Publications
ACADEMIA.EDU
Rituals and Co-reasonings/Presentiments (EN)
Imayna Caceres, Adriana Ciudad, Ana Zavala
In BISAGRA 005: "Presagios y Destinos Compartidos".
...And rituals have many roles: they are practice, relationship, technology, tool, archive, portal, space-time, and so on. They are a technology of connection and retribution to other species and worlds, recognizing the multispecies communities in which we live and the powers of diverse beings and entities. Rituals are affirmed in relationships of trust and assume a world that communicates. The moment of thanking the cosmos for providing what we need, not taking for granted the work of the soil, plants, and animals, but expressing gratitude with the best one has to offer.
That wisdom about these forms of coexistence exists in many traditions of care and healing and is very useful in times of crisis, of disorder, of chaos. And that is why rituals are also a practical reaffirmation and reactivation of knowledge and critical positions. In my experience, I have learned to understand rituals as a political technology of inter-species reciprocity and re-linking. A moment of fusion of the spheres in which we exist. A portal through which subterranean pains and memories come to the surface. A tool to question fetishistic processes of alienation, to question hegemonic apparatuses, and to create a sense of community. In this sense, rituals can be understood as a political rethinking of the ways in which we want to live and a confrontation with the orders that have led us to the current anthropogenic crisis. A practice that is ultimately artistic, insofar as it requires us as sentient (of sense, senses, and sensibility) beings."
Thinking through Art, Drawing and Performance Ontological Conflicts That Are at the Core of Mining Struggles
Imayna Caceres and Alfredo Ledesma
In fiar 15.2 Struggles over Mining and Territory in Latin America
Threads that intertwine, break, and remake tissues: Practices of connection and care of life
Imayna Caceres
In Texte zur Kunst
2022
I focus in this text on modes of being with others – human and non-human – that emerged in my migration experience as binding connections and repairing lessons concerning acceptance, community, and kinship.
Multispecies dance movements through endangered worlds
About Amanda Piña's Climatic Dances
In Tanzquartier Magazin
Imayna Caceres
2021
What might happen to co-existing communities that are more-than-human, if corporate extractivism continues to be allowed to wreck life, affecting a large multiplicity of ecosystems and modes of living? For Amanda Piña, who has been observing these effects on the Apu Wamani mountain-being located near Santiago de Chile, close to where she grew up and where part of her family still lives, this is a distinctly troubling question. Through highland ritual dances, her aim is to channel the power of coming together towards active modes of co-survivance. Breathing with her entrails glittering on the tongue that greets us, Piña as incarnated mountain-being conjures dances as a catalog of movements-with-the-other which are part of the complex being which is (with) the Apu mountain. Traditional ritual dances, unlike what their name seems to suggest, don’t remain static. Rather, each body that dances it transforms the dance, and so the dance continues to grow like a living being. These dances constitute a body-based knowledge that understands ‘humans’ as having been artificially separated from ‘nature’, and recognizes symbiotic relations to other earth-beings, maintaining an invested relationality with the whole of the cosmos. As practices of reciprocity that retain an awareness of our radical interdependence, and where the artistic is spiritual, social, functional and worldly, intertwined with all spheres of life. Facing the current multiple socioecological crises, we urgently need artistic practices that invite us (as Climatic Dances does) to take another look at how, in certain modes of existing, thinking, and moving with others, alternative ways of creating knowledge might surface.
Imayna Caceres, Adriana Ciudad, Ana Zavala
In BISAGRA 005: "Presagios y Destinos Compartidos".
2023
...And rituals have many roles: they are practice, relationship, technology, tool, archive, portal, space-time, and so on. They are a technology of connection and retribution to other species and worlds, recognizing the multispecies communities in which we live and the powers of diverse beings and entities. Rituals are affirmed in relationships of trust and assume a world that communicates. The moment of thanking the cosmos for providing what we need, not taking for granted the work of the soil, plants, and animals, but expressing gratitude with the best one has to offer.
That wisdom about these forms of coexistence exists in many traditions of care and healing and is very useful in times of crisis, of disorder, of chaos. And that is why rituals are also a practical reaffirmation and reactivation of knowledge and critical positions. In my experience, I have learned to understand rituals as a political technology of inter-species reciprocity and re-linking. A moment of fusion of the spheres in which we exist. A portal through which subterranean pains and memories come to the surface. A tool to question fetishistic processes of alienation, to question hegemonic apparatuses, and to create a sense of community. In this sense, rituals can be understood as a political rethinking of the ways in which we want to live and a confrontation with the orders that have led us to the current anthropogenic crisis. A practice that is ultimately artistic, insofar as it requires us as sentient (of sense, senses, and sensibility) beings."
