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< Back Artists as Gardeners Bishkek 16 Apr 2020 Gulnara Kasmalieva & Muratbek Djumaliev The quarantine for coronavirus has forced everybody to stay within their home. For many reasons, we cannot say that this situation has completely changed our lifestyle. It just allows us to put on ice some of our projects and slow down everything we usually do. A combination of artistic activity with gardening allows us to be in isolation for a long time and connect with our friends, students and colleagues online. Besides, spring is a hot season for a gardener. We moved to a village in a suburb of Bishkek city more than 20 years ago. We dreamed of having our own land and studio and it was a chance to buy a small house for quite an affordable price. At that time, we did not know that most of the territory we bought used to be on a riverside. The Soviet government decided to change one of the riverbeds of Ala Archa river in the 1970s, dry it, fill it with some construction waste and flatten the land. Later we learned that our neighboors called our place “The House on a Rubbish Dump.” We realised this when we began to cultivate the land in order to plant some trees. Every time we excavated the ground we found either concrete details or broken bricks and other waste. During the last 20 years we transformed this place step-by-step by putting down a dozen trucks of soil, planting a garden and organizingirrigation. We extended the house by building a studio, and all this process of building and garderning gave us many reasons to think about our relations to Nature. This has affected many of our artistic and curatorial projects that we have been doing in recent years, from shooting videos at Bishkek city dump, curating a public art festival at the botanical gardens, building an eco-house, following the principles of permaculture, water conservation, waste separation and recycling. This activity has allowed us to become familiar with so many urban activists, architects and eco farmers, to help our students to realize their works in two editions of Trash Festival and participate in their actions against city pollution. Being in quarantine is not complete isolation for us due to constant online connection with the local and world news for updates on coronavirus. The State of Emergency in Kyrgyzstan has put the spotlight on many problems in our country, such as social inequality, the poor condition of hospitals, religious fanaticism and corruption within the government. At the same time, it is obvious that, since the lockdown, air in Bishkek city has become much cleaner and we can also see a decrease in air pollution at a world-level. It is quite ironic that air for citizens could be cleaner only without them. We are the second urban generation in Kyrgyzstan – our parents came from the countryside to study at the university and then settled in Bishkek. Most of our school holidays we spent in the highland countryside in a house of our grannies and it gave us some good memories, energy, and probably nostalgia about apple gardens and green grass in a courtyard. Today, gardening for us is more than just planting and harvesting. It is something very close to artistic activity. It is rather a philosophy than a farming. Leaving all turbulences behind the fence, the gardener is aware that whatever he does improves this life and there are no alternatives for the future, only building a Garden. Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev are artists and curators from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Previous Next

This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. < Back This is a Title 01 This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. Want to view and manage all your collections? Click on the Content Manager button in the Add panel on the left. Here, you can make changes to your content, add new fields, create dynamic pages and more. You can create as many collections as you need. Your collection is already set up for you with fields and content. Add your own, or import content from a CSV file. Add fields for any type of content you want to display, such as rich text, images, videos and more. You can also collect and store information from your site visitors using input elements like custom forms and fields. Be sure to click Sync after making changes in a collection, so visitors can see your newest content on your live site. Preview your site to check that all your elements are displaying content from the right collection fields. Previous Next

This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. < Back This is a Title 02 This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. Want to view and manage all your collections? Click on the Content Manager button in the Add panel on the left. Here, you can make changes to your content, add new fields, create dynamic pages and more. You can create as many collections as you need. Your collection is already set up for you with fields and content. Add your own, or import content from a CSV file. Add fields for any type of content you want to display, such as rich text, images, videos and more. You can also collect and store information from your site visitors using input elements like custom forms and fields. Be sure to click Sync after making changes in a collection, so visitors can see your newest content on your live site. Preview your site to check that all your elements are displaying content from the right collection fields. Previous Next

