On October 29, the fourth and final meeting of the Seminar Places and Meanings in Art: Debates from the South, organized by Sabrina Moura, brought together to discuss the theme Rethinking Time: Art, Silences and History, the cofounder of the Havana Biennale and curator of New York’s New Museum, Gerardo Mosquera (Cuba); the artist, curator and publisher of magazine DIK Fagazine, Karol Radziszewski (Poland); and the journalist, founder and editor of curatorial/editorial platform Chimurenga, Ntone Edjabe (Cameroon).
The author of a body of work and research focusing on queer archives in his native Poland and in East and Central European countries, Karol Radziszewski, the founder of the magazine DIK Fagazine, said his work strives to build a historical narrative from a queer perspective and based on his local context. His research was both based on personal archives, which reveal intimate moments, and on the “pink archive” kept by the Polish communist dictatorship. The artist uses research as a means to create his work, building dialogue between different time periods, materials, and languages. The creator the of pan-African magazine Chimurenga [Fighting spirit], which lasted seven years, Ntone Edjabe discussed a wave of xenophobic attacks that took place in South Africa in 2008 and claimed over 100 lives, an experience that transformed him completely, forcing him into a series of reflections that changed the character of his publication. Regarded as a reflection-oriented platform whose purpose is to foster spaces of resistance, it changed from a magazine into a literary newspaper and turned to knowledge and language production, focusing on self-referring discourse to translate the crisis experience. Gerardo Mosquera approached the work of Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, who, on the sidelines of the 12th Havana Biennale, in a denunciation of repression she had suffered, enacted another performance: a reading of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, from end to end, uninterruptedly. Despite the prohibition, the artist took to the street wielding a pigeon and the book. As she was stopped by a policeman, Bruguera let go of the pigeon, which flew, hit a wall and collapsed on the sidewalk; then, she threw the book against the wall, giving it the same path and fate as the pigeon’s. According to Mosquera, this street performance was complemented by police repression, and her improvised action became a symbol of freedom in the face of Government repression against the individual, creating a network of solidarity in and out of the country.
- More about Karol Radziszewski in Collection