Formally established in 2016, the Creative Centre for Fluid Territories (CCFT) is an international, peripatetic, research group which interrogates how interdisciplinary research practices contribute to and share critical insights about place making, belonging and occupation.
CCFT is an academic network, seeking to consider the role of practice-based research methods in shaping narratives of place through a series of nomadic dialogues and travelling colloquia. Through its research processes, the Group aims to address the following questions:
– In what ways does a nomadic and dialogic encounter with other place(s) deepen cultural, philosophical, and political understanding?
– How can the complex histories held in landscapes be critically interpreted and represented?
– Can creative practice transform places or our perception of them?
CCFT in particular has focused to date on three sites – the Norwegian village of Telavåg and the abandoned, former inter-communal Cypriot village of Agios Sozomenos and the divided city of Nicosia. Telavåg was rebuilt in its entirety after World War II by its surviving former inhabitants, having been raised to the ground by occupying forces in 1942. With its proximity to the UN De-militarized Buffer Zone, and its current status as an environmental resource, Agios Sozomenos provides a powerful, multi-layered and poignant location and focus for creative intercommunal and ecological research and dialogue.
In late 2019, work by the Group was displayed in two military tents, erected by UN soldiers, in an area of Nicosia now part of the UN Buffer Zone, as part of Buffer Fringe 2019. Throughout one day and into the evening, the work displayed here, and at the Home for Cooperation (a space for inter-communal dialogue), provided a focus for presentations and conversations with visitors from both North and South Cyprus, as well as UN personnel.
CCFT is: Susan Brind, Dr Jim Harold – Visiting Lecturer, Shauna McMullan (The Glasgow School of Art), Prof Yiorgos Hadjichristou (University of Nicosia, Southern Cyprus), Prof Duncan Higgins (Nottingham Trent University & University of Bergen), Andrew Lock (Doctoral Researcher), Prof Johan Sandborg (University of Bergen), Linda Lien (Independent Designer, Bergen), Dr Ana Souto (Nottingham Trent University)
Reading Landscape 