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Alumni Alumni 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 < Participants Educational Program Programs >

Alumni Program Participant Activities Tonight we invite you to encounter a collective archive of the 2022 What could/should curating do educational programme, which took place in Belgrade and other locations around the Post-Yugoslav region, between September and December this year. The departure point for this archive is a proposal by Biljana Ćirić, program curator and facilitator, to consider the means by which the discussions, events, inquiries and relationships developed during this time might be recorded or documented. Archiving is never neutral. Determinations are always made—by individuals, by collectives, by collecting institutions—about what knowledge is worth saving, the means by which knowledge is indexed, housed and cared for, who has access and on what terms. Within the framework of an alternative educational platform—with a loose and evolving curriculum, and no formalised method of assessment or grading—this exercise presents an opportunity to consider what alternative measures we might allow ourselves for the production of knowledge when freed from institutional modes of transmission and circulation. As such, these archives—both individually and collectively—do not simply record a series of shared (and at times differing) experiences. They include questions around how the embodied, linguistic, political, intimate, relational nature of experience and remembering, ranging in scope from the personal, to the national. Each contribution is informed by the “baggage” we carried with us, as a group of individuals from many different geographic and cultural contexts, many of whom had little relationship with Belgrade, Serbia or the Balkan region prior to this course. This “baggage” includes our different relationships to contemporary art’s infrastructures; our different fields of knowledge and networks of relationships; cultural and linguistic differences; differing relations to histories of colonialism, resource extraction and capitalist exploitation; and varying habits of thought, modes of making, inhabiting and formulating questions about the world. Through differing strategies of presentation and circulation, we hope to open up questions about what we have in common, as well as what separates us; what of ourselves is dispersed, and what is withheld. But the physical “archive” we share with you tonight is only a part of a wider set of relationships, experiences, idea exchanges, occasional encounters, gossip and experimenting. Tonight we celebrate the beauty and fragility of these moments. Be our guests at the two tables. Read silently. Read aloud. Whisper. Describe what you see. Share what you feel. Eat. Drink. Embrace. This archive is staged as something living, developing and transformational, ever evolving as our moments with you. Thank you for sharing this journey with us. We hope it’s not the end, but only a stop on the way. WC/SCD 2022 Adelina, Anastasia, Ginevra, Giuglia, Jelena, Karly, Lera, Sabine, Simon < Educational Program Participants >

Alumni Alumni 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2019 Alumni Aigerim Kapar is an independent curator, cultural activist, and founder of the creative communication platform Artcom. She was born in 1987 in Kazakhstan and continues to live and work in Astana. Kapar curates and organizes exhibitions, urban art interventions, discussions, lectures, and workshops. To accomplish such wide-ranging initiatives she often collaborates closely with art and educational institutions, as well as scientific apparatuses. In 2015, she founded the open online platform Artcom in conjunction with the local art community. The platform brings together different cultural figures to share experiences and discover channels for greater interaction within society in order to develop and promote contemporary art and culture. In 2017, Aigerim initiated the Art Collider informal school—when art meets science. Through this initiative artists and scientists jointly conduct research and present lectures and discussions related to current issues. The results of the school are presented through exhibitions, publications, and audio-visual materials. Ana Roman has a Master’s degree in Human Geography from São Paulo University and is a doctoral student in Art History at the University of Essex. Her current research focuses on contemporary art and curatorship. Previously, she was an assistant curator for Between Construction and Appropriation: Antonio Dias, Geraldo de Barros and Rubens Gerchman in the 60s (SESC Pinheiros, São Paulo, Brazil, 2018), and researcher/assistant curator for Ready Made in Brasil(Centro Cultural Fiesp, São Paulo, Brazil, 2017); Rever_Augusto de Campos (SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, Brazil, 2016); and Lina Grafica (SESC Pompeia, São Paulo , Brazil, 2014), among others. She was the head curator for Whereabouts (Zipper Gallery, 2018) with works by David Almeida; Mirages (Baro Gallery, 2018) with works by Amanda Mei; and Small Formats (Baro Gallery, 2018) with works by Alexandre Wagner, to name a few. She also writes critical texts for different media outlets. Since 2014, she has been a participant in Sem Titulo, s.d., a production and research collective focused on contemporary art with whom she organized the exhibitions What is not performance? (Centro Universitário Maria Antonia, São Paulo, Brazil, 2015) and Tuiuiu, with works by Alice Shintani (ABER, São Paulo, Brazil, 2017). Bermet Borubaeva is a curator, researcher, and artist. She was born in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and gained her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, and Master’s of Arts focusing on “Political analysis and public policy,” from the High School of Economics in Moscow. She graduated from the Bishkek “Art East” School of Contemporary Art in 2009 and studied at First Moscow Curatorial Summer School for their program “Doing Exhibitions Politically,” initiated by Victor Miziano and V-A-C Foundation. Borubaeva also participated in the curatorial research residency “ReDirecting East” at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw. Borubaeva has also taken part in different exhibitions and projects, such as the First Youth Central Asian exhibition of Contemporary Art, ON/OFF; the eco-festival, Trash; and an exchange project in collaboration with Focus-Art Association, titled TET A TET #2 (Vevey, Switzerland). Recent projects include the Education Program for Lingua Franca/франк тили’, the re-exhibition project for the Central Asia Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale, done in collaboration with Oxana Kapishnikova and Ukhina Diana (2012); the exhibitions Artists-in-Residence at CCI Fabrika (2014–2016 Moscow); the exhibition PAS DE DEUX—KG. CH. at the Center of Contemporary Art Yverdon-Les-Bains, Switzerland; and the performance Café “Non-seller,” addressing the problem of food waste in conjunction with the documentary film “Eco Cup” (Moscow), as part of the Curatorial Research Program, CPR-2017: Mexico. She has also contributed to several publications in the fields of art, political science, and urban environment. Ewa Borysiewicz studied art history at the University of Warsaw and Freie Universität Berlin. She was a member of the curatorial team for Side by Side: Poland—Germany. A 1000 Years of Art and History (Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin), led by Anda Rottenberg. She is the author of Rausz kinetyczny (2013), a book exploring the political and emancipatory aspects of non-camera animation. From 2012–2019, she worked at the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw as the curator for visual arts. Her duties included establishing international partnerships, programming the international visitors’ program, facilitating artistic residencies, and enabling presentations of Polish art worldwide. She is presently co-organizing (with galleries Stereo and Wschód) the exhibition Friend of a Friend, a gallery-share initiative in Warsaw that has been taking place since 2018. Borysiewicz has also curated and co-curated exhibitions at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Polish Institute in Düsseldorf, and the Museum Jerke in Recklinghausen. She is the author of many texts and catalogue entries. Mateja Smic is a Dublin-based artist working with coffee, gelatin and other, often non-traditional materials, chosen by principles of association within her subject matter. Her recent subjects range from geopolitics to national identity. Through printmaking, digital collage, video