Chaired by Samid Suliman, this conversation brings together Susan Best, Dirk Yates, and Joanne Choueiri to explore ruins and the ways we live with what remains.
Moving between Beirut’s shattered grain silos, Queenslanders and their yards, and the ways artists’ behaviour can ‘ruin’ our experience of their work, the discussion asks what happens when the things we value become damaged, compromised or lost.
How does the disappearance of buildings change a city’s memory? How do our attachments to familiar housing landscapes shape our relationships with each other, Country and the environment? And how does knowledge of an artist’s life alter our response to their art? These questions open a wider conversation about memory, responsibility and the contested choices we make about what to preserve.
Susan Best is Professor of Art History and Theory at Queensland College of Art and Design, Griffith University. Her current research is on aesthetic reception in the era of #MeToo and cancel culture.
Dirk Yates participates in architecture and visual arts communities, having formal training in both disciplines, through the design of public buildings, exhibitions, talks, commentary, guest lectures, representation on institutional boards, and mentoring. Dirk’s interest is in developing projects that promote critical reflection for participants in a given social and cultural context. Focusing peoples attention on how they see, reflect, and interact with each other and their environment is the basis for his practice.
Joanne Choueiri is a researcher,educator and artist whose work explores what happens to a city’s memory when its buildings disappear. Her research examines the politics of demolition and how architectural loss shapes collective memory and the histories of cities. Drawing on her work in Beirut and Brisbane, she investigates how buildings become sites of contestation and how their absence continues to influence urban life. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia.
Samid Suliman is Director, International (Arts, Education and Law) and Senior Lecturer, Migration and Security (School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science). As a political scientist with a drama degree, he is an interdisciplinary researcher with wide-ranging interests that include migration, mobility, development, security, climate change, political theory and the intersections of art and politics. His recent publications include Performance, Refugees and Resistance, co-edited with Caroline Wake and Suzanne Little (Routledge, 2023).
