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< Back Behind Ethiopia’s Civil War: From Guerrilla to Secessionist 25 Dec 2020 Berhanu The state formation through the alliance of ethnicity-based parties since 1991 is fragile. The simmering ethno-nationalism within Ethiopia has become clear and leads to the faltering of Ethiopian politics this year. Tigray region of Ethiopia. source: made from google map. On November 4, which coincided with the polling day of the US general election, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, announced on Facebook that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) attacked the Northern Command of Ethiopian Defense Force stationed in Mekele, the capital city of Tigray kilil (region). Merkley airport was immediately bombed by the Ethiopian federal army as punishment. Within a few days, the confrontation between the federal government and TPLF escalated rapidly. On November 7, U.N. Secretary-General Gutierrez spoke with Abiy and asked the Sudanese Prime Minister, who holds the rotating presidency of the International Development Organization (IGAD), and the African Union to intervene in negotiations between the warring parties. However, Abiy tweeted on the 9th saying: “Concerns that Ethiopia will descend into chaos are unfounded and a result of not understanding our context deeply. Our rule of law enforcement operation, as a sovereign state with the capacity to manage its own internal affairs, will wrap up soon by ending the prevailing impunity.” Getachew Reda, an adviser to the president of Tigray state and a key member of the DPA, took a back-and-forth, tweeting that Abiy was a poor soldier and had started the war first, and that Tigray was merely acting self-defensively. Subsequently, traffic in Tigray was cut off by the TPLF, outward communications were cut off by the federal Government, commercial banks were closed, and the Government of Ethiopia took control of all social media. From the outside, the two sides are almost fighting in a huge black box, with little contradictory news only managing to make it out. According to a report by Amnesty International on November 12, the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (NDF) and Amharic Special Forces attacked the People’s Front in Lugdi on the Sudan-Ethiop border on November 9. On the night of the 9th, hundreds of people were found dead with machete wounds near the Ethiopian Commercial Bank, close to the center of Mai-Kadra town and on the road leading to Himora on the northern border, most of whom were said to be Amharans who came here to work. The survivors identified the perpetrators as the police and the armed forces of Tigray State, but Debretsion Gebremichael, the acting governor and chairman of Tigray State, denounced these accusations. On November 10, Federal Government Spokesperson, Redwan Hussein, announced that the NDF had retaken Mekele’s Northern Command. On the 13th, Abiy changed his generals and the ministers of federal intelligence, security, and police, amongst other departments. Mulu Nega was appointed as the chief executive of the interim government of Tigray State. Tigray State thus entered a situation where two heads coexisted. At 10 o’clock in the evening on the 13th, the Amhara State in the southern part of Tigray State was attacked by an air raid. The local residents said that the gunfire lasted 15 minutes. The fighting has intensified, apparently beyond PM Abiy’s initial call of “an issue of law and order”, to the regional crisis in East Africa. At least 25,000 refugees have fled Tigray state and poured into neighbouring Sudan. The UNHCR has urged neighbouring countries to open their borders to facilitate people fleeing and has asked Ethiopian authorities to allow international aid agencies to enter the country to help an approximately 100,000 displaced people in Tigray state. On the 14th, the NDF claimed to have moved south of Tigray towards Mekele, taking control of several towns along the road, with the spokesman saying the rebellion would end quickly, and the head of the TPLF would be punished. However, on the same day, TPLF warned its northern neighbour Eritrea not to go to war and fired at least three rockets at the airport in Asmara, the Eritrean capital, hours later. It is just one year after PM Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Prize for ending the two-decade confrontation between Ethiopia and Eritrea – so how did a war break out? Is this war, as Abiy claimed, a military operation to maintain the rule of law? Or was it the starting point of a melee in East Africa? Why did the TPLF, once the core of the Ethiopian ruling coalition ERPDF, recede to northern Ethiopia in only five years after Prime Minister Abiy took office? TPLF: From Hoxhaism Guerrilla to the ruling party Without reviewing the rise and fall of TPLF, one would not be able understand its historical memory and current position. Dr Aregawi Berhe, one of the founders and the early military commander of TPLF, has by far the most in-depth and critical accounts in this regard. In 1974, Major Mengistu Haile Mariam staged a coup in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, toppling Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I and establishing a military junta, DERGUE, which then sided with the Soviet Union. But there were rebel groups in the north, one of which was TPLF. It was from the 1970s to 1991 that the TPLF was transformed from a national liberation organization in a remote area, into the heart of Ethiopia’s ruling party: the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). From a military point of view, the rise of the TPLF was quite unexpected. In 1978, after DERGUE had cleared the eastern Somali rebellion, it sent troops northward and planned to quell two rebel groups: the TPLF in Tigray and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) in today’s Eritrea. In March 1988, with one of the largest military forces in Africa, the DERGUE was defeated in Eritrea’s Af-abet in just 48 hours by TPLF and EPLF. Next, the TPLF launched the Shire-Enda Selassie campaign in the mountains of the central state of Tigray. In April 1988, DERGUE regrouped its forces in Mekele. TPLF fought back in rapid movements, eliminating small groups of enemy forces and occupying commanding heights to cut off the enemy’s links with their base battalions, before then regrouping and annihilating the enemy. In early 1989, having had seen the dawn of victory, TPLF formed the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front in coalition with other national movements. In April 1990, negotiations coordinated by Italy broke down because Meles Zenawi, the leader of TPLF/EPRDF, felt that the opposition was on the verge of collapse. On 19 February 1991, Major Mengistu began his exile and the DERGUE faltered. In April, EPRDF entered Addis Ababa, the capital city, signaling the start of its three-decade rule of Ethiopia. What’s behind TPLF’s military achievement is its capacity to mobilize, which is inextricable to the Marxism-Leninism that emerged in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. Ideologically, TPLF follows Hoxhaism, holding that both the Post-Stalin Soviet Union and Mao Zedong’s China were revisionist, and that only Enver Hoxha and the Albania he led were the true socialists. But such hair-splitting divergence could have [also] been the work of ethnic boundary making. The mode of mobilization, as Aregawi Berhe argues, was also highly dependent on Tigray nationalism, which ultimately sowed the seeds of separatism in the process of nation-building later on. As early as the 1970s, in the Haile Selassie I University (now Addis Ababa University) established by the last Emperor of Ethiopia for the cause of modernization, a group of students from the Tigray region in their early 20s formed the Tigray National