Thanks to Bisagra, a Lima based project that aims to generate connections, circulate ideas, projects and experiments in areas of research and creation.
Thinking through Art, Drawing and Performance Ontological Conflicts That Are at the Core of Mining Struggles
Imayna Caceres and Alfredo Ledesma
In fiar 15.2 Struggles over Mining and Territory in Latin America
Ann-Kathrin Volmer, Anna Preiser, Tyanif Rico Rodríguez, Eds.
2022
2022
"In my experience, the artistic practice of drawing makes us pay attention to what we are able to perceive in the shapes, languages and properties of things and beings, in their livingness, and through this, to come across other forms of knowing. A knowing that takes place through our senses, through the materiality of our body and through the standpoint of our multiple identities.
...Through drawing I employ speculative ways of associating information, making unexpected connections. As an extensive web, made of threads, knots and entanglements, which break creating gaps but that also generate structures of interaction and open new questions. Drawing and thinking with the more than human creates a dialogue between intuitive and scientific knowledge that connect aspects that are commonly dismissed such as intuition and connect it to theoretical thinking.
...I bear in mind that I come from a history that does not begin with writing as a way of creating and archiving knowledge, but with the language of other natures-cultures, of colors, of drawing, murals, khipus, knotting, textile weaving, ceramics, stonework and more. In my practice, I have found that a grounded approach to the different arts can contribute to decentering the human and ultimately can contribute to the project of decolonizing the academy."
"...the dialogue on territory already begins at a disadvantage for these groups, which are unable to assert their political-spiritual relationship with the cosmos in their dealing with the state."
Thanks to fiar for the invitation to write. The forum for inter-american research (fiar) is the official electronic journal of the International Association of Inter-American Studies (IAS). fiar was established by the American Studies Program at Bielefeld University in 2008.
...Through drawing I employ speculative ways of associating information, making unexpected connections. As an extensive web, made of threads, knots and entanglements, which break creating gaps but that also generate structures of interaction and open new questions. Drawing and thinking with the more than human creates a dialogue between intuitive and scientific knowledge that connect aspects that are commonly dismissed such as intuition and connect it to theoretical thinking.
...I bear in mind that I come from a history that does not begin with writing as a way of creating and archiving knowledge, but with the language of other natures-cultures, of colors, of drawing, murals, khipus, knotting, textile weaving, ceramics, stonework and more. In my practice, I have found that a grounded approach to the different arts can contribute to decentering the human and ultimately can contribute to the project of decolonizing the academy."
"...the dialogue on territory already begins at a disadvantage for these groups, which are unable to assert their political-spiritual relationship with the cosmos in their dealing with the state."
Thanks to fiar for the invitation to write. The forum for inter-american research (fiar) is the official electronic journal of the International Association of Inter-American Studies (IAS). fiar was established by the American Studies Program at Bielefeld University in 2008.
Threads that intertwine, break, and remake tissues: Practices of connection and care of lifeImayna Caceres
In Texte zur Kunst
2022
I focus in this text on modes of being with others – human and non-human – that emerged in my migration experience as binding connections and repairing lessons concerning acceptance, community, and kinship.
"When referring to the spiritual, I do not wish to make reference to private beliefs or a personal/collective connection to religion. Instead, by spiritual, I mean a practical, nurturing relation to a materiality or ecosystem (local and cosmic) that is practiced out of need. A care of the relationships with what keeps us alive, which is the basic condition for our life to exist."
"Reflecting on my migration highlighted what I experienced as forms of repair that were connected to a sense of care and renewal."
"Through drawing, painting, dancing, and collective actions, one is able to revise personal experiences, ground the lessons received, and process these insights bodily. The evoked arts and practices, intertwined with rhythmic language, scientific knowledge, and political-spiritual lessons (which are drawn from the ecosystems with which we coexist), contribute to the processing of memories, tracing affectively what is deemed necessary to remember."
"Reflecting on my migration highlighted what I experienced as forms of repair that were connected to a sense of care and renewal."
"Through drawing, painting, dancing, and collective actions, one is able to revise personal experiences, ground the lessons received, and process these insights bodily. The evoked arts and practices, intertwined with rhythmic language, scientific knowledge, and political-spiritual lessons (which are drawn from the ecosystems with which we coexist), contribute to the processing of memories, tracing affectively what is deemed necessary to remember."
Thanks to Çiğdem Inan who invited me to write.
Curating as Healing
Imayna Caceres and Verena Melgarejo Weinandt
In Radicalizing Care. Feminist and Queer Activism in Curating
Birgit Bosold, Lena Fritsch, Vera Hofmann, Elke Krasny, Sophie Lingg, Eds.
2022
What happens when the notion of care based on the politics of relatedness, interdependence, reciprocity, and response-ability informs the practices of curating?