< Back School-In-Isolation Isolated in Bishkek 18 Apr 2020 Bermet Borubaeva Kyrgyzstan is a small country of the post-soviet bloc, impacted by corruption, where one third of the population lives at or below the poverty line. Many people live day-to-day without savings, on as little as $30-$50 USD per month, and there is no governmental support for low-income families. One third of the GDP derives from the wages of workers who have migrated to Russia to earn money to send home to their families in Kyrgyzstan. Intellectual workers, freelancers and artists face similar issues as other vulnerable workers as their employment is often precarious and irregular, with income often dependent on foreign grants and international projects. Kyrgyzstan went into isolation mode after confirmation that three pilgrims who came back from Saudi Arabia on 12 March 2020 tested positive for COVID-19. Very soon all schools, universities, and private companies (except for enterprises of strategic supply, shops, pharmacies) were closed and transformed for distant work. The government declared a State of Emergency and closed the borders. People were only allowed to go to shops and pharmacies during the day, with a night-time curfew from 8pm to 7am until 14 April, however this has now been extended until the end of April. Visiting the park for some exercise. The sports parks in Bishkek are almost empty. 4.4.2020 In the beginning there was some kind of euphoria, people were not used to sitting at home and not going to work and school – usually this is only possible during New Year vacations when, for one week, we stay at home most of the time, meet with friends, eat and drink. But this is not Happy New Year and Christmas time. Most of the time, workers are busy at work and don’t have the opportunity to stay home with their families and dedicate time to reading books, hobbies or cleaning. I think it would be nice if people had access to a universal basic income for this period and could just use the time to reboot. The parking spaces near my apartment are full. Everyone sits at home. 24.3.2020 I had been very busy for the past six months, including exhibitions, many street rallies, protests and rights protection activities. And in one moment it all stopped. It was as though almost everything I was working for as an arts professional or activist became useless somehow. I had no idea how to behave, what to do, and how I could help. Initially, I was just travelling along the tracks as I had before, working on current projects as if nothing had changed, even though I knew this route had already been disconnected. I find it difficult to be optimistic about the current situation – without a universal basic income and with the corruption of the government, I feel it is impossible to solve this situation adequately to avoid a deep human crisis. For the past 7 years I lived in Moscow but returned to Bishkek for the exhibition “ Death. Yearning. Love ” by Laboratory CI that opened in November 2019. During my stay in Bishkek, I attended the Conference of Green Mobility, where I learned that Bishkek had the highest air pollution rating in the world, which lead to my decision to move back to Bishkek and join the Green Party and run in the parliamentary elections in October. I was also aware that there was no plan for a new group of students in the ArtEast School of Contemporary Art, so I decided to take on the role of coordinator to ensure that the school would continue. The view from my apartment window. 10.4.2020 ArtEast was founded in 2002 by Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev founded, with the aim of developing the contemporary art scene in Central Asia in various ways, including through the curation of international exhibitions and arts festivals, creating artworks, and conducting educational projects. ArtEast’s School of Contemporary Art launched in 2009 and I was part of the first group of students to attend. The school was non-formal, with the aim of providing an introduction to art history and expanding the worldview of students. After graduating, we did many projects together, with some of the students moving into filmmaking, design etc, and some founding their own institutions. My desire to keep the school going was inspired by research that took place during the What Could Should Curating Do? curatorial program in Belgrade last year, when I was a participant of the program. The research focused on the informal education program “School of History and Theory of Images” that was initiated 20 years ago in Belgrade by curators and theoreticians and made a huge impact on the art scene. Thinking about this school, I realised how