Landscape, Belonging, and Time

Proof of registration, via a QR code on your phone or on paper, will be required to enter Reid Hall. Entry will be refused to those who are not registered.

In conjunction with the Sciences Po-Columbia-sponsored conference Luttes d’hier et richesses de demain – Ecological Resources, Belonging and Temporal Imaginaries in Guinea, artists and scholars working across different traditions and locations will reflect on how their work engages with attachment to place. Land, ecology, and historical time produce social worlds and are produced by them. They enmesh in people’s claims to belonging and collective identity, particularly amidst extraction, environmental transformation, and political change. The event brings together artists and academics from both Guinea and the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination to explore the potential for international comparison across different geographies.

Panelist: 

Camila Rodríguez Triana  is a visual artist and filmmaker whose distinctions include the Best Art Installation Award at Panorama 21, Le Fresnoy (France), and the Emerging Artist Award at the Rencontres Artistiques, Carré sur Seine (France). She was selected as Carrie Mae Weems’s mentee for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative (2020–2022). Her work has been presented internationally at institutions and venues such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Greece), the Salon de Montrouge (France), and BAM Fisher, New York (USA), among others. Her films have been screened at major international festivals, including the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Doclisboa, and FIDMarseille. Camila Rodríguez Triana is a 2026-2027 Fellow at the Institute.

Timothy Vasko is Assistant Professor of Religion and Human Rights at Barnard College. An historian of international political thought, his work focuses on the intersections between religion, law, and empire in the early modern Americas. He has published essays in History of the Human Sciences, Critical Research on Religion, and Modern Intellectual History. His first book, Making All the World America: Native Information and the Doctrine of Discovery, is published by University of Pennsylvania Press. Timothy Vasko is a 2026-2027 Fellow at the Institute.

Hakim Bah is an author and theater director. His plays examine social injustices, systemic violence, and human divisions. Through texts often rooted in contexts of conflict, oppression, or personal crises, he explores the flaws of power, the resilience of individuals, and the dynamics of domination. His writing, characterized by a tension between the poetic and the raw, gives a voice to the forgotten and the oppressed, while examining moral contradictions and the limits of humanity.

Nomi Dave  is an interdisciplinary researcher working across music / sound studies, legal studies, and anthropology. Her research examines sound, voice, violence, and the law.

Moussa Yéro Bah is a committed journalist and activist, she is illustrated by her fierce struggle for human rights and the promotion of gender equality.

Bremen Donovan is a filmmaker, photographer, and researcher. Her first feature documentary is a collaboration with journalists, activists, and lawyers in the Republic of Guinea. A 2025 Fejos Fellow, Bremen has conducted visual reporting and engaged documentary projects internationally for years, including recent work on policing and the production of visual evidence in France. Bremen holds an interdisciplinary B.A. from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Anthropology. She lives in Marseille.

Organisers:

Lynnette Widder is an architect and architectural historian who teaches sustainability management at Columbia University. She has authored two books on architectural history, Year Zero to Economic Miracle: Hans Schwippert and Sep Ruf in Postwar West German Building Culture (2022) and Ira Rakatansky: As Modern as Tomorrow (2010); co-edited Seeds of Diaspora (2026); and published in New German Critique, W86, Wolkenkuckuckheim, Oxonian Review, Kritische Berichte and elsewhere. Her research has been supported by the NY State Council on the Arts, the Architectural League, DAAD and the Graham Foundation; and by fellowships at the Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, MacDowell, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination and the Heyman Center for the Humanities.

Gustav Kalm is Assistant Professor, Junior Chair in Earth Jurisprudence. He received his PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from Columbia University (2023) and previously trained as a lawyer at Sciences Po (2014). Besides his ethnographic work on legal techniques in world economy, he has also studied the importance of visual rhetoric in legal bureaucracy. He also writes cultural and political commentary in the Estonian press and has pursued multiple collaborations with artists and curators.

Gabriel André, graduate of the École Normale Supérieure (ENS Ulm), earned his Ph.D. in political science in September 2025, following four years at the Center for International Research and Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po Paris.  Since September 2024, he has also been a full-time Temporary Teaching and Research Assistant (ATER) at Sciences Po Lille. In 2026, he won the Thesis Prize from the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery for his dissertation: “Historiographic Practices of the Self: Historicities of Slavery, Political Prestige, and Islamic Legitimacy in Fouta-Djallon (Guinea).”

This event is organized by Lynnette Widder, who was a 2020-2021 Fellow at the Institute.