The Seminar Places and meanings in art: debates from the South, curated and mediated by Sabrina Moura, looked to expand on key issues raised by the shows that made up the 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil. In connection with the Southern Observatory study program, initiated in May 2015 in partnership with the Goethe-Institut, the seminar discussed the expansion of art as a knowledge production field. Over the course of four meetings in October 2015, we engaged in dialogues with thinkers, writers and artists to rethink their traditions, spaces of circulation, narratives, and histories.
PANEL 1 | RETHINKING TRADITIONS: ART, GESTURE AND CONTEMPORANEITY
OCT/07 (WED) | 11-13H30 | SESC POMPEIA | THEATER
The notion of contemporary art responds to a specific system, supported by certain practices, actors and institutions. Throughout the 20th century, the “dematerialization” of the artwork allowed for the emergence of artistic languages that came to coexist with art objects of different natures, many of which are associated with traditions of the past. What are the directions and frameworks of contemporary art? If it covers the present time, how can we rethink and broaden the categories of this cultural practice?
PARTICIPANTS
Abdoulaye Konaté (Mali), visual artist.
Júlia Rebouças (Brasil), curator
Roy Dib (Lebanon), visual artist and art critic.
N’gone Fall (Senegal), curator and critic.
PANEL 3 | RETHINKING NARRATIVES: ART, MEMORY AND FICTION
OCT/22 (THU) | 14-16H | SESC POMPEIA | THEATER
Being open to multiple interpretations and perceptions, fiction enables narrative linearity to be replaced with other sensory logics. The fictional dimension of literature liberates the narrator for other forms of storytelling and to elaborate personal or collective trajectories. The panel discusses creative works which, devoid of any proof or documentation, look for word and image junctures that allow an escape from a world reduced to what is visible and into the realm of imagination.
PARTICIPANTS
Andrea Giunta (Argentina), curator and professor.
Júlio Pimentel (Brazil), historian.
Tânia Rivera (Brazil), essayist, a psychoanalyst and professor.
PANEL 2 | RETHINKING SPACES: ART, USES AND DAILY LIFE
OCT/10 (SAT) | 14-16H30 | SESC POMPEIA | THEATER
Outside institutional spaces, art seeps into daily life and interferes with how people perceive the world. Artistic creation transcends formatted educational practices to become a powerful tool for production of meaning, knowledge, and critical thinking. What places does art occupy today? What uses does the artwork suggest to us? The meeting will be followed by the launch of the book Southern Panoramas | Readings | Perspectives for other geographies of thought.
PARTICIPANTS
Berhanu Ashagrie Deribew (Ethiopia), artist and the director of the Fine Arts and Design School at Addis Abeba University.
Hoor Al-Qasimi (Sharjah), artist and chair of Sharjah Art Foundation.
Keli Safia-Maksud (Kenya), artist.
Till Fellrath (Germany), curator.
PANEL 4 | RETHINKING TIME: ART, SILENCES AND HISTORIES
OCT/29 (THU) | 14-16H | SESC POMPEIA | THEATER PARTICIPANTS
Immersed in contexts marked by history’s dilemmas, the art sphere inevitably expresses the relationships that inform the social fabric. Its discourses, silences, or denouncements reveal the tensions between what we wish to remember or to forget. The meeting will discuss the practices of thinkers and artists who look to destabilize (or reiterate) the limiting political forces of history and memory.
PARTICIPANTS
Gerardo Mosquera (Cuba), critic and curator.
Karol Radziszewski (Poland), artist, curator and publisher.
Ntone Edjabe (Cameroon), journalist and DJ.
Datasheet
19th Contemporary Art Festival SESC Videobrasil
Outubro – Dezembro, 2015
Sesc Pompeia
São Paulo, Brazil
Curatorship | Solange Farkas, João Laia, Júlia Rebouças, Bitú Cassundé, Bernardo de Souza
Places and meanings in art: debates from the South (Seminar)
7-29 October, 2015
Curatorship | Sabrina Moura