important it is to keep art schools and programs running. This year, the school evolved to include a curatorial team consisting of the founders and a number of graduates and their own platforms – Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev (founders), Alima Tokmergenova and Oksana Kapishnikova (ArtBus), Kanaiym Kydyralieva, Ravshan Ta Djing, Diana Ukhina ( Laboratoria CI ), Nellya Djamanbaeva ( Capacity Building Foundation ) and Bermet Borubaeva ( Cooperative PreobraZHenskiy ). We even had three spaces to conduct classes in – the underground space of Laboratory CI, the ArtEast Studio, and our partners Ololohouse. We had lessons every Sunday, lasting between 3-5 hours, with sandwiches, fruits and sweets, and, several times, someone cooking for the group. It is an ArtEast school tradition to gather and celebrate holidays together. We had planned to organise an informal party in the style of Dada but were not able to do so before the quarantine began. As we do not have any governmental or non-governmental educational institutions in the sphere of contemporary art and culture the school is very important for the region. We do not receive any state funding, asking students to pay a small fee (approx. $70USD for the whole 5-month program) to cover basic expenditures, which gives us the opportunity to keep the school autonomous and to continue without any grants. This year’s group of students were excited to be learning about contemporary art. Some of our students had a background in art, while others did not, but we saw this as a good thing as we wanted to have a multidisciplinary program. Among the students we have musicians, an IT specialist, architects, designers, a Yoga trainer, criminalist, feminists and urban activists, anthropologist, teacher, philosopher and even medical worker. We had a really nice atmosphere every time we met, with students involved in a number of projects before the quarantine began, such as the exhibition-protest #BishkekSmog 20.02.2020 against air pollution, in front of Parliament House. Some of the students were involved in working on an exhibition to take place inside a bus, called “Kiyinky Aiyaldama” (“Next Station” in Kyrgyz language), curated by student Rada Valentina Kyzy and two curators of the course – myself and Oksana Kapishnikova. We had permission from the city Mairie, had selected works through an open-call, and had the opening planned for March 29. The exhibition has been postponed, rather than being moved online. For the ArtEast School it was tradition to make informal parties together, celebrating New Year or other events and we, with the students, had planned to make a party in the style of Warhol’s Factory or Surrealist’s dreams, but has not been able to happen yet. For the School, we made the decision to shift to an online format even before isolation officially started, after the students requested this, and in order to provide security for everyone. The first online session of the school was extremely complicated as nobody was used to such a format – the noises, the order for people to speak, lack of eye-contact and direct attention for speakers, microphones switched off, people out of visibility of their cameras, and so on. However, one of the positives to come out of this new format is the possibility of inviting guests from other countries to participate in the school and conduct lectures and discussions. Knowing this, we added a fourth topic to the program. In addition to Modern Art, Contemporary Art and Contemporary Art in Central Asia, we have added Meetings with International Curators and Theoreticians. In this way, we have been able to move beyond the borders, even when the borders are closed. School activities before the quarantine began – discussing the “Next Station” exhibition that has now had to be postponed. 9.2.2020 Lessons have now moved online, which has taken time for everyone to adjust to. 1.4.2020 The question of one of our students – what is the final result of our school now? – is very poignant. We have very little understanding of how things will be after all of this ends – what the role of artists will be, how they will be able to impact society etc. But for the moment, all we can do is develop our imagination and use a critical approach. We had planned, as the final stage of the achool program, for students to participate in our Festival of Public Art, “TRASH III”, dedicated to environmental pollution, and held in the ‘Straw-bricks Belt’ of Bishkek’s Novostroikas, where there is no infrastructure or arts events. As part of this, we planned to hold a workshop-laboratory event called “Art of Co-participation”, conducted by Anton Valkovsky (a curator from Volgograd/Berlin). He has said that it’s better to conduct this workshop offline, rather than trying to change it for an online platform, and so we have postponed the workshop and the festival for an indefinite period. Online Zoom Lesson: Moscow Conceptualism. 29.3.2020 Online Zoom Lesson: From Sculpture to Installation. Muratbek Djumaliev showing Festival of Public art Art Prospect. 