Bright lights, Brussels
I’m just back from a short residency with the transdisciplinary lab, FoAM. Whilst my plans for a study/stay were fairly vague – as it wasn’t clear what might be possible – I had been keen to go there for some time and to be involved, or help out, with a project. It had also been discussed that I might take a more informal role: more an observer than a co-experimenter (an on-going tension). I was also keen to chat about the working practices and processes, and get to know the spaces in and with which FoAM were working. Although emails had been sent back and forth, and I attended Luminous Green at the end of July, things only fell into place late on. This culminated in me being offered a more-than-generous residency.
The dates, 18-24 September, were arranged and the Eurostar tickets were booked. I had a vague idea of what would be happening from the ‘events’ part of FoAM’s website (soon to be overhauled). Whilst there, I would meet an AI researcher who also had a residency, as well as be around for the writing of a funding proposal and a small post-Luminous Green publication, as well as other on-going projects. With the suggestion that there was “plenty of stuff going on and much help needed (primarily writing and editing though, not sure if that’s interesting for you)” and that there would also be time for chatting, I was very keen to visit. The posts that follow will try to gesture towards some of those activities, and examine the notion of a ‘geographer in residence’.