Workshop 1: Transnational / postnational artistic practices
The notion of transnationality/postnationality offers a tempting perspective. It inspires to change the mindset for a while; to get rid of currently dominating patterns of thinking and operating, that most often represent the dominant structure of national states. However promising it may sound, to most of art workers it would be a misleading fantasy: for the actual political map does influence our professional and private lives on the every day basis, shaping our ways of thinking and enabling or interrupting relations. Some may find the national borders pretty symbolic, for the others of us they are the most real barrier that remains very difficult to overcome. It feels liberating to imagine the political structures above the actually existing national and state patterns, but the actual political context will quickly remind us its powers.
Moreover, if a free exchange of thoughts, practices and experiences is definitely one of the most basic values enabling personal and professional development, it still remains a luxury for a few — only the privileged can travel and develop their works as they want; the others are either forced to move or refused to leave. Yet the transnationality becomes a highly appreciated trend, setting the rules of the current art world and representing to the market logics: an artist need to be visible internationally in order to sustain. The more connections you have and the broader your network is, the higher your position in the art world becomes. Mobility in its late capitalist form has such spatial and time consequences as a feeling of being detached from the present time (by the temporality of projects) and from a local space (by being in a constant move and feeling of not belonging anywhere anymore). So it does influence our personal and social condition and submits us even more to the flow of constant overproductivity. Where is the way out?
Together with a group of eight fabulous art makers, thinkers and researchers, we will reflect and practice the possible and impossible modes of being-with in the arts field in diverse socio-political and economic contexts. We will look for a way to go out from the currently dominating patterns created by powerful institutions, western logics of art production and already existing funds. We aim at proposing alternatives to dominating logics of transnational art production and to readdress the notion of the mobility itself. Is it actually a value we want to defend or rather an obstacle to overcome? What are the alternatives to the existing models of co-production, touring and artist-in-residence programs? Why the most prominent festivals present always the same few names, thus reproducing the existing hierarchies? What seems crucial in the current situation in Europe and beyond is to imagine anew the ways of gathering and instituting ourselves: out of dominating structures, but not neglecting its challenges.
Workshop will be held in Copenhagen and it will be organized by ONDA.