5.4.2020 Another ArtEast project is the construction of an energy-efficient Residency building at the famous lake Issyk-kul, working with local community. It is important for our ArtEast community to decentralize art practices and run projects outside the capital. Spring is the time to plant trees, to work with the earth, to mobilize the community and collaborate in these ways. We had also discussed plans to organise students to hold some workshops or a festival at the lake. But now the road to the Issyk-kul region is closed and there is no possibility to work in that part of the country. The salary from the TRASH III festival was to be my main source of income, so now I find myself with no income for the foreseeable future. I live with my family – my mom and grandmother – and my mother, a hairdresser, has almost finished working as hair salons are not allowed now. We have only pensions, which are very small in Kyrgyzstan, but we are very privileged because we have our flat that we live in. If not, it would be extremely tough now. My brother just went to Moscow to work in a taxi service to send money back, but the percentage of the promised salary is extremely low now and he has to work for Yandex.taxi (like Uber), with his earnings only covering food expenses. There are millions of migrant workers in Russia who send money back to families in the Central Asian regions and I am very sad because it is now the only income for many Kyrgyz families and these workers will be exposed to even more exploitation than before as they try to find any job in any conditions. There are some discussions among art practitioners in Kyrgyzstan about how isolation can affect the country in general and us. Our museums and art institutions have started to open their archives and make e-shows. Meder Akhmetov from ‘Studio Museum’ suggested to open an e-gallery to support artists. Many art practitioners are just staying calm and working on their projects waiting for when the current situation ends. Some said that in such situations they think it is better to live in a country other that Kyrgyzstan – if you catch the virus here, you are almost incurable, you’re on your own and, even if you do the right thing and stay inside, there are no social guarantees or support from the State. Actually, so many people have already migrated and those who stayed were mostly those who wanted to work on developing culture, however given the current situation, maybe they will change their minds and decide to migrate too. I cannot image that it is possible for such a large-scale pandemic to disappear in the next few months. I believe that after the quarantine period ends, people will still be afraid to go out and will remain at home if possible, so many online activities will continue. Even now, activity in Bishkek has not completely stopped – someone has started online art challenge and online art schools, such as the School of Artistic Gesture in Kazakhstan. We have even had our first experience of an online exhibition – our annual event, 1st April Art Competition – where works were exhibited online and the jury even published a play-discussion of the selection process in a Whatsapp chat group. As for me, my life has not really changed a lot except that I am not going out. Work is progressing, there is still a schedule of meetings (albeit e-meetings) and the same deadlines, and so I just keep going. I will continue to work on my art ideas and now just have more time to write the concept and programs, apply for financing and find partners. I believe more now in what I am doing in art and my other activities in relation to drawing attention to global risks of environment pollution. I would like to experience more live practices in art like gardening or cooking, cooperating, saving. The dream is to create space as a prototype for an alternative way of living, and perhaps now, for the next half a year at least, we can start to build this platform. Class preparation involves a special guest now. 29.3.2020 I have also started home improvements, which are going very slowly. 6.4.2020 Bermet Borubaeva is an artist and activist from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Previous Next

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities WCSCD 2025/2026 educational program lecture series Lecture by Nina Möntmann Decentring the Museum. Contemporary Art Institutions and Colonial Legacies Time September 10th , 2025, 19:00 Venue: SKUP Novi Sad Nina Montmann lecture is taking point of departure of her recently published book Decentering the Museum: Contemporary Art Institutions and Colonial legacy. Montmann in the book acknowledges transition processes towards decolonization, de-elitiziation, giving emphasis on importance of moving away from collection, exhibition policies that are based on European colonial legacy of institutional rituals that will be also addressed at the lecture. To counter their dwindling relevance in a post-migrant society more and more modern and contemporary art museums are seeking approaches to decenter their collections, policies and infrastructures. In doing so, they can benefit