Against Erasure: art and archives under oppression

Please check ticket info for this event below, incl. information about access.

How do we challenge oppression when it seeks to obscure the very fabric of history and truth?

In Pleasure Gardens, Skye Arundhati Thomas and co-author Izabella Scott seek to make visible the conditions of the military occupation and blackouts in Kashmir. In her work, Rosa Campbell disrupts ideas of ‘canon’ and margin.They are joined by journalist and documentary film-maker Zozan Yasar to investigate the role of art and archives when oppression takes the form of erasure.

The unseen is a strategy of oppression - this is how our stories are made seen again.

The event is hosted by Tatevik Sargsyan.

Our speakers:

Skye Arundhati Thomas is a writer and editor from India. Their first book Remember the Details, on viral images, courtrooms, and a brief history of a protest movement, is out with Floating Opera Press, and their second, Pleasure Gardens (co-written with Izabella Scott) on constitutional law, military occupation and communications blackouts is out now with Mack Books, as is their third, on the painter Lalitha Lajmi, with Sternberg Press. From 2021-24 they were co-editor of The White Review. They are currently international curator-in-residence at the Fondation Pernod Ricard in Paris.

Zozan Yasar is a Kurdish journalist, documentary filmmaker, and researcher based in Scotland. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She co-produced the documentary My (Refugee) Life and co-directed the short film We Depend on Each Other, both of which explore the challenges faced by displaced communities. In her work, Zozan focuses on the complex intersections of conflict, gender, displacement, and humanitarian crises. She has worked with media outlets such as The New Humanitarian, Voice of America, and Internews, and her writing has appeared in publications like The Guardian, BBC, Vice News, and the Humanitarian Practice Network. Her experience covers diverse regions, including the Middle East, the UK, Europe, North and East Syria/Rojava, Iraqi Kurdistan, Central Africa, and the US.

Rosa Campbell lives in Leith, and is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of St Andrews, where she teaches modern and contemporary literature, specialising in the poetry and poetics of women and queer writers. Her first book, Pothos, a lyric essay/memoir about grief and houseplants, was published in 2021 by Broken Sleep Books, and she is the editor of The Miraculous Season: The Selected Poems of V.R. ‘Bunny’ Lang (Carcanet, 2024).

Our chair:

Tatevik Sargsyan is the founding publisher and editor of Anamot Press, focused on queer experiences across borders and other stories told with no shame. As the only queer, Armenian-led publishing press in the UK, Anamot offers a home for cross-border dialogue and cultural exchange. Through groundbreaking anthologies, poetry and food events, residencies for poets and collaborative international book events, Tatevik curates spaces for individuals to form and reform themselves, affirming their identities. Tatevik was born in Yerevan, Armenia and is currently based in London. She is also a design strategist and a trustee of the Poetry Translation Centre.

*Please note that masks will be required at this event (as with all Lighthouse events).

*Accessibility: All events will be professionally filmed & livestreamed. The Roxy is wheelchair accessible (including toilets) and we'll have provisions for neurodivergent guests including stims, quiet space and colour-coded lanyards.

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