Syllabus IV will be at Iniva, London, over the weekend of 7–9 June. Please note, we have already selected the participants for Syllabus IV.

Syllabus IV artists Scott Caruth, Libita Clayton, Jessica Coleman, Bettina Fung, Laura Hindmarsh, Beth Kettel, David Lisser, Alicja Rogalska, Kirsty Russell and Abigail Sidebotham are visiting London for their fifth retreat framed around speculative fiction, working with archives, and “unlocking” future possibilities.

Friday

Friday will be spent in Iniva's new building where Iniva's Library and Archive Manager, Tavian Hunter, will lead the group on a zine-making workshop. There will also be screenings from Iniva's collection.

Saturday

Saturday will feature a lock-picking workshop with Irena Krüger, focued on the social history of lockpicking. This will be followed by a talk and discussion with curator and writer Taylor Le Melle. In the afternoon, there will be an artist talk and reading group with artist Victoria Sin and a group meal at Adulis Restaurant and Bar.

Sunday 

Sunday will be spent at South London Gallery and Tate Britain, where Hassan Vawda will deliver a tour and talk on fictionalising history.

Biographies

​Victoria Sin is an artist using speculative fiction within performance, moving image, writing, and print to interrupt normative processes of desire, identification, and objectification. This includes: Drag as a practice of purposeful embodiment questioning the reification and ascription of ideal images within technologies of representation and systems of looking, Science fiction as a practice of rewriting patriarchal and colonial narratives naturalized by scientific and historical discourses on states of sexed, gendered and raced bodies, Storytelling as a collective practice of centering marginalized experience, creating a multiplicity of social contexts to be immersed in and strive towards. Drawing from close personal encounters of looking and wanting, their work presents heavily constructed fantasy narratives on the often unsettling experience of the physical within the social body. Their long-term project Dream Babes explores science and speculative fiction as a productive strategy of queer resistance, imaging futurity that does not depend on existing historical and social infrastructure. It has included science fiction porn screenings and talks, a three-day programme of performance at Auto Italia South East, a publication, and a regular science fiction reading group for queer people of colour.

Taylor Le Melle is a curator and writer based in London. Taylor’s writing has been featured in anthologies such as: Gender, Space (Macmillian) ed. Aimee Meredith Cox as well as in periodicals such as Art Monthly. With artist Imran Perretta, Taylor has initiated not/no.w.here, an artist workers’ cooperative. Taylor co-facilitates the Art Magazines Reading Group and alongside Rowan Powell, Taylor runs PSS, a publisher of printed material which has recently launched Daniella Valz Gen’s poetry chapbook Subversive Economies and Victoria Sin’s performance relic, A View From Elsewhere.

Hassan Vawda is the Guides Coordinator at Tate and a co-chair of Tate’s BAME network. He is also an artist involved in programming and projects across multiple disciplines and an Aziz Foundation Scholar studying Community Development, looking at inclusion/exclusion within cultural and creative spaces, particularly faithbased creative expression. Currently finishing his MA in Applied Anthropology & Community & Youth Work at Goldsmith’s University of London, he will start his PhD at Tate in October 2019.