Organization (TNO) – the predecessor of the TPLF. Back then, the Ethiopian monarchy was already in crisis. In the context of the African independence movement, Marxist-Leninist classics were widely circulated among young students. The Marxist revelation that the imperialist oppression was the reason behind the poverty and backwardness of third-world nations, as well as the victories of the socialist revolution and developments in socialist countries, attracted young students. Indeed, Tigray has suffered multiple hardships in modern history. This area is the origin of Ethiopian civilization. Historically, elevated plateaus with rivers cutting deep among them were geographically apt for rule by scattered feudal lords. In modern times, Tigray became war-trodden, not only because of the War of the Princes (1769-1885), but also because European colonists needed to enter Ethiopia from here. It was with Lord Kasa Mercha’s permission that the British Napier Expedition was able to pass Tigray and defeat Emperor Tewodros II. Kasa Mercha was later crowned as Yohannes IV. In 1889, he was seriously wounded in battle by Mahandist Sudanese, passing the throne to Menilik II, the powerful leader of Addis Ababa. This marked the shift of power of Abyssinia from the Tigrays to the Amharas. After WWII, Emperor Haile Selassie I strengthened centrality and appointed officials to replace the old nobles in the Tigray region. But heavy taxes imposed on local governments by these officials, coupled with corruption, provoked the revolution of Tigranian farmers. Many wars have caused the people’s livelihood in this area to decline. Bandits prevailed in Tigray. Those who went out for a living were often looked down upon by locals. In general, Tigray people had little liking towards the colonists and Ethiopian emperors. In the 1970s, students who fell under the influence of Marxism returned to their hometowns from Addis Ababa, setting out to transform the traditional rural society in Tigray while resisting DERGUE, whose rule was even worse than Emperor Selassie. Under the leadership of the legendary Gessesew Ayele (Sihul) – who had participated in the opposition to Emperor Haile Selassie in the 1940s and served in the DERGUE government – these students intended to follow China’s revolutionary path from their armed resistance in the countryside, before eventually engulfing the cities. It was with this intention that they went to Shire, Ayele’s hometown in the central mountainous area. The students’ organization, Tigray National Organization (TNO), was revamped as TPLF, claiming itself as the “Second Revolution” (Kalai Woyyane) to invoke the history of [the] “first revolution” of 1943, which pursued national self-determination from imperial oppression. In the beginning, farmers simply regarded these young men as educated yet unsophisticated radicals. However, TPLF went on to effectively reform the traditional Tigray society, and under the guidance of its ally, Eritrea People’s Liberation Front (EPLF, when Eritrea was still part of Ethiopia), consciously recruited farmers to participate in its armed struggle. These reforms include the following four aspects: the establishment of farmers’ associations and a people’s assembly to replace traditional rural governance land reform youth and women’s organizations and religion. First, the establishment of farmers’ associations and [the] People’s Assembly to replace traditional rural governance by the village elderly (shimagile). In the beginning, TPLF members went to churches, funerals, markets, and neighborhood meetings to explain the goals of the revolutionary movement, encouraging farmers to join the peasant associations and prepare for land reform. Nevertheless, the elderly approved of TPLF’s conduct and discipline, but cautioned their sons and daughters against its propaganda. In response, TPLF resorted to national sentiments, presenting itself as the “sons and daughters of Tigray” to legitimize their roots and exclude other competing fronts in Tigray. It also managed to achieve consensus among the people through the apparatus of cadres ( kifli hizbi ) and meetings ( gämgams ). In the propaganda meetings convened by the cadres, differing opinions were eliminated under group pressure, thereby strengthening their internal cohesion. Under collective pressure, many people who were sympathetic to the forces outside of TPLF were required to show loyalty through “self-criticism” or else silence themselves. Through this, the TPLF turned all farmers into members of [the] farmer’s association. Second, the implementation of land reform. Traditionally, the land was divided into risti land (inherited from the previous generation), the communal deisaa land (which was redistributed every seven years to immigrants and new couples), and the gulti land (allocated by emperors to officials, lords, and churches. This included himsho land (or “rim” land) owned by the parish, with 20% of its farm produce used in the services of parish priests and laymen). On the eve of the revolution, it was estimated that 25% of farmers had little to no land, 45% of farmers had less than 1 hectare, 23% owned between ½ – 1 hectare, and 21% owned 1 – 2 hectares (Tekeste Agazi 1983). The purpose of TPLF, then, was to crush the highly disproportionate land system. At the same time, the socialist DERGUE was also promoting land reform through abandoning guiti lands. However, it did not consider the working class, craftsmen, and small businessmen in the city. TPLF took the lead to divide land among these groups, consolidating its political base both in the city and the countryside. Third, youth and women’s organizations. In order to arm rural youth, TPLF raised the age of marriage to 26 for men and to 22 for women through the decision of baitos , the transformed people’s assembly. In traditional agricultural societies, only married couples could obtain land as their means of production. As a result of the postponement of marriage, young people were delayed access to land ownership but were freed from obligations to land and family. TPLF then organized the youth, who participated in logistics and other activities, becoming reserves of the armed struggle. Cadres trained the youth to shout, “I want to fight for Tigray!” “I’m going to join the TPLF army!” Young people who were reluctant to join the army were seen as “opportunists” and consequently marginalized. In the meantime, TPLF also trained radio station staff and barefoot doctors who had international aid and financial resources provided by the Tigrainian diaspora. It closed state schools in towns and cities and set up its own schools to mobilize more of the youth. In addition, TPLF male fighters were known for their monkish behavior to abstain from sex. TPLF criminalized sexual violence and even imposed the death penalty to discipline its army. This won the approval of local husbands and fathers, who were rest assured when their wives and daughters were encouraged by female TPLF fighters to join the army. As a result, approximately one third of the TPLF fighters were women. Fourth, the use of religion. Ethiopia traditionally has a strong religious atmosphere. The Tewahedo Orthodox Church, on the one hand had close ties with the community and the family, but on the other hand supported the imperial power. TPLF strategically supported DERGUE’s policy of confiscating gulti land, but it permitted the parish land system without damaging the church’s grassroots economic base. The TPLF also placed religious and social activities under the control of the People’s Assembly ( baitos ). They severed ties between the Tigranian Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and at the same time showed tolerance for Muslims as a minority group. Participants holding photos of the martyrs in the parade of TPLF 45-year anniversary, which dates