Deniz is currently co-organising a series of creative workshops in response to Stuart Hall’s work as the PI of the Representation and Identity strand of the College of Arts and Law’s Rethinking the Fateful Triangle in an Age of Democratic Decay: Race, Ethnicity, Nation incubator (2024) in collaboration with researchers of the University of Birmingham and local artists. The creative responses will form part of a new sound piece (in collaboration with sound artist Mia Sugunasingha tbc) reflecting on how we see ourselves in Birmingham, bringing together different languages and perspectives on belonging in the city.

She is currently also working on developing a new audio-visual project in response to the Stuart Hall archive. Building on the methods utilised during her practice-based PhD the Art of Un-belonging, the project proposes to engage with Stuart Hall’s legacy and the University of Birmingham’s Stuart Hall archive by way of creative writing, sound, and moving image. Multilingual diaristic sound and video recordings addressed to Stuart Hall will generate an imaginary dialogue, aiming to explore and re-inscribe the meaning of identity and belonging as something that Hall described as “an endless, ever unfinished conversation”.

The creative process, culminating in a video and sound installation, will be driven by a series of research questions: What does cultural identity and belonging mean in Britain today? How can we challenge fixed notions of belonging and identity through art and audio-visual strategies? What does diaspora sound like?