from engaging with the discourses triggered by the restitution processes of the anthropological museum as well as the working methods of small art spaces. In this talk I will introduce the concept and practice of decentring as it can be applied to the museum. I will have a look at the example of the MASP/Museu de Arte São Paulo and the HKW in Berlin and focus on a series of exhibitions and projects that performed the interweaving of diverse colonial histories with imperial modernity that the art historian Ruth Iskin calls for. Nina Montmann is mentor of WCSCD educational program 2025/2026 and she the lecture is organized as part of educational program public encounters in collaboration with SKUP and Sok Cooperative Lecture will be in English Nina Möntmann is Professor of Art Theory at the University of Cologne, curator and writer as well as Principal Investigator at the Global South Study Center (GSSC) at the University of Cologne. Before she has been Professor of Art Theory and the History of Ideas at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and curator at NIFCA, the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art in Helsinki. Curated projects include Naeem Mohaiemen: Langer Tag , Temporary Gallery, Cologne, 2023; Måns Wrange: Magic Bureaucracy , Tensta konsthall in Stockholm 2017; Fluidity , Kunstverein in Hamburg 2016; Harun Farocki A New Product (Deichtorhallen Hamburg, 2012); If we can't get it together. Artists rethinking the (mal)functions of community (The Power Plant, Toronto, 2008); The Jerusalem Show: Jerusalem Syndrome (together with Jack Persekian), 2009, Parallel Economies in India , (Frankfurter Kunstverein, 2006) and the Armenian Pavillion for the 52nd Venice Biennial. She participated in the long-term Israeli/Palestinian art and research project Liminal Spaces , and in 2010 was a research fellow at the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. She organized a number of symposia, such as Beyond Cynicism: Political Forms of Opposition, Protest and Provocation in Art , 2012, and New Communities , 2008 (both at Moderna Museet in Stockholm), We, Ourselves, and Us at the Power Plant in Toronto, 2009, and ReForming India - Artistic Collectives Bend International Art Practices at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School in New York, 2007. < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

Nikita Yingqian Cai < Back Manila shawl and “gold mountain uncles” and Protein demand and chicken farm blockchain Nikita Yingqian Cai Manila shawl and “gold mountain uncles” The Manila shawl was originally from Canton. The silk produced in Shunde – an affluent region since the Ming Dynasty due to its adjacency to water, abundance of agricultural land, and its robust mulberry and sericulture industry – was woven into the shawls hand-made by local embroidery artisans. They adapted designs principally of lotus flowers and dragons to depict flora that resonated better with an international audience, such as roses and carnations. Spanish and Latin American women became enamored with the intricate floral designs, while the shawl’s signature tassels, originating from Native American garments, contributed to the vibrancy of the flamenco dancer’s mellifluous performances. This was the time when Spain dominated the maritime trade route. A range of colonial luxuries including silk products, ceramics, and tea leaves would be loaded in Canton and transported via Manila and Acapulco before arriving in the southern port of Seville in Spain—the same route taken by the explorer Magellan. It would, however, go on to lose its imperial advantages within Asia to the monopoly of [the] East Indian Companies in the 19th century. Travelling in the opposite direction, destined for the Philippines, were Spanish galleons transporting heavy loads of Mexican bullion from South America and devoted Catholic missionaries from Europe. The missionaries arriving early in Luzon had known for a long time that “Catholicizing” the traders ( sangley ) from the southern regions of Imperial China — particularly those from Guangdong, Fujian, and Taiwan — and fostering them as local intermediaries, would aid the Spanish colonial expansion in the area. To this day, there are still some Catholic relics in the region of Sze Yap . The region would later provide a large number of young and cheap laborers for the coolie trade that followed the opium wars. Coolies were deceived into signing up for jobs that had them setting sail from Macau, and drifting for months, before arriving in Peru, Cuba, or the British-controlled Caribbean to earn a pittance shoveling bird droppings, farming sugarcane, or digging the Panama Canal. Some would later travel to the west coast of North America where they provided labor for mines, the construction of transcontinental railways, and the California gold rush. Those who struck rich by panning for gold were referred to as “gold mountain uncles” upon their return home. Right after the peak of the coolie trade, the US signed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, and the racist rhetoric it legitimized