back to 18 February 1975 when the armed struggle began in Tigray. Bottom right is the TPLF logo. It has a hammer, a torch, and the national symbol Axum obelisk encircled by the wheat ear of injera, the traditional crop of Ethiopia. Source: www.Tigrayonline.com To an extent, the TPLF borrowed from China [and] Vietnam’s revolutionary experience. They transformed traditional rural society and gained a high degree of control over Tigray through [their] movements. Administratively, the old governance in Tigray’s rural society, baitos , was transformed into the People’s Assembly under the leadership of TPLF. The People’s Revolutionary Assembly had armed forces at a national level, and the families of cadres and fighters were taken care by the village. The legal power was shared by the elderly ( shimagle ) and cadres – but the cadres, elevated as “torchbearers of the revolution”, often had the decision-making power. In this way, TPLF successfully mobilized the society of Tigray and became the sole spokesperson for the Tigray people. This is what Dr Aregawi Berhe calls the “mobilization hegemony” with a nationalist predilection. Separatism in the 1994 Ethiopian Constitution When overthrowing the once powerful Military Junta became imminent, the TPLF found itself standing at a historical crossroad for establishing a transitional government. In 1989, before entering Addis Ababa, the TPLF formed the ruling coalition EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front) and in 1991, the EPRDF began to draft the new constitution for the liberated Ethiopia. However, these two milestones bore the markings of separatism once they were laid out by TPLF and its allies. EPRDF is composed of four major national political groups: the TPLF, ADP (Amhara Democratic Party, formerly known as ANDM, Amhara National Democratic Movement), OPDO (Oromo People’s Democratic Organization), and SEPDM (Southern Ethiopian’s People’s Democratic Movements). Although the establishment of the EPRDF created an image of Ethiopian solidarity, for the TPLF, it was also the solution to two emerging challenges. Firstly, as a political group that only accounts for 6% of the population of Ethiopia, the Tigranians had to unite with other national forces. Secondly, they had to formally meet demands from the West to achieve democracy (at the time, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Herman Cohen, warned that TPLF had “no democracy, no cooperation.”). The unification of the political forces in Ethiopia through the party apparatus seemed beneficial for the TPLF, who chose to collaborate with like-minded political organizations. The ANDM, an ally of the TPLF, was considered to merely be the “Amhara mouthpiece” of the EPRDF, while the OPDO, composed of political prisoners released by the EPRDF, was seen as its “Oromo mouthpiece”. Given the earlier fall of the communist junta, the United States was willing to accept an authoritative government. In July 1991, under the diplomatic coordination of the United States, TPLF/ EPRDF held the “Peace and Democracy Transitional Conference of Ethiopia” in Addis Ababa and invited representatives of 27 national movement organizations to participate (Aregawi 2008: 335). Of the 27 organizations, 19 were based on ethnic politics, 5 on national political organizations, and the remaining 3 were civic or professional groups. The draft of the constitution discussed in the transitional meeting was prepared by the TPLF and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), who also dominated the negotiating table alongside heavy involvement from the EPLF (according to OLF), who were preparing for the Eritrea transitional government. Being the product of ethnic oppression in the past, these three parties naturally took the option of secession into account. Notably, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) and the All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement (MEISON) were not invited to this meeting. In the absence of these organizations, who would advocate for a pan-Ethiopia unity, the participants could easily reach an agreement for the Eritrean Transitional Government (led by the EPLF) to conduct a referendum for secession from Ethiopia in three years. Some participating organizations, such as the ENDO (Ethiopian National Democratic Organization), initiated discussions on the separation of ethnic groups and the separation of Eritrea, but the representatives of the EPRDF believed that these reservations would damage the foundation of the constitution. In the end, the provisional Ethiopian Constitution stipulates that the regional assembly shall be based on the nation and that “every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has an unconditional right to self-determination, including the right to secession.” (article 39.1). Moreover, the EPRDF only recognizes the individual ethnic identity of citizens, and not the dual or multiple ethnic identities that were a result of historical integration. This is the design of the national federalism currently implemented in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Parliament which was consequently established composed of 27 ethnic organization representatives, who would form the Council of Representatives. It is a legislative body with a total of 87 seats: 32 of which belong to the EPRDF, with the remaining 55 seats belonging to 23 non-EPRDF organizations. As the highest administrative body, the Council of Ministers is headed by Meles Zenawi. As the president of the transitional government, he appointed 17 of the cabinet ministers, most of whom were held by candidates from the TPLF and the OLF. In just a few years, Meles Zenawi controlled the power of the state through the coalition of political parties. In the meantime, the ethnic and national political parties in Ethiopia rapidly increased. Today, of the 81 political parties registered in the Federation of Ethiopia, 73 are based on ethnicities. Since ethnic politics has been legitimized, some leaders of ethnic political groups often antagonize ethnical sentiments to strengthen their power, further worsening the state of Ethiopian politics. A war between secessionists and Ethiopianists? Ethiopia has long been a country with a low level of development. However, after Meles Zenawi came to power, especially since 2005, the average annual GDP growth of >10% attracted the world’s attention, while foreign direct investment (FDI) also increased significantly during this period. Economically, Meles Zenawi pursued an authoritarian mode in developing the country, prioritizing industrial and infrastructural investments, and establishing several industrial parks in different regions. Nonetheless, such modes of development are not without precedents. The successful trajectory of East Asian economies (such as China, Taiwan, South Korea, etc.) since the 1980s became a model to emulate for some African countries, especially when IMF’s structural adjustment failed in many African countries. Nevertheless, the Tigrainians, thanks to their ethnicity and connections with the ruling party, are widely believed to hold a monopoly on Ethiopia’s economic power and accumulative wealth. The growing civil discontent towards political and economic inequality, and democratization on an ethnic basis, has brought imminent risks both to state failure within Ethiopia and the decline of TPLF. The first serious indicator was as early as 1992 when OLF, the party who co-drafted the constitution with TPLF, withdrew from the Ethiopian government because it was marginalized by the ally of the EPRDF, the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO). The Oromo people account for 40% of the Ethiopian population, and the split within Oromo is further complicated by its diaspora in the Gulf countries and the United States. After 2016, the problem of land