THE EDIT, IN THE IN-BETWEEN | Panel Discussion

Jemma Desai, Mason Leaver-Yap, Adnan Madani and Alia Syed will come together for a panel discussion chaired by Paul Goodwin, exploring migration, identity and the relationship between film and cultural memory.

This event is part of the public programme for The Ring in the Fish, a solo exhibition by Alia Syed curated by Shalmali Shetty, that was on view at the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), Glasgow, from 17 May to 26 July 2025. Please note that, due to the indefinite closure of the CCA, this event has been rescheduled to take place at an alternative venue.

For more information on the exhibition, visit: https://www.cca-glasgow.com/programme/the-ring-in-the-fish

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You can watch the films in advance using the links provided. Please note that they will also be available for viewing at the venue, one hour before and and after the event, as doors will open an hour prior to the start.

1. Ka Ba Ddi: a breath, a move, a game; Alia Syed (2025)
2. The Dhaba: 1st Chapter: Mr. Sharif and 2nd Chapter: Mr. Bhari; Alia Syed (2025)

BIOS

Jemma Desai is a cultural worker across film, visual arts and performance and a somatic facilitator working with individuals and groups.

Paul Goodwin is a curator, researcher and educator based in London. He works at Chelsea College of Art, where he is a professor and director of the University of the Arts London Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity & Nation (TrAIN). His main research and curatorial interests coalesce around analyses and critiques of global and diasporic art. Goodwin has engaged with Alia Syed's practice extensively over the years since inviting her to participate in the Conversation Pieces artist talk and performance series he curated at Tate Britain in 2010.

Mason Leaver-Yap works with artists to produce publications, exhibitions, and events. Recent projects include work with Alia Syed, Jasleen Kaur, Ingrid Pollard, James Richards, Alexis Kyle Mitchell, Ima-Abasi Okon, Phil Collins, Renée Green and Free Agent Media, Laura Guy, Stefanie Heinze, Taylor Le Melle, Jamie Crewe, Onyeka Igwe, Emily Wardill, Jimmy Robert, Ain Bailey, Andrea Büttner, and Oreet Ashery.

Adnan Madani is an artist and theorist. He has written widely on South Asian art and diasporic cultures, Islamic philosophy, secularism, and globalization. He is the author of Visual Cultures as World—Forming (with Jean-Paul Martinon, Sternberg 2024), and leads the Advanced Practices research programme at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Alia Syed born in Swansea and currently living between London and Glasgow, has been creating experimental films in Britain for over three decades. She is interested in how subjectivities are produced through culture, diaspora and location; and her practice therefore interrogates the protean nature of self-narration: enfolding fact, fiction, present, past, and how histories are made and unmade. Her work has been shown extensively in cinemas and galleries around the world.