would later be a contributing factor in the opening of the notorious immigration station on Angel Island (1910 – 1940). Protein demand and chicken farm blockchain A YouTube video “How to quickly destroy the world’s forests?” produced by PaperClip and WWF sparked accusations from Chinese internet commentators in early 2020 for its direct linking of China’s middle class growing protein demand with deforestation in Brazil. Some of the commentators claimed the “right to development” both for the Brazilians who wanted to do business with China and for the Chinese who could finally afford to consume more meat. It is a third-world developmentalist ghost in the shell of nationalism, and the current trade route of meat and soy between China and Brazil resonates with the long history of mercantile modernity. China’s food security based on pork supply and the Belt and Road Initiative are also connected to Brazil’s soybean chain and the ongoing construction of highway BR-163 in the state of Mato Grosso, which has a fundamental role in commerce, tourism, and the transport logistics of the agribusiness. However, the growing Chinese demand for protein does not have much to do with the CCP and state-owned enterprises as most western media would have depicted. On the contrary, it masks a socio-economic divide which is very much like what is happening around the world. Some people like beef, some people like pork, while some can afford neither but will surely want more. Some might prefer organic food or no meat because they live a cosmopolitan life and are more alert to the surrounding ecological crisis. In some poor villages of hinterland China, one would still have hard time finding beef dishes in home-run restaurants because farmers won’t kill cows for food – they raise the animal for agricultural labor. There are still plenty of small farm holders in rural areas of China, and when compared to industrial farming, have different ways of bonding with their lands and animals. Cows for them are like horses to cowboys (though less romantic). In recent years, some farmers have started raising high-tech chicken in their farms, in which chicken wear leg bands to track their movements as Fitbits for tech start-ups to record the data on a blockchain. That is how technology is transforming the lives of the human and nonhuman – neither the farmers nor the animals have any free choice when confronted by global capitalism. What we should continue to bear in mind is who sustains the flourishing of the world. Nikita Yingqian Cai lives and works in Guangzhou, where she is currently Associate Director and Chief Curator at Guangdong Times Museum. Previous Next

Hu Yun < Back “Topola” (Cottonwood trees) and “Breza” (birch trees) and Chinese wok Hu Yun Key words from Bor:Provided by The Hunter and Miss K (two friends from Bor who guided me during my first visit to Bor) http://old.wcscd.com/index.php/wcscd-curatorial-inquiries/as-you-go-journal/bor/ Collected by Hu Yun Disappearing: “Topola” (Cottonwood trees) A towering native, a cottonwood tree soars and spreads, growing more than 30m tall and almost as wide. It’s a cherished shade tree, often planted in parks. In the wild, cottonwood grows along rivers, ponds and other bodies of water. It also thrives in floodplains and dry riverbeds, where infrequent rains transform dry land into waterways. Historically, cottonwood earned its place as a landscape tree because it grows rapidly, cumulatively up to 1.5m a year. It’s also a favorite for shade, with the large spread helping to cast cooling shade over homes and streets. There’s a cottonwood for nearly any region, with different hardy types in Zones 2 through 9. (Brandt, Wilhelm; Gürke, M.; Köhler, F. E.; Pabst, G.; Schellenberg, G.; Vogtherr, Max., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen in naturgetreuen Abbildungen mit kurz erläuterndem Texte : Gera-Untermhaus :Fr. Eugen Köhler,[1883-1914]. www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/303674 ) “Breza” (birch trees) Birch trees belong to the genus Betula and are classified as part of the Betulaceae family of plants. They are typically small to medium-sized trees and shrubs found in temperate zones in the Northern Hemisphere. Some varieties grow in shrubby clusters. Others are trees that clump with multiple trunks. And others grow as classic single-trunk trees. Most birches are characterized by distinctive bark with papery plates; the appearance of the bark often is the feature that gives the species its common names. Birches often form even-aged stands on light, well-drained, particularly acidic soils. They are regarded as pioneer species, rapidly colonizing open ground especially in secondary successional sequences following a disturbance or fire. Mycorrhizal fungi, including sheathing (ecto) mycorrhizas, are found in some cases to be beneficial to tree growth. A large number of lepidopteran insects feed on birch foliage. (Betula pendula Roth, syn. Betula verrucosa Ehrh. Original book source: Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1885, Gera, Germany. Source: www.biolib.de ) Appearing: Chinese wok Being the first Chinese person to open a Chinese restaurant in Bor, Chef Qiu’s wok is one of his everyday’s essentials. Image courtesy Chef Qiu, Bor, Serbia Hu Yun is an artist currently based in Melbourne. Previous Next