acquisition in the Oromo region, especially in the development around Addis Ababa, triggered political protests against the EPRDF/TPLF, bringing the country into state of emergency on many occasions. Other emerging democratic voices were silenced by the ruling coalition, owing to its authoritarian nature. In the 2005 Ethiopian general election, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) claimed to have won 49% of the votes, outnumbering the 34% held by the EPRDF. However, it was suppressed by EPRDF, and the leader of the CUD was placed under house arrest. CUD’s party guidelines have already pointed out that the primary task of contemporary Ethiopia’s development is to achieve national reconciliation. The sudden death of Meles Zenawi in 2012 left a power vacuum in Ethiopia, which is a common problem with all authoritarian governments. In 2018, the successive prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, believed to be a puppet of TPLF, resigned because the country once again fell into a state of emergency caused by intensified ethnic conflicts. According to election procedures, the four major parties will elect the chairman of EPRDF, who will also become the next prime minister. Lemma Megers, the chairman of OPDO at the time, was unable to serve as prime minister because he was not a member of the parliament, so an emergency meeting was held to elect the next candidate within the party, Abiy Ahmed, as chairman. This crucial step successfully catapulted Abiy to the supreme position he now holds in Ethiopia. Dr Abiy Ahamed was born in 1976. He joined the army led by TPLF where he learned Tigrinya as a teenager and served for many years in the army’s security intelligence department. In the 2010s, he was appointed as director of the Urban Development Planning Department of Oromia. Thanks to his peace-making talents, Abiy solved many land and religious disputes, and established a bridge of communication between the Oromo and Amhara peoples. The two ethnic groups alone account for 2/3 of the total population of Ethiopia. Therefore, in addition to his Oromo origin and recognition from the TPLF, Abiy became ideal for the unification of the major nations and parties. In the 2018 election, the Amhara leader withdrew at the last minute, paving way for Abiy to become chairman of the EDPRF and subsequently, Prime Minister of Ethiopia. After taking office, however, Abiy steered Ethiopia towards market liberalism – a stark contrast from the policies EDPRF had adopted. Previously, although the Ethiopian government attached great importance to the introduction of foreign capital, their domestic retail, logistics, and financial industries had not been opened to such. Meles Zenawi even rejected the IMF’s request to open up banking arrangements. In contrast, Abiy plans to privatize state-owned enterprises in the communication, sugar, energy, and aviation industries; and liquidate the party assets controlled by TPLF. In this process, the Metal Engineering Group (METEC), Ethiopia’s largest military industrial complex, collapsed. METEC was established in 2010 to undertake the construction of the Renaissance Dam and the sugar factory on the Blue Nile in Ethiopia, both of which are national megaprojects. In June 2018, the parliamentary committee found that the company’s US$330 million machinery and equipment had no marketvalue, and the US$3 billion sugar plant project failed to reach completion (Ethiopia’s GDP in 2018 was about 84.4 billion USD). Abiy’s administration soon terminated METEC’s contract for the Renaissance Dam and Sugar Factory, and had their CEO, Kinfe Dagnew, who was about to flee Sudan, escorted back to Ethiopia for trial. In 2018, Abiy dissolved EDPRF and established the new Prosperity Party, underscoring a new narrative of harmony and Ethiopian unity. TPLF was among the dissidents against the Prosperity party, but its efforts to bring Ethiopia to a “federal coalition” failed in 2020. [1] Having declined in power and without a strongman like Meles Zenawi, the TPLF is said to have split from within, wavering between the option to either to remain in Addis or withdraw to Tigray. In fact, although the TPLF was the initiator of ethnic politics in Ethiopia, as a minority group the Tigray people remain susceptible to antipathy from the Amharic and Oromo people. Nevertheless, the antagonism towards the TPLF and Tigray people is to some extent unjustifiable, a Tigrainian friend told me, because they sacrificed enormously fighting against DERGUE for the sake of a new Ethiopia. When asked about corruption, another Tigrainian businessman said, “as long as you put the corrupted officials in jail, you can move forward for development!” Their adamant positions reveal how history and ideology have shaped the mentality of a proud nation. In recent years, Tigray has become further isolated geopolitically. Tigray is sandwiched between Sudan to its west and Eritrea to its northeast. In 2019, Prime Minister Abiy and Prime Minister Isaias Afevolki of Eritrea reached a settlement on the 20-year border standoff, which provoked discontent between the TPLF and Abiy. At its inception, TPLF had received military assistance from EPLF. The latter even sent a fighter, Mussa, to the TPLF in the early days, who served as the TPLF’s military commander. However, during the joint resistance against the military government, EPLF oscillated between the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP), another political organization in Tigray, and TPLF. From the EPLF’s viewpoint, if it were to support a separatist movement, it would only give Ethiopia an excuse to expand its arms, thereby posing a threat to itself. Only when the DERGUE threatened its own survival would the EPLF tolerate ideological and strategic differences to fight alongside the TPLF (EPLF advocates the socialism of Soviet Union and positional warfare). The Ethiopia-Eritrea war from 1998 to 2000 pushed the two into a heightened confrontation. Eritrea was in a state of emergency for a long time after the war, and semi-openly supported the armed activities of the anti-government OLF in Ethiopia. The reconciliation between Abiy and Eritrea in 2019 included a plan to transfer the disputed Badme region to Eritrea. This olive branch gesture was applauded by the international community and Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize that year. However, as far as the TPLF is concerned, Abiy’s move was really a deal at the cost of Tigray’s interests. The global pandemic has exacerbated the rival between the federal government and Tigray. Ethiopia was one of the first countries in Africa to take active action against the virus, thanks to its favorable relationship with China and the Secretary-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom, who served in Tigray State and the Ethiopian government. In March 2020, while experts from around the world were still debating the effectiveness of a lockdown, Tigray declared a state emergency, banning travel within the state for 14 days and canceling all social activities. The move was two weeks in advance of the federal declaration of a state of emergency on April 8. It caused debates among constitutionalists, and the move was criticized as illegal by the Prosperity Party. On April 2, Tigray State claimed to have virus detection capabilities, almost at the same time as the Ethiopian Ministry of Health, seemingly aiming for political legitimacy by way of epidemic prevention and control. In September, Tigray State held elections, despite Abiy Ahmed’s announcement that the national election would be postponed due to the pandemic. This open defiance sparked the war between the secessionist TPLF and the federal government. Abiy called the election in Tigray a “shanty election”, for it is illegal to build a house on an illegal foundation, no matter how high it