Festival Forum: On Bodies & Borders

3 Oct, 4pm

Project Arts Centre (Space Upstairs)

€5

Duration: 90 mins

“I didn’t know that the war was still inside you, that there was a war to begin with, that once it enters you it never leaves – but merely echoes, a sound forming the face of your own son.” – On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Borders are not just lines on a map, but physical, affective, and racialized experiences. The journalist Sorcha Pollak will chair a conversation with artist Alice Rekab, novelist Evgeny Shtorn and journalist David Gilbert, using Dead Centre’s ZINC as a jumping off point to explore –through the lenses of visual art, literature, frontline reportage, and the lived experience of migration–how the state enforces itself on the individual, how art maps what geography cannot, and the psycho-physical impact of transgressing and shifting borders.

Sponsors

Co Productions and Support

Speaker Bios

Alice Rekab

Alice Rekab is an artist based in Dublin. Their work explores embedded personal and cultural narratives; the stories that we tell and the stories that we are told about ourselves. This work emerges from their own mixed-race Irish identity, family history, experiences of growing up, and the context of present day Ireland. Working across film, sculpture, performance, print and installation Rekab considers the making of one’s belonging through the prisms of the body, the family and the nation state, exploring associated joys and trauma.
Following solo exhibitions in Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2023) and The Douglas Hyde,
Dublin (2021-22), Rekab’s recent solo exhibition Clann Miotlantach / Mythlantics (2024-26) took place at Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Co. Cork, and toured to Galway Arts Centre; Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda; and Limerick City Gallery of Art. Their work was included in the Liverpool Biennial 2025, and is held in the collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art; Arts Council of Ireland; Trinity College, Dublin; and The Cathal Ryan Trust.

David Gilbert

David Gilbert is a reporter with over two decades of experience covering technology. He currently works at WIRED covering disinformation, online extremism, and how they impact people’s lives across the globe, with a special focus on US politics and elections. He is a regular contributor to CNN, PBS, and MSNBC, as well as RTE radio and TV. Prior to joining WIRED, David worked at VICE News. He lives in Ireland.

Evgeny Shtorn

Evgeny Shtorn is an Irish Russophone writer, activist, and researcher. He left Russia in 2018 due to his civil society work and was granted international protection in Ireland in 2019. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Helsinki, where his research examines violence against LGBTIQ+ people in Russia. His work focuses on confronting authoritarian governance, analysing its effects on civil society, and supporting human rights work on the ground. In parallel, he develops autoethnographic writing grounded in lived experience, bridging research, advocacy, and narrative practice. He collaborates with international partners on initiatives supporting human rights defenders at risk, including those in exile and relocation. His writing has been published in academic journals, anthologies, and international media outlets.

Sorcha Pollak

Sorcha Pollak is an award-winning reporter with the Irish Times specialising in immigration and also co-hosts the In The News podcast. In 2015, she created the Irish Times’ weekly New to the Parish feature and is the author of ‘New to the Parish: Stories of Love, War and Adventure from Ireland’s Immigrants’ published in 2018.

Before joining the Irish Times, Sorcha worked for the Guardian newspaper and TIME Magazine in London. She has also lived and worked in Peru, India, Spain and France and her journalistic reporting has taken her across the globe, from Beirut to Stockholm and Amman to Tegucigalpa. She has a BA in European Studies from Trinity College Dublin and an MSc in Media, Communication and Development from the London School of Economics.

She is currently on maternity leave following the birth of her second child and will return to the Irish Times in November.

Duration:
90 mins