2019-2022 WPC ACADEMIES: OTTAWA, AMSTERDAM, LONDON & DRESDEN
WPC 2023 Worlding Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, 31 March – 1 April 2023, is the last in a series of five international gatherings of the four-year Trans-Atlantic Platform project, “Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation” (WPC), exploring how global, transnational and transcultural public narratives are being represented in universities and museums worldwide.
In anticipation of WPC 2023 Worlding Tiohtià:ke/Montreal taking place at the end of March 2023, we are pleased to launch this one-hour video compiled by artist Pansee Atta, showcasing aspects of the previous four international academies held at Carleton University in 2019, Amsterdam University, and TATE and University of Arts London in 2021; and by Heidelberg University at Dresden State Art Collections in 2022.
WPC 2023 invited the project leads of each of the previous academy city teams to self-organize and co-create a one-hour video and a ninety-minute session for this final gathering of the WPC Project. Knowing as in previous gatherings, not all members could participate and the project being introduced to yet another new city context, the intention for the self-reflexive video and session was not only to give newcomers to WPC an idea of the research outcomes of each of the academies over the past four years but also to offer a chance for the teams to deliberate on how they wanted to self-represent with an emphasis on transparency and accountability by those speaking in the two-and-a-half program – the video being tethered to the WPC 2023 Session 2 on lessons learnt from previous academies.
Only a few prompts were provided: Who or what would you like to showcase from the four academies? The final overall presentation would explain “why”. Workshop amongst and across teams to discuss and compare notes on: heretofore indiscernible injustices, intellectual growth, and/or research synergies.
Here is the result.
The WPC 2023 organizing team thanks all their colleagues from the other academic city teams for participating in the self-reflection, self-organizing, and presentations for the video and WPC session for WPC 2023 Worlding Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. We look forward to conferencing with you. Bonne Conference.
In anticipation of WPC 2023 Worlding Tiohtià:ke/Montreal taking place at the end of March 2023, we are pleased to launch this one-hour video compiled by artist Pansee Atta, showcasing aspects of the previous four international academies held at Carleton University in 2019, Amsterdam University, and TATE and University of Arts London in 2021; and by Heidelberg University at Dresden State Art Collections in 2022.
WPC 2023 invited the project leads of each of the previous academy city teams to self-organize and co-create a one-hour video and a ninety-minute session for this final gathering of the WPC Project. Knowing as in previous gatherings, not all members could participate and the project being introduced to yet another new city context, the intention for the self-reflexive video and session was not only to give newcomers to WPC an idea of the research outcomes of each of the academies over the past four years but also to offer a chance for the teams to deliberate on how they wanted to self-represent with an emphasis on transparency and accountability by those speaking in the two-and-a-half program – the video being tethered to the WPC 2023 Session 2 on lessons learnt from previous academies.
Only a few prompts were provided: Who or what would you like to showcase from the four academies? The final overall presentation would explain “why”. Workshop amongst and across teams to discuss and compare notes on: heretofore indiscernible injustices, intellectual growth, and/or research synergies.
Here is the result.
The WPC 2023 organizing team thanks all their colleagues from the other academic city teams for participating in the self-reflection, self-organizing, and presentations for the video and WPC session for WPC 2023 Worlding Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. We look forward to conferencing with you. Bonne Conference.
ABOUT
Working with universities, museums, and other cultural organizations, the transnational collaborative research project Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation seeks to reimagine cultural and educational institutions in order to better mobilize them as agents of social and political change that increase the understanding of global complexities. The project interrogates, from historical and contemporary perspectives, the concepts of “worlding” and “public cultures.” What does worlding mean and what is meant by public cultures? What are the implications of these entangled terms for the visual arts and global art histories? And, in this current moment of fear, anguish, and loss generated by the ongoing and future global effects of COVID-19 and racial injustice, what purpose does worlding public cultures serve? These are some of the Worlding Public Cultures (WPC) project’s guiding questions in an effort to multiply and decenter knowledge, narratives, and points of view.
