Image: Apotome Generative Visuals Courtesy of Khyam Allami / Counterpoint
Glossary of Common Knowledge | Subjectivisation 2
Seminar and radio programme
The Glossary of Common Knowledge is a project of the European confederation of museums L’Internationale initiated by Moderna galerija in 2014 and organised cross-sectionally from working seminars and public conferences. The goal of the project is to compile a glossary of art terminology that differs substantially from what is found in the existing literature on art. This time, the referential field is Subjectivisation. We also prepared a special public radio show, accessible on L'Internationale Online and partly also on Radio Student, Ljubljana, produced by Radia Al Hara (Palestine), Bridge Radio (Copenhagen) and L'Internationale Online.
SEMINAR
Each edition begins with a public event, followed by several working days, in which a group of invited participants who act as "narrators" proposing new terms around a given "referential field”. All the sessions of the seminar will be recorded and published on the Glossary of Common Knowledge website.
The Glossary of Common Knowledge (GCK) seeks to find common knowledge to speak about less visible stories in contemporary art, and to address systems that govern our ways of thinking in art and beyond. The project is ongoing since 2014 and is based on discussions surrounding six referential fields (Historicisation, Subjectivisation, Geopolitics, Constituencies, Commons, and Other Institutionality). The first series of discussions was published in 2018 and now we are working on the second edition. For this second series we are working again with these same referential fields in order to re-examine how the conditions in our cultural landscape have changed. In May 2021, a group of narrators is being invited to propose terms for the Glossary, to speak about the notion of Subjectivisation with respect to their current research and/or artistic practice and shifting cultural conditions. With this referential field we are interested in interpretations of subjectivities that are critical toward dominant ways of producing subjectivisation and the exploitation and commodification of intellect and affect by capital. This subjectivisation is produced from the rebellion and critical situatedness of both individual and collective.
We understand subjectivisation as a potentially transformative process that confronts the judgments and biases in our societies and poses critical questions about who we are, and how we act in the world. It works in the direction of forming aesthetical, ethical and political statements and decisions that are to an extent unrepresentable, historically situated, fragmented and inconsistent, yet capable of weaving political affinities, that bring about social transformation. A collective subjectivity that experiences common trauma may form a solidarity movement that challenges systematic violence in political realities despite the existing intersectionality between its members. The opposite of subjectivation is identification; that is, the police activity of assigning to each body its ‘natural’ place and function. The process of subjectivisation is about citizens becoming makers and not only subjects of public policies and institutions. In a world facing pandemic, climate change, migrations, economic and social struggle, terrorism and an array of new communication technologies we observe growing social, political and economical tension resulting in an ever-more stratified society. Subjectivity-as-encounter is a way to promote the possibility of sharing borders, margins and thresholds with empathy.
Coordination: Mick Wilson (Valand Academy)
Public programme: Corina Oprea (Valand Academy), Jason E. Bowman (Valand Academy), Jennifer Hayashida (Valand Academy)
Moderators: Zdenka Badovinac (Moderna galerija, SI), Bojana Piškur (Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, SI), Jesús Carrillo (Madid, ES), Jennifer Hayashida (Valand, Gothenburg, SE)
Participating narrators: Nicolás Cuello, Pauliina Feodoroff, Elisa Fuenzalida, Diego Marchante “Genderhacker”, Abhijan Toto, Maja Smrekar (Ljubljana, SI), Jesús Carrillo (Madid, ES), Ram Krishna Ranjan (Valand, Gothenburg, SE), Charles Esche (Vanabbe, Eindhoven, NL), Ida Hiršenfelder (Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, SI), Yuji Kawasima (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, ES), Pablo Martínez (MACBA, Barcelona, ES), Bogna Stefańska, Jakub Depczyński (Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, PL), Deniz Gül (SALT, Istanbul, TR), Joanna Zielińska (M HKA, Antwerpen, BE).
