Southern Observatory

Southern Observatory

By December 4, 2015 Education, Portfolio 129 Comments
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Southern Observatory is a research and debate platform set to run from May to August 2015 via a partnership between the Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil and Episodes of the South, conceived and hosted by the Goethe Institut in São Paulo. The program is devoted to problematizing the uses, contexts and developments of the notion of “global south” in the art and human sciences fields. The idea is to address the concept of South from a critical and historical perspective, through a program built around four thematic sections. They are: Counter- narratives, Documents and Manifestos, Geopolitics of Knowledge, Regionalisms and Decenterings.

Datasheet
Southern Observatory
19th Contemporary Art Festival SESC Videobrasil
Episodes of the South
May – August 2015
Sesc Pompeia, Goethe Institut
São Paulo, Brazil
Curatorship and Coordination | Sabrina Moura
Guests | Amy Buono, Kelly Gillespie, Pedro Cesarino, Marcelo Rosa, Neo Muyanga, Gabi Ngcobo, Daniel Lima, Maria Elisa Cevasco, Rita Carelli, Walter Mignolo, Solange Farkas, Siba, Moacir dos Anjos.
Associate Researchers | Alex Flynn, Marina Guzzo, Cristina Boniglioli, Nathalia Lavigne
Participants | Ruy Luduvice, Alcimar Fraz‹o, Lorena Vinci, Luiz Rangel, Particia Marchesoni.

The quest to define what is (or what is from) the South denotes an a priori outlook that often curtails the possibilities for speculation on such an imprecise category. Our proposal for the first Observatory session does not therefore attempt to discuss its boundaries or definitions. Instead, we will approach the South as a project, or perhaps a discourse device that suggests contours and makes inroads into recent discussions on the legitimization of forms of knowledge and epistemologies constituted outside the Euro-American axis. How does the notion of “South” enable us to access the revisions that have taken place in the social sciences field since the second half of the 20th century? What tools does this concept provide us to consider alternative forms of cultural networks?

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