Anne Bourrassé < Back Art as barrier gestures Anne Bourrassé Early mornings collide with long evenings. Tuesday is like Friday, and Saturday runs without sleep. News are so often repeated that it falls into the norm. The days pass by. Without natural light in the apartment my shadow disappear. It appears behind my back, twice a week, on my way to buy basic necessities. All that remains to be done then is to reconquer the “infra-ordinary”, as Georges Perec calls it, to enchant the usual. There is nothing usual about the crisis. It does, however, impose new attitudes on us, by freezing the binary rhythm. It defines a space for our movements and its choreography of useful gestures. Locked up, the right foot more rarely exceeds the left foot, and vice versa. Big is the magnitude of the situation, small is the space of our condition. How can we extract ourselves from it and apprehend it in new forms? See this crisis as an object in its own right, understanding its language and the tone of its appearances, deducing from it the means of artistic action, even ephemeral and solid. How can we propose an image for the invisible ? How can we lend a material to the impalpable? Artists, curators, critics, operate at a distance to make the sensation of reality take off and allow creation to emit new frequencies. Geographically isolated, but united in the experience of the environment. The studio moved to the home, in a context that constrains us in our possibilities and tools. At the same time, the situation delivers its own atmosphere, it defines its point of view, its materials, its sonorities, and its colours. Resource of inspiration, it sets the tone of time. Art thus becomes a rampart to agitation with its own barrier gestures. Respect the distance with your subject. Listen to your environment. Favour the tools at your disposal. Use your hands regularly. Anne Bourrassé is an independent curator, fostering the interactions between visual arts and humanities. Previous Next

Katelynn Dunn < Back Response to Latour I, Crisis, Production and Closed Communication Katelynn Dunn Divergent Mediums (Isolation and Closed Communication Channels),NYC. April 2020. ‘Culture detaches itself from the unity of the society of myth ‘when the power of unification disappears from the life of man and when opposites lose their living relation and interaction and acquire autonomy.’ [1] Isolation continues every day. It is hard to say when it unofficially started. During this time, people are focused on reflecting, taking it easy and self-care. People use the word ‘mundane’ quite often. Concerning production and the environment there is a positive overall from a global perspective, and that is what Bruno Latour discusses in the article, “What protective measures can you think of, so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model?” He says covid-19 is resocialising us in this moment while globalisation and capitalism wane, and we should use it to get ‘away from production as the overriding principle of our relationship to the world.’ [2] Within this experience, the world has been granted eyes to see that we have the ability to change and quickly. Production has halted throughout the globe due to the requirements of our governments. Movement has been blocked, borders closed everywhere, and we are all left to look to state leaders to make decisions about what to do after we slow the expanse of the new and mutating coronavirus. While we wait, we wonder what we should do without or what we could change to make the re-start for a new world a better place. Where are we going? More question and reflection – ‘What are some suspended activities that you would like to see not coming back? Describe why this activity seems to you to be noxious/superfluous/dangerous/incoherent and how its disappearance/putting on hold/substitution might render other activities that you prefer easier/more coherent.’ [3] I am not sure I have the insight to say what we can do without yet. Feeling so close to the pandemic currently and being within the gears of the machine moving it makes it difficult to fully understand the implications. It feels like being in an already moving and working world of its own. The ‘coronavirus system’ is our life now, and we only function within it. Its power has shifted our attention and moved our pieces. We are required to adapt to it, to work with it and to govern it. Feelings of monotony, lack of freedom, lack of control, confinement, these are the feelings and words that come to mind. It is not right. Leisure is fine. Heaviness is not. We are without so much at this moment that there are more paths to thinking of things that we do need, especially from a non-materialistic point of view. You feel the ebb of production in the environment, and it is not necessarily for the better. This is referring to the environment of ideas and