Reflecting on the four events that were gathered under the heading of Money, Space and Ciinema, it is clear to me that this group of people formed a temporary community of practice through a series of dialogues that reflected on and teased out complex issues to do with representation, the role of the viewer, the political effectivity of documentary as a form, questions of gender and matters of social justice in our current moment.
I had very much wanted to open this dialogue to citizens and to subjects, with the latter referring to those who reside in Limerick but are not entitled to the full protection of citizenship, such as asylum seekers. Only one person emerging from the asylum seeker community attended; they proved a difficult group to reach in spite of physical proximity to the Gaff.
From my perspective as a researcher three matters of particular significance emerged as grounds for further development;
The co-productive element of each event, comprising a group of people from a wide range of positions, coming together to debate, argue, agree, disagree and challenge one another’s perspectives, out of which they co-produced a set of events that have forged connections, future possibilities and the seeds of a wider discussion.
Each of the films that were screened presented different ideas about capitalism and space. This included the fiscal space generated by financial capitalism; the geopolitical space of global monetary policy as enacted and effected by the IMF and related bodies; the space of the Anthropocene, a hybrid space derived from collisions of capital and ecology; the space of the industrial-military complex; the poetic space of cinema; the geopolitical space of colonialism; the space of racist exclusion; the boundary space of the Mediterranean sea; the space of the ‘camp’ generated by the growing exclusions of capitalist policy; the network of uneventful spaces that make up the beauty and the horror of human life; the space between the viewer and the screen.
A number of people drew my attention to socio-spatial matters in the city of Limerick which I will develop through further conversation.
It is entirely possible that these events may continue as a monthly programme of screenings and discussions. A number of people expressed and interest in that possibility and suggested some interesting venues which I will need to check out.