Last February, Kader Attia and Jean-Jacques Lebel presented “L’Un et l’Autre [One and the Other]” at Palais de Tokyo. Jean-Jacques Lebel (b. 1936, France) is an artist, curator, writer, activist, event organiser, and was the author of the first European happening; Kader Attia (b. 1970, France) grew up between Paris and Algeria, and his interdisciplinary approach to research explores issues such as traditions, colonialism and collective memory.
In 1970, Judy Baca created with the collaboration of local gang members the mural entitled Mi Abuelita, one of the first community murals in L.A. This project introduced an innovative approach in the creation of inclusive and non-conflictual public art.
Migration, a documentary theatre piece performed in the Macao Arts Festival in May 2018, produced by the non-profit theatre company Macau Experimental Theatre, puts this agency onto the bodies of a group of Indonesian workers in Macao.
Artist Amira Hanafi reflects on the process of assembling and translating a work of multivocal storytelling of the 2011 Egyptian uprising and its aftermath.
Las Golondrinas (The Swallows) is the name of a Mexican song from the end of the 19th century which is still part of melancholic goodbyes and nostalgic memories. Present in Latin American culture and its particular experience of migration, this song also entitles Maya Saravia's exhibition at Balcony Gallery.
A view from the UK where “the simplifiers, the oligarchs, the enemies of freedom” are making their presence felt, just as they are across Europe. A snapshot of work by Kader Attia, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Kathrin Böhm who provide a counter to the narrow and angry face of prejudice.
Ahlam Shibli (1970, Palestine) is a Palestinian photographer whose work, indeed documentarist, can be seen as a reportage, yet not so dramatic. What follows is the result of an interview conducted with her: a reflection around issues of power and coexistence, as they are portrayed through her series “Trackers” (2005) where she pictured Palestinians of Bedouin descent, who made the choice to enrol in the Israeli Defence Force.
The streets are her stage; the city and the passers-by, the motivation for her performance. Who is this woman? Where is this woman heading to? What does this woman want?
From the suburbs to the coastline, Prouvost experiences and represents via a multitude of media (from singing and speech to dance and magic) the possibility of building a system where discrepancies are nothing but opportunities of sharing.
The Peng! Collective presented the video “Fluchthelfer.in Become an Escape Agent” at Manifesta 12 in Palermo. It was the result of a Campaign launched to help refugees cross the internal EU borders.
Reflections following a week at the Antoni Tàpies Foundation for the exhibition ‘Errata’ and associated events.
'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” (George Orwell, ‘1984')
The sound: a dry slap on the cold tile floor. [...] The paper-white as it was, black as it is becoming - lies there, giving in, totally resilient to the man's restless activity.
There isn’t a better way to say this. We are dying. Humanity is dying – physically, socially, and culturally.
Schools, Universities, Museums have closed last week. Today, access has been restricted to shops and to public spaces. The streets are emptied. And I think of Gregor Graf’s images that have become so close to reality.
Edward Hopper’s "Nighthawks in the age of the coronavirus". This image is striking, as it upgrades the loneliness in Hopper’s painting to a heartbreaking abandonment. In this new version, there are not even persons, subjects to the experience of loneliness; the viewer is left with that experience himself. We are not invited to see how others feel lonely, we are forced into loneliness.
A personal blog from the UK in recognition of the value of art online at this time of extreme anxiety and economic hardship. Thank you to all the artists, and here’s to the flourishing of conflict-defying and border-flouting friendships, and to art across the digital cosmos.
Sharing knowledge, just as sharing stories, will take our students across borders and perpetuate the network Erasmus started to build three decades ago.
When Luísa Santos suggested that I might write a brief reflection on the present moment of the coronavirus pandemic, particularly on what it might mean in the way we understand and live the notion of conviviality, I was immediately receptive. I found the invitation itself a gesture of conviviality, an opportunity to join a debate, started by Luísa and taken up already by Ana Margarida Abrantes and Michaela Crimmin, on the possibility of adding a fifth c to the familiar four: change.
A call from Poland for increased support for artists and art during Covid-19, and a reflection on their importance in countering fascist narratives and threats to democracy. With thanks to the author, London and Warsaw-based curator Kuba Szreder, and to L’internationale where this article was published.
"4Cs International Project and how art can, more than ever, create new conviviality spaces"
Julia Flamingo's reflection on some of the 4Cs Portuguese activities in these three years published on Artecapital website.
[this post is only available in Portuguese]
In this essay, Rado Ištok proposes to examine the stereotypical racial imagery of the café and shop windows as transparent interfaces between public and private space in Lithuania and Eastern Europe in relation to the region’s complicit yet often ignored relationship with the histories of colonial and racist violence.
The text was originally published on echo gone wrong's website.
4Cs' scientific co-coordinator, CECC researcher, and Rector of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa Isabel Capeloa Gil has published last year the chapter The Compulsion to be cruel: Contemporary returns in the book Repetition, Recurrence, Returns: How Cultural Renewal Works by Lexington Books.
4Cs' scientific co-coordinator, CECC researcher, and Rector of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa Isabel Capeloa Gil published the chapter "The Global Eye or Foucault Rewired: Security, Control, and Scholarship in the Twenty-first Century" on the book Futures of the Study of Culture, edited by deGruyter.
