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

< Back Seeing the Invisible: Documenting and Interpreting China’s Cultural Presence in Uzbekistan (Part 1) 25 Aug 2020 Alexey Ulko From the beginning, I saw the primary objective of my research was to document and interpret the different visual signs and symbols of China’s growing presence in Uzbekistan. I began writing notes and taking and collecting photos; trying to categorise and interpret the evidence with the help of different conceptual approaches, from visual anthropology to object-oriented ontology. The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing quarantine, however, have interfered with this intention in more ways than one. As I was thinking about how the Belt and Road Initiative has influenced Uzbekistan, the pandemic struck and very visibly changed the rules of the game. Beginning in Wuhan, it was a clear illustration of how China can affect the world – though I have serious reservations about calling this influence “Chinese”. The more I thought about the asymmetrical political and cultural relations between China and Uzbekistan, the more disjointed and fragmented the picture became. Not fragmented in a stylish postmodernist way, but rather, uselessly and helplessly mixed up and confused. I had set myself the task of researching “the politics and aesthetics of the visual representation of China-Uzbek relations, through documentary photography and film,” in order to provide anthropological perspectives on these. But typing those words on a keyboard made in China, sitting in an armchair produced in China, drinking tea from a china cup, and seeing the plastic letters HUAWEI on my modem connecting me to the world, made me question whether I could aspire to produce any meaningful research on something so intangible – the world or flow that is literally everywhere – and whether I could make any meaningful statement about China as a hyper-object , all while I remained within it. “The Chinese invented gunpowder, tea, silk production, the compass, paper, mechanical clocks…” – ah, thank you very much. This list of inventions probably isn’t as long as the one of all the objects around me which had been made in China, but it tells us an important story. If today’s narrative is that the Chinese are good at adapting and replicating something that has been invented (usually from the so-called “West”), it was obviously different in the past: things were invented in China and adapted for future use by others. Peter Greenaway’s mesmerising film, The Pillow Book (1996), tells the story of a Japanese born model living in Hong Kong. Her aunt tells her that when she is twenty-eight years old, the diary of a Japanese woman (Sei Shonagon), known as Pillow Book, will be a thousand years old, and that she (Nagiko) will be the same age as Sei Shonagon when she had written the book. The film made a profound impact on me and made me want to learn calligraphy (which I never really did). However in 969, exactly a thousand years before I was born, two generals serving the Song Dynasty invented a fire arrow which used gunpowder tubes as mini rocket engines, enabling them to fly much further, and cause damage to any inflammable object by setting them alight. This was the year rocket artillery was invented and utilized for the first time. Later, the Chinese produced the first cannons, but these would be vastly improved by the Europeans who would go on to use them many centuries later to subjugate China in the 19th century. These kinds of reverse loops seem to characterise much of what is going on between China, Central Asia and the West, and there is little in popular literature that can describe it better than the books on the Silks Roads by Peter Frankopan ( The Silk Roads , 2015 and The New Silk Roads , 2018). I will return to Frankopan’s texts later, but for now I would like to explore the issue from a very different angle. *** What are my earliest memories of China or anything Chinese? It could be a conical straw hat I played with in my early years (though that could also have been Vietnamese). The very delicate porcelain tea set which our family used only on special occasions. (We still have some of the cups, very Victorian by design, not bone china judging by its colour, but still very fine and translucent.) My father’s white shirt with a label I think saying “The Great Friendship”. The stories my father told me about the Chinese students he knew while studying at some in-service artist training course in Moscow in the 1960s. A painting by Qi Baishi similar to the one I had in my childhood Left: Remembering Qi Baishi and Tajik territories conceded to China Right: Qi Baishi’s seal and a letter to the Chinese government asking it to reconsider its actions against the Uyghurs by Marie van der Zyl, the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews Beautiful facsimile prints of Qi Baishi’s watercolours. I remember Red Morning Glories and some similar pieces hanging in my little room as late as 1996. (Where have they all gone?) An exquisitely printed book on him by Evgeniya Zavadskaya ( Tsi Bai Shi , 1982). (Is that still with my sister?) I have just downloaded it in .pdf. Evgeniya Zavadskaya’s superb book on Qi Baishi In Uzbekistan, the growing Chinese presence had been relatively low-profile and pragmatic. It can be broadly categorised into being culturally and visually marked (e.g. the Confucius Institute, Chinese restaurants) or unmarked (Chinese investment projects). At the same time, there have been few, if any, noticeable cultural projects involving Chinese artists, curators, writers, musicians or photographers. The establishment of the Confucius Institute in Samarkand marked a shift from the earlier invisibility towards a more spectacular and confident Chinese cultural manifestation. The statue of Confucius and the belfry of St. Alexey’s Cathedral in Samarkand One of the main buildings of the Samarkand State