and animation, Smic’s installations combine philosophical and psychological questions around experience, the phenomenon of Othering, and tensions between the real subject and its mediated representations. Consisting of intensive cycles and processes of intuitive and experimental engagement with her materials, which become a metaphor for an intangible subject, Smic’s reflexive and multi-layered art practice parallels with her contextual research and writing. Having graduated from the National College of Art and Design in Fine Print and Critical Cultures, her thesis and professional practice project focused on the creation of the image of the Balkans in the West and the portrayal of the region through various art forms and curatorial activities. Tomek Pawlowski is a curator, and events and meeting producer. In 2018 he participated in the curatorial program at Swimming Pool, Sofia. He is the curator of numerous exhibitions, performances, and projects in collaboration with artists from younger generations, groups, independent galleries, and institutions in Poland. He uses collective practices, critical entertainment, and politics of friendship as his main guiding framework. From 2016–2018 he ran Cycle, a program of micro-residencies and events in the apartments where he lived. In 2017 co-curated (along with Romuald Demidenko and Aurelia Nowak) The Open Triennial: the 8th Young Triennial at the Center for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko. He is also the co-curator (with Magdalena Adameczek and Ola Polerowicz) of Sandra Art Gallery, the nomadic agency associating with and supporting emerging female artists from Poznań. He currently resides between Białystok and Poznań. Shasta Stevic is an artist and curator from Melbourne, Australia. She is the co-founder, co-curator, and creative director of IntraLiminal—an ongoing project that showcases the work of talented young artists from regional Australia. She is passionate about providing opportunities for young artists to share their work publicly and supporting the development of ongoing creative practices in younger generations. Having completed degrees in science and law, she sees art as an important vehicle for the exploration of social issues including the environment and sustainability, civilization and progress, so-called technological and scientific advancement, and the worrying divide between humans and nature. She is particularly interested in using unconventional methods of storytelling and installation to bring about social change. Stevic has studied at the LungA School, an experimental art school in Seydisfjordur, Iceland, and has curated exhibitions for a mid-winter festival in Northern Iceland. Sasha Puchkova is an artist and curator based in Moscow. As an artist, Puchkova works with different media: sound, video, objects, performative communication and experiments. She explores phenomena related to different points of connection and the linking of digital and offline processes, as well as the space between these realms, and the interdependent influence of cyberspace on social norms. Key topics are particular interest to her are the plasticity of the laws of the digital system; the body in online space; new materialism; artificial synesthesia; decolonial pathways; post-cyberfeminist practices; and post-anthropocene practices. The pivot of her curatorial practice revolves around an experimental, expositional approach, which has been realized in such projects as a series of performative actions, ideas around the “exhibition as living space,” long-term laboratories, and the development of theatrical exhibitions-in-real-time, among other things. Her curated projects include Syntax (a series of performances and laboratory); (Im)-possible object (research and exhibition projects); and Capture Map (performative project and communication platform). Puchkova is also a member of the research group “Speculative Practices of Corporal Mutations” (with Katya Pislari and Daria Yuriychuk). Victoria Vargas Downing is a Chilean art historian, heritage researcher and independent curator based Leeds in the UK. She holds a BA in Fine Theory and History of Art at the University of Chile, a Curating Diploma and MA in Arts Management and Heritages studies at Leeds University. Has participated in art projects in Chile, Sao Paulo, Los Angeles CA, Vienna and The UK where she co-curated Imtiaz Dharker Exhibition and participated in the process and management of Chilean Mural restoration at the Leeds Students Union. She has worked as teacher and research assistant in different projects and art organisations in Chile (museums, galleries and non-profit organisations). She is PhD candidate at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at Leeds University. Her research verse on the relationship between contemporary art and heritage, particularly, in non-Western cultures. Seda Yıldız is a Hamburg-based artist-curator. Her multidisciplinary practice focuses on exploring the art of shaping (collective) memory, language, and the politics of the city. She is interested in the poetics of politics and frequently uses humor and abstraction as a tool in her artistic practice, working primarily with video, text, installation, and the form of the artist book. Her curatorial practice focuses on exploring the clash and intersection between the local and global, and aims to reach a heterogeneous audience while giving voice to the silenced. She is particularly is interested to take part in process-oriented, open and experimental projects that foster collaboration and exchange. Yıldız has exhibited her work and joined various editorial and curatorial projects internationally. In 2018, she was selected as an emerging curator by PARALLEL Photo Platform, co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union. Occasionally she writes about design, architecture, and urbanism, and contributed to Brownbook Magazine, MONU Magazine, Kajet Journal, and Freunde von Freunden. Yıldız holds an MA in Contemporary Artistic Practices from Haute école d’art et de design Geneva (2014) and a BA in Communication and Design from Bilkent University (2011). http://yildizseda.com Zulfikar Filandra is a film and theatre-maker based in Sarajevo. Filandra was educated at Griffith College Dublin, the Academy of Performing Arts Sarajevo, and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering Sarajevo. As a collaborator and member of several local and several international art collectives, he has worked with all the relevant mainstream art and cultural institutions in Sarajevo and is also active in Sarajevo’s underground art scene. Aside from directing in film and theatre, and assistant directing, Filandra also works as a screenwriter, lecturer, producer, editor, musician, actor, promoter, event organizer, and photographer. As a member of the youngest generation of Bosnian directors his topics touch on the legacy of war in Bosnia, but through a more intimate view of living in contemporary times and the position of a small culture like Bosnia in a globalizing world. Currently, he is actively collaborating with the Experimental Film Society (based in Dublin, Ireland) and Outline (based in Amsterdam, Netherlands). Filandra completed two short films in 2018 and is currently working on two more short films, while also developing his first feature project, titled Shipbuilding. At the moment, Filandra is in the process of founding and starting the first full-time artist-in-residence program in Sarajevo. Martina Yordanova is a curator, writer, and researcher based in Sofia, Bulgaria. She graduated from the University of Vienna in Publicity and Communication Sciences in 2014. She went on to do her postgraduate studies in Cultural Management and Curatorial Practices at different European educational institutions, including the University of Arts Berlin, Goldsmiths University, Institute for Cultural Concepts Vienna, and The Cultural Academy in Salzburg. Currently, she works in Sofia where in 2016, together with architects Galya Krumova and exhibition designer Petya Krumova, she established a non-profit foundation for contemporary art and media. Since then, Yordanova has been initiating different art events and exhibitions with international and Bulgarian artists, mostly living abroad. She is also the founder and curator of “1m2 of Art”—a project based in Veliko Tarnovo wherein every month a different artist from the local art scene presents their work in a space no bigger than its name. < Participants Educational Program Programs >