“In this time of uncertainty and hyper-change, we need more than ever to think of the anticipatory – how to anticipate the future, to move from emergency to emergence,” said Alice Jim (Concordia University). “The arts are crucial to the efforts of imagining what the world’s future can be.”
Maya Rae Oppenheimer (Concordia University) adds that paying attention to how careful practice nestles alongside theoretical, anticipatory, imminent concerns is prevalent in these discussions. “Working through an ecosystem of intertwined futures is akin to mobilizing and empowering pedagogical moments that ricochet back and forth from the individual to the collective and back again; such exchanges are unfolding under new conditions, and the ability to pivot and to build upon imaginative, collaborative improvisations must be part of the work. This practice and rehearsal help us welcome lateral growth, tensile strengths and radical inertias for new work in spaces that are often hierarchical or pre-determined.”
Equally critical is an acknowledgement of, and responsiveness to, the existing systemic inequity and precarity that this period of crisis amplifies for QTBIPOC2S+ folks, artists, activists, independent arts and culture workers, and other marginalized communities. In response to the current context, the project aims to radically adapt its frame and modes of research and pedagogy so as to be informed by “compassion, humility, and a commitment to adaptive practice,” said Édith-Anne Pageot (Université du Québec à Montréal).
La crise sanitaire, la crise écologique et la crise politique commandent une profonde restructuration des régimes de pouvoir et de savoirs fondés sur le maillage productivité-colonialisme-patriarcat. Il ne suffit plus d’interroger le(s) contenu(s), mais il faut aussi interroger le(s) contenant(s), c’est-à-dire les approches, les méthodes, les structures, les hiérarchies, les catégories, les nomenclatures, etc., tout autant que l'individu ou l’entité qui effectue cette remise en question : Qui interroge ? Et d’où ? “Cette restructuration repose d’abord sur la reconnaissance de l’impérialisme cognitif de nos propres environnements de recherche, d’enseignement et des lieux de diffusion de l’art contemporain,” selon Pageot. Elle repose également sur un dialogue entre différentes postures épistémologiques. L’angle pluriversel et interversel de notre projet sollicite justement une production de connaissances à la croisée d’une multitude de traditions de pensées. “Par exemple, eu égard à la position géographique du Canada et à ses liens historiques avec l’Amérique latine et les Caraïbes, une des avenues privilégiées par notre équipe de chercheuses est celle de bâtir, avec ces régions, des réseaux d’échange académiques et artistiques, ainsi que de consolider ceux existants,” explique Analays Alvarez Hernandez (Université de Montréal). “Le projet préconise ainsi l'adoption d’incertitudes fécondes et de postures d’agentivité et de déterritorialisation, en déplaçant notamment les lieux d’énonciation, ” affirment Alvarez Hernandez et Pageot.
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Worlding Public Cultures is a project of the Transnational and Transcultural Art and Culture Exchange (TrACE). The TrACE network brings together an extraordinary range of geographical and interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars, curators, artists and early-career researchers.
“In this time of uncertainty and hyper-change, we need more than ever to think of the anticipatory – how to anticipate the future, to move from emergency to emergence,” said Alice Jim (Concordia University). “The arts are crucial to the efforts of imagining what the world’s future can be.”
Maya Rae Oppenheimer (Concordia University) adds that paying attention to how careful practice nestles alongside theoretical, anticipatory, imminent concerns is prevalent in these discussions. “Working through an ecosystem of intertwined futures is akin to mobilizing and empowering pedagogical moments that ricochet back and forth from the individual to the collective and back again; such exchanges are unfolding under new conditions, and the ability to pivot and to build upon imaginative, collaborative improvisations must be part of the work. This practice and rehearsal help us welcome lateral growth, tensile strengths and radical inertias for new work in spaces that are often hierarchical or pre-determined.”
Equally critical is an acknowledgement of, and responsiveness to, the existing systemic inequity and precarity that this period of crisis amplifies for QTBIPOC2S+ folks, artists, activists, independent arts and culture workers, and other marginalized communities. In response to the current context, the project aims to radically adapt its frame and modes of research and pedagogy so as to be informed by “compassion, humility, and a commitment to adaptive practice,” said Édith-Anne Pageot (Université du Québec à Montréal).