University The statue of Confucius in front of the Samarkand State University that hosts the Confucius Institute As the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) seems to have regained momentum after its setback in 2018, I thought it would be interesting to follow the dynamics of China’s visual presence in Uzbekistan and reflect it through photographs, videos and texts. What is the BRI? How large is it? Like China, it can also be seen as a hyper-object that encompasses nearly half of the world’s population, a multitude of resources, and 50 percent of the global GDP. About 150 countries, including the Central Asian states, have reportedly joined the BRI in one way or another. Its infrastructure is accompanied by large-scale investments from Chinese companies and institutions (such as the Silk Road Foundation with funds of US$40 billion), and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), with funds of US$100 billion to provide development aid to the countries who participate in the BRI. The Chinese writer Zhenqing Zheng, claims that “more and more people see the BRI as an incremental China-driven project to develop international and regional public goods in terms of economic cooperation, free trade, infrastructural connectivity, international security and mutual trust. The BRI advocates the mutual docking of development strategies between participant countries and China. The aim is to build large-scale, high-level, deep-seated and high-standard international and regional economic networks.” If so, why is it then seen by many as a threat, rather than an opportunity? A snapshot of Chinese government’s influence One possible reason is the sheer might of the Chinese economy. Another reason is a deep distrust of Chinese intentions, which often borders on Sinophobia. As Sebastian Peyrouse claims, all Central Asian experts on China express concern about the silence cultivated by the authorities in their countries about their partnership with China. They worry that the true extent of China’s grip over the region has been concealed. They criticise the authorities’ incapacity to make decisions for the future of Central Asian nations, and are concerned about the atmosphere of suspicion, generated by the lack of information. About ten years ago I spoke to a driver and a junior officer working for a Chinese company with a large office located on the same floor as the educational centre I was visiting at the time. I asked them if they spoke any Chinese and they said no. “In fact, the Chinese do not encourage local employees to study Chinese, and do not recruit any local Chinese-speakers. We have an interpreter to translate any important negotiations, and the junior staff are learning Russian and Uzbek. All decisions are made only by the senior Chinese officials, and they do not want servants to understand what their masters are saying.” *** As a child, I liked Chinese fairy tales and often wondered why many of them featured young officials sitting exams, carrying documents and seals, performing various administrative functions. I liked stories about the huli jing (vixens), but my favourite was from Yao folklore, called Red Maize . Later, I read Journey to the West by Wu Cheg’en, and became most fascinated by the character Sha Wujing with his gourd and staff. Li Bai and Du Fu were my favourite poets at a certain point, especially the former. Li Bai was born in a Silk Road city known today as Ak-Beshim, some 30km from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. He started writing poetry before he was ten, was well-travelled, and skilled at riding, hunting, and fencing. From a pot of wine among the flowers I drank alone. There was no one with me – Till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon To bring me my shadow and make us three. Alas, the moon was unable to drink And my shadow tagged me vacantly; But still for a while I had these friends To cheer me through the end of spring…. I sang. The moon encouraged me. I danced. My shadow tumbled after. As far as I knew, we were boon companions. And then I was drunk, and we lost one another. …Shall goodwill ever be secure? I watch the long road of the River of Stars. *** Christopher Francis Patten, the last British Governor of Hong Kong, was denounced by some Chinese media outlets as the “whore of the East,” a “serpent” and a “wrongdoer who would be condemned for a thousand generations”. *** There are several Chinese restaurants in Tashkent, and many more Korean ones which also often serve a generic East Asian mixture. I tried Chinese food for the first time in Islamabad in 1998 and found it very unusual. The gluey, homogenous, chicken soup; heavily fried vegetables; chicken pieces in a sticky sauce which resembled mixed caramel, but had a touch of spice – all of these tasted strange and artificial. But I liked chopsticks. I do not remember exactly where and how I learned to use them – probably much later when I started visiting Korean restaurants in Tashkent and elsewhere. In the early 1990s I often travelled to Karachi where I developed a taste for spicy food, which I have eaten ever since, transforming even the simple Uzbek plov into some kind of biryani. Uzbeks are, of course, famously conservative in their cuisine, and in many families they eat little else apart from their own traditional dishes – and their food isn’t as spicy when compared to Indian, Chinese or Korean cuisines. However, Chinese influence remains evident in dishes such as laghman (noodles), which has been borrowed from the Uyghurs. The Uyghur food can be found in Tashkent, but it is not as abundant as in places like Osh in Kyrgyzstan. In other words, in different parts of Central Asia, depending on the type of restaurants, you can get different local varieties of Chinese food (of which I can count at least three). The first is the outcome of the above-mentioned cultural transfer from the Chinese to the Uyghurs, to