Beatrice Rubio-Gabriel < Back Care in Crisis – A Response to Bruno Latour’s protective measures post-crisis Beatrice Rubio-Gabriel We are in a state of emergency. We are told to stay at home, to only leave for work if it is essential, to only go to the shops if it is for food, and even then, we must not be within more than a meter and a half of one another. We are in a state of emergency. We are in a moment in time so tense, that we can barely see our loved ones. In some countries, others are not able to bury their dead. We are told not to touch our loved ones. The police are patrolling the streets and men are on trial for leaving their hotel rooms in a state of desperation to escape quarantine. The economy is crumbling, and businessmen and landlords wring their hands nervously alongside the rest of us. The government is trying to roll out an app that they say will monitor who you are in contact with for more than 15 minutes, and people are drawing the line. It is a gross invasion of privacy. But in this time, so many things are. We are in a state of emergency. I fear many things. Many little things. I fear the dark. I fear confinement, of never knowing true political freedom from this politically charged body that screams with every breath. I fear one day that this family will clash one too many times and we will just lose it at each other. Driven insane from spending more time together in the past 2 months than we have in the past 7 years. Sometimes I fear that in this isolation, I will learn that no body truly cares about me after all. I fear that I will walk out of this pandemic with nothing in my pocket. To me, those are the small things. They end at the edge of the bubble that encases my life. Then there are the big things frantically cycling through everybody’s mind. Death. The destruction of our way of life. The disintegration of our economies. These are the big things. These are the big concerns the rest of the world is scrambling to find the answers with which to contain these issues. [1] That is not to say I am not concerned by them. Of course, they gnaw at my mind, and I spend nights trying to create new ways to reach out and help my own community, both inside and outside of the arts. But in this isolation, I have also discovered my mind is better equipped to cope with inevitability over uncertainty. There is no going back now. Normalcy as we recognise it will not emerge from this pandemic. We shall not walk out of this and back into the rhythm of life we once knew, no matter what many of our world leaders and big business owners will try to have you believe, or convince themselves of. What this pandemic has given us – fear, community, pockets of solidarity, economic re-evaluations, bitterness, patience – those will stay with us. In forms different from how they are manifesting now, but they will stay. There are many things that have become glaringly obvious that when push comes to shove, humanity learns how to do without. Heavy production, instant material gratification, intensive 5-day 9-5 work weeks. We learn that we don’t crumble when we can’t acquire certain possessions instantly. We learn that we can adapt to working from home, to working less. When we have time to ourselves, we spend it cultivating the relationships around us, healing our bodies and our minds. But the things linked to an intensive labour economy, the capitalist structure which supports itself on the pillars on production, we are realising we can do mostly without. But only because now we must. Within weeks, we were able to mobilize workplace measures to counter the necessity of the 5-day 9-5 workweek. Yet how loudly people would yell in the discourse of maternity leave for mothers. How little we would accommodate for those working with disabilities. Nevertheless, this virus has shown that we can indeed work shorter hours, or we can work remotely, and we will be productive. To those who scorn federal financial aid, who say that if you do not make the people work then they will not work, this virus came to prove them wrong. As we speak, the artworld is clambering into overdrive; digitising all they possibly can, increasing the amount of resources readily available in online databases, and doing their best to transform the experience of physical exhibitions into the virtual. And perhaps a touch late, we are now critically exploring what it means to govern within the politics of Care. Incredibly as Capitalism buckles under this intense pandemic, Mother Earth is beginning to flourish. With less cars on the road, less people littering outdoors, and less physical businesses operating, our air is becoming cleaner, waterways are clearing, and fields are regrowing. An environmentally incited self-sufficiency (though catalysed by an apocalyptic mindset) is also developing as people begin to grow their own gardens. Yet on the other end, resource consumption is increasing. One-time use plastic items such as bin liner bags, latex gloves and antibacterial wipes are quickly filling up garbage bins. But I optimistically hope that this can only mean that we will adapt to become even more environmentally conscious, and biodegradable alternatives will become more accessible as the demand for single use items grows. Most notably, it is ironically in this time of isolation that the sense of community grows stronger. The desire for connection is greater and we are all asking ourselves how we can be together if we can barely be within arm’s reach. Society is learning to reconnect with one another, with the planet and with themselves. Online groups have surfaced to keep communities interconnected and accountable to checking in with one another. Self-care is booming in the form of learning to sleep better, eat better and be better. Not only this, but the return to the personal archive has also risen with vigour. Diaries, dream journals and photo logs are here to document our thoughts as they delve into loneliness, insanity and awe. And if we are asking ourselves how it is and what it means to live through a crisis, then we must also consider what it is to live after it. How can we emerge together, safe and sane? This time of upheaval is an opportunity to push the reset button on life. From what this crisis has taught us, we can take away harsh workweeks, that break the backs of single parents, and eat too much and too dangerously into our time. We can learn to be more mindful. We can cope with being more self-sufficient. We know how to form communities. What I fear however, is that what will emerge will be the inverse of these desires. Companies will surely do their best to bring back the labour force which focuses solely on the production value of an individual. I suspect when this dies down that people will flock to the shops with their new-found freedom. Companies will return to taking advantage of their employees. Using the guilt of gratitude for having any sort of job at all. The roads and planet will buckle under the weight of the return of everyone’s cars, and thoughtless racism will not fail to remind us at every airport how conditional belonging is. The kindness that is being extended by many to many, will revert to being a few. It is clear that the government, when required of them, are able to re-distribute national economic resources in a way to help the financially disadvantaged. It would be too much to attempt to tackle the issues of capitalism in this single response and there are certainly minds out there greater than my own who are better equipped to help handle this discourse. But navigating a kinder workweek – that is something we can handle. But in tandem with this, for us to accept working less and producing less, we must have the capacity to be able to live on less. For society to also value themselves above their production value, the system supporting that mentality on the outside must also change. Companies are already beginning to employ shorter work weeks to benefit the wellbeing of their employees, so we already know how to do this, and why it is important. But for many workers, the desire to work heavy hours often stems from feeling the need to. It is time to re-evaluate the cost of living standards to negotiate this with more amiable work weeks. Perhaps here in Australia, they should think harder on what it means to support families than the supposed economic promise of what it means to support coat mines. Think of where else this Federal budget can go to if it were guided by a system of care, and not by structures of corruption. It could go into accommodating learning and working remotely, into making companies better equipped to hit their environmental benchmarks, into art institutions being able to fund more initiatives for emerging artists. For the wellbeing of our citizens, we must re-evaluate how much it costs to simply be able to