the movement of people, goods, memories and relationships between the city's centre, different parts of Brazil and China.
The book brings together the materials that compose the exhibition with reflections emerging from the research project. Combining essays, visual materials and field-based narratives, it explores how ethnographic research, artistic practice and exhibition-making can generate new ways of understanding and communicating transnational popular economies.
At the launch, members of the research and curatorial team will talk about the book, the exhibition it portrays, and the research process behind both.
Dr Renata Marquez (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
From fieldwork to exhibition: curating transnational popular economies
Dr Priscila Musa (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Documenting transnational journeys through collaborative visual practice
The discussion will be chaired by Dr Mara Nogueira (Birkbeck, University of London) and followed by a conversation with the audience.
From October, the Transnational Diaries exhibition will be on display at the Peltz Gallery (Birkbeck), bringing the images, stories and journeys explored in the book into a new space.
Contact name: Mara Nogueira
Speakers-
Dr Mara Nogueira
—
Mara Nogueira is an Urban Geography Senior Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences. She is the Principal Investigator of the project "Globalisation from Below: Livelihoods, Trade and Transnationalism in the Brazilian Informal Economy", a collaboration between Birkbeck and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil) funded by the British Academy.
-
Priscila Musa
—
Dr Priscila Musa is an architect and photographer, and a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Architecture at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. She holds a PhD in Architecture from UFMG. Her work combines ethnographic practice, photography and design to investigate urban histories, visual cultures and the ways different forms of knowledge and memory shape how cities are seen and understood. Her research explores photography and archives as sites of contestation, working collaboratively with communities to bring marginalised histories and alternative ways of seeing the city into view. Her doctoral research on photographic archives and insurgent memories of Belo Horizonte was awarded the 2023 UFMG Grand Thesis Prize.
-
Renata Marquez
—
Dr Renata Marquez is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, and co-editor of Piseagrama, an open-access, non-profit publishing platform based in Belo Horizonte. She holds a PhD in Geography and completed postdoctoral research in Anthropology. Her work brings together art, architecture, geography and anthropology, with a particular focus on curatorial practices, contemporary art and critical approaches to urban space. As a curator, she has developed and collaborated on many exhibitions and projects exploring the relationships between art, the city, territory and different forms of knowledge. Together with Pricila Musa, Aline Franceschini and Isadora Marques, she curated and designed the Transnational Diaries exhibition.
Tags: