Conspiracy Dwellings - Surveillance in Contemporary Art

Chair of panel enitled 'Conspiracy Dwellings - Surveillance in Contemporary Art'.

Pam Skelton

Research Interests

Spatial and temporal displacement, the expanded archive, memory, history, conflict and space that explores the interface of private and public memory in still and moving media.

Current Research

Current research activity includes a Speculative AHRC project ‘Archive of Exile’ with Cultural Geographer Jessica Dubow. This project explores the theoretical and creative possibilities of two apparently contradictory concepts: the exile (understood as a mode of thought informed by radical spatial mobility) and the archive (figured as a key institution of a national or territorial political imaginary. Ongoing research includes ‘Dwelling in the Space of Conspiracy’ an extended examination that has emerged from the recent AHRC project ‘Conspiracy Dwellings, the Stasi Ring Unveiled’. This project began with a study of the topography of surveillance in a former East German city and extends its parameters by investigating the ethical and cultural boundaries that impact on political archives and citizens. I am co-editor with Outi Remes on the book forthcoming Conspiracy Dwellings – Surveillance in Contemporary Art, in 2010. Currently, I am researching a new project that focuses on an Anglo Soviet archive and asks how can it contribute to our understanding and interpretation of ideas and culture and prevent certain histories from being marginalised or lost.