the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. By and large, it is still determined by a geographical proximity to the Eastern Turkestan. The second type is more cultural. It’s the Chinese food you get at Korean restaurants usually run by local urban Koreans, who are descendants of the Korean communities deported to Central Asia from the Russian “Far East” in 1937. Unsurprisingly, the Korean restaurants that cater for the expats from South Korea are less exposed to Chinese influence, while those serving mostly local clientele, tend to be more relaxed and generic. Finally, there are distinct Chinese restaurants, usually run by the Chinese, with all the necessary attributes of Chinese restaurants scattered all over the world, though still rather rare in Uzbekistan. That being said, they seem to be more popular than Indian restaurants, which has always surprised me because of the apparently sufficient resemblance between Uzbek and Indian cuisines, which in theory would make the transition from one to the other smoother. While biryani does look like a simplified version of plov, Uzbeks have their own samosa, naan bread, and an indigenous version of raita called chalob. Still, despite the huge popularity of Indian films and other cultural parallels, Uzbeks have never really embraced curries. At this stage it is difficult to say whether Chinese food will spread all over Uzbekistan, but as two of its three local varieties are symbiotic, it makes Chinese dishes look much less foreign than the distinct South Asian cuisine. While the number of Chinese visitors to the country sky-rocketed in 2017-18, only the COVID-19 pandemic has so far hampered the growth of the number of Chinese restaurants, which were designed especially to meet demands from the tourist sector. *** What about US-China trade wars? What is going on and how does it affect Central Asia? So far, the impact of this has been rather difficult to assess. According to IFF China Report , 2020, a kind of provisional agreement between the USA and China was finally reached in January earlier this year. This included assent by China to move away from forced technology transfers and a willingness to offer foreign companies greater access to Chinese markets – plus a commitment to increase purchases of US manufacturing, energy and agricultural goods and services by US$200 billion over the next two years. Will China hold these promises? Simultaneously, the US cancelled its plans for the so-called “penalty tariffs” it had scheduled for $156 billion of Chinese goods, and cut the tariffs imposed in September 2019 on $120 billion of these goods from 15% to 7.5%. It also dropped its labelling of China as a “currency manipulator” as part of the deal. Will the deal hold? Will it force China to be more, or less aggressive? What turn will the events take if Trump is re-elected (or not re-elected)? All of these variables make the situation difficult to predict. Meanwhile, the huge letters of HUAWEI atop a block of flats above Oybek underground station nave been recently replaced with ZTE 5G . HUAWEI is a big name in the centre of Tashkent, one of those companies that have a marked presence in the city *** Another important name that indirectly links China with Central Asia is that of Julian Shchutsky, the first translator of the I Ching (“Book of Changes”) into Russian. His name first attracted my attention as an alleged member of themystical-anarchist group which included artists and many other Anthroposophists and esotericists. As a prominent Sinologist, he left an impressive imprint on Russian Oriental studies. Julian Shchutsky was a polyglot; he translated from about 16 languages. He was Professor of the Leningrad Institute of Oriental Studies, Professor of the Leningrad State University in 1936-37, and a research scientist in the Asian Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1920-37. Shchutsky was given bibliographical responsibility for the Dauism and Alchemy portions of the Asian Museum’s new acquisitions. He also did extensive translations from late Tang poetry. Yulian Shchutsky’s newly found musical score at the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art GARAGE in Moscow Shchutsky had various artistic talents but was modest about them. In his remarkable autobiography written in 1935, he says: “The greatest passion in my youth is music, especially Scriabin and later Bach. I was more interested in the theory of composition than performance. As a performer, I never achieved anything worthy of attention. Most of my music I wrote in the period of 1915 – 1923 – all of the pieces have been lost [1] . It is hardly possible to resume this work, since for this, it is necessary to live in music, and there is no time for that in my present life. […] Second in time and value in my life is of art and poetry. It began in 1918, but I do not treat my poems seriously. The only real result is mastering the poetic technique, which I use only as a translator. I was also engaged in painting, but I don’t have any real training in painting, except for lessons in the icon painting technique. I was also engaged in engraving on wood, but now I cannot continue these studies because of my poor eyesight. I participated in an exhibition at the Russian Museum in 1927. That’s all about my art.” In 1922 he met the poet Elisaveta Vasilieva (aka Cherubina de Gabriak) in St. Petersburg. On 3 March 1923 she wrote to her friend and fellow Anthroposophist, the poet Maximillian Voloshin: “Love came into my life, maybe I learnt how to give for the first time. He is much younger than me, and I want to save his life. He is both an Anthroposophist and a Sinologist. He holds music, poetry and painting in his hands.” In 1927, Vasilieva, who was an important figure in Russian Anthroposophical movement, was arrested and deported to Tashkent where she died on 5 December 1928. Before her death, Shchutsky visited her in Tashkent twice, on his way to Japan and