exist. And perhaps it isn’t only the government that should be held accountable, but also the rich. This pandemic has made painfully clear (as if it wasn’t already) the gaps between class in our systems. As I write this, millions of people are without jobs and without homes, and the wealthy are in houses big enough to house families four times their size. If there is a minimum wage that allows people the barest standard of living, there should also be a maximum wage, to ensure that this actually occurs. There is a huge discrepancy between the CEOs and their workers, with CEOs earning annual incomes at least 16 times that of their labour force [2] . Not that I am advocating for barricades to innovation, but there is surely a reasonable limit to wealth. For decades we have supported systems that have almost encouraged the wealthy in taking advantage of the working class. Rewarding and praising those at the top for consistently making more only means that they also have greater incentive to take more. And now look at where we are. It isn’t enough to rely on the Government’s redistribution of wealth, a weak attempt to counter this system through taxation laws, but it is time to look at the predistribution [3] of wealth. Currently in Australia, almost half of the wealth in the country is owned by 10% of its population [4] , but inequitable wealth distribution is an issue that isn’t limited to Australia alone. It is why I suppose we are all working so hard to find sustainable ways to operate around and outside of Capitalism. We are individually picking up the pieces of the puzzle, but I suspect it might be some time before we can harmoniously work together to complete the picture. I hope for the best after this crisis. I certainly have more hopes than fears. I hope that we will stop making those with the least give up the most. I hope that we may stay connected. I hope that after all of this, we will still be sending letters and keeping journals. I hope that we may learn to work smarter, instead of being pushed to work harder. I hope that we will see the planet having begun to heal itself in our absence, and that we may preserve and continue this. I hope that people will continue to be more thoughtful of their neighbours. I hope that humanity will not forget a kindness and consideration that emerged from their desperation. This is what it means to operate within a system of care. Beatrice Rubio-Gabriel is an independent curator, writer and performance artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. [1] I am interestingly finding people are at one end or the other. For some, their greatest concern is that their Nintendo Switch could not be delivered on time. For others, they worry that they might not be able to return home from work as healthy and well as they entered it. [2] Sam Pizzigatti, “Minimum wage? It’s time to talk about a maximum wage,” The Guardian , June 30, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/30/minimum-wage-maximum-wage-income-inequality [3] I was interestingly in a conversation with an artist the other week, who was stressed financially, that I brought up the idea of a maximum wage to her, unaware that this was something that was already being debated heavily on ( https://www.debate.org/opinions/should-there-be-a-maximum-wage-law ), but she also thought it was a fantastic idea and was surprised to find it wasn’t present in our Australian economic discourse. I am equally confused. [4] “Wealth inequality in Australia is getting worse,” Findings, Roy Morgan, last modified September 21, 2018. http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/7733-wealth-inequality-in-australia-is-getting-worse-201809210554 Previous Next

Mentors Alumni 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 Mentors of WCSCD program so far included: Dorothea von Hantelmann (Bard College, Berlin); Antariksa (co-founding member of KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, Yogyakarta, Indonesia); the Flash Art Magazine editorial team (Flash Art is a bimonthly magazine focused on contemporary art, based in Milan); Elena Filipović (director of Kunsthalle Basel); < Participants Educational Program Programs >

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities WCSCD 2025/2026 educational program lecture series Lecture by Toby Upson A practice of Artwriting Time October 3d , 2025, 19:00 Venue: SKUP Novi Sad Folding A.V. Marraccini's approach to criticism into Anne Carson’s notion of desire as well as Bruce Hainley’s practice, this lecture will explore 'commensal' approaches to writing. Rather than a mode of writing 'about' a thing, 'writing to' or 'with' a thing, this approach recognises the innate agency of a thing, asking a writer to enter into a relationship with it and to write that space. This is not about making the abstract residues of a dreamt-up relationship visible; it is about manifesting the affective spark that runs between bodies, thereby allowing others to enter into this relationship or at least to know why it has come to be. In this way, writers embracing a commensal approach work through an essayistic sensibility, giving this relational space enough of a body to withstand a trial. Whenever I mention the essay form, I am always reminded of the Goethe quote that opens Adorno's ‘The Essay as Form’: “Destined to see what is illuminated, not the light.” By dwelling in a space of desire, writers embracing a commensal approach do this illuminative work inside out. Toby Upson is the mentor of the WCSCD educational program 2025/2026, and his lecture is organized as part of the educational program public encounters in collaboration with SKUP and Sok Cooperative. Lecture will be in English Toby Üpson is a writer currently based in Glasgow (Scotland, UK). Stemming from an interest in how we/he experiences everyday life, Üpson's practices uses forms of artwriting and creative nonfiction to explore the interdependencies of being. As an arts worker, Üpson's writing has appeared in international publications including Art Monthly, e-flux Education, émergent magazine, FAD_ and Garageland, he has also produced commissioned texts for artists, museums and galleries such as Belmacz, Camden Arts Center, Charleston, the Gerald Moore Gallery as well as Cooke Latham Gallery, amongst others. Alongside these more standard formats, Üpson’s creative writing has been published by La chaise jaune and Pilot Press as well as through galleries and museums such as The Warburg Institute. Between 2023 and 2024 Üpson was a Faculty Member of the Metabolic Museum-University based at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, where he co-convened the debating chamber “BREATH — Figureheads and Emancipation”. < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

< Back What happens after the contactless art world? Guangzhou 14 Apr 2020 Nikita Yingqian Cai When Covid-19 crosses physical borders with exponential scale and speed, its secondary catastrophes also provoke doomsday imagination from every sector of society. One ironic image about the art world circulating on social media is a meme of two screen shots from Titanic , in which the sinking boat symbolizes “The world in 2020”, while the quartet playing on the deck stands for the “Art institutions and galleries generating online content”. The metaphor is blunt and alarming：our security net and social identification won’t stand alone in the bleak economic prospect of the sinking world, so are we producing content just for the sense of belonging? Will we end up being the only audience of this content? Titanic meme After Art Basel launched the online viewing room on March 20 as compensation for its cancelling of the fair in Hong Kong, commercial galleries fell over one another to explore the contactless art market as a therapy for the pandemic shock. It will probably take another crisis for economists to analyze data, compare behavioral patterns, and make predictions of the online sales profitability, but institutions that are less profit-oriented are by no means immune to the competition of attention that has been created by global social distancing. Alongside the outburst of open resource archives and publications, online screenings and showrooms, podcasts, live streaming and Zoom conferences quickly take over as platforms for art events. M Woods, a private art museum in Beijing, set up a virtual gallery inside the Nintendo game Animal Crossing to add value to its image as internet influencer. The game allows people to pay mortgages, build homes with furniture and objects, and socialize with animal neighbors according to their own image and imagination, but all the resources for this dreamlike island have to be