Organised by the L'Internationale confederation with HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design at the University of Gothenburg (Gothenburg, Sweden) and Moderna galerija (Ljubljana, Slovenia)
PUBLIC PROGRAMME
On the occasion of 2021’s Glossary of Common Knowledge seminar on Subjectivisation L’Internationale Online proposes to engage a fluid network of listening sites where provocations on the relations between/of essentialism and subjectivisation may be positioned and disseminated, thereby offering greater accessibility and geographical reverberance. The shift to digitisation caused by the pandemic provides a grounding from which to enquire into the physicality of interaction and therefore we invite participants, readers and listeners to actively engage with their senses over various forms of frequencies via a series of radio programs. Recognising the polyphony of symphony, an aim is to catalyse a space through which to negotiate theories, practices and entanglements around essentialism and subject becoming, through radio programs that unpack sonic migration, what is essential to decolonial research and disembodied performances. In identifying radio as a potential form and circulatory mechanism we seek to acknowledge a poly-cultural and cacophonous approach that is also attentive to radio as a significant media amidst the global pandemic. Our proposition is to enter into dialogue with a series of radio stations - as critically situated sites of radio production and broadcasting - across differing locales in order to further develop debate on the concept of subjectivisation, which is a theme in the development of the current Glossary project. We understand subjectivisation, broadly, as a potentially transformative process that confronts judgments and biases in our societies and discussions which can pose critical questions about who we are, how we act in the world; and in what ways particular situations, structures and resulting forms of exclusion inform and constrain what is made possible.
CONVERSATION | Musician Khyam Allami and architect Nora Akawi
Tuning and the problematics of transcultural creativity
Production: Radio Al Hara, 63:40 min
Monday, 10 May 2021, on L'Internationale Online and Radio Študent, R A D A R, Ljubljana (at 11 p.m.)
With the release of two free programs that encourage experimentation with global tuning systems Leimma and Apotome, the musician and researcher Khyam Allami is challenging the Western biases of music production software.
RADIO DRAMA | Our Movements Are Loud
Production: Bridge Radio, Copenhagen, 29:05 min
Tuesday, 11 May 2021, on L'Internationale Online and Sunday, 16 May 2021, 6 p.m., Radio Študent, R A D A R, Ljubljana
The radio drama is an experimental radio play produced collectively by people without Danish citizenship, linked to each other through their experience of the asylum system in Denmark. The radio play consists of different perspectives, positions and voices that coincide in a story about the fight against expulsion. These interwoven stories take place in an imaginary scenario and are told by activists working inside and outside the asylum camps. The stories in the radio play are based on real events that have taken place in asylum camps, airplanes and in larger protests that The Bridge Radio and its network has participated in.
The process of creating the radio play started with a workshop in writing and drama for radio with writer Athena Farrokhzad, director Saga Gärde and sound designer Arash Pandi.
Texts and voices: Laila, Serafin, Cedric, Barly, Kirstine, Arash, Nanna, Arendse, Shakira, Fayeza, Carina, Nanna, Kathrine and Allan.
Sound recordings from the Bridge Radio Archive: Quotes by Audre Lorde, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Nicholas De Genova and Bertolt Brecht.
Radio drama workshop: Athena Farrokhzad and Saga Gärde.
Recordings and editing: The Bridge Radio.
Sound design: Arash Pandi.
RECORDED POEMS by Napo Masheane in collaboration with Francis Lo, What About Struggle and What About Support
Production: L'Internationlale Online
Wednesday, 12 May 2021, on L'Internationale Online
Recorded poems by Napo Masheane in collaboration with Francis Lo from the upcoming e-publication of the L'Internationlale Online edited by Corina Oprea and Jeniffer Hayashida on the proposition to resituate the critique of catastrophe discourse in urgent pasts and presents. What about support and what about struggle is an international speculative translation project where writers and artists across a range of geopolitical contexts have responded to Francis Lo’s work across languages, forms, and aesthetic-political concerns. Poets and artists contributors: Napo Masheane, Leuli Eshraghi, Merve Unsal, Taco de Raya, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, and Fernanda Laguna.
The Glossary of Common Knowledge is a part of a four-year programme Our Many Europes led by L'Internationale confederation of museums with its partners Valand Academy (University of Gothenburg) and National College of Art and Design Dublin. Supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory.
