[Liuhum] Gender Studies and LiU-Humanities event 18 May

[Olga Zabalueva]

Dear colleagues,

See the invitation below and contact me (olga.zabalueva at liu.se<mailto:olga.zabalueva at liu.se>) or Madina Tlostanova for a Zoom-link.

Från: Madina Tlostanova <madina.tlostanova at liu.se>



TEMA GENUS Higher Seminar

18 May 2021, 13.15-16.00 (GMT+2)

Mini-Symposium

Navigating Institutional Agendas:  how to organize against appropriation and erasure of decolonial art practices?



In this mini-symposium we aim to discuss appropriation, extractivism and erasure of decolonial art practices in institutions like academia, museums, and art organizations. We would like to accommodate, from our different positionalities, a conversation that aids in analyzing and understanding these processes and also ask the question of what to do? Resisting, refusing, and countering these institutional agendas often entails a slow, frustrating and frequently damaging process for the people, speaking with Sara Ahmed, who complain or signal an injustice.

Terms like decoloniality all too easily get co-opted as cosmetics rather than as critical practice. In protecting and persisting in one’s own decolonial, anti-racist practice, multiple problems are encountered. Most of them can be boiled down to the imperialist structures of western institutions and the systems of power they uphold. The hierarchy between the few with fixed term contracts and precarious flex-contracts is one such example, another is taking up notions as trends rather than as critical engagement, as well as intellectual racism. What knowledge production is accepted as knowledge, and what knowledge is seen as ‘merely’ personal experience that can be used by those in power without credit? One possible route is to find common ground by those working in art practice and those working in academia in recognizing, calling out, and halting these harmful processes.



Katayoun Arian is an independent curator based in Amsterdam, currently also working at Tent, Platform for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. Her curatorial work is rooted in a commitment to grapple with complex divisions and interplays between historical narratives and events, and contemporary discourses and phenomena. In attending to different methodologies and analytical frames, and cross-disciplinary practices, her projects range from exhibitions, discursive events, to a self-directed DJ-ing archival practice; building and activating sonic archives. Her research is embedded in intersectional feminist and queer legacies, and various and divergent decolonial and diasporic frameworks and positionalities in envisioning an alternative collectivity.



Katayoun Arian will talk about how institutional appropriation of anti-colonial and ant-racist activism, discourses and curatorial models, is at work in the contemporary art world. She will also shed light on how this relates to a model in which temporary, precarious contracts and infringement on the moral right to the ownership of ideas and of practice, are detrimental to the wellbeing of art workers and specifically curators.



Aigerim Kapar is an independent curator, cultural activist, founder of the Artcom platform public engaged art platform and an alternative school Art Collider. She was born in 1987 in Kazakhstan and continues to live and work between Astana and Almaty. In her curatorial practice, Kapar focuses on postcolonial and decolonial discourses in Central Asia. Kapar curates and organizes exhibitions, urban art interventions, discussions, lectures, and workshops. To accomplish such wide-ranging initiatives, she often collaborates closely with art and educational institutions, as well as scientific apparatuses.



Aigerim Kapar will talk about attempts to appropriate decolonial discourse in Kazakhstan, based on her curatorial practice and Artcom Platform community initiatives. She will also share reflections on how decolonial discourse is becoming fashionable and profitable in the Central Asian region.



Fabienne Rachmadiev is a writer and researcher. Currently she is finishing her PhD on (temporalities of) historical and environmental waste in contemporary art from the former Soviet Union, with a special focus on art and art collectives from Central Asia, at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (University of Amsterdam). Her work concerns the changing role of art vis-a-vis social, political, and environmental issues. Recent publications include “Female Shamans: Healing Rituals for Environmental Catastrophe in the Work of Almagul Menlibayeva,” in Tijdschrift Kunstlicht.  She also writes art criticism, essays, and fiction. Her first novel is forthcoming with Das Mag Publishers (Dutch).



Fabienne Rachmadiev will talk about what kind of knowledge is viewed as knowledge within an academic context, and what kind of knowledge is seen as a free to exploit source of personal experience, for example to illustrate or legitimize trendy “decolonial” projects. In this process of erasure there are many layers that accommodate the process; what could be the layers that halt such a process?


https://www.routledge.com/Postcolonial-and-Postsocialist-Dialogues-Intersections-Opacities-Challenges/Koobak-Tlostanova-Thapar-Bjorkert/p/book/9780367434403<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.routledge.com%2FPostcolonial-and-Postsocialist-Dialogues-Intersections-Opacities-Challenges%2FKoobak-Tlostanova-Thapar-Bjorkert%2Fp%2Fbook%2F9780367434403&data=04%7C01%7Colga.zabalueva%40liu.se%7Cd2398da81aae4c52fa7708d9138ea2ab%7C913f18ec7f264c5fa816784fe9a58edd%7C0%7C0%7C637562325604317674%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=mG8GXsUIcspSbikrIftOzC35NSSu5CCkcdbr3xsDxSg%3D&reserved=0>

Madina Tlostanova
Professor of postcolonial feminisms


Organisation: Institutionen för Tema (TEMA) / Tema Genus (TEMAG)
Telefon: +4613281763
Internt: 1763
E-post: madina.tlostanova at liu.se<mailto:madina.tlostanova at liu.se>

Besöksadress
Temahuset
Rum E:424
Campus Valla, Linköping<https://liu.se/karta?px_campus=Campus%20Valla&px_building=Temahuset&l=sv>

Postadress
Linköpings universitet
Madina Tlostanova
Institutionen för Tema (TEMA) / Tema Genus (TEMAG)
581 83 Linköping
Sweden


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