Imayna Caceres and Verena Melgarejo Weinandt
In Radicalizing Care. Feminist and Queer Activism in Curating
Birgit Bosold, Lena Fritsch, Vera Hofmann, Elke Krasny, Sophie Lingg, Eds.
2022
What happens when the notion of care based on the politics of relatedness, interdependence, reciprocity, and response-ability informs the practices of curating?
Thanks to Elke Krasny for the invitation to take part.
Multispecies dance movements through endangered worlds
About Amanda Piña's Climatic Dances
In Tanzquartier Magazin
Imayna Caceres
2021
What might happen to co-existing communities that are more-than-human, if corporate extractivism continues to be allowed to wreck life, affecting a large multiplicity of ecosystems and modes of living? For Amanda Piña, who has been observing these effects on the Apu Wamani mountain-being located near Santiago de Chile, close to where she grew up and where part of her family still lives, this is a distinctly troubling question. Through highland ritual dances, her aim is to channel the power of coming together towards active modes of co-survivance. Breathing with her entrails glittering on the tongue that greets us, Piña as incarnated mountain-being conjures dances as a catalog of movements-with-the-other which are part of the complex being which is (with) the Apu mountain. Traditional ritual dances, unlike what their name seems to suggest, don’t remain static. Rather, each body that dances it transforms the dance, and so the dance continues to grow like a living being. These dances constitute a body-based knowledge that understands ‘humans’ as having been artificially separated from ‘nature’, and recognizes symbiotic relations to other earth-beings, maintaining an invested relationality with the whole of the cosmos. As practices of reciprocity that retain an awareness of our radical interdependence, and where the artistic is spiritual, social, functional and worldly, intertwined with all spheres of life. Facing the current multiple socioecological crises, we urgently need artistic practices that invite us (as Climatic Dances does) to take another look at how, in certain modes of existing, thinking, and moving with others, alternative ways of creating knowledge might surface.
Thanks to Amanda Piña for the invitation to write about her work.
"In Denmark, the discussion on artistic research has predominantly been about what artistic research is, and if its processes and practices can qualify as both a work of art and knowledge. With this special issue, we wish to instead ask how artistic research is being done and what potentials it holds for future critical practices in response to different contexts. We want to use this special issue to look backwards, forwards, and into the present, to look at the practices that currently shape the field as well as those to come. / This issue compiles various voices, practices, and propositions that each draws different trajectories and avenues for artistic research as a field that is in a continuous process of becoming. Thus, this special issue of Periskop is an issue of artistic research by artist researchers, and not an issue about the artists and their work. / In times like these, this special issue asks: How can we reclaim artistic research? And how are artistic research practices engaging in the co-creation of other worlds in response to different forms of social crises and planetary destruction?"
In her contribution “Underground Blossomings: Serpentine thinking with other beings” Imayna Caceres gathers the outcome of processes of research in connection to drawing, as a method for reflecting about practices of political relationality to other ways of being in the world. The findings she presents were experienced as lessons gathered in the interaction with other-than-human beings, situations, and events. Academic discussion can no longer aspire to validity when discussions about reality only happen between humans, in the absence of other non-human agents of history that build reality along with us.
Contributors: Imayna Caceres, Christian Danielewitz, Julie Edel Hardenberg, Helen Eriksen, Lisa Nyberg, Nanna Lysholt Hansen, Maria Finn, Christina Marie Jespersen, Sofie Volquartz Lebech, Mia Line, Gry Worre Hallberg, Gry O.Ulrichsen, and Zahra Bayati.
Anti*Colonial Fantasies, Decolonial Strategies.
Imayna Caceres, Sunanda Mesquita, Sophie Utikal, Eds.
Published by Zaglossus Editorial.
2017
Anti*Colonial Fantasies / Decolonial Strategies brings together artists from different diasporas, students and lecturers, who engage with a critique of the repercussions of colonialism—including in academia—and the quest for transforming this reality. Working with various media—performances, videos, installations, paintings, photographs, drawings, and writing—as well as participatory formats, the artists expose ways in which colonialism persists today. Raising questions of race, sexuality, gender, spirituality, space, and time, they occupy themselves with the imagination and possibility of alternative realities and pursue decolonial strategies of resistance and knowledge production.
Anti*Colonial Fantasies is a student and lecturer initiative that is part of a history of decolonial, postcolonial, antiracist initiatives at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and within Austria. It belongs to a genealogy of artistic works produced by BPoC (Black and People of Color) and migrant artists that seek to transform the contexts and spaces they occupy. These interventions seek to address colonialism and racism from within the centers of hegemonic Eurocentric knowledge. The activist protagonists of this history of BPoC political actions are from different diasporas and move within the realm of arts where they affirm BPoC identity.
