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Writer and curator Ekow Eshun, lately Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, speaks to the Press Association after he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to the arts by The Princess Royal at an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle.

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00:00let's say it's it's it's a surprise not so much you know appreciate the honor
00:06but it's a strange place I mean it's kind of fantastic place or it's a
00:11fantastical place let's say that because I think being in a place like this
00:18palace is such a long such a rich history it actually does take you back
00:25slightly being here we talked about art we talked about art we talked about what
00:30she's reading we talked about the fact she gets to meet these astonishing people
00:37that come through the doors of the palace every day but I think yeah the
00:43mate so that's what we talked about and what is she reading then well I think
00:48really her point was that she didn't get a chance to read all the books that she
00:52had and wanted to have and so on and I think I was just suggesting that
00:56sometimes actually just having the book having this body of knowledge around you
01:01has its worth whileness to it it's like having a conversation you don't
01:05necessarily get to the end of a conversation so maybe you start but you
01:08don't finish a book it's part of the whole thing you're just trying to expand how you
01:12see the world and how you imagine the world anyway that's kind of what we talked about
01:16Eko Usham was among the 67 people given honours by the Princess Royal as an
01:22investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle in late September the 58 year olds chairs
01:27the fourth plinth commissioning group which oversees the artworks that appear on
01:31the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square born in London he is a broadcaster writer and
01:37curator Usham was the first black editor of a major magazine in the UK yeah well I
01:44think these in some respects are quite strange times we feels very unsettled by
01:49just all kinds of developments climate change to immigration to the pace of
01:54technological change and I think very often we embody that unease in this idea
02:00of an outsider a stranger as a an epitome of difference otherness something
02:09that we can't quite fathom so in my head at the moment I tend to think of the fear
02:16of the other the fear of the stranger as one of defining aspects of our time right
02:24now but with that said I'm really interested in how we as individuals or
02:30collectively might also come to look from the position and from the viewpoint of the
02:36other and of each other because I would suggest that doing so allows us to see
02:42the world from different perspectives through new eyes in different ways
02:47sometimes there's a desire to make that simple and to suggest there's only two
02:51ways to read society us and them in and out I tend to think the world is more
02:56interesting when we embrace complexity

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