back. On his first visit she wrote, inspired by him, 21 poems attributed to Li Xiang Zi, a fictional Chinese poet exiled for his “belief in the immortality of human spirit”. The name of Li Xiang, invented by Shchutsky, means “a philosopher from a house under a pear tree”, where Vasilieva indeed lived in Tashkent. It was also a phonetic play on Elisaveta’s first name. This literary mystification became her swan song. Shchutsky lived for another ten years full of professional achievements, as well as with fears of imminent repressions against him. He was arrested two months after defending his PhD dissertation on I-Ching in Pitkelevo, a village in the Leningrad province on 3 August 1937. He was charged with counter-revolutionary activities under articles 58-10 and 58-11 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, interrogated, tortured, trialled and finally shot on 18 February 1938. *** River… Here even rivers have green water, Like dense and lazy mica that has A shade of dust and wormwood … Ah, only in the North is the water blue … And here is the East. Between us, like a river, lies a desert, And tears are like sand. (Li Xiang Zi, Tashkent, 1927) Alexey Ulko , born in Samarkand (Uzbekistan) in 1969. [1] Some of his music scores have been found and displayed for the first time at the exhibition We Treasure our Lucid Dreams held in the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art GARAGE for which I conducted this research – AU Previous Next

< Back Bicycle Uprising Against Authoritarianism 20 July 2020 Tjaša Pureber Three months of protests in Slovenia Culture is a guardian of sleep of the middle class. Graffiti on the wall of Ministry of Culture, May 2020. On March 12, 2020, Slovenia went into a lockdown after declaring the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic. A day later, right-wing Prime Minister Janez Janša, took over the government. What followed were three months of repressive measures, often disguised as anti-pandemic laws, which made already existing contradictions within society even more visible and dire. Government policies were met with massive self-organized resistance, and the Slovenians’ mass protests on bicycles were one of the first attempts in the world to explore what it means to fight against social injustice on a massive scale, whilst maintaining social solidarity within a pandemic. Cultural workers and creative actions played an important role in the still ongoing wave of unrest that has redefined the notion of collectivity in a time when the individualization of our lives has become mandatory. The following is a short summary of what has happened. Prelude: from the uprising of 2012/2013 to the protests of 2020 The last time Janez Janša was in power, he was met with six months of uprisings in the winter and spring of 2012/2013, which eventually led to his resignation. This was the biggest continuous social and political unrest the country had seen since its fight for independence in 1991. It was marked by massive direct action, while the diverse movement itself was self-organized by various anti-capitalist and other initiatives, within which cultural workers played a visible role. The protests were also marked by anti-corruption and anti-austerity topics, as well as a general distrust in the political class. In the years since, Slovenia was ruled by what can only be described as governments of extreme center. They introduced several laws that increased the authority of military and police to be used against the civil population, installed barbed wire on the southern border, and maintained extremely restrictive immigration policies. In many ways, those characteristics set the stage for more ideologically far right policies, immediately introduced by the new right-wing government. Once the pandemic of COVID-19 hit Slovenia, most civil society actors and institutions, largely dependent on state funding, were met with the new reality – lockdown, lack of funding, an uncertain employment future; all mixed with restrictive, authoritarian governmental policies, and a new style of ruling largely marked by hate speech, character assassinations in the press, and the spread of fake news through government owned and controlled media. # stayathome was quickly adopted by the people as the only way to remain in solidarity, often forgetting it only applies to the financially stable and educated, middle class populace. Meanwhile, industrial production continued undisturbed, often in risky health conditions, while cities and states closed down support structures for the homeless, thus leaving a vulnerable part of the population in even more precarious situations. From the very beginning of the pandemic, it was the self-organized social movements who offered a different vision of social solidarity, aimed at supporting those cut off from state-led welfare structures (such as the elderly, homeless, and the poor). They offered a vision of direct social care as an answer to state imposed quarantine, which accommodates only those who can afford it. These attempts coincided with the need to address the question of political protests and building a collective experience of dissent in times of imposed individualization. State responses to the pandemic marked a return to the patriarchal society – limiting social interactions to the immediate family members, combined with the oppressive language of the “dangerous and dirty Other,” who spreads the virus. The only safe environment became the notion of home, while everything else posed a risk. This created a claustrophobic atmosphere, in which authoritarian measures, such as the attempt to use the military to monitor and control migration flows, were unable to be met with dissent on the streets. Anti-authoritarian, mostly anarchist social movements in the country, recognized this as the first attempt from the new government to establish authoritarian rule in Slovenia. This created the need to form a collective response which would still be able to protect people in struggle from the dangers of the pandemic, whilst offering a platform to express anger over the political measurements. At beginning of April, roughly three weeks after the introduction of quarantine, an alliance of different anti-authoritarian, anarchist and autonomous initiatives created a decentralized call for sound demonstrations on balconies. Urging people to visibly mark and transform their home space into political territories (such as with banners, slogans etc), it was an attempt to break the cycle of re-patriarchalisation. To radicalize traditional patriarchic spaces in which we live, whilst creating a tool for neighborhoods to connect in a common, yet safe action. Meanwhile, people were also finding creative ways of expression on the streets. While the state prohibited collective gatherings in public space (limited to only people you live with, even merely for recreation), people from all walks of life were discovering ways in which they could do solo political actions. Walls in the city center were densely covered by political graffiti, people were filming themselves jogging with political banners, and the square in the front of the parliament became plastered with black crosses, thus marking the 1.5 meter social distance that would still allow protesting, while people set up pictures of their feet in front of the parliament in a similar fashion. On April 24, a week before May Day, the anti-authoritarian initiative that had at that point been doing sound demonstrations on balconies for almost a month, called for the first bicycle demonstration in the city center. Bicycles were chosen because they allowed social distancing as well as social solidarity against the virus for those who needed it, all while allowing the presence of a collective body in dissent. Several hundreds of people joined the call to protest authoritarian policies, militarization, and capitalism, creating one of the biggest protests in the world during the COVID-19 lockdown. This marked the beginning of numerous protests all over the world against authoritarian measurements of states, and against repression of dissent under the pretense of fighting the pandemic, while many parts of the world continued to fail in protecting the people against the spread of the virus. The stage in Slovenia was now set for new things to come. Creative direct action The May Day demonstration on bikes attracted wide support, and self-organized protests gathered close to ten thousand people who completely blocked the city center and around major crossroads with bicycles, creating traffic chaos. Messages were anti-authoritarian, in solidarity with nature, and against militarization and capitalism. Soon afterward, the first assembly in the autonomous cultural center of Metelkova followed, marking the beginning of three mutually supporting blocs – anti-capitalist, cultural, and environmental – that has since initiated action on the streets. Every week the routes of cyclists changed: from Ministry of Culture, to Ministry of Environment; from Parliament to public television; from the main hospital to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Protests were met with unprecedented policing – hundreds of people were either detained or had their information taken for breach of quarantine and are still in process of receiving penalties. Soon, the public discourse and protests themselves became geared toward an anti-police sentiment, addressing both repressions abroad (in front of US Embassy) and at home. It became clear that the battle here was larger than against the mere subduing of one particular protest, but rather, against a government trying to impose new limits of dissent in public spaces. Protesting against the fence around Parliament and against policing therefore became the symbolic point of struggle for free expression of dissent in public space. Looking back at the protests in 2012/13, it is often discussed among activists that part of the demobilization was also caused by the culturalization of protests – considered here is the introduction of creative communication actions that often only served as a spectacle, but were not challenging the existing relations of power. This was one of the arguments about being careful in introducing exclusively creative actions within the movement this time around. One of the strongest moments from this wave of protests, was the coexistence and mutual support between different forms of action, from more militant direct action to more symbolic ones. When Prime Minister and government controlled media attacked the anti-capitalist bloc and antifa as terrorist, other blocs, namely cultural, publicly defended them. It became clear that mutual solidarity creates an environment in which protests are far less controllable. If only limited to militant direct action, they are bound to be subdued by repression, and if only limited to symbolic mass action they are limited to self-neutralization. Together, the combination of both approaches creates a more incisive social unrest and edginess. Friday protests were full of creative actions. From climbing and pushing the fence around the Parliament, to displaying different placards of messages against the government and dropping banners of revolt from bridges. The Ministry of Culture was marked by a banner saying “We refuse to give up art for cultural mess” , that later became the slogan of the cultural bloc’s future protests. Almost all actions were met with heavy police repression, resulting in a spontaneous demonstration in front of the police station, until all protesters were released. Besides smaller and more socio-politically oriented assemblies in autonomous spaces (three so far), experiments with direct democracy also took place in a bigger setting as part of one of the Friday protests. During one of them in July, several thousand protesters gathered to