Contributors: Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Gerardo Montes de Oca, Imayna Caceres, Sunanda Mesquita, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, Amoako Boafo, Stephanie Misa, Sandra Monterroso, Tatiana Nascimento, Ezgi Erol, Firas Shehadeh, Hansel Sato, Sophie Utikal, Rini Mitra, Mariel Rodríguez, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Cana Bilir-Meier, Pêdra Costa, and Eduardo Triviño Cely.
Thanks to Jean Pierre Cueto who invited us to apply, and to Nicole de Fleurs of Zaglossus.
Curating as Anti-Racist Practice
Imayna Caceres, Sunanda Mesquita, Sophie Utikal
Natalie Bayer, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Nora Sternfeld, editors
Published in German by De Gruyter / Die Angewandte
Published in English by Aalto University
2017
The anthology Curating as Anti-Racist Practice reflects upon museums and exhibitions from the perspective of postcolonial museology, and critical migration and regime research. Beyond critical analysis, this collection of texts is about collecting strategies and forms of action that make it possible to think of curating as anti-racist practice. Using as springboards the intersections between social battlefields and curatorial practices, as well as a focus on agency, this book examines the relationality of struggles for and against representation. Therefore, the focus is on discursive strategies of resistance, contact zones and approaches to re-appropriation.
With texts and artistic contributions by Kemi Bassene / Natalie Bayer, Mark Terkessidis / Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński / Imayna Caceres, Sunanda Mesquita, Sophie Utikal / Nuray Demir, Nanna Heidenreich / Silvina Der-Meguerditchian / Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung / Minna Henriksson / Thomas J. Lax / Verena Melgarejo Weinandt / Bahareh Sharifi, Sandrine Micossé-Aikins / Katharina Morawek / Naomi Rincon Gallardo / Nora Sternfeld / Third Space Helsinki (Marianne Niemelä, Christopher Wessels, Ahmed Al-Nawas) / Jelena Vesić U.A.
Thanks to Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński who invited us to contribute.
The Ritual issue : Art as Healing Practice
Parabol N° 9. Curated by Verena Melgarejo Weinandt & Imayna Caceres (Vienna / Berlin / Lima)
Special format: 40 ✕ 58 cm
2018
Bleibeführer_in Wien
Guide for refugees and asylum seekers who stay to live in Vienna
Collective project
2012
A guide to make visible the network of support towards migrants and asylum seekers and to encourage resistance by gathering local, political, and cultural spaces, as well as testimonies on how to deal with social workers, police harassment or any other forms of institutionalized racism. Places where to sleep, legal and asylum support, governmental institutions, antiracist work organizations, counseling for women, queer spaces, healthcare centers for migrants, options for mobility, education, children, culture, and spaces for political organization. First edition: 1000 copies. Second edition: 1500 copies. The guide can be downloaded here and a search by districts can be made here. Initiated by Hansel Sato and Erinmwionghae Clifford in cooperation with Planet 10 in the frame of Wienwoche. Thanks to Hansel Sato who invited me to participate.
An Indigenous critique of the State
I took the opportunity to have the protest of an unidentified Awajun-Wampi woman published in the book: in the Peruvian Amazon a series of protests against the extraction of oil, wood and gold in protected areas, is counteracted by the State and ends with a hundred civilians injured and the death of what is presented as murdered policemen and deceased natives. While the figure 'exploitation of natural resources – damage to the environment – protest – state repression' is a constant in Peru, the protest of the Amazonian peoples reveals the most salient aspects of the underlying continuities of a colonial system. State representatives refer to the protesters as terrorists who impede the progress of the country, or alternative as good people ("the natives are good") who are just being manipulated by forces who seek to destabilize the government. This denial of the Amazonian subject and/or of the Indigenous subject as a political subject, is questioned by the protest speech of an Awajun-Wampi woman who provides an analysis of the role of the State in her sense of reality. Thanks to the class of Post Conceptual Art Practices of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in which the book was produced between 2011-2013.
Imayna Caceres
Unruly: Artistic Research between Disciplines and Becoming.
Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Charlotte Hauch, Camilla Graff Junior, and
Lise Margrethe Jørgensen. Eds.
2020
Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Charlotte Hauch, Camilla Graff Junior, and
Lise Margrethe Jørgensen. Eds.
2020
"In Denmark, the discussion on artistic research has predominantly been about what artistic research is, and if its processes and practices can qualify as both a work of art and knowledge. With this special issue, we wish to instead ask how artistic research is being done and what potentials it holds for future critical practices in response to different contexts. We want to use this special issue to look backwards, forwards, and into the present, to look at the practices that currently shape the field as well as those to come. / This issue compiles various voices, practices, and propositions that each draws different trajectories and avenues for artistic research as a field that is in a continuous process of becoming. Thus, this special issue of Periskop is an issue of artistic research by artist researchers, and not an issue about the artists and their work. / In times like these, this special issue asks: How can we reclaim artistic research? And how are artistic research practices engaging in the co-creation of other worlds in response to different forms of social crises and planetary destruction?"
