Timed to take place during February 2022, the first structure of Inhabiting Spaces (link to this project), ‘Working Disobedience from Latin America’, was an international encounter organised in collaboration with Working Disobedience Platform. This involved online and offline conversations and performances, featuring 35 participants working on Latin-American art and cultures. This part of the programme looked at contemporary art practices and colonialism, anti-colonialism and decolonialism in Latin America, focusing on the different forms that power takes in the region.
The sessions highlighted ways to activate a de/anticolonial practice in Latin America and invited participants and audiences to think about how to dislocate power relations within the art system and how to propose new power dynamics for an extended art field.
One of the highlights of the series was the panel discussion titled Decolonial Perspectives on Exhibition-Making, Heritage and Material Cultures which took place on the 23rd of February at Gasworks, London. Special guests focused on the politics of display, heritage and material cultures, in order to interrogate the future role and place for art within institutions.
The full programme of ‘Working Disobedience from Latin America’ is available here.
Latin American artistic practices and their place in relation to the discussion on anti- and de-colonialism has distinct nuances, which evinces the tensions, gaps, and challenges to reflect critically on the problems of the present. The use and overuse of terms face us with a highly complex scenario in which the question of how to talk from and about situated activity acquires relevance. At this table, some of the questions discussed were: what is the place of visuality and aesthetics in decolonial studies? how do we imagine from the complexities and crises of the present? how does interest in thinking about disobedience in art scenes emerge? and what is the critical place of unlearning and disobedient practices to rethink, rewrite, and feel stories?
Las prácticas artísticas latinoamericanas y su lugar en relación con la discusión sobre el anti/decolonialismo tiene distintos matices, que hacen evidente las tensiones, vacíos y desafíos para reflexionar críticamente sobre los problemas del presente. El uso y sobreuso de los términos nos enfrenta a un escenario cargado de complejidades, en el cual la pregunta por cómo hablar sobre y desde quehaceres situados adquiere relevancia. En esta mesa, algunas de las preguntas que se discutieron fueron ¿cuál es el lugar de la visualidad y la estética en los estudios decoloniales?, ¿cómo imaginar desde las complejidades y crisis del presente?, ¿cómo emerge el interés por pensar sobre las desobediencias en las escenas del arte? y ¿cuál es el lugar crítico del desaprender y de las prácticas desobedientes para repensar, reescribir y sentir las historias?
The idea of participating, belonging, and being in collectivity is central to discussions about current and future conditions, especially in contexts of health, environmental, and political crises. Investigating and questioning the place of collaborative and communal artistic practices as generators of individual and collective imaginaries, and their poetics as possibilities for resistance are the central points of this discussion, which addresses the methodologies that make observing the legacies and persistence of colonial violence possible, how to open and create spaces for political and artistic experimentation from Latin America, and the need to question the scope of language in creation and research.
The limits of the concept of art, in the Western sense, were questioned in this conversation, and the possibilities of de-centering, questioning, and re-signifying them from Latinamerica explored in depth. The dialog touched on topics such as the processes of decolonization, plurality, self-management, self-determination, witchcraft, cannibalism, and ancestral knowledge, as strategies to reconfigure what we understand as art, from Latinamerica.
En esta conversación se cuestionaron los límites del concepto de arte, en el sentido occidental, profundizando en las posibilidades de descentrar, interpelar y resignificarlos desde Latinoamérica. En la discusión, se tocaron temas como los procesos de descolonización, la pluralidad, la autogestión, la autodeterminación, la brujería, el canibalismo y los saberes ancestrales, como estrategias para reconfigurar desde Latinoamérica lo que entendemos como arte.
Romeo Gongora (Canada/ Guatemala), Anamaría Garzón Mantilla (Ecuador), Milena Costa (Brazil)
The tensions and questions generated by the relationship between the local and the global run through different areas of practice and knowledge. How to dissolve distance to generate encounters is one of the questions that artistic theory/practice has explored in different and diverse ways, adopting forms, methodologies, and strategies to question and think about the politics of the encounter and distance between cultures, knowledges, and endeavors.
Las tensiones y preguntas que genera la relación entre lo local y lo global transitan por distintas áreas de las prácticas y los conocimientos. Cómo disolver la distancia y generar encuentros es una de las preguntas que la teoría/práctica artística ha explorado de distintas y diversas maneras, adoptando formas, metodologías y estrategias para interrogar y pensar las políticas del encuentro y la distancia entre culturas, conocimientos y quehaceres.
Agencia de Borde (Chile), Deborah Martin (United Kingdom), Gabriela Saldias (Bolivia), Valentina Montero (Chile)
Revisiting the link between nature and power is one of the challenges of the present, which was explored in this conversation from the arts and humanities, with a transdisciplinary approach. Through an exploration of the relationships between arts and activisms, environment, non-human life, nature, and technologies, the question of how to imagine other relationships will be examined.
Revisar la vinculación entre naturaleza y poder es uno de los desafíos del presente, que se exploró en esta conversación desde las artes y humanidades, con un enfoque transdisciplinar. Mediante una exploración sobre las relaciones entre artes y activismos, medioambiente, vida no-humana, naturaleza y tecnologías, la pregunta por cómo imaginar relaciones otras será examinada.
The borders imposed in our histories and narratives come from the exercise and action of power. In this conversation, we will delve into questions regarding how to alter understandings, how to create and put disruptive gestures into practice, and how to weave and work the arts as acts of protest in an attempt to disrupt the conditions of the present.
Los bordes que han sido impuestos en nuestras historias y narrativas provienen del ejercicio y accionar del poder. En esta conversación, se profundizará en preguntas relacionadas con cómo alterar concepciones, cómo crear y poner en prácticas gestos disruptivos, cómo tejer y trabajar las artes como protesta, en un intento por alterar las condiciones del presente.
Diego Chocano (Perú), Victoria Vargas Downing (Chile), Pamela Gomez (Bolivia)
This conversation was held at Gasworks
On the politics of display, heritage, and material cultures, in order to question the future role and place of art within institutions.
Carla Garlanchi (Chile), Gulia Palladini (United Kingdom), Luis Alarcón and Ana María Saavedra (Chile), Lily Hall (United Kingdom)
This conversation was held at Tate Modern.
Current struggles demand going further and deeper into the problems and situations that led to them. But they also require discussing, sharing, and questioning the strategies and desires that move us to find ways to change our contexts. In this session, we discussed how to activate a disobedient practice as artists, curators, art directors, and scholars in an uncertain context.
Las luchas actuales exigen ir más allá y profundizar en los problemas y situaciones que las provocan. Pero también requieren discutir, compartir e interrogar las estrategias y deseos que nos mueven a encontrar formas de cambiar nuestros contextos. En esta sesión, discutimos cómo activar una práctica desobediente como artistas, curadores, directores de arte y académicos en un contexto incierto.