discuss topics which included new alternative political models, health, street action, environment, and culture. Outside of the Friday mass protests, smaller actions and forms of dissent continued through the following months. Environmental actions mostly took place in front of the Ministry of Environment, including sit-ins and protests, as well as the symbolic mass walking that occurred around the river Sava. Journalists protested the new media law, which was supported by other blocs. The Ministry of Culture saw five smaller protests of a few hundred people. These addressed the systemic problems within the current cultural model, which was leaving people in precarious and perilous situations. These were the first continuous large-scale protests in front of the Ministry in the history of independent Slovenia. Actions in front of the Ministry included plastering the outside of the building with all of unanswered memos of cultural organizations during the pandemic to improve the situation of the artists; lying on the street in silence for several minutes; sitting on the chairs in the streets; watching the Ministry’s lack of response at the police violence against artists during the Friday protests; dropping tools of artistic work in front of the building; and reading in front of the ministry, amplifying the dissent of voices. Nearby, the Museum of Contemporary Art also expressed solidarity with activists by showing artwork on the building’s exterior during the protest. Other smaller actions continued throughout the city expressing concern for other pressing issues such as rape, women’s rights, migration, repression, militarization, and notably, antifascism (critically after Neo-Nazis appeared on the streets, though only drawing an extremely small crowd). New terrain of struggle The composition of these protests is extremely diverse, and often conflictual in ideas between themselves. Despite a glaring rejection of political parties on the streets, it is clear that both the opposition and the current governmental parties seek to gain something from the protests, whether it be legitimization for more repressive measurements or support for elections. It would however, be wrong to assume that protests can be reduced to only desiring a change of current government, since a large part of the movement rejects current political and capitalist systems while actively seeking alternative political modes of horizontal self-organization and anti-authoritarianism, combined with a clear anti-fascist positioning against all forms of oppression. The challenge now posing itself to the majority of protesters has become complex. It is clear that we no longer live in times when mobilization lasted for a short period to be followed by long periods of assumed social peace. As the historical compromise with the working class is coming to an end, it is becoming clearer that the states, especially led by right and/or far right political parties, are willing to use violent means of repression to maintain the illusion of the security of a welfare state. As a consequence of new forms of government, and experiences of this year’s mobilization, it is becoming evident that we are looking at new forms of social movements. In them, weeks, months or even years of ongoing social protest will be the enduring form of dissent on the streets. Therefore, the question for the movement that remains is how to maintain the strength, attention and constant mobilization, while avoiding activist burnouts. Of how to create a common space in which a diversity of tactics is possible, and how to keep the struggle open for different forms of expression and topics to be addressed. But importantly, how to maintain unpredictability, within a constant reinvention of what political conflict means. Tjaša Pureber is a political scientist, cultural worker and activist. Previous Next

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

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Project launch and lecture by Niels Van Tomme / The Walking Institution Saša Tkačenko, Flags from the WCSCD series, 2018. Photo by Ivan Zupanc In collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, the first lecture within the series of public programs about contemporary curatorial practices will be held by Niels Van Tomme (director and chief curator at De Appel – an Amsterdam-based contemporary art institution with a pioneering curatorial program) and will serve as a preface to the curatorial course WCSCD. The final list of enrollees will be publicly announced on the day of the presentation, as well as more information about the workshop, program, and international and local mentors. In the ever-evolving presentation “The Walking Institution”, Niels Van Tomme considers his work at De Appel as an act of curatorial care, and as an ongoing process of thinking alternative ways of instituting, both on an ethical and structural level. On the occasion of the launch of What Could/Should Curating Do?, Van Tomme will elaborate on the prominent role the Curatorial Programme takes within De Appel’s institutional context since 1994. On this occasion Niels Van Tomme answers the question – What Could/Should Curating Do? “In curating one plus one should equal three. Curating departs from a what if, which it firmly positions towards what is. Curating takes scientific methods such as speculation and experimentation as its ruling principles, even though it is not a science. Curating is that which happens when something is about to become known. Yet it should always be done with the full knowledge that it might get things wrong.” ABOUT THE LECTURER: Niels Van Tomme is the director and chief curator at De Appel in Amsterdam. As a curator, lecturer and critic, he works at the intersections of contemporary culture and critical awareness. His exhibitions and events have been presented at The Kitchen (New York), Akademie der Künste (Berlin), Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), Gallery 400 (Chicago), National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), and P! (New York). In 2016 he curated the Bucharest Biennale 7: What are we building down there? He is a contributing editor at Art Papers magazine. His texts, in which he connects contemporary art, popular culture, literature, and music to broader societal issues and cultural contexts, are published in Art in America, The Wire, Camera Austria, Afterimage, and Metropolis M, among others. He has published the books Where Do We Migrate To? (2011), Visibility Machines: Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen (2014), Aesthetic Justice: Intersecting Artistic and Moral Perspectives (2015) and Muntadas: About Academia: Activating Artifacts (2017). Together with film scholar Sonja Simonyi, he is the parent of two young children: Jens and Nico. 