is. Since claiming a domestic and international reputation of maintaining national harmony, and with the support of Eritrea, Prime Minister Abiy now seems to have the upper hand. Framing the war as an internal affair of “law and order” and the military action as “punishment of the criminals” thus serves to diminish the constitutional crisis. A massive campaign harvest to protect possible locust attack in Tigray region in October, just before the war broke out. Source: https://twitter.com/ProfKindeya/status/1318510358915665922 Whether it is an issue of “law and order” as declared by the federal government, or the “civil war” as recognized by the outside world, this conflict has been ongoing for several weeks; meanwhile Ethiopian social media prohibits discussing political and war-related information. From a military standpoint, it is hard to rule out the possibility of prolonged warfare – the length of which would depend on the mobilization capability of TPLF and the position of Tigranian people towards the war. The war seems to have subsided in scale recently, but the antagonizing ethnic groups in Tigray and Ethiopia; and critically, the tens of thousands of displaced men, women, and children to Sudan, are the biggest victims. Part of the points of view in this article are from the doctoral thesis of Aregawi Berhe (2008), “A Political History of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (1975-1991): Revolt, Ideology and Mobilisation in Ethiopia” and Zhou Jin Yan (2019), “The Experience from Ethiopia – a Democratic Development State as an African Approach”. Culture Review, No. 3. Dr Aregawi Berhe had served as the early military commander of TPLF but was expelled by TPLF in 1986. After over three decades of exile in Europe, he returned to Ethiopia at Abiy’s invitation for the sake of the political reconciliation between parties. Chinese version of this text has been published by Initium Media, Hong Kong in November 2020https:// theinitium.com/ Berhanu is an anthropologist in African Studies. [1] https://borkena.com/2019/08/26/tigray-organized-a-conference-to-save-constitution-and-the-federal-system/ Previous Next

SELF - POSITIONING Self-positioning starts not during a conference or a business handshake. It is rooted in your personality and shaped by the many contexts in which you exist. Self-positioning is also framed by the notions of ‘normative’ deriving from colonial, gender and a multitude of sociopolitical frameworks. To be able to liberate ourselves from predominant discourses and find our unique ways to act in the world we need first to discover and question our core attitudes - to ourselves, to the art system, to the global ‘other’. BLOCK 1.1 An input for this task is provided by Biljana Ciric, WSCSD program initiator. To start with, we offer you a set of questions. They may seem quite abstract, but can act as a trigger for a more in-depth analysis of self and further expand on your professional identity. What moves you? What has you? What is your position in relation to colonial difference? Who are you in relation to others? Task Position yourself within the world. Tell about your practice, but try to avoid showcasing your works. Think and understand who do you cite. Through citation you create relation and history. Revise your vocabulary. Who are you citing? By which terms do you define yourself and your practice? How can you overcome the colonial vocabulary? Put this into a text or a text+images format An advice: before staring each session we propose you to devote your practice to someone. Additional materials Listen to Hicham Khalidi, Director of the Jan van Eyck Academie, and Rolando Vázquez, Associate Professor of Sociology, University College Roosevelt speaking in “Transforming Institutions: On Social and Climate Justice ” Podcast. Self-feedback Did you discover something about yourself? What is your main trigger/ question? BLOCK 1.2 Together with artist and curator Anastasia Albokrinova we will focus on communication and creative approach. I am an impostor i imitate i play i squeeze in others’ skin i sign fake papers i make void agreements i take peoples’ money and give them to others i pretend i don’t know what’s curating and thus i own the freedom to reinvent it i fool those who want the truth i do things nobody notices i nourish useless processes i intervene in the order of things i ask why this should be that way and not the other i ask who said that i feel sometimes my game has gone too far i fear i have no legal right but somehow i’m where i should be Anastasia Albokrinova, 2022 Let's start with What are the alternatives for direct speech or image+text presentations? Thinks about the fears do you face while trying to step out of the pattern. Is it being vulnerable, shy, ignorant, insecure or else? Think of ways to embrace and face these fears. Make a list with three columns: Fears / Ways to face them / Means to transform fear into action. Task Relying on the content you developed before, try to experiment with the ways you deliver it. Can you use drawing, gestures, sound, movement, multilinguility, gamification? Develop an alternative way for self-presentation. Deliver it to other people. Additional materials Listen to Hicham Khalidi, Director of the Jan van Eyck Academie, and Rolando Vázquez, Associate Professor of Sociology, University College Roosevelt speaking in “Transforming Institutions: On Social and Climate Justice ” Podcast. Self-feedback What are your expectations when communicating yourself to others? What limitations did you face? What is your authenticity you can play with? Did a self-positioning process help you better understand why you do things that you do, the way you do? Online sharing session We invite you to share your self-positioning presentations with a group of fellow students of the WCSCD online course. We will focus on giving and receiving critique, discuss what is a good and bad experience in communication. The meeting is a recurring event with a limitation of 10 participants. Estimated duration: around 1.5 hrs. To take part subscribe for a proposed time in the table below. During the session you will have 10 to 15 minutes to present and receive feedback. Form: Date/ Time (GMT)/ Number of places left/ (organizer provides nearest time/date options and limits the number of attendants) Enter your email to receive a zoom link for the meeting. Email Book Session (user receives a zoom link for a set time) Modules

Art and the Post-Pandemic Condition – an online curatorial program and support grant for art practitioners Open call: May 15th 2020 End of the open call June 15th 2020 Start of the program July 15th 2020 Practical information related to the program: Fee for the workshop is 450 euros Maximum number of applicants 20 WCSCD is launching a one-month online program from July 15th to August 15th reflecting on the post-pandemic condition that we are slowly entering into. This one month program hopes to provoke thinking, reflection and solidarity but also to serve as a collective annotation for our new reality. Through a series of workshops, the curatorial program will open discussions on how our work as artists and curators will be affected. What are some of the fundamental changes that we could address at this very moment to initiate that change? We are hoping to learn from Indigenous knowledge, small scale institutions, different species, notions of care and ways of staying connected from the past, the present and the future, finding gaps from where new relationships and encounters could emerge. While economic pressure forces nation-states to re-open we would like to pose urgent questions addressing the modes of working within the sphere of art that is deeply informed by neoliberal mechanisms. Amid fear of others, suffering and loss of lives, the pandemic has made us pause and to rethink our place