Periodic Reporting for period 3 - UrbTerr (Urban Terrorism in Europe (2004-2019): Remembering, Imagining, and Anticipating Violence)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2022-12-01 do 2024-05-31
The project has three concrete aims: (1) analyse the collective forms of forgetting, remembering, and imagining that have shaped urban spaces in the four countries after recent terrorist attacks, (2) develop a ‘new materialist approach’ to terrorism and use this framework to critically assess policies and material security infrastructures that have been created in response to these attacks at a local and European level, (3) use art as a creative tool to develop and experiment with alternative forms of remembering and different visions of the future.
One of UrbTerr’s key aims is to develop a new materialist approach to urban terrorism, and to use this theoretical framework to offer a critical analysis of the role of material objects and infrastructures in terrorist attacks and counter-terrorism strategies. To work towards this objective, we have organised workshops and conferences with leading experts in new (feminist) materialism. While our theoretical framework draws on ideas from a range of thinkers, the work of feminist physicist and philosopher Karen Barad is of particular importance to UrbTerr. A Baradian approach enables us to analyse urban terrorism as a ‘material-discursive’ phenomenon and to explore how terrorist weapons have evolved with and against weapon laws, counter-terrorism architectures, and a range of other material and immaterial structures and processes. We are currently working on a number of co-authored and individual publications outlining and further developing this new materialist approach to terrorism. Of particular importance in this context is the PI’s monograph 'The Terror of Things: Rethinking security through the agency of everyday objects' (Bloomsbury, 2023).
Art plays a vital part in UrbTerr because it can be used to honour the memory of victims and to expand the field of imagination in ways that go beyond the forms of narrating, planning, and playing that characterise many counter-terrorism measures. In 2020, the PI and the Birmingham based arts organisation Eastside Projects (EP) released the call for submissions (In)security – critical explorations and alternative visions resulting in a fruitful collaboration with five artists. The collaboration culminated in the art exhibition ‘It might be nothing but it could be something’ (https://eastsideprojects.org/projects/insecurity2020/). The PI has initiated a number of other art collaborations, including a photography project with a survivor of the London Bridge attack in 2019, and is working towards a major international art event in 2023.
The PI will use the remaining time to continue to work with local and international artists and to plan public exhibitions and events showcasing the results of these creative collaborations. Another central objective for the second half of the project cycle is to disseminate research findings in the form of open access publications, conference papers, and public research events. Planned outputs include the interdisciplinary conference ‘Remembering/Imagining Terror in Europe’ in September 2022, three more UrbTerr workshops with international speakers, two monographs, two PhD theses, and two articles.