In her contribution “Underground Blossomings: Serpentine thinking with other beings” Imayna Caceres gathers the outcome of processes of research in connection to drawing, as a method for reflecting about practices of political relationality to other ways of being in the world. The findings she presents were experienced as lessons gathered in the interaction with other-than-human beings, situations, and events. Academic discussion can no longer aspire to validity when discussions about reality only happen between humans, in the absence of other non-human agents of history that build reality along with us.
Contributors: Imayna Caceres, Christian Danielewitz, Julie Edel Hardenberg, Helen Eriksen, Lisa Nyberg, Nanna Lysholt Hansen, Maria Finn, Christina Marie Jespersen, Sofie Volquartz Lebech, Mia Line, Gry Worre Hallberg, Gry O.Ulrichsen, and Zahra Bayati.
Imayna Caceres, Sunanda Mesquita, Sophie Utikal, Eds.
Published by Zaglossus Editorial.
2017
Anti*Colonial Fantasies / Decolonial Strategies brings together artists from different diasporas, students and lecturers, who engage with a critique of the repercussions of colonialism—including in academia—and the quest for transforming this reality. Working with various media—performances, videos, installations, paintings, photographs, drawings, and writing—as well as participatory formats, the artists expose ways in which colonialism persists today. Raising questions of race, sexuality, gender, spirituality, space, and time, they occupy themselves with the imagination and possibility of alternative realities and pursue decolonial strategies of resistance and knowledge production.
Anti*Colonial Fantasies is a student and lecturer initiative that is part of a history of decolonial, postcolonial, antiracist initiatives at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and within Austria. It belongs to a genealogy of artistic works produced by BPoC (Black and People of Color) and migrant artists that seek to transform the contexts and spaces they occupy. These interventions seek to address colonialism and racism from within the centers of hegemonic Eurocentric knowledge. The activist protagonists of this history of BPoC political actions are from different diasporas and move within the realm of arts where they affirm BPoC identity.
Contributors: Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Gerardo Montes de Oca, Imayna Caceres, Sunanda Mesquita, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, Amoako Boafo, Stephanie Misa, Sandra Monterroso, Tatiana Nascimento, Ezgi Erol, Firas Shehadeh, Hansel Sato, Sophie Utikal, Rini Mitra, Mariel Rodríguez, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Cana Bilir-Meier, Pêdra Costa, and Eduardo Triviño Cely.
Thanks to Jean Pierre Cueto who invited us to apply, and to Nicole de Fleurs of Zaglossus.
Curating as Anti-Racist Practice
Imayna Caceres, Sunanda Mesquita, Sophie Utikal
Natalie Bayer, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Nora Sternfeld, editors
Published in German by De Gruyter / Die Angewandte
Published in English by Aalto University
2017
The anthology Curating as Anti-Racist Practice reflects upon museums and exhibitions from the perspective of postcolonial museology, and critical migration and regime research. Beyond critical analysis, this collection of texts is about collecting strategies and forms of action that make it possible to think of curating as anti-racist practice. Using as springboards the intersections between social battlefields and curatorial practices, as well as a focus on agency, this book examines the relationality of struggles for and against representation. Therefore, the focus is on discursive strategies of resistance, contact zones and approaches to re-appropriation.
With texts and artistic contributions by Kemi Bassene / Natalie Bayer, Mark Terkessidis / Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński / Imayna Caceres, Sunanda Mesquita, Sophie Utikal / Nuray Demir, Nanna Heidenreich / Silvina Der-Meguerditchian / Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung / Minna Henriksson / Thomas J. Lax / Verena Melgarejo Weinandt / Bahareh Sharifi, Sandrine Micossé-Aikins / Katharina Morawek / Naomi Rincon Gallardo / Nora Sternfeld / Third Space Helsinki (Marianne Niemelä, Christopher Wessels, Ahmed Al-Nawas) / Jelena Vesić U.A.
Thanks to Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński who invited us to contribute.
The Ritual issue : Art as Healing Practice
Parabol N° 9. Curated by Verena Melgarejo Weinandt & Imayna Caceres (Vienna / Berlin / Lima)
Special format: 40 ✕ 58 cm
2018
In curating this printed issue, we approached the artistic and theoretical reflections of two guiding figures: the Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta and the Chicana author and artist Gloria Anzaldúa. For Anzaldúa, her job as an artist “is to bear witness to what haunts us, to step back and attempt to see the pattern in these events (personal and societal) and how we can repair el daño (the damage) by using the imagination and its vision.” In turn, for Mendieta, art’s greatest value is its spiritual role: “My art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy that runs through everything: from insect to man, from man to spectre, from spectre to plant, from plant to galaxy.”
