Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo

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

Line Ellegaard — 2024-12-10

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

Ignacio Acosta — 2024-12-10

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

Elena Mazzi — 2024-12-10

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

Tobias Ertl — 2024-12-10

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

Alessio Mazzaro — 2024-12-10

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

Gerald Schröder — 2024-12-10

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

Oscar Mauricio Moreno Escárraga — 2024-12-10

This article presents a brief account of experiences and references -artistic and conceptual- of El Nido de los Pájaros: Micropolítica, Memoria e Imágenes de la Migración Forzosa (The Birds’ Nest: Micropolitics, Memory and Images of Forced Migration), a collection of artistic proposals presented at the Museo de Artes Visuales in Bogotá D.C. in the year 2023. The project materializes from sensitive and affective experiences, personal and collective memories, images and narratives of forced migration, in the context of the war in Colombia from the mid-twentieth century to the present. These artistic proposals focus on life stories, community networks, and social leadership in this country, approaching these themes through a framework that bridges artistic creation, social research, and diverse cultural practices. Through journeys to various locations, encounters, conversations, actions, and collective reflections, the initiative delves into the realm of micropolitics, where themes of displacement, family memory, and historical consciousness emerge, alongside a deep exploration of the relationship between poetics and mythological thought.

"Artgricultura": la agricultura como una práctica artística comunitaria

Olga Sureda Guasch — 2024-12-10

Although until the 1970s the role of the city and the construction of the urban imaginary had been a major theme not only in the social sciences but also in art and culture, it was not until the 1980s that a progressive revival began in rural studies and an interest on the part of artists inspired by land art to integrate agricultural gestures and knowledge into their works emerged. It is in this experiential and sometimes communal relationship with agriculture that we can identify the origin of artgriculture, a term coined by Julie Creen (2024) to activate different actions of resistance related to ecological transition, the misuse of land, the evolution of the agri-food system and, in general, to ways of cooperating with situated knowledge. To analyse these aspects, we refer to the historical figure of Gianfranco Baruchello and the thought of George Chan and then delve into curatorial projects such as: Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots (2012), Potential Agrarianisms (2021) and Artistes et paysans - Battre la campagne (2024). A separate section is occupied by the artistic practices of Fernando García-Dory, one of the founders of INLAND - Campo Adentro (Madrid) and one of the main promoters of the relationship between art and agriculture.

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

Chiara Sgaramella — 2024-12-10

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

Chiara Sgaramella — 2024-12-10

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)"

Alessandra Saviotti — 2024-12-10

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.