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 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

< 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

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

< Back Mask making and coffee drinking in Addis Addis Ababa 18 May 2020 Sarah Bushra Making masks in Temesgen studio “The idea of abundance and scarcity takes a constant shift. What seemed to be scarce has forced itself to become an abundance”, writes Robel Temesgen on his Instagram post announcing his communal mask making adventures. In a conversation over the phone, Robel relates he finds the confinement to his home studio stifling with consequent strains on his creative practice. In addition to escapades to favourite coffee spots around the city, a regular habit prior to the pandemic, in the past 7 weeks since the Corona lock-down he has taken up several new pastimes, one of which is making beautiful face masks. The collective mask making began organically. Tsedenya Abayneh, Robel’s close friend attempted to make a mask for herself and shared her process with Robel, who’s then reminded to call on Leayne Telahun, a friend with a sewing machine, to give their endeavour a fighting chance to succeed. Between the malfunctioning of said machine and the hunt for a new one, the task force grew to seven people in total. Kasahun Hailu, a regular at Robel’s studio, who also happens to be an industrial design graduate, took over the streamlining of the production and earned himself the name ‘Supé’ short for a supervisor. Shimeles Tadesse and Tesfaye Bekele, along with Robel, fill in the necessary gaps in the production line, while Naod Lemma, documents the process through pictures. Now, the collective makes an average of 60 masks in one afternoon and staggers their distribution rippling from their closest relations to members of their communities in need of a shield. Many pharmacies around town hiked the price for a single-use face mask by upwards of 200% on the day the first case of Corona was confirmed in Addis. What used to be available at 25 ETB (75 cents) suddenly started to be sold for 150 ETB (4,50 USD), way beyond what a majority of Addis Ababans can afford. When the fear of contracting the virus increased with the rising number of cases, unable to afford to buy masks, many invented make-shift solutions, covering their faces with the shawls they’re wearing or repurposing discarded Ethiopian airlines sleeping eye shields to cover their mouths. On the 16th of March, quickly after the breakout of Corona in Africa, Jack Ma, Chinese Billionaire, and founder of e-commerce multinational Alibaba announced his donation of 100,000 face masks and other PPE to each one of the 54 countries in the continent. [1] This donation was followed by a second batch containing 200,000 face masks and other PPE to be distributed among 54 countries [2] , and the third batch including 4.6 million masks and other PPE donated immediately to African Union, and Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) [3] . The Ethiopian government has also received facemasks form UAE, Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture, Korean Business Association and other local and international organizations [4] . Although it is generally assumed these donated masks go to, or are reserved for health workers in the country, there’s no system in place to track whether the distribution is indeed being made towards the right recipients. According to a doctor working at St. Paul Hospital in Addis Ababa, a hospital anticipated to become a treatment centre for confirmed cases when the current centre, Eko Kotebe Hospital, reaches its capacity, thus far she has to buy her own PPE from private pharmacies. Although, at the beginning of the pandemic many were lax about wearing a mask, in recent times members of the community have started to hold each other accountable. Now a person not wearing a mask is not allowed entry to the blue and white minibus taxis, the most common mode of private transportation in Addis. When entering public service areas like banks, security guards ask people without a mask to put one on. Ride, one of the most popular taxi-hailing platforms has distributed face masks and hand sanitizers to the majority of their drivers. Other mask making endeavours in Addis that stem from organizing like-minded individuals include a collaboration between Doctors in Action (DIA), an enterprise empowering doctors for social change, and Sabegn, a concept store for lifestyle products. They started Debo project that works to spread awareness about Corona, recognize and support the work of front-line health workers and spread videos on how to make DIY masks and distribute the masks they’ve produced. Many good-hearted business-inspired communities have also mobilized to make face masks available for sale on the streets of Addis, standing close by taxi lines and other relatively crowded spaces for a price of 10 ETB (30 cents). The price for surgical masks sold at pharmacies has also plummeted to 30 ETB (90 cents) from its sudden