La crise sanitaire, la crise écologique et la crise politique commandent une profonde restructuration des régimes de pouvoir et de savoirs fondés sur le maillage productivité-colonialisme-patriarcat. Il ne suffit plus d’interroger le(s) contenu(s), mais il faut aussi interroger le(s) contenant(s), c’est-à-dire les approches, les méthodes, les structures, les hiérarchies, les catégories, les nomenclatures, etc., tout autant que l'individu ou l’entité qui effectue cette remise en question : Qui interroge ? Et d’où ? “Cette restructuration repose d’abord sur la reconnaissance de l’impérialisme cognitif de nos propres environnements de recherche, d’enseignement et des lieux de diffusion de l’art contemporain,” selon Pageot. Elle repose également sur un dialogue entre différentes postures épistémologiques. L’angle pluriversel et interversel de notre projet sollicite justement une production de connaissances à la croisée d’une multitude de traditions de pensées. “Par exemple, eu égard à la position géographique du Canada et à ses liens historiques avec l’Amérique latine et les Caraïbes, une des avenues privilégiées par notre équipe de chercheuses est celle de bâtir, avec ces régions, des réseaux d’échange académiques et artistiques, ainsi que de consolider ceux existants,” explique Analays Alvarez Hernandez (Université de Montréal). “Le projet préconise ainsi l'adoption d’incertitudes fécondes et de postures d’agentivité et de déterritorialisation, en déplaçant notamment les lieux d’énonciation, ” affirment Alvarez Hernandez et Pageot.
* * * * * * *
Worlding Public Cultures is a project of the Transnational and Transcultural Art and Culture Exchange (TrACE). The TrACE network brings together an extraordinary range of geographical and interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars, curators, artists and early-career researchers.
2019-2022 Worlding Public Cultures Academies in Ottawa, Amsterdam, London, and Dresden
One-hour video produced as part of WPC 2023 Worlding Tiohtià:ke/Montreal Session 2.
WPC 2023 Worlding Tiohtià:ke/Montreal: www.ethnoculturalarts.co
One-hour video produced as part of WPC 2023 Worlding Tiohtià:ke/Montreal Session 2.
WPC 2023 Worlding Tiohtià:ke/Montreal: www.ethnoculturalarts.co
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Universities:
Carleton University Concordia University Université de Montreal Université de Quebec a Montreal Heidelberg University University of Amsterdam Vrije Universitet University of Arts London Institutions: Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin National Gallery of Canada Netherlands National Museum of World Cultures State Art Collections of Dresden Tate Modern Funding bodies: Trans-Atlantic Platform for Social Sciences and Humanities (T-AP) Economic and Social Research Council (UKRI-ESRC) (United Kingdom) Arts & Humanities Research Council (UKRI-AHRC) (United Kingdom) Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (Germany) Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF/ DLR Projektträger (no. 01UG2026: WPC) (Germany) DLR Project Management Agency (DLR-PT) (Germany) Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research— Social Sciences and Humanities (NWO) (The Netherlands) Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC) (Canada) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) (Canada) |
Video participants (in alphabetical order):
Birgit Hopfener Carine Zaayman Chiara de Cesari Emily Putnam Eva Bentcheva-Webb Franziska Kaun Franziska Koch Janneke Van Hoeve Maribel Hidalgo-Urbaneja Ming Tiampo Moritz Schwoerer Nuraini Juliastuti Paul Goodwin Rahila Haque Ruth Philips Seung Hee Kim Wayne Modest Filming Pansee Atta Editing Pansee Atta & Seung Hee Kim Music "Lifelike" by AlexiAction, via PixaBay The Fourth Plinth. 'Nelson's Ship in a Bottle' by Yinka Shonibare, Trafalgar Square, London. Image courtesy of Wikimedia. Photograph by Brian Gillman. |