Eddie Bruce-Jones
©2024 Eddie Bruce-Jones
Law & Humanities
My work involves thinking through ideas of justice, including legal justice, through art and literature. The humanities also help us to understand the limits of legal remedies. I teach a course called Race, Law and Literature, maintain a creative writing practice, and use literature alongside legal and social science approaches to researching colonial indentureship.
Some of the collaborations in the arts that have been most formative for me are below.
We Will Walk: Art and Resistance in the American South
Turner Contemporary
Slide 1: Entrance to Exhibition
Slide 2: L-r: Eddie Bruce-Jones, Paul Goodwin, Hannah Collins and Lonnie Holley. Not shown: Kelly Foster.
Slide 3: Timeline element of Exhibition, authored by Eddie Bruce-Jones and Kelly Foster
Video: Zoom webinar on Exhibition
I contributed modestly to the exhibition, curated by Hannah Collins and Paul Goodwin for the Turner Contemporary in 2020. The exhibition was closed for several months during the Covid-19 Pandemic and reopened for the Autumn of 2020. In addition to the exhibition, I moderated a conversation on the exhibition on Black Art, Radical Transformation with Barby Asante, Kojo Koram, Rabz Lansiquot and Imani Mason Jordan.
The Archive is a Gathering Place
The Tate
The 2024 symposium was curated by Vasundhara Mathur for Tate Research and it brought togther artists, academics, curators and other thinkers to examine the concept of the archive, community and transformative change. Together with my collaborator Prof. Tao Leigh Goffee (Hunter University), I offered reflections on the archive and the subject of history in relation to the British colonial indentureship period.
The Price of the Ticket
Tate Modern and 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning
From the organisers: “In a moment when social, cultural and political values are being fiercely contested, 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning’s Associate Curator Barby Asante invites Eddie Bruce Jones, Teresa Cisneros, Taylor Le Melle, Andrea Phillips, Willow Verkek and Rehana Zaman to join her to lead a collective study session using James Baldwin’s text the Price of the Ticket as the central text in a study session on value.
Baldwin’s text explores power, economics and other systems of value, through reflection on the value of friendship, mentorship, black life, art and more. This is an invitation for us to discuss ideas relating to value in the arts and how artistic production is affected by social values. We intend to interrogate the idea of value, values and value systems and how we can think and work differently with value.”
An Evening with Saidiya Hartman
Birkbeck Centre for Law and the Humanities
Alongside Avery Gordon, I was delighted to welcome Saidiya Hartman to Birkbeck Law School on behalf of the Center for Law and Humanities. Colleagues and I offered brief remarks on her then recent work, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, before turning the floor to Hartman and opening up for discussion.
Blackness - Ghosts of Past, Present and Future
Camden Arts Centre
An afternoon discussion looking at how we can move away from constructs of ‘colour’ when we are in an age that is haunted by a history of racial oppression. With a keynote presentation from Avery F. Gordon, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara followed by a panel discussion with artist, writer and filmmaker, John Akomfrah, Dr des. Eddie Bruce-Jones, Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck College, Avery F. Gordon and Gilane Tawadros, Chief Executive of DACS, a not-for-profit visual artists’ rights management organisation.
The Politics of Fragility
Birkbeck Arts Week
In May 2017, as part of Birkbeck University of London Arts Week, filmmakers Lata Mani and Nicholas Grandi screened “The Poetics of Fragility,” which they describe as “a narrative and optical exploration of the texture, vitality and aesthetics of fragility that interweaves story, poetry and critical inquiry to reclaim fragility as intrinsic to nature and human existence, not merely something to be bemoaned or overcome.” I offered a brief response to the film prior to an audience Q&A.
View the film at https://thepoeticsoffragility.com/
Oury Jalloh - Oranienplatz - Ohlauer Strasse
English Theatre Berlin
In Winter 2014, an exhibition, scenic presentation and panel discussion was hosted by the English Theatre Belin in commemoration of the ten-year anniversary of the death-in-custody of Oury Jalloh. The event included the official launch and scenic presentation of the play The Most Unsatisfied Town by Amy Evans, directed by Daniel Brunet, and a panel discussion. In cooperation with Sharon Dodua Otoo, Witnessed Series and Africavenir
Workshop of Play ‘The Most Unsatisfied Town’ by Amy Evans
Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin
In 2009, I assisted the writer and cast/readers in the workshop of an early verison of The Most Unsatisfied Town, by Amy Evans, based on the life and story of Oury Jalloh. I contributed legal expertise and details about the ongoing trial on the circumstances of Jalloh’s death.