“What keeps us the same person we were 5 minutes ago?” stated Hugh Aldersey-Williams, the co-curator of Identity, Eight Rooms, Nine Lives. The question of “what?” was then followed by talks on genetics, history, politics, culinary cuisines, medicine and art. As part of the lecture series, Birth and Belonging (26 Feb 2010) sought to underline the interplay of multiple interests in order to unsettle outmoded skepticism and blind sights of fixing one discipline, identity, location, nationality and race (although they criminally missed out on gender and sexuality). The discussion also made so much sense within the context in which this discussion took place, in contemporary London, which embraces cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. Hence, it made it even more probable that the audience would eventually get into the swing of exclaiming “I am a Londoner who is also x, y, z, who also speaks more two languages, and mind you, I will probably end up being something else one day, God knows (chuckles)”. And hence, the rainbow talk of cultures, regions and ethnicities were ready to go ahead- snap, crackle and pop.
Identity: Eight Rooms, Nine Lives, Wellcome Collection, London, 26 Nov 2009- 06 April
http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/identity.aspx