in the world and our relationship to other human beings and species. We are hoping to initiate a series of workshops on how to facilitate different modes of working within the sphere of art from individual standpoints but also from a sense of belonging to a community. How can we organize ourselves and discuss different values publicly? How do we deal with the digitalized world imposed on us? Where is it still possible to find cracks for touch and proximity within a highly sanitized world? Many cultural producers are already familiar with different forms of insecurity and precarity. We will look at existing ways of working which are characterized by agility and resilience. A case in question is how small-scale visual arts organisations across the planet have developed methodologies which made it possible to keep running under the neoliberal economic regime. Another case is artists who have developed and maintained a practice without reverting to high production value. This is a good moment to explore unconventional sites and infrastructure that is in place and how they can be activated concerning art, from beaches and forests to libraries and schools. We see the post-pandemic condition as the beginning of a new struggle. It is a common struggle traversing the borders of nation-states, involving practitioners working with contemporary art having a variety of backgrounds. As online program practitioners from all geographies are welcome to apply. The mentors leading the program are Maria Lind, Natasa Petresin Bachelez and Biljana Ciric. Practical information related to the program: Fee for the workshop is 450 euros Maximum number of applicants 20 Application procedure Please send your bio or CV and a short reflection or statement related to the post-pandemic conditions from your perspective. The online sessions will be organized through Zoom and will require preparation, including the readings and different forms of exercises, both physical (what does that imply) and conceptual. There will be approximately three workshops led by the mentors per week and the duration of each session will be two hours. Besides fees for the mentors, part of the budget of the program will be distributed as a grant for three artists as a form of community support. Artists will be reached through the open call while selection panel will consist of program participants and mentors for grant Artists based in any former Yugoslav country are eligible to apply Support fund for artists is 500 euros. what.could.curating.do@gmail.com

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 >

< Back Immovable Object /Unstoppable Force Devashish Sharma Bangalore, India Hidden from view by the forest, about two kilometres from where I stay runs a highway, and at night once things are quiet, it is possible to hear the low hum of vehicles as they move across the landscape. I stay on the southern side of rural Bangalore, about seventeen kilometres from the city centre. For the past few weeks I haven’t heard the vehicles at night – only the occasional barking deer or an owl, and at times the sound of rustling of dry leaves, and the snapping of twigs as wild boars and other animals roam the forest late at night in search of food. Birds 1, Home, Valley, 3rd April .wav Download WAV • 15.27MB Birds 1, Home, Valley, 3rd April The past three weeks have been difficult for me, and catastrophic for some; India has been under lockdown. Being away from the city, I haven’t been able to see the empty streets that my friends tell me about, or witness the migration of people as they walk back home. The lockdown has also brought with it a set of unintended consequences; people from around the world have reported how nature has reclaimed spaces that humans had polluted; air in the most polluted cities has become breathable again. Listening to these descriptions, I feel incredibly happy, but there is also a sense of guilt. I wonder what is the future of cities. Do they need to be more like villages- smaller in size and more self-sustaining? There is also the possibility that we transition into a society where hyper-surveillance becomes legalized. Is the Pandemic a Portal? The models for cities in India have failed and industries globally have done more damage to the environment than we can possibly repair in our lifetime. It is imperative that we stop and contemplate new ways of living. As Latour, Arundhati Roy and others urge us to treat the pandemic as a portal to reconsider systems of production, I find it quite difficult to isolate activities that I would not want coming back, or that I would want started, or accelerated. Ideally I would like to live in an environmentally sustainable society; where every person has good food, a nice place to stay, good education, and an enjoyable job – overall a healthy lifestyle. But how can these ideals be translated into action? Which activities must I stop in my life, and which must I initiate or accelerate to move closer to this ideal society? And if we were to do this collectively, won’t the cessation of a few of these activities destabilise the already precariously placed ecological and economic systems that we are a part of? At the same time, this uncertainty shouldn’t become an excuse for inaction, to postpone action until a later date when things seem clearer. How do we negotiate this change? Will a new system of production really reduce or negate the possibility of ecological and social catastrophe? What is the fundamental cause of this problem? Is the human mind geared to produce societies that are doomed to fail? Perhaps the solution lies in understanding how we produce these systems, and letting our lives organically evolve from this understanding. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? It is surprising how fragile everything is; our bodies, the plants around us, the streams, lakes, the buildings, even the economy in which we put such trust. Looking back, there are innumerable examples of civilisations that have vanished- entire cities abandoned, and buried under the unceasing flow of time. These were civilisations, just like ours, that probably didn’t considered the possibility that one day the structures that they had built would collapse. Is that where we are headed? If not forgotten, we might be remembered as the generation that could have done something to prevent the imminent ecological disaster. As I sit to think about the future, I am faced with an even more basic question – what is time? How do I understand it? And how does it structure my response to my environment? I have a feeling that the answer to the question of production lies in our understanding of time and thought. As a society we have become preoccupied with accumulating both wealth and knowledge. This might be attributed to our understanding of time. Thinking about time is important because that is what lays the foundation for our systems of production, distribution and consumption of products and ideas. It is possible that in the desire for a better tomorrow we have neglected our present. The current crisis offers us the opportunity to sit quietly, observe our minds, and to understand how we think – to think about thinking. I suspect that the very nature of thought is aggressive, and anything that is born out of thinking is bound to posses its very basic nature. Perhaps, right now the most pertinent question that faces humanity is, can we think without being selfish? Otherwise, any system- political, economic, or artistic, while attempting to be selfless, will ultimately be a sophisticated way of gaining control over material resources and people. I am reminded of a riddle we used to ask as children- What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? In the current ecological crisis are we the unstoppable force, and nature the immovable object? Or is nature the unstoppable force and we the immovable object? Is that what we are witnessing; the collision of an unstoppable force with an immovable object? Devashish Sharma has a BFA in Painting from the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, and an MFA from the Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida. Previous Next

