Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo

Curatorial Activism and Practices of Listening: Revisiting Kuratorisk Aktion’s "Rethinking Nordic Colonialism" (2006)

2024-09-20T19:27:10+00:00

This article critically discusses the collective and collaborative curatorial practice of Kuratorisk Aktion, consisting of Danish curators Fred (previously Frederikke) Hansen and Tone Olaf Nielsen, though the case of their first exhibition project Rethinking Nordic Colonialism: A Postcolonial Exhibition Project in Five Acts (2006). The exhibition was a pioneering effort, which addressed systemic discrimination and racial silences in relation to minorities and Indigenous people in the Nordic region, through a focus on amnesia in the collective memory around Nordic colonial history. This article examines how the white Danish curators addressed and negotiated asymmetrical power relations between Denmark and Greenland, as well as asymmetries in relation to their own practice as curators and their position as Danes. Further, it analyses how the project assembled practicians from both the so-called Global North and the Global South, to enhance strategies of resistance across geographical divides and create alliances of solidarity across common differences, as suggested by feminist theorist Chandra T. Mohanty (2003). Through this historical example, the article contributes to ongoing discussions of creative forms of resistance, and alliances between arts and social movements in which assemblies and gatherings form generative strategies. This case study suggests how curatorial activism seeking to prevent forms of cognitive extractivism might be understood in relation to practices of listening, whilst reflecting on issues of privilege and authorship in collective and collaborative practices.

Indigenous Perspectives on Forest Fires, Drought, and Climate Change in Sábme: A Collaborative Arts-led Research Project

2024-11-04T11:03:27+00:00

The impact of wildfires in Sweden, commonly claimed to be caused by climate change, has recently become a national and international concern. The overall aim of the inter- and supradisciplinary research project presented in this article is to analyse, document and draw attention to the local and Indigenous/Sámi stewardship of land, with specific regard to fire management, drought, and other aspects of climate change. The project situated within the growing field of Indigenous Land Based Education and Knowledge (Wildcat et al., 2014). It is run by an experienced artist and researcher in collaboration with Indigenous Sámi communities and Indigenous Sámi academic scholars. The project brings together the disciplines of artistic research and visual documentation with the history of technology and science, environmental history, feminist technoscience, gender research and Indigenous methodologies as well as Sámi knowledge. Based on the methods available within these research disciplines, the project uses extensive fieldwork, archival research, and audio-visual documentation, including interviews, documents, drone images, photographs, writings, and workshops, as a source of research, communication, and dissemination. We investigate local and Sámi ecological knowledge available. Furthermore, we evaluate how artistic research and visual documentation -with a critical approach and developed collaboratively- can be used to document, analyse, discuss and provide a basis for promoting Indigenous knowledges in the nation state and climate change debate.

Searching for the Language. A Possible Dialogue between Artistic, Activist and Curatorial Practices

2024-11-21T10:29:56+00:00

This paper delves into the project SILVER RIGHTS (2020-2022), initiated by Italian artist Elena Mazzi in dialogue with Mapuche spiritual leader and silversmith Mauro Millán and Argentinian artist Eduardo Molinari, and supported by ar/ge kunst. As cultural operators, a visual artist and a curator, we felt the importance of sharing this project we have been working on for several years, unpacking complexities and difficulties we encountered along the way. SILVER RIGHTS unfolds around the role that silver jewelry plays in the social, spiritual and political life of The Mapuche, the Indigenous people inhabiting lands across Chile and Argentina. Accordingly, the central nucleus of the project consists of a series of six silver jewellery pieces crafted by Mauro Millán and designed in dialogue with Elena Mazzi following workshops on symbologies and current struggles, held with numerous members of the Mapuche community. Furthermore, the project confronts the Museum Leleque in Patagonia, established by Italian company Benetton; a museum that dismisses the Mapuche people as an extinct culture ‘museumizing’ their memory and material culture. The jewels, alongside a complex installation display with documentary and research materials, have been exhibited at ar/ge kunst, Italy, and other international venues. Drawing on anthropologist Viveiros de Castro’s (2007) writings, the paper reads the dialogue between Mauro Millán and Elena Mazzi, as practice towards inventing of culture and inter-ethnic politics. More generally, through the work of Azoulay (2019), Acosta (2013) and Esposito Yussif (2019) the paper addresses how contemporary cultural institutions preserve separative and neo-extractivist practices. Ultimately, it aims to propose ways in which exhibition-making and display politics can activate mediation, recomposition, and healing as countermeasures against the perpetuation of colonial narratives.

Artistic Inactivism: With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing and Discussing Everything

2024-09-19T14:48:52+00:00

Arguably, one of the core impulses of modern art and of the 20th century avantgarde, was to abandon its contemplative nature and align itself with the productivist paradigm of industrial societies. In this paper, I will argue that by affirming work, production and social activity as the liberatory horizon of modernity, art conceals and naturalizes the fact that these concepts are themselves embedded in capitalist social relations. I will then turn to artistic gestures of inactivity and non-production to examine their critical potential within the framework of conceptual and postconceptual art practice. The examples I consider register the contradictions and shifts in contemporary social technologies and ideologies of labor and, in doing so, help establish (in)activity as a critical and problematic category. Through the temporality of inactivity, these gestures can serve as critical models for a different rationale of social production.

