Being T/here

Abstract

In 2015, I was invited to attend the Nordic Summer University (NSU) in Druskininkai, a spa town in Lithuania, as one of its keynote speakers. It was here, over the course of a week, that I participated in workshops and discussions – warm, generous, creative, thought-provoking and rigorous – led by many of the contributors to this book. I travelled with my British daughter and granddaughter, who is named after Maya Deren. Deren was an avant-garde film-maker whose family immigrated to America when she was a child in the face of anti-Semitic Soviet pogroms.