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 >

WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO? 2018 Call for Applications Author of the project: Biljana Ćirić, in collaboration with Supervizuelna / Visual identity: Saša Tkačenko Application deadline: April 30, 2018 Start date: September 2018 Duration: September 7 – December 7, 2018 Final exhibition project: January 2019 The first international course for emerging curators to take place in Belgrade, Serbia, will be held from September to December 2018, and will draw upon the unique local and regional context as a critical source of knowledge. Participants will be engaged in a rigorous itinerary of extensive studio visits, research visits to public and private institutions and collections, along with a series of closed door workshop sessions led by both international and local mentors of the program. The program aims to situate curatorial practice within the specific contextual framework of the region, while also providing insights to the wider international framework related to exhibition-making practices on both a theoretical and practical level. Over the course of the three month-long program, international cultural producers will conduct specific workshops related to different aspects of curating, offering participants the opportunity to individually and collectively consider the different institutional aspects that often frame curatorial endeavors. For the culmination of the course, participants will propose a collective exhibition and will also be tasked with working on the accompanying publication. The Belgrade-based artist Saša Tkačenko has been commissioned to develop the visual identity for the project, as well as to conceive how to best document the project and the final exhibition in book format. Niels Van Tomme, director at De Appel in Amsterdam (a contemporary art institution that runs a pioneering curatorial programme since 1994), will give an inaugural lecture in June about the prominent role the Curatorial Programme takes within De Appel’s institutional context (final date to be confirmed). The primary mentors for the course include 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); Tara McDowell (director of curatorial practice at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia); Maria Lind (director of Tensta konsthall, Stockholm); Matt Packer (director of EVA International); Hou Hanru (artistic director of MAXXI Rome, Italy); and What, How & for Whom (a curatorial collective formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb, Croatia), among others. Application requirements: Applicants must be 35 years of age or younger No prior degrees in art or art history are required The course fee of 300 € (international participants will be assisted with finding accommodation in Belgrade an accommodation rate is approximately 150 € per month) Applications should include the following items as a single WORD or PDF document, sent by email to what.could.curating.do@gmail.com with the subject line Curatorial-course-Belgrade by April 30 2018: CV/Portfolio Letter of Interest (500 words maximum, explaining why you are interested in curatorial practices) Project Description(300 words maximum, an urgent project you would like to develop) Based on the quality of the submitted documents, 15 participants will be selected to attend the course. Selected applicants should plan to arrive in Belgrade no later than September 7, 2018. The final list of the participants will be announced in May 2018. After the run of the program, three attendees who have been recommended by program mentors will have an opportunity to submit a proposal to the Ming Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai for their curatorial research residency (in 2019). The course is long term project initiated by Biljana Ćirić together with Supervizuelna, with the following institutions as project partners: The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, GRAD—European Center for Culture and Debate, EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial and Zepter Museum. Project was supported by: Goethe Institute in Belgrade, Istituto Italiano di Cultura Belgrado, Embassy of Sweden, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, EU Info Centre; Eugster || Belgrade, Zepter Hotel. Media partners: EUNIC Serbia, RTS3.

< Back Corena* Musings Addis Ababa 15 Apr 2020 Sarah Bushra I am writing this text safely tucked in a studio apartment in Basha Wolde Condominium , Arat Kilo, Addis Ababa. Although the city is not in total lockdown, I barely leave my home, except for sporadic coffee breaks at a café downstairs. At least once a day, I make my way down from the fourth floor – pausing at the balcony of each story to look out at the city and check if it is still there and indeed intact between my climbs down each staircase. The pauses get longer with the passing days, and my gazes more unsure and less futile. Balcony Series – Addis Ababa, Sarah Bushra. There seems to be so much time stretching between the sips one cup packs, to embody all the possibilities the coffee’s dreamy color alludes to. Yet, sitting on a low stool and staring down the road, the day suddenly dusks and I realize there’s no time at all. It’s been 4 weeks since the first confirmed case was announced in Ethiopia, 3 weeks since the government banned all public gatherings, 3 weeks since schools and universities shut down, 5 days since the first reported COVID-19 death. There are new languid movements my limbs have adopted as they move through the day – in stark contrast to the lilting anxiety that sits at the opening of my throat. I think of my eyes and imagine how this lethargy translates into my vision. I see a wave, a certain dissolution and emergence of communities – as the physical spaces fade and the virtual appears. Among the many articles, listicles, memes, and mantras I encountered online that urge us to reflect on the changing times brought about by the global pandemic, one stood out to me, captivating in its subtlety. Tamrat Gezahegne shares on his Facebook account pictures of his stone carving installation. These images are less of a call to action as they are a solace, inviting us to the tranquility the artwork offers. My mind wanders to the meditative act of carving a stone, remembering Louise Bourgeois as she says: “….the thing that had to be said was so difficult and so painful that you have to hack it out of yourself and so you hack it out of the material, a very, very hard material.” Selected stone Carvings, Tamrat Gezahegne. Images shared with permission of the artist. Thinking about the physicality of the rock, despite what it refuses to do, Gezahegne has carved it to fit his imagination. Empathy is my entry point to his work. Reflecting on his perseverance and the repetitive force he used to hack, I ask what the thing was that has to be said that was so painful, maybe in this case, so alien and unprecedented. When the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia announced the first case of Corona in the country, I saw huddles of people, mostly mothers living in my apartment complex talking in hushed tones. I imagined at one point every conversation in the world dominated by Corona. All of us connected with this invisible string of whispers scuttling through our ears. Art makes this link apparent and visceral, as if we all are components of one physical body connected through the veins under our skin. Selected paintings, Selome Muleta. Images shared with permission of