extracted from somewhere offshore. The image of a cute little girl meditating on a bench surrounded by the wallpaper of Andy Warhol’s Cow (1966) is a perfect metaphor for escapism. Such 4.0 version of Cao Fei’s RMB City (2007-2011) is nonetheless novel but its simulation of the neo-liberal lifestyle is hard to ignore. Since the outbreak in Wuhan in January, new forms of social networks and collaborations have emerged and concrete solidarity is being formed across different social sectors in China, yet our contemporary art world is busy promoting the commodified experience of art. M Woods Instagram Two days ago, I stumbled upon an online vernissage on e-flux, presented by the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design and titled Weird Sensation Feels Good. An Exhibition About ASMR (“Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response”). According to the statement, “ASMR injects the Internet with softness, kindness and empathy. As a form of digital intimacy, it offers comfort on demand, standing against the feeling of isolation that constant connectivity can deceptively breed. Anecdotally, ASMR is being used as a form of self-medication against the effects of loneliness, insomnia, stress, and anxiety. This is a cue to its success, and to its transcendental appeal”. [1] Conversely, the offline world is injected with hardness and struggles, self-medication is not going to protect people from getting sick or losing jobs. Less than a month after the containment policy went into effect in New York, the Museum of Modern Art terminated contracts with all its freelance educators in early April. MoMA represents one example of the museum industry among many other service industries that have sacked its part-time staff or furloughed its full-time employees quickly after the pandemic hit hard. Compared with small businesses such as restaurants, most museums’ operational budgets had been approved in 2019, and big institutions like MoMA would have planned out its fiscal structure, including the percentage of public funding, private patronage and ticket revenue for at least three years into the future. Before the closing of borders and museums, blockbuster exhibitions sat at the core of the art world’s show business, balancing the interests of trustees and the scale of production and demand. MoMA is one of the wealthiest museums in the world, so how come a cultural entity that embraces speculative narratives and future imaginations gives up so quickly in response to temporary uncertainties? Are we losing faith in reclaiming our audience after the pandemic? Manuel Borja-Villel, director of the Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, stated in an open letter that some of their staff have been sick but all of them will be able to keep their jobs “thanks in part to Spain’s governmental assistance program”. He also addressed the necessity of a paradigm shift, “Eventually, museums will reopen, but will people be afraid of being close to one another? Will we be able to continue developing large exhibitions that are anti-ecological? Maybe blockbuster exhibitions are over. Maybe we should think more about process and research.” [2] Recalling a postwar Marshall plan or a re-emphasis on process and research is certainly not a paradigm shift. We have to go deeper to ask: What kind of paradigm are we talking about? Has the pandemic revealed the problematics of the diffusionist museum model driven by Euro-American centralism and modernism? The Museum of Modern Art as a canon of large-scale institution was born in the U.S. context and charged with historical contingency. When Alfred Barr organized Cubism and Abstract Art at 11 West 53rd Street in New York, he had no idea that the diagram he presented and the symbolic construct of abstract art would lay ground for a global chronology of modernism which shaped artists’ learning experiences and their occupational aspirations, historical arguments and museology outside of the Western centers in the postwar years. The evolutionary periodization and the colonial terms of “Near-Eastern Art” and “Negro Sculpture” have been challenged and eventually abandoned, but the network of the main characters remains (artists, art historians, curators, museum directors and trustees etc.) and it maps out a division of labor, identity and resource which still functions in our contemporary art world. What is invisible in Barr’s modern art supply chain is the end of demand, which we call “audience” nowadays. The American economy had not recovered from the Great Depression when Barr’s exhibition opened in 1936, and it took a sharp downturn in mid-1937 which lasted for another 18 months. It is hard to imagine Cubism and Abstract Art was orchestrated for ordinary Americans who were still suffering from unemployment at that time, and yet the exhibition gained substantial support from MoMA’s trustees to secure the artworks through U.S. Customs and from other private foundations. Barr’s essay in the catalog highlighted the “impulse of abstraction” and its dialectic; “it is based upon the assumption that a work of art, a painting for example, is worth looking at primarily because it presents a composition or organization of color, line, light and shape.” [3] Such zeitgeist needs to be accommodated in the idealized, climate-controlled white cube, which becomes the most important paradigmatic residual of MoMA. Even in a time of crisis, museums can still shut the discorded tones of the economical-disadvantaged and messiness of reality outside, and provide sanctuary for autonomous art objects and meditation. Museum of American Art in Berlin, installation shots at Times Museum in the collection display of Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana There has been a lot of comparison between the stock market crashes in February and March this year and the Wall Street collapse in 1929 that triggered the decade-long Great Depression. But the postwar trauma has given European countries more reasons to activate their social democratic policies，such as the German federal government’s sweeping aid package of €50 billion for the country’s creative and cultural sectors. The Chinese media and artist community voluntarily picked up the positive messages rather than the depressing ones in such a difficult time. Artist friends who live in Germany posted messages on wechat about their application for the subsidies, and some of them had already received the money. I’m genuinely happy that art sector and artist’s social values can be recognized and sustained in the European context, but a conversation between myself and Qiao, our curatorial assistant，unpacked my doubts. Qiao shares an apartment with a couple of friends who are educated young professionals. They have been intrigued by Qiao’s enthusiasm and have visited some of Times Museum’s exhibitions. Qiao said that her friends couldn’t understand why the arts need to be subsidized, and why a government like Germany is giving artists money. I tried to structure my thoughts and present my arguments around the emergence of the bourgeoisie museum after the French Revolution, Tony Bennett’s “exhibitionary complex” informed by Foucault, the modernist ideology of “art for art’s sake” and the more recent socioeconomic concept of “precariat” proposed by Guy Standing… I soon realized that none of Qiao’s roommates would be satisfied with my explanation. Artists are precariats because “they live with the expectation and desire to move around, without an impulse for long-term, full-time employment in a single enterprise.” [4] They are cultural migrant workers competing in the global market, but the globalization that used to support their production has been put on hold. European countries with colonial history have been exporting their culture and artists for centuries and they know this business better than anyone else. Xiang Biao, a social anthropologist who has won awards for his survey on cross-bordered labor migration from Northeast China, argued for a different interpretation of “precariat”, “one very important background note about the precariat in the West is that they are the product of a large-scale reduction of the welfare state, as well as excessive marketization and liberalization. The loss of workers’ benefits has left these people feeling like they are in a precarious spot. So the Western precariat has developed movements such as Occupy Wall Street, and they have become an active political force. For China’s society people, their material life is better than before, and many are quite grateful to their country. From this point of view, they’re not like the precariat. That’s why when you talk to them about movements