We presented the works, exploring their connections between each other and the invocations they summon. The works invoke a stitching of wounds, of moving selves, and of spiritual activism. They refer to cosmovisions of interrelation, of trans and afro spiritualities, of Andean transformations, and indigenous reparations. They braid connections: caring for the dead in underworld journeys, exorcising whiteness with poisonous cures, and channeling communal spirits. They seek to activate ancestral knowledge and universal energies—a politics of the ritual towards healing revolutions. The invited artists share a deep preoccupation with the intersection of political, sexual, ecological, and spiritual realms. Their works push the association between third-world, racialized, gendered bodies and colonial history, political activism and ancestral references, sexual politics, and mystical sources.
Participating Artists: Vivian Zurita, Sergio Zevallos, Sophie Utikal, Mariel Rodríguez, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Maque Pereyra, Antonio Paucar, Eliana Otta, Sandra Monterroso, Ana Mendieta, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, Marissa Lôbo, Alfredo Ledesma, Alessandra Dos Santos, Pêdra Costa And Taís Lobo, Imayna Caceres, Gloria Anzaldúa.
Thanks to Verena Melgarejo Weinandt who invited me to co-curate, to Margarethe Makovec of < rotor > association for contemporary art who linked us to section a, and to the people of section a for the enthusiastic support. Thanks to the suggestions of Miguel López and Arturo Higa, and to Manuel Carreon Lopez of kunst-dokumentation.com.
Bildpunkt N°46 Aus dem utopischen Halbdunkel
Heft Mai, Künstlerische position
2018
Wer braucht überhaupt Organisation – die Zivilgesellschaft oder die postsozialdemokratische Linke, das alternative Milieu, das Prekariat oder die Subalternen? Und welche – Netzwerk, Mosaik, Schwarm, oder doch Partei? Auch stellen sich Fragen der Organisierung im Kunstfeld strukturell anders als im politischen Feld. Nicht zuletzt angesichts des Regierungswechsels in Österreich und des Vormarsches ultrarechter Bewegungen und Parteien in ganz Europa stellt sich die Frage linker Organisierung neu. Während mit dem Aufbruch in Österreich der langen Reihe linker Organisierungsversuche ein weiterer hinzugefügt wurde, hat auch die Geschichte des künstlerischen Feld einige Zusammenrottungen um Programme, Mitglieder und Statuten zu bieten. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser historischen Differenzen und gegenwärtiger Entwicklungen stellt der Bildpunkt die Organisationsfrage(n), um sie nicht länger im „utopischen Halbdunkel“ zu belassen, wo Lukács sie noch sah. –Jens Kastner.
Auf dem Backcover ist eine Bleistiftzeichnung von Imayna Caceres abgebildet, die einen Ausschnitt ihrer Installation Condor, Puma, Serpiente (2018) zeigt. Die Arbeit ist eine Würdigung der und Annäherung an die Frauen ihrer Familie, die die Künstlerin, Kuratorin und Aktivistin mit peruanischer Herkunft, die seit mittlerweile 10 Jahren in Wien lebt, als Fundament ihrer eigenen sowie der kollektiven Geschichte begreift. Ihre Methode des Zeichnens, die sie beim Porträtieren ihrer Großmutter und ihrer Mutter gewählt hat, beschreibt Drei künstlerische Positionen begleiten jede Ausgabe des Bildpunkt und sind als eigenständige Kommentare und Reflexionen zum jeweiligen Thema des Heftes zu verstehen. Caceres sorgfältiges Verknüpfen und Verweben von Bleistiftstrichen, um, wie sie sagt, „die Wege nachzuzeichnen, die zu mir führen, die Schichten und Gewebe, die mich ausmachen, die Wurzeln, die mir Halt geben.“ Zeichnen stellt für sie eine Form der Annäherung, ein Werkzeug des Erinnerns dar – in Anbetracht einer Abwesenheit von Fotos oder Dokumenten, die von ihrer Vergangenheit erzählen könnten.
Thanks to Carlos Toledo who invited me to participate in this edition.