its power, not of material production. It is important to be productive in our communication forming connection. It could be developed from having face to face or in person exchanges taking place. If this isn’t the case, it could be just as effective to have digital communication taking place, and then it is the activity between meeting that is most important for connection. One of the issues from this crisis is a decrease in the quality of communication, from a creative standpoint. Currently, we hear and see the same phrases repeated over and over due to absence of overall information available. We receive most information from media outlets as these are one of the main sources of communication while we are distanced from one another. It is mind-numbing and propagandist. We have more creative possibilities in a system with hyper connectivity and communication, because there are more channels to consciousness. Creating is situational. Art is situational. It is most captivating when it happens in orbit, cyclically, and sequentially. Each movement feeds on the one before, or the ones around it, and it continuously changes. It requires a setting for us to deem it relevant, and to stir us into questioning our existence or to take action. The artist forms the structure of their own creative atmosphere. In the current moment, this structure is changing via the virus, and we must find ways to maintain our agency to have control of our art and of our own future. This becomes more difficult in an environment with less information due to reduced overall movement, and most notably in an environment with a dramatically sensed drop in movement. Stopping or interfering with movement is completely averse to decision making power of all people. In our world, movement, or activity between people, is equivalent to power and provides force needed to progress. It also provides the agency to see by allowing for different positions in society and therefore perspectives. ‘If we’re so oppressed, it’s because our movement’s being restricted.’ [4] People may have more time to concentrate on skills of a craft. However, the authority of art will not be felt as strongly. How do we avoid becoming spectators, and blind ones, when movement is blocked? Hyper activity and communication in the globalized world is one that breeds significantly faster connections. This means there is more available information which creates more differentiated connections, language associations and diversity in the world. This leads to a deeply complex and unique evolution of rare ideas. This system proves creativity and is the artist’s world. While it leads to greater ‘pollution’ in the environment of ideas, which could be seen as a negative, the system with less communication and less information means less possibility (i.e. production) for people to contribute to building the world as they see it. It puts the power of thinking, idealizing, and constructing reality in the hands of those who have greater concentrated power, which will be fewer people. Social systems are flattened. This creates more equality and less conflict. However, it also decreases complexity between ideas and the overall need to question existence. To see the larger picture, and to have the ability to make a new system, one must have the connections to see, to have vision. With less production and activity, our vision is minimized, obstructed and reduced comparatively. For artists and critics, what I believe will be the difficult aspect of this problem we are attempting to solve and system we are attempting to restructure is the current notion attached to creativity. To create is to produce, so to be creative is to be productive. To move away from production means to move away from creativity or inventiveness. How will we value art in the new world if we detach creativity from capitalism? Could we have a system of creativity within a non-capitalistic society? Why shouldn’t we value complexity of ideas? What could be a new definition of creative? Will quality of art improve with less people producing? Where will the force to create originate in the future? Katelynn Dunn is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is based on understanding philosophies of experience and image, patterns in society and the human psyche, artist process, power structures and systems and language. [1] Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: Black & Red, 1983), 180. [2] Bruno Latour, “What protective measures can you think of, so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model?,” AOC Media , March 29, 2020, https://aoc.media/opinion/2020/03/29/imaginer- les-gestes-barrieres-contre-le-retour-a-la-production-davant-crise/ . [3] Bruno Latour, “What protective measures can you think of, so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model?,” AOC Media , March 29, 2020, https://aoc.media/opinion/2020/03/29/imaginer- les-gestes-barrieres-contre-le-retour-a-la-production-davant-crise/ . [4] Gilles Deleuze, “Mediators,” in Negotiations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 121-134. Previous Next