like Occupy, they don’t understand where all this anger is coming from.” Xiang emphasized the role of intermediaries which create demand and control the flow of migration, and went even further to claim that these laborers’ “contributions to China will increasingly be reflected in their role as consumers. In the future, the way in which they relate to society will not be mainly as laborers, but as consumers.” [5] After the Beijing Olympic Game in 2008, galleries, museums and art media in China have all contributed to creating a demand for contemporary art narrowly defined by market value. The inauguration of the West Bund Art & Design Fair in 2014 and the neo-liberal developmental policies of the Shanghai government also paved the way for unprecedented growth of blockbuster exhibitions which feature artists as celebrity producers of commodified visual experiences. The paradigm of MoMA and the ideology of modernism were stripped of their historical context and repackaged as a glossy new dream of immersive consumption. Museums, biennials and art fairs witnessed queues of young audiences even though the price of one entrance ticket has soared up to 150-250RMB. There is also a popular myth among potential museum founders that franchising museums and reproducing blockbusters are going to bring in substantial revenues. We are creating the bubble of contemporary art like Luckin Coffee selling its speculative financial statements to investors. China’s economic miracle in the past four decades has relied on demographic dividends boosted by the increasing share of the working-age population and more women entering the labor force. One does not need statistics to confirm such insight because museum audiences in China are mostly young and mostly girls. During the period of containment, people got used to contactless everything. Contactless payment has prevailed over cash for some time, contactless delivery prevents people from rushing to supermarkets and hoarding, contactless education keeps kids and parents occupied at home… It is not Confucianism or totalitarianism that have stopped Chinese people from going around, it is our easy adaption to contactless socializing. The modernist impulse of abstraction demonstrated by Alfred Barr in Cubism and Abstract Art has been transformed into a powerful, digitized abstraction of capitalism and consumerism. The question is whether the digital intermediary will lead our audience back to the museum after we all recover from the pandemic, or it will completely replace the temporal-spatial intimacy of relating to an artwork in a museum? One thing we have learnt from the ongoing crisis is the vulnerability of our existing structure of globalization. Individual stories, precarious voices and empirical knowledge can be filtered by ideological constructs and power relations. We are all in this and there is no exclusive position we can take as cultural makers. Identifying ourselves as precariats might smash the forming hierarchy of different social groups, and we have to recognize that labor division between artists (art professionals) and other professions, producers and consumers does not hold a historical legitimacy outside of the Euro-American context. The paradigm of museums and exhibition-making might not be able to accommodate the diverse experiences and document the socioeconomic transformations in the post-corona world. Replicating the model of the modern art museum, reproducing large exhibitions that are anti-ecological, or homogenizing user-consumer experiences of art will not introduce any shift. We have to walk on the ground, resist our impulse of abstraction, indigenize the process of art making and become our own intermediaries to configurate new contacts between people. Click to read Chinese version Nikita Yingqian Cai lives and works in Guangzhou, where she is currently Associate Director and Chief Curator at Guangdong Times Museum. [1] ArkDes presents a virtual vernissage, WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD | An exhibition about ASMR, April 7, 2020, https://www.e-flux.com/video/325072/arkdes-nbsp-presents-a-virtual-vernissage-weird-sensation-feels-good/ (accessed on April 11, 2020)[1] Manuel Borja-Villel, [2] Letter From Madrid: The Director of the Reina Sofia on What It Will Take for Museums to Rise Again—and What They Can Do in the Meantime, April 6, 2020, https://news.artnet.com/opinion/madrid-reina-sofia-director-1824210 [3] Cubism and Abstract Art, p. 13, April 1936, The Museum of Modern Art New York [4] Guy Standing, Defining the Precariat, A Class in the Making. April 19. 2013, https://www.eurozine.com/defining-the-precariat/ [5] Cai Yiwen, Q&A with Anthropologist Xiang Biao on Northeast China’s Overseas Migrants, March 19. 2020 http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1005348/q%26a-with-anthropologist-xiang-biao-on-northeast-chinas-overseas-migrants Previous Next

< Back BOR 28 June 2020 Hu Yun It’s been only a bit over a year since I visited Bor, a Serbian town for the first time. However, the global outbreak of the virus for the past few months has redefined my perception of “time”. Sitting by my desk in the southern hemisphere as I try to write something down about my several short visits to Bor during last year, I feel like I’m describing a trip during which I’ve constantly moved in and out of the same dream. My first visit to Bor was a 2 days trip occurred in February 2019, right after I have learned about several Chinese investments in the Balkans as parts of Belt and Road Initiative [1] . The reason for choosing Bor issimply that I have never been to a mining field, and as a Chinese, I am very curious about the Belt and Road project, which has become one of the hottest topics globally, but at the same time so little information can be traced domestically. Therefore, I chose Bor as a study case, to follow the coming changes of the city and its surrounding area. Throughout the year 2019, I have made another two visits to the place, which I am going to write about in the coming texts, all together making a series of ongoing field notes published by the As you go… journal. Infection (a drawing based on the map of Bor 2020), ink on paper, Hu Yun, 2020 I Public Square Departing from Belgrade, it was a 3.5-hour journey towards the southeast by coach. The road was flat most of the time, and scenery along the way was dull enough to hypnotize people. But before we reached the border of Bor, the coach had to cross over several mountains, which shook up the few passengers on board. My companion, K, is a Belgrade-based curator who is from Bor. As it wasn’t completely dark when we got off the coach, K took me to a mining pit nearby. It was the first open-air copper mine extracted on a large scale in Bor at the beginning of the 20th century [2] . As mine extraction gradually expanded towards surrounding areas and went underground, the pit is no longer in use, and has been gradually backfilled by tailings from surrounding mining areas. Adjacent to the south side of the pit, there were arrays of houses, most of which were built while the mine was first extracted. The houses, together with whole mining area, as well as the town of Bor that took shape afterwards, were all planned and constructed by a French mining company back in 1904. The matchmaker who facilitated all these to happen was George Weifert [3] , whose portrait is on the banknote of 1,000 Serbian dinars (and the main road connecting the mining area and the downtown is also named after him). The term of the lease signed with the French lasted 99 years. Known as “Tilva Roš” (In Vlachian [4] it means The Red Hill ) by the locals, the area was home to red hills rich in minerals, which could still be seen in colour photos taken in the 1940s. However, after one hundred years of extraction, not only were the red hills removed but also a negative form of the hills was created out of thin air. The city of Bor, taking the mining area as a starting point, gradually expands southwards. K took me for a walk through the abandoned houses around the pit, so deftly as if she had a map of the place in mind. Looking around, there was no fence whatsoever around the vast pit. As long as you are bold enough, you can do as Stefan did at the beginning of the movie Tilva Roš [ 5] : to ride a skateboard all the way down to the bottom of the pit. K told me anyone who was born and raised in Bor, more or less would have some memory related to the pit. The north side of the pit was close to RTB mining area and there was even a sightseeing platform there. K didn’t quite remember in which year it was built. But the location used to be a major “gathering point”. Especially in