climb 7 weeks ago. With continued improvement in access to masks, many still walk the streets of Addis without a shield on their faces. Robel admits buying a 10 ETB mask from the streets is an easier way of providing protection for himself and many around him. It is not just the lack of masks on the streets that motivated the collective to gather at his studio. He speaks about the boredom that brought this group of people together, an interest in shared conversations that made them stay, the satisfaction in simple acts of generosity that entices them to come back. This impromptu artist’ collective is beyond a manufacturing line, they’re a conduit transforming what is scarce towards a perception of abundance. For many Ethiopians, the stay at home period for this pandemic is frequented with power cuts and water shortages. The severity of this problem varies in different parts of town. While the cuts are intermittent in some areas varying between one to two days per week, other areas have no power for days on end. The longer power cuts are caused by the malfunctioning problem rather than rationing tact. Although this may appear unbearable for an outsider, for a majority of Addis dwellers it is, unfortunately, business as usual. The understanding of abundance and scarcity is versatile in Addis society, its flow is seamless and uninterrupted. When there’s no electricity at Robel’s studio, for example, to power the sewing machine used to make masks, the group simply shifts towards activities done only by hand or simply playing cards, relishing in the sudden abundance of time to be filled with enjoying each other’s company. In these times, the productivity aspect of time is scarce, says Robel, while the idle and reflective space remain abundant. “Is it worth it to be an artist?” – he asks. “I am in my studio – suddenly forced to gauge my capacity: what is my actual reach, how vastly does my network extend, and how wide are the margins circumscribing the works I produce?” Although an avid consumer of art through virtual media, Robel expresses his hesitancy towards creating work for an online audience, he says he’s not interested in that capital right now. This sentiment refreshingly centres Ethiopian audiences as spectators of contemporary art that are coming from the country. Considering the very limited access to the internet, a work of art with output on a digital platform has little to no local reach. The resistance from Addis Ababans towards staying at home is not primarily a question of the economy, Robel says. Although the economy is a crucial factor, people defy stay at home sanctions from the government, unable to placate their needs to socialize. Long before the pandemic, Robel has been investigating the nature of communities around coffee drinking culture in Ethiopia, describing the resulting spaces as heavens for uncensored dialogue and fertile soil for growing deep-rooted connections. In a conversation with the Corpus Podcast about his exhibition RE:PUBLIC held at Circle Art Gallery [5] , Robel describes ‘jebena’ as a symbol of society. For his series, Floating Jebenas he has been looking at the disruption of social structures formed around coffee drinking culture due to rapid urbanization of the city. He notes the shift from neighbourly socials that were dismantled by aggressive construction to the emergence of informal small businesses that serve coffee at the many curves and crevices of the city. He iterates the way Ethiopians function as social fabric, and points at the various means we evade threats to our coffee gatherings. Robel’s creative practice continually probes at the nature of communities, the strands that form them, the bedrocks they stand on. His meditation with ‘jebena’ as a holding space for Ethiopian culture and identity has resonance in the space his studio has recently become, a host for labour of passion in the form of mask making. Within the folding, stitching, and pressing of fabric, there’s a strain of alchemy at play, morphing superfluous substances into one of the most valuable items of the times. Sarah Bushra is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, working primarily with a hybrid of text and images. [1] https://twitter.com/jackma/status/1239581509125726210?s=21 [2] https://twitter.com/jackma/status/1247014237303537664?s=21 [3] https://twitter.com/jackma/status/1252136657672790016?s=21 [4] https://www.trackethiogov.com/in-kind-donations-tracker [5] https://circleartagency.com/online-gallery/exhibitions/recent-exhibition/re-public/ Previous Next

< Back As you go... Journal Special Issue April 2021 10 Apr 2021 Biljana Ciric Throughout the first year of inquiry, As you go…roads under your feet, towards the new future , most of the research has dealt with human-made changes and how this has interfered with the local life of other people. However, there is very little mention of the non-human world, or an acknowledgement of its existence and transformation. For the april edition of our online journal , I asked each researcher and partner cells (if there are many of you in one cell, you must still each individually participate) to contribute two keywords . The first describing one non-human existence which has disappeared from the earth in relation to the changes within their research. The second a non-human existence that has emerged from the new living conditions that have transformed within your respective research. The keyword and its accompanying description could range from one sentence to an entire page, could be sounds of short video, and image. This special feature of journal in march will acknowledge our interdependence in the world that virus reminded us of but also proposition to act and view the world as truly interconnected web knowing that we are just one part of it. It is invitation to become conscious of the world under our feet, making each step lighter, acknowledging the world below. Biljana Ciric Previous Next