Limbo – Susannah Gent’s ‘Unhomely Street’ in Brighton exhibition

Limbo
Saturday 04 May 2019
SEAS – Socially Engaged Art Salon, Brighton

Limbo isn’t just the imaginary place or state of all holy souls after death, but a real condition. The artists in the exhibition present limbo spaces that have risen due to Brexit, austerity, socio-economic insecurity, racism and xenophobia. They explore on a personal and national level what it is to be in-between and to live in uncertainty.

The exhibition includes paintings, photography, installations and video-art, Artists’ talks and film screening. Dates for events will be posted on SEAS Facebook.

Part of Artists’ Open Houses – Brighton and with a collaboration of SEAS, #BMECP Centre (https://bmecp.org.uk/) and #Euromernet (https://www.facebook.com/euromernet/) and #Figmentarts www.figmentarts.co.uk

List of participating artists:
Curator: Gil Mualem-Doron
Artists: Rob Rich (a solo exhibition)/ Sarah Watson (a solo exhibition)/ Joshua Evan/ Ana Matos/ Hannah Baker/ Angela Fox/ Karolina Maciejak/ Ursula Vargas/ Judith Beeby/ Peter Mammes/ Jane Ostler/ Sophie Kyriakopoulou/ James Kuszewski/ Charlie Williams/ Spasova Maja/ Katie Carson/ Khaled Alwarea / Louisa Pankhurst Johnson/ Shonagh Short/ Caroline Streatfield/ Stephen Harwood/ Laura Potts/ Charlie Williams/ Sampy Sicada/ Anthony Stevens/ Sabrina Fuller/ Beatrice Asia Taylor Searle/ Susannah Gent/ Hannah Robin Baker/ SOMA/ Greta Sharp/ Katrina Abbatuan /David Parker/ Tugba tirpan/ Žaneta Zukalová / Russell Honeyman / Katrina Abbatuan / Ian Nasbitt

Unhomely Street follows a female protagonist in a state of fugue following a head injury as she wanders an alienating city underbelly of clubs and free parties. Through recollections of anti-capitalist conversations, historical information about wartime atrocity, and human brutality, she searches for hope in an increasingly frightening, subjective landscape.

The film explores the Derridean concept of hauntology both in terms of its original context taken from Spectres of Marx where Derrida suggests that ‘time is out of joint’ and that we are haunted by spectres of those dead and those not yet born, as well as recognising Mark Fisher’s interpretation that mourns the lost futures of the twentieth century, suggesting we live in a time of mental illness, unable to envisage a future that is different to current times.

Unhomely Street is a deeply personal film that aims to employ new approaches to filmmaking through multiple narrative strands and a focus on tone and metaphor in an attempt to communicate a subjective experience.

---

Susannah Gent is a filmmaker and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media Arts &Communication at Sheffield Hallam University.