summer, as long as there was no wind (sandstones blown up by the wind around the pit were formidable), people liked to go there to have some fun. Seen from the platform, the man-made landscape was indeed spectacular under the setting sun. What laid in between me and the town on the other side was the vast pit, or say, void. Whether scenes of the performing band at the abandoned house around the pit (which remained the same) in Good Luck [6] (Ben Russell, 2017) or those of the workers’ chorus shot beside it (where now the sightseeing platform is located) in Beli Beli Svet [7] (White White World, 2010), the city was always shown as if it was surrounded by a vast black hole, drawing people inside. If every modern city must have a public square, for Bor, that would be the pit – the void that connects everyone who lives here. Smoke The next day K’s father took the role of a guide. He worked at the cable factory (like almost all the other factories in the city, the cable factory was affiliated to RTB Group [8] , which after being taken over by Zijin Mining Group [9] was temporarily shut down, waiting for further arrangements from Zijin [10] ). And he was also a hunter. He tried to explain to me how things went on in the factory, and even brought me there. However, “hunter” seemed to me a more suitable description of him after the short time we spent together. Standing at a commanding height of the city early in the morning, one could take an overview over the entire Zeleni Bulevar (which is one of the few main streets running through north and south). The pit was still an overwhelming presence in the background. But what shocked me more this time was the massive clouds of white smoke that appeared from different parts of the city from time to time. “The mining areas run 24/7 and become the clock for Bor. No matter where you are, you’d hear the bell indicating (day/night) shifting of duty of the miners. As to these chimneys, the processing of ores [11] could be roughly deduced from the gases emitted from them at different locations. The whole process is quite a routine. On windy days, you can tell time by the smell of smoke without even looking up.” While he was talking, the hunter pointed to the different chimneys to explain to me the smelting process of copper. [12] He seemed extremely calm during the whole conversation. It was me, a visitor from one of the most polluted countries, who secretly regretted that I hadn’t brought a N95 mask [13] with me. I learned from Deana Jovanović’s article that “ Borski dim ” (Bor’s smoke) was a specialty of Bor [14] . Local friends of hers suggested that “one should light a cigarette to ‘wash off the lungs’ with the cigarette smoke, which she usually did if she encountered the smoke in the streets.” Like K’s family, all those who live in Bor have some kind connection with the mining area. RTB and its peripheral industries function as the only source of livelihood for most people there. Hence, the implications of “smog” [15] to this place are more complicated. Environmental issues have emerged in people’s conversations more frequently than before. But when Bor was initially established, and even today, “smog” remains an intuitive image of production / life ongoing. Forest The hunter suggested bringing me to take a look at the Bor River. Along the way we passed by the house of K’s grandma, which was located at a serene village no different from other Serbian villages I have visited, with a church in the center, surrounded by a school, a post and a Chinese cheap goods store. A brook beside the church merged into the Bor River not far away. We parked by the brook, and the hunter brought out a thermo jug from the trunk, pouring me a cup of herbal tea he brewed in the morning. It was high noon with the warm sunshine of early spring, the fragrance of the hot tea effectively drove my doziness away. Walking alongside the brook, apart from the herbal fragrance, I also smelt bursts of unnatural sourness. I took a closer look: a weird touch of peacock blue could be perceived from within the gurgling brook. As we approached the Bor River, we witnessed more unusual scenes. The hunter took me to a mire, where used to be his “pond” to catch wild ducks. There was indeed a pool of water here, but in unusually gorgeous color. By the side of it there were several branches continuously merging into the pond, which were in bright orange color. The middle part of the pond was in pure royal blue. And there were a few barren slopes nearby. It’s one of the disposal points of the tailings. As I’d guessed, it appeared in many sci-fi movies in the past few years. No single filter effect in my phone could create such a gorgeous palette. Appearing side by side with these “spectacles” were farmlands and village houses. We kept walking southward, and climbed up a hill. At this point, we were far far away from the pit at the north. The forests around were the hunting area for K’s father. Since about twenty years ago, mining and exploration companies from Canada and the Netherlands came to detect the area, certainly not only for copper. “They found several points of extraction in the forests, for gold.” The hunter pointed into the distance and said. Is this why Zijin took over RTB Mining Group? Will they further expand the extraction area in Bor? Will the forests disappear? Perhaps it was because of the heavy wind on top of the hill, neither of us talked anymore. (written by Hu Yun and translated by Wu Chenyun) Click to read Chinese version Hu Yun is an artist based in Melbourne. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bor,_Serbia [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90or%C4%91e_Vajfert [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlachs [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilva_ Roš [6] https://www.documenta14.de/en/artists/8548/ben-russell [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_White_World [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zijin_Bor_Copper [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zijin_Mining [10] The final agreement was signed in December 2018 [11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore#:~:text=Ore%20is%20natural%20rock%20or,the%20valuable%20metals%20or%20minerals.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore#:~:text=Ore%20is%20natural%20rock%20or,the%20valuable%20metals%20or%20minerals . [12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smelting [13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N95_mask [14] Deana Jovanović (2016) Prosperous Pollutants: Bargaining with Risks and Forging Hopes in an Industrial Town in Eastern Serbia, Ethnos, 83:3, 489-504, DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2016.1169205 [15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smog Previous Next

Consider being part of the WCSCD growing community. This program is designed for people who want to engage in contemporary social issues through art. Join one of our groups to support our programs and vision, but also to gain special access to parts of the programs we present. Support could be on an annual basis or by a three-year engagement. Volunteers (no age requirement): If you would like to gain an insight into the work of WCSCD, all the while helping us with various activities, send us an email with a proposed timeframe and area of your involvement. We are happy to consider you becoming a part of our team in the short or long-term run! Artisans 30€ (up to 35 years old): For young art lovers who want to connect with the art world deeper. A gift from our publications’ catalog. Get personal with the WCSCD team and the people we work with. Invitation to join one close session during the educational program that is of interest to you. For each session, we invite a limited number of artisans, since we prefer to work in smaller groups. Exclusive invitation to a welcome dinner for WCSCD participants. Companion 500€: Invitation to join our team and educational program participants for a research trip we organize annually to another country (including meeting professionals in the field, and visiting institutions and galleries with us). Invitation to join us for artists' studio visits in Serbia. Invitation to a dinner with our mentors or invited guests and artists. A gift from our publications’ catalog. Artist production supporting circle, 1200€: You can directly support emerging artists in the production of their new work. Every year, through the educational program, we work with one artist on one of their developing new work. See some of the artists’ works we supported in the following link: sasatkacenko.com/wcscd Artist and curators education supporting circle, 