Susannah Haslam is a tutor (research) in humanities at the Royal College of Art in London and a research fellow with Theatrum Mundi. She collaborates with Tom Clark via the research group adpe. Her current research navigates the relationship between contemporary education and cultural institutions and infrastructures; queer and critical subjects, pedagogies, practices and environments; tertiary-level educational alternatives and expansions. Susannah holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art, titled, After the Educational Turn— alternatives to the alternative art school; and an MA and BA in visual cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London.

 

 

Susannah’s research with Theatrum Mundi’s Making Cultural Infrastructure project considers how infrastructure can be put to work, radically, in and out of cultural institutions. The research has explored how to engage with the infrastructural conditions of cultural institutions, through methods of arrest, intervention and co-option, in the context of Tania Bruguera’s 10,146,374 commission at Tate Modern. With John Bingham-Hall, Tram Nguyen and Annie Bicknell, Susannah co-curated a series of discussions, under the aegis of Reimagining the Institution, at Tate Exchange in February 2019; and presented work as part of Theatrum Mundi’s Backstage Production exhibition at Agile City’s Civic House, in Glasgow in June 2019. Throughout 2020, the research has involved a series of in-depth discussions with Cecilia Wee, Sean Roy Parker, Meneesha Kellay, Marta Michalowska and John Bingham-Hall towards the production of a framework for a curriculum on cultural infrastructure. The curriculum will be piloted in TM’s first Summer School in 2021 and marks an alternative format to publishing research.