the artist. Scrolling down artist Selome Muleta’s feed is like peering through a hole into her private unraveling, performed beautifully and with care. We see the figure in her paintings shuffle in her bed from one side to the other, dressing and undressing through the day, cross-legged and ideally sitting facing the wall, before she melts into her surrounding, no different from the rigid and inanimate room she occupies. I imagine us, Addis dwellers engaged in a collective struggle to swallow the concept of physical distancing and self-isolation and I wonder what small things are letting them linger at the back of our throat floating in a thick fluid of uncertainty. We are now constantly attentive to where our hands might fall, as if they had not once freely landed on the brackets of our neighbor’s folded arm, or cupped a stranger child’s cheek, or hoisted the trailing corner of netela and flung it across the back of a woman rushing out from the neighborhood suk . These acts of intimacies that threaded people into communities are now replaced with static jerks as we remember that it’s no longer okay to hug, kiss or shake hands. As the government tallies the positive cases from a meager pool of tests, the real fear of most Addis Abebes come from imagining the impending fate, when the virus surges into our community in full force as it has done into other metropolises across the globe. On April 8, the Ethiopian government issued a State of Emergency, the fourth one in three years, urging citizens to take the necessary precautions, abide by the sanctioned laws, support one another, and nurture a spiritual relationship with God. Thus far Ethiopians’ strongest grounding against the unsettling nature of the virus has been a spiritual armor. On April 6, the Ethiopian Religious Council officiated the beginning of a one-month long prayer period among all religions represented in the country. The pandemic escalating in the middle of Lent, priests have been burning incense on the streets of Addis, to protect the city from COVID-19. The smoke in the air is reminiscent of the trash burning tradition on Hidar 12 (St. Michael’s day), of each year to commemorate the Spanish flu that took the lives of many Ethiopians in 1918. Alula Pankhurst draws our attention to this correlation in his post that includes his picture of a hazy Addis as the city celebrates the pandemic’s centennial by burning trash. He cautions those that criticize this traditional and historical practice and asks if we remember COVID-19 in 100 years, how will we commemorate it? I noticed my mind wouldn’t trail to memory-scape pressed by the immediate curiosity of how all this is going to end. But I imagine the post-COVID world will be defined by the company we keep now amidst the storm. This pandemic challenges and disrupts our understanding of community. It confronts us with our loneliness, unveiling the true nature of our ties, not only as we exist confined alone or with a select few, but also by unveiling the true nature of our ties to people, places, and ideologies. * Corona virus as it’s commonly pronounced by Ethiopians. It echoes sentiments of breaking/disrupting language as a form of resistance, reminiscent of Maaza Mengiste’s words in her war novel, The Shadow King, “the deliberate mispronunciation has spread across the country, started by those who did not know better and continued by those who do. It is another sign of [Ethiopians’] rebellion, another sign that they are trying to fight in every way that they can.” (Mengiste, Maaza. The Shadow King. W W Norton, 2019.) Sarah Bushra is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, working primarily with a hybrid of text and images. Previous Next

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Lecture by Elena Filipovic / Marcel Duchamp, the most influential curator of the 20th century? Saša Tkačenko, Flags from the WCSCD series, 2018. Photo by Ivan Zupanc THE CURATORIAL COURSE WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO? IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE A PUBLIC TALK BY: ELENA FILIPOVIC Marcel Duchamp, the most influential curator of the 20th century? MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART BELGRADE MONDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2018 AT 6 PM In collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, the lecture within the series of public programs organized by WCSCD will be presented by Elena Filipovic — the director and curator of Kunsthalle Basel. The series is designed to offer new and different perspectives on the theories and practices of exhibition-making. The lecture by Elena Filipovic, entitled Marcel Duchamp, the most influential curator of the 20th century?, will evolve around the history of art as a discipline that has been constructed through the analysis of individual artists and their objects and images. Monet’s Water Lilies, Picasso’s Demoiselles, Giacometti’s Walking Man… And it is no different for Marcel Duchamp, who is largely celebrated for the objects he produced—whether a store-bought urinal named Fountain or a cryptic, erotic-mechanical diagram known as the Large Glass. But what if the impact of the most influential artist of the 20th century lay elsewhere? This lecture asks you to take seriously Duchamp’s activities not normally seen as artistic—from his art dealing, administrating, and reproducing to his publicizing and exhibition-making. Across a variety of projects spanning from 1913 to 1969, we will see that Duchamp’s “non-art” labor, and in particular what could be seen as his curatorial strategies, were both central to his conception of the work of art and deeply influential to generations of artists after him who learned from him that the frame around the artwork might actually make the artwork as such. ABOUT THE LECTURER: Elena Filipovic has lead Kunsthalle Basel as its director and curator since November 2014. She previously served as senior curator of WIELS from 2009-2014, and co-curator of the 5th Berlin Biennial in 2008 with Adam Szymczyk as well as editor or co-editor of a number of anthologies on global exhibition histories, including The Artist as Curator: An Anthology (Mousse Publications, 2017), The Biennial Reader: Anthology on Large-Scale Perennial Exhibitions of Contemporary Art (Hatje Cantz, 2010), and The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe (MIT Press, 2005). She has curated numerous solo exhibitions of emerging artists in addition to organizing several traveling retrospectives. She is author, most recently, of The Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp (MIT Press, 2016) and David Hammons, Bliz-aard Ball Sale (Afterall Books, 2017). The WCSCD curatorial course and series of public lectures are initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric together with Supervizuelna. The lecture by Niels Van Tomme is made possible with the help of MoCAB and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with the additional support of Zepter Museum and Zepter Hotel. Project partners: The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; GRAD—European Center for Culture and Debate; EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial, ’Novi Sad 2021 – European Capital of Culture’ Foundation and Zepter Museum. The project is supported by: the Goethe Institute in Belgrade; Istituto Italiano di Cultura Belgrado; the Embassy of Sweden; the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; the Embassy of Ireland in Greece; the Embassy of Indonesia; the EU Info Centre; Pro Helvetia – Swiss Art Council; and galleries Eugster || Belgrade, HESTIA Art Residency & Exhibitions Bureau, and Zepter Hotel, Royal Inn Hotel and CAR:GO. Media partners: EUNIC Serbia, RTS3. < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

< 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