1200€: Offer the opportunity to an individual to participate in the educational program. You can be anywhere in the world. We run an open call for artists and curators for our educational program. However, if you feel that any other artist or curator is in urgent need of the educational program we offer, we are open to your proposals. Revitalizing the land circle WCSCD is going through a transition while exploring its relationship to rural land. We are working with communities in the Šumadija region (Central Serbia) towards enabling the land to be used and incorporated into contemporary practice. If you need land access or are exploring similar topics, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Giulia Menegale < Back After The Covid-19: Speculations Over The Verb ‘To Re-Start Giulia Menegale One week ago, I left my room in London with mixed feelings: I took this decision based on the impossibility to formulate any previsions about the future. I travelled from London- Heathrow to Roma-Fiumicino by plane and then, from Roma-Fiumicino to Venice by car. Being born in neoliberal and globalized times, I am not used to making decisions which are beyond the possibility of choosing among several diversified options: in the current situation, we have lost our apparently unlimited freedom to travel, to produce and to consume. Only one flight company operates this trip. The Italian government ensures the opportunity to come back to their home country only for its own citizens who are currently living in the UK, whilst the borders are officially closed for the rest of the population. Once arrived in Venice, I had to self-isolate for 14 days meaning that I could not leave home neither for doing shopping or taking the trash out. These are the only two activities for which Italians who reside in the red areas – zones highly affected by the COVID-19 – are now allowed to leave their houses. Being at home with my family implies to join again the quotidian rituals happening among its warm walls, after months. One of these consists in watching the news together on the television, while having meals. Since my return, I thus heard several times journalists announcing that ‘We will be ready to restart our activities soon, though we need to act carefully and gradually’. When this happens, the members of my family stop eating and impose absolute silence on each other in the hope that possible dates for the ‘re-opening’ of the activities will be officially announced. Recently, the Italian government has indeed made public a provisional calendar for the next months: ‘on the 3rd May…’; ‘in July 2020…’; ‘in October 2020…’; ‘next year…’ I am the only member of my family who keeps eating her meals regardless of these announcements and does not make comments on them. I understand the shared need and will to ‘restart’ after more than one month of lockdown: ‘The Italian economy is suffering’ an Italian politician says, ‘The lockdown for the COVID-19 costs each Italian citizen 788 euros per month’ someone else adds, ‘and Italy risks to lose up to the 20% of its total GDP by the end of the year’. Nonetheless, when I hear the television or my familiars pronouncing the term ‘restart’, I cannot avoid asking myself whether me and the governments, me and thousands of other Italian families, are waiting for the same systems, activities and lifestyles to ‘restart’. By using the term ‘restarting’, do we even refer to the same phenomenon? Once, the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari said that the fundamental problem of political philosophy ‘is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?’ (2004: 31). Through this sentence, they emphasize the fact that the neoliberal and consumeristic societies we live in, produce the same conditions that make us “to want” and “to need” this exploitative economic system ruling us. Since the lockdown began, we all have experienced the ambiguous feeling caused by being trapped between the desire of “carry on as if a health crisis has never happened” and the pleasure of “escaping from any imposed duty”. This pandemic has been efficacious in showing us, through empirical experimentation, that the “ought to consume”, as well as, the “ought to produce” are not urgencies tied to our bodies or our souls. Why should we desire to come back to a system, a lifestyle, a world whose survival relies on the application of mechanisms of massive subordinations? In these weeks, several intellectuals have speculated about possible futures after the COVID-19, over online journals. The sociologist Bruno Latour suggests ‘do not repeat the exact thing we were doing before’ this unexpected ‘stopping of the world’(2020: 2). If we want to become ‘efficient globalization interrupters ’, we should strongly refuse the same modes of overproduction which lead us to periodical crises and to the accentuation of inequalities between winner nations and defeated ones. In light of Latour’s suggestions, the verb ‘to restart’ acquires thus meanings which differ from the ones evoked by worldwide governments: it means, not only to seriously deal with the heath crisis we are passing through now, but also with the climatic and planetary emergencies which we are witnessing since many years. The current heath crisis encounters the environmental emergency in the image of a man carrying in his hands a branch with several hanging face masks which has been shared by the association Ocean Asia. The picture was taken during some marine operations around the Soko Islands, a small archipelago in Hong Kong, where associated researchers had found dozens of these protection devices along the coasts. According to some figures announced by an Italian newspaper a few days ago, Cina produces nearly 200 million of face masks per day while the U.S. will need to supply 3,5 billion in order to protect medical workers in a severe pandemic. By the end of each month, Italy will have consumed and thrown away 130 million of face masks. The photo I have referred to thus summarize the paradox with which we will soon be confronting, if we do not consider the environment as a priority in this generalized call ‘to re-start’. An important number of single-use face masks and plastic gloves – all surgical devices which are certainly saving human lives now! – will be added to the 6 millions of tons of synthetic fibers produced per year – materials which are certainly dangerous for the environment due to their dispersion in the form of microplastics! – to get rid off. In the scenario described, it seems to me that we are living in times where the pages of our daily agendas are full of exclamation marks and red underscores: priorities get accumulated under long ‘to-do lists’ (or to-change lists?!) that requires equally energetic and prompt responses. Formulating the question in Spinozian words again, have we reached the full capacity in confront of the challenges that our bodies, our planet, the pandemic can take on? When the health and social crises encounter the environmental one, establishing a political agenda means to set priories among urgencies that cannot longer be postponed. When I hear the word ‘re-start’ on the television or other mouths, I take time to imagine that, meanwhile, we are meeting over the web to agree on possible actions to be undertaken on the small and bigger scales. In this period of lockdown, my hope is that we have begun working consistently toward the construction of the infrastructures which will allow us to respond to these multilayered crises, both on the micropolitical and macropolitical levels. Has the ambiguity generated by the use of the verb ‘to restart’ suggested any strategies regarding how to actuate such systematic changes, yet? Giulia Menegale (1995) is an Italian-based curator, writer and researcher. SOURCES [1] Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Felix. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia , London: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd, 1984. [2] Latour, Bruno. What protective measures can you think of so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model? , translated by Stephen Muecke, ACO media, 29th March, 2020: https://aoc.media/opinion/2020/03/29/imaginer-les-gestes-barrieres-contre-le-retour-a-la-production-davant-crise/ (last visit: 23/04/2020.) [3] Zanini, Luca. “Coronavirus, allarme ambientale: «Miliardi di mascherine finiranno nei mari»”. In Il Corriere della Sera , Milan, 8th April 2020: https://www.corriere.it/cronache/20_aprile_08/coronavirus-allarme-ambientale-miliardi-mascherine-finiranno-mari-7e05af60-781c-11ea-98b9-85d4a42f03ea.shtml [4] Article from Ocean Asia: http://oceansasia.org/beach-mask-coronavirus/ Previous Next