Bildpunkt N°31 EXITstrategien
Heft Frühling, Künstlerische position
Katherine Ball, Katarzyna Winiecka, Imayna Caceres and Refugee Protest Vienna
2014
Eine lange „Tradition der Migration“ machte die Feministin Gloria Anzaldúa 1987 in ihrem Buch Borderlands aus, die durch das Ziehen einer neuen Grenze ausgelöst worden sei. Konkret gemeint war der Grenzverlauf zwischen Mexiko und den USA. Nach dem Krieg zwischen den beiden Ländern wurden 1848 weite Teile des mexikanischen Nordens den USA zugeschlagen. Aber Anzaldúa verallgemeinert diese Situation: Jede Grenze erzeugt Bevölkerungsgruppen, die auf der „falschen“ Seite leben und schafft unterschiedliche Lebensbedingungen, die zum Ortswechsel verleiten. Wenn auch auf Gewalt und Zwang beruhend, so bieten solche Grenzräume laut Anzaldúa doch auch Möglichkeiten. Strategische Möglichkeiten, die auch den Umgang mit (immer fremdund selbstzugeschriebener) Zugehörigkeit betreffen. „Nothing happens in the ‚real’ world“, schreibt Anzaldúa, „unless it first happens in the images of our heads.“ Sich etwas klar- und sich ein Bild machen, Kognition und Kreation, rücken hier recht eng zusammen und werden zur selbstbestimmten Grundlage sozialen Wandels gemacht. Deshalb rückt auch die Bildproduktion dies- und jenseits des eigenen Kopfes ins Interesse sozialwissenschaftlicher wie politisch-aktivistischer Ansätze. –Jens Kastner.
Die Bildstrecke zeigt diverse icons, die von Katherine Ball, Katarzyna Winiecka und Imayna Caceres mit Refugee Protest Vienna entwickelt wurden. Sie wurden und werden als Teil von öffentlichen Installationen, als Poster und Flyer verwendet, und setzen mit Flucht verbundene Situationen, Instrumente, Gefahren ins Bild. So funktionieren sie als Interventionen in den öffentlichen Raum und prägnantes Kommunikationsmittel, um Forderungen der Refugee Bewegungen nicht nur in Wien Gewicht und Nachdruck zu verleihen. Solidarize with the Refugee Protest Vienna!
http://refugeecampvienna.noblogs.org
Bildpunkt N°46 Aus dem utopischen Halbdunkel
Heft Mai, Künstlerische position
2018
Wer braucht überhaupt Organisation – die Zivilgesellschaft oder die postsozialdemokratische Linke, das alternative Milieu, das Prekariat oder die Subalternen? Und welche – Netzwerk, Mosaik, Schwarm, oder doch Partei? Auch stellen sich Fragen der Organisierung im Kunstfeld strukturell anders als im politischen Feld. Nicht zuletzt angesichts des Regierungswechsels in Österreich und des Vormarsches ultrarechter Bewegungen und Parteien in ganz Europa stellt sich die Frage linker Organisierung neu. Während mit dem Aufbruch in Österreich der langen Reihe linker Organisierungsversuche ein weiterer hinzugefügt wurde, hat auch die Geschichte des künstlerischen Feld einige Zusammenrottungen um Programme, Mitglieder und Statuten zu bieten. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser historischen Differenzen und gegenwärtiger Entwicklungen stellt der Bildpunkt die Organisationsfrage(n), um sie nicht länger im „utopischen Halbdunkel“ zu belassen, wo Lukács sie noch sah. –Jens Kastner.
Auf dem Backcover ist eine Bleistiftzeichnung von Imayna Caceres abgebildet, die einen Ausschnitt ihrer Installation Condor, Puma, Serpiente (2018) zeigt. Die Arbeit ist eine Würdigung der und Annäherung an die Frauen ihrer Familie, die die Künstlerin, Kuratorin und Aktivistin mit peruanischer Herkunft, die seit mittlerweile 10 Jahren in Wien lebt, als Fundament ihrer eigenen sowie der kollektiven Geschichte begreift. Ihre Methode des Zeichnens, die sie beim Porträtieren ihrer Großmutter und ihrer Mutter gewählt hat, beschreibt Drei künstlerische Positionen begleiten jede Ausgabe des Bildpunkt und sind als eigenständige Kommentare und Reflexionen zum jeweiligen Thema des Heftes zu verstehen. Caceres sorgfältiges Verknüpfen und Verweben von Bleistiftstrichen, um, wie sie sagt, „die Wege nachzuzeichnen, die zu mir führen, die Schichten und Gewebe, die mich ausmachen, die Wurzeln, die mir Halt geben.“ Zeichnen stellt für sie eine Form der Annäherung, ein Werkzeug des Erinnerns dar – in Anbetracht einer Abwesenheit von Fotos oder Dokumenten, die von ihrer Vergangenheit erzählen könnten.
Thanks to Carlos Toledo who invited me to participate in this edition.