Prefiguration, Complicity and Afterlife in Contextual Practices: A Conversation on What Happens When Art Encounters Reality

2024-09-15T08:56:02+00:00

Using conversation –a collaborative practice– as a way of researching and writing about collaborative endeavours, the authors met for an oral exchange on activist imaginaries in which their research and experiences in the field of socially engaged and community-based art became triggers for interactions. The conversation starts delving into the different positionalities between activism, activist art, and curating activism, as well as the terms used in literature to describe artists involved in social or communitarian projects. Asking what leads artists to work within and with a community that is not their own, the article brings forth the idea of complicity, suggesting that perhaps the artist has to be "functional" to a community, serving their needs and feelings. Then, the authors discuss the aftermath of a situated project, its permanence in the territory, between the concepts of maintenance, afterlife, and reverberation, paying attention to the different nuances of autonomy with which a community can appropriate the artist's work. Finally, the conversation explores the materialistic dimension of contextual practices, reflecting on the imaginaries in which artworks and activist actions are planned and conceived and how reality compromises them, making them real. While considering whether there is space for the poetical in areas of high political violence and whether it always makes sense to produce art in those contexts, the conversation ends with an open question: Is art always possible? The article then closes with a posthumous moment, in which the authors, rereading the conversation, reflect on how it has reverberated in their recent practices.

Critical Reflections on Participatory Art. "The Counterfeit Crochet Project" by Stephanie Syjuco

2024-10-22T17:56:41+00:00

Through the in-depth analysis of a complex participatory work by US artist Stephanie Syjuco, this essay shows how contemporary art can critically reflect on its own problematic proximity to the values of post-Fordist work and the global economy. At the same time, the activist potential of this work is highlighted in regard to feminist goals. Finally, it is argued that Stephanie Syjuco’s work can be understood as a critical contribution to a certain canonization of relational art.

"El nido de los pájaros": micropolítica y relatos de la migración forzosa en el contexto colombiano

2024-09-19T14:10:45+00:00

Este artículo plantea un breve recuento de experiencias y referentes -artísticos y conceptuales- del Lo Nido de los Pájaros: micropolítica, Memoria e Imágenes de la Migración Forzosa, un tejido de propuestas artísticas que se presentó en el Museo de Artes Visuales de Bogotá D.C., en 2023. El proyecto se materializa desde experiencias sensibles y afectivas, memorias personales y colectivas, imágenes y narrativas sobre la migración forzosa, en el contexto de la guerra en Colombia de mediados de siglo XX a la actualidad. Estas propuestas artísticas se centran en los relatos de vida, las redes comunitarias, los liderazgos sociales en este país, desde un eje de trabajo que propone el diálogo entre la creación artística, los estudios sociales y varias prácticas culturales. A través de viajes por varios lugares, encuentros, conversaciones, acciones y reflexiones colectivas, la iniciativa indaga el horizonte de la micropolítica, en el cual aparecen con fuerza el desarraigo, la memoria familiar y la conciencia histórica, junto a una inquietud por los vínculos entre la poé

"Artgricultura": la agricultura como una práctica artística comunitaria

2024-09-04T12:22:10+00:00

Si bien hasta la década de los años setenta el papel de la ciudad y la construcción del urbano había estado pieza capital no solo en el ámbito de las ciencias sociales, sino en el del arte y la cultura, no fue hasta los años ochenta cuando se inició un progresivo revival en los estudios rurales y un interés por parte de los artistas herederos del land arte para integrar en sus obras gestos y saberes agrícolas. Es esta relación experiencial y a veces comunitaria con la agricultura que se puede hablar del origen del artgricultura, un término acuñado por Julie Crenn (2024) para activar diferentes acciones de resistencia relacionadas con la transición ecológica, el mal uso de la tierra, la evolución del sistema agroalimentario y, en general, modas de cooperar con saberes situados. Para analizar estos aspectos, nos remitimos a la figura histórica de Gianfranco Baruchello y el pensamiento de George Chan para, seguidamente, profundizar en prácticas curatorials como: Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lotes (2012), Potential Agrarianisms (2021) y Artistas te paysans – Battre la campagne (2024). Un apartado diferenciado lo ocupan las prácticas artísticas de Fernando García-Dory, uno de los fundadores de INLAND – Campo Adentro (Madrid) y uno de los principales impulsores de las relaciones entre el arte y la agricultura.

Activist Imaginaries: Art and Curatorial Practice as Collaborative Endeavour - Editorial

2024-11-28T18:12:01+00:00

Aprender desde la práctica: ecofeminismo y procesos artísticos colectivos. Una conversación con LaFundició

2024-11-29T15:13:00+00:00

Chiara Sgaramella conversa con Francisco Rubio, integrando de LaFundició, una cooperativa creada en 2006 que impulsa procesos colectivos de construcción de conocimiento, prácticas culturales y formas de relación, entendidos como recursos de uso común. El diálogo se centra en las principales ideas y motivaciones que mueven el colectivo artístico, su implicación en el territorio de l'Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona), y profundiza en el análisis de algunas iniciativas culturales como el proyecto de producción agroecológica y simbólica Las Cabasses.

What Can Art Do? "Visible: Art As Policies for Care. Socially Engaged Art (2010-ongoing)"

2024-12-04T09:42:43+00:00

This paper reviews the book Visible: Art As Policies for Care. Socially Engaged Art (2010-ongoing). The publication, edited by Martina Angelotti, Matteo Lucchetti, and Judith Wielander, explores the evolution and transformative potential of socially engaged art practices from 2010 to the present. Organized into five sections, the book provides a comprehensive overview of diverse artistic manifestations, featuring insights from artists, anthropologists, activists, and the constituencies they engage. This review examines the key themes addressed in the research, alongside the methodological approaches employed, which include storytelling and subjective perspectives, in line with the framework of autoethnographic writing.