Making im/mobilities visible

At no time in our recent past has so great a share of the world’s population sensed the tension between mobility and immobility. From the residents of Shanghai tower blocks in mandatory lock down screaming into the void, to the colour coding of travel risks in pandemic-stricken airports, the contours of our mobility and our immobility are inscribed on our senses. This workshop is intended to give researchers the opportunity to consider the senses of im/mobilities, by asking: how are im/mobilities visible?

‘Mobilities’ is a well-established area of multi- and transdisciplinary research and inquiry that brings together scholars and practitioners interested in movement. Recent scholarship on immobility, and indeed, our own experiences of the immobilities over the past two years, has seen increasing interest in expanding the vocabularies and attentions towards mobile and immobile phenomena.

The Australian context also clouds the way that mobility is conceptualised. Not only do continental scales create distance, but our imaginaries and stories of such geographies are still embedded in colonial and political discourses of migration and borders. Conceptualising mobility in Australian research necessarily raises questions about very different scales, spatial domains and historical legacies shaping the representation of movement, its visualisation and aestheticization.

This in-person workshop will involve short presentations from each participant outlining their research interests related to mobilities, and a lecture from Associate Professor Michelle Duffy (Uni of Newcastle). To kick off our thinking, a short walk-through of the Queensland Art Gallery will be a starting point for discussion.

The workshop aims to build local networks of scholars interested in mobilities, and to produce a collaborative written paper arising from the event. Those who are interested in being part of the written aspect will be invited to stay on for another half day (on Tuesday 16 August) to kickstart the writing process.

Free to attend, but places are limited. Please send a short EOI (~200 words) of your interest in participating to Kaya Barry (k.barry@griffith.edu.au) by Friday 20th May. Lunch and refreshments will be provided. Please indicate if you have any accessibility or dietary requirements. Organised by Kaya Barry, Bruce Buchan, and the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research.