Bildpunkt N°31 EXITstrategien
Heft Frühling, Künstlerische position
Katherine Ball, Katarzyna Winiecka, Imayna Caceres and Refugee Protest Vienna
2014
Eine lange „Tradition der Migration“ machte die Feministin Gloria Anzaldúa 1987 in ihrem Buch Borderlands aus, die durch das Ziehen einer neuen Grenze ausgelöst worden sei. Konkret gemeint war der Grenzverlauf zwischen Mexiko und den USA. Nach dem Krieg zwischen den beiden Ländern wurden 1848 weite Teile des mexikanischen Nordens den USA zugeschlagen. Aber Anzaldúa verallgemeinert diese Situation: Jede Grenze erzeugt Bevölkerungsgruppen, die auf der „falschen“ Seite leben und schafft unterschiedliche Lebensbedingungen, die zum Ortswechsel verleiten. Wenn auch auf Gewalt und Zwang beruhend, so bieten solche Grenzräume laut Anzaldúa doch auch Möglichkeiten. Strategische Möglichkeiten, die auch den Umgang mit (immer fremdund selbstzugeschriebener) Zugehörigkeit betreffen. „Nothing happens in the ‚real’ world“, schreibt Anzaldúa, „unless it first happens in the images of our heads.“ Sich etwas klar- und sich ein Bild machen, Kognition und Kreation, rücken hier recht eng zusammen und werden zur selbstbestimmten Grundlage sozialen Wandels gemacht. Deshalb rückt auch die Bildproduktion dies- und jenseits des eigenen Kopfes ins Interesse sozialwissenschaftlicher wie politisch-aktivistischer Ansätze. –Jens Kastner.
Die Bildstrecke zeigt diverse icons, die von Katherine Ball, Katarzyna Winiecka und Imayna Caceres mit Refugee Protest Vienna entwickelt wurden. Sie wurden und werden als Teil von öffentlichen Installationen, als Poster und Flyer verwendet, und setzen mit Flucht verbundene Situationen, Instrumente, Gefahren ins Bild. So funktionieren sie als Interventionen in den öffentlichen Raum und prägnantes Kommunikationsmittel, um Forderungen der Refugee Bewegungen nicht nur in Wien Gewicht und Nachdruck zu verleihen. Solidarize with the Refugee Protest Vienna!
http://refugeecampvienna.noblogs.org
Thanks to Katarzyna Winiecka and Katherine Ball who asked me to take part.
Bleibeführer_in Wien
Guide for refugees and asylum seekers who stay to live in Vienna
Collective project
2012
A guide to make visible the network of support towards migrants and asylum seekers and to encourage resistance by gathering local, political, and cultural spaces, as well as testimonies on how to deal with social workers, police harassment or any other forms of institutionalized racism. Places where to sleep, legal and asylum support, governmental institutions, antiracist work organizations, counseling for women, queer spaces, healthcare centers for migrants, options for mobility, education, children, culture, and spaces for political organization. First edition: 1000 copies. Second edition: 1500 copies. The guide can be downloaded here and a search by districts can be made here. Initiated by Hansel Sato and Erinmwionghae Clifford in cooperation with Planet 10 in the frame of Wienwoche. Thanks to Hansel Sato who invited me to participate.
An Indigenous critique of the State
Utopia of alliances, conditions of impossibilities and the vocabulary of decoloniality.
Editorial Group for Writing Insurgent Genealogies
361 pp. Löcker Verlag
2013
A reflection of forms of anti-racist, anti-colonial, political, theoretical, critical and artistic works. In this book the concept of decoloniality is employed to rethink learning processes coming from positions that are not exclusively Western-oriented but are instead formed by other political-social contexts and perspectives.
Editorial Group for Writing Insurgent Genealogies
361 pp. Löcker Verlag
2013
A reflection of forms of anti-racist, anti-colonial, political, theoretical, critical and artistic works. In this book the concept of decoloniality is employed to rethink learning processes coming from positions that are not exclusively Western-oriented but are instead formed by other political-social contexts and perspectives.
I took the opportunity to have the protest of an unidentified Awajun-Wampi woman published in the book: in the Peruvian Amazon a series of protests against the extraction of oil, wood and gold in protected areas, is counteracted by the State and ends with a hundred civilians injured and the death of what is presented as murdered policemen and deceased natives. While the figure 'exploitation of natural resources – damage to the environment – protest – state repression' is a constant in Peru, the protest of the Amazonian peoples reveals the most salient aspects of the underlying continuities of a colonial system. State representatives refer to the protesters as terrorists who impede the progress of the country, or alternative as good people ("the natives are good") who are just being manipulated by forces who seek to destabilize the government. This denial of the Amazonian subject and/or of the Indigenous subject as a political subject, is questioned by the protest speech of an Awajun-Wampi woman who provides an analysis of the role of the State in her sense of reality. Thanks to the class of Post Conceptual Art Practices of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in which the book was produced between 2011-2013.