Keynote Speakers - CONVIVIAL CULTURES | XI Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture - Luísa Santos

CALLS FOR (EX)CHANGE: IN PRAISE OF MICRO-NARRATIVES

Abstract

In this communication, titled “Calls for (ex)Change: in praise of micro-narratives”, the path of the 4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, a European Cooperation Project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, will be shared. The project has been aiming at advancing the conceptual framework of intercultural dialogue and enhancing the role of public arts and cultural institutions in fostering togetherness through cultural diversity and intercultural encounters. In other words, or following its title, in its inception, the 4Cs’ initial intention was to move from Conflict to Conviviality. Its path, nevertheless, wasn’t quite like that and it encompasses as much of conviviality as it does of conflict.

To tell the path of the 4Cs is to tell its stories. All stories – like curatorial practices - have a time, a space, and characters. In research practice, on top of these elements, there is always a problem to be solved; a way (a method) to solve it, and, hopefully, some knowledge is produced in the path leading to (some sort of) a conclusion. The 4Cs’ story (or stories) unfold(s) in various formal, organisational and conceptual layers that embody micro-narratives, which I adopt for the structure of this presentation in a series of short-stories as follows: i) in the first part, (the politics of) time and space, which might be understood as the problem, will be introduced; ii) then, the power of speculation which was a key methodology adopted across the activities of the 4Cs will be discussed; iii) and this will lead me to mutability and (ex)change, which is, in fact, the last story told by the 4Cs in the shape that it has today. These three micro-narratives are tied together by a fourth element, which is the collective of institutions and individuals that make the 4Cs.

Adopting methodologies of the 4Cs, such as storytelling and speculation, this communication is neither a purely artistic or curatorial exhibition nor an exclusively academic presentation. It is – like the 4Cs - a hybrid or something that lies at the edge of different methods and cultures.

Biography

Ph.D in Culture Studies by the Humboldt & Viadrina School of Governance, in Berlin, and M.A. in Curating Contemporary Art by the Royal College of Art, in London, Luísa Santos is an Assistant Researcher, in Culture Studies / Artistic Studies, since 2019. Between 2016 and 2019, she was Assistant Professor, with a Gulbenkian Professorship, at the Faculty of Human Sciences of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa. An independent curator since 2009, she conducted research in curatorial practices at the Konstfack, in Stockholm, in 2013 and, since 2019, she is a research fellow at The European School of Governance (EUSG), in Berlin. At the CECC, in which she is a senior researcher, she takes the roles of coordinator and artistic director of the 4Cs: from Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, which she has initiated with a consortium of 8 European institutions in 2017. Luísa Santos sits in the editorial and scientific boards of the peer-reviewed magazines Estúdio, Gama, and Croma and of the Yearbook of Moving Image Studies (YoMIS - Research Group Moving Image Kiel), Büchner-Verlag. Luísa Santos also collaborates in the Arts-based participatory research approach: Potential for exploring Asian-Canadian youth identities through an intersectionality lens, a research project coordinated at the York University. Her main areas of research are contemporary art and social systems. She has collaborated with various institutions such as Tensta Konsthall, SAVVY Contemporary – Laboratory of Form-Ideas, Fundació Antoni Tápies, Museet for Samtidskunst, P28, Gulbenkian Museum, Carpe Diem Arte & Pesquisa, Anozero Biennial, Frankfurter Kunstvrein, OK-Centrum, and curated numerous exhibitions with artists such as Miguel Palma, Nikolaj Larsen, Yorgos Zois, Ângela Ferreira, Amira Hanafi, Marilá Dardot, Jeppe Hein, Jane Jin Kaisen, and Rouzbeh Akhbari. Having authored various publications in the domains of art and society, Luísa Santos is, since 2021, editing a book series on the politics of immaterial cultures with the Routledge. Since 2018, she is the co-artistic director of the nanogaleria, an independent curatorial project which she co-founded with Ana Fabíola Maurício.