The Spiritual Imagination in Everyday World-Making

In this talk, Terence will illustrate and visualize the social and material processes that individuals use in order to see their everyday lives and spaces in a spiritual way. Starting in Singapore, we will examine various death, afterlife and religious rituals that can enchant one’s worldview of an otherwise mundane environment, performed in the context of state policy and diasporic memories – resulting in “flowscapes” around regulations and infrastructure. We will then move closer to home, and see how the concept of a “spiritual imagination” is equally at play in England, where different communities make use of place-making, aesthetic juxtapositions and bodily discourse to construct worlds of past/home, present/presence or health/wellness. The talk will conclude about what having and exercising a spiritual imagination means in our everyday lives – how this can be seen as an act of political resistance and everyday sacralisation.

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This event will be BSL interpreted by Yvonne Strain.

Terence Heng

Terence Heng is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool. Working on intersections between creative practice, cultural geographies and visual sociology, he investigates the making of sacred space, spirit mediumship and diasporic identities. Terence is the author of four books, including Of Gods, Gifts and Ghosts: Spiritual Places in Urban Spaces – a visual sociological take on Chinese religious practices in Singapore. He is currently a British Academy Mid-Career Fellow, photographing overlooked spiritual spaces in the North of England.

This event is part of the live programme for life-bestowing cadaverous soooooooooooooooooooot a research exhibition collated by Rae-Yen Song 宋瑞渊.