Art Activism for an Anticolonial Future , livre ebook

ART ACTIVISM FOR AN ANTICOLONIAL FUTURE
SUNY series, Praxis: Theory in Action Nancy A. Naples
ART ACTIVISM FOR AN ANTICOLONIAL FUTURE
CARLOS GARRIDO CASTELLANO
Cover image: Abandoned Beaver Dam at Karukinka, 2016. Image courtesy of Christy Gast.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Garrido Castellano, Carlos, author.
Title: Art activism for an anticolonial future / Carlos Garrido Castellano.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2021] | Series: SUNY series, praxis: theory in action | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021000579 | ISBN 9781438485737 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781438485744 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Art—Political aspects. | Art and social action. | Decolonization in art.
Classification: LCC N72.P6 G385 2021 | DDC 701/.03—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000579
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART 1: UNDISCIPLINING SOCIALLY ENGAGED ART
1. Art Biennials and Postcolonialism’s Politics of Discourse
2. The Lexicon of Social Practice and Socially Engaged Art’s Futures
PART 2: RADICAL AFFINITIES AND THE HORIZON OF DECOLONIZATION
3. On Experience, Land Use, and the Threats of the Bourgeoisie: Learning from Amílcar Cabral
4. Art, Engagement, and Popular Imagination: Around the “Missed Encounter” between Theodor Adorno and C. L. R. James
PART 3: LEGACIES
5. The Boda Moment: Repositioning Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary Uganda
6. Art and Politics in Times of Reform: The Collective and the Contemporary in Indonesia
7. Agency and (Street) Art Politics in Beirut: On Temporary Art Platform’s Guide for Urban Intervention
PART 4: ENCLOSURES, APERTURES, AND THE PERFORMATIVE
8. Utility, Multispecies Agency, and Speculative Study: On Ensayos
9. Activism and Performance in the Age of Intellectual and Artistic Witch Hunting
Open Coda: Black Lives Matter and/for the Genealogies of Subversive Artistic Creativity
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 3.1 . Graffiti in honor of Amílcar Cabral . Figure 3.2 . Amílcar Cabral . Figure 5.1 . Lilian Mary Nabulime, Winnowing , 2002–2004 . Figure 5.2 . Participants in discussion, responding to Lilian Mary Nabulime’s collaborative project on HIV/AIDS . Figure 5.3 . Disability Art Project Uganda meeting, 32 East Art Trust, Kampala, Uganda . Figure 6.1 . Apotik Komik, Sakit Berlanjut , 1999 . Figure 6.2 . Taring Padi, Festival Memedi Sawah . Figure 6.3 . Taring Padi, Aset Koruptor , 2003 . Figure 6.4 . OK Video Militia festival poster . Figure 6.5 . ruangrupa, Karbon journal cover, 2003 . Figure 7.1 . Temporary Art Platform, research photos for the database on public art practices, Lebanon . Figure 7.2 . Temporary Art Platform, cover page of the tool guide A Few Things You Need to Know When Creating an Art Project in a Public Space in Lebanon . Figure 7.3 . Omar Fakhoury, The Flag , a site-specific intervention in the framework of Art Interventions on Dalieh, 2017 . Figure 7.4 . Jana Traboulsi, Because They Want a View on the Sea, We Cannot See the Sky , 2010 . Figure 8.1 . Ensayos, drowned in Useless Bay, 2011 . Figure 8.2 . Ensayos, abandoned beaver dam at Karukinka, 2016 . Figure 8.3 . Ensayos, on the road to Estancia Vicuña, 2016. Source : Courtesy of Christy Gast . Figure 8.4 . Ensayos, Being , Camila Marambio, Isla Navarino, 2014 . Figure 8.5 . Ensayos, Camila Marambio testing scent mounds at Rio Calavera, 2016 . Figure 8.6 . Ensayos, testing scents at New York’s freest art school, 2015 . Figure 9.1 . Padre António Vieira statue, Largo Trindade Coelho, Lisbon . Figure 9.2 . Public art piece by Frederico Draw and Ergo Bandits made on the occasion of the opening of the Casa da Cultura de Cabo Verde, Lisbon . Figure 9.3 . Strike in Portugal against violence against women in Brazil, Coimbra, Portugal . Figure 9.4 . Online banner mobilized as part of the strike in Portugal against violence against women in Brazil, Coimbra, Portugal .
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book owes much to the generosity and determination of cultural activists, scholars and artists all corners of the world. Special thanks to my editors at SUNY, Rebecca Colesworthy and James Peltz, for their continuous support and valuable feedback. Thanks also to the anonymous peer reviewers who contributed to improve the first version of the book. I would like to express my gratitude to: Santi Pérez, Marta Pacheco, Fernanda Gil Costa, Inocência Mata, Magdalena López, Rita Correia, Elsa Peralta, Clara Saraiva, Filipa Rosário, Sofia Pinto, Miguel Amado, Paulo Raposo, Otávio Raposo, Pedro Lapa, Susana Araújo, Everton Machado, Helena Buescu, Ana Nolasco, Ângela Fernandes, Bruno Leitão, Jorge Cabrera Gómez, Lizi Meneses, Adriana Bebiano, Joana Craveiro, António Sousa Ribeiro in Portugal. This book could not have been possible without the supportive atmosphere I found at the University College Cork. Thanks to Helena Buffery, Pedro Nilsson-Fernández, Céire Broderick, Clare Geraghty, Rafa Jaime and all my colleagues at SPLAS; to Chiara Giuliani, Yairen Jerez, James O’Sullivan, Marco Amici, Daragh O’Connell, Pat Crowley, Dónal Hassett, Silvia Ross, Kevin Cawley, Till Weingartner and all my colleagues at CACSSS. Thanks also to Helen Carey and the Firestation Dublin staff, Fiona Kearney and Mary Kelly. I found a perfect space to discuss and improve the chapters of this book in the lectures of the MA in Global Gallery Studies. Thanks to my colleagues Lucy Dubert, Giulia Luciani, Fiona Carey, Kayleigh Falvey, Chloé Griffin, Phoebe Milne, Heather Dorgan, Marie Lynch, and Giulia Priori for providing answers to some of my doubts as well as for arising more productive questions. My gratitude to the staff of Coffee Dock at the O’Rahilly Building, a place that became my second office in the last stage of writing. Special thanks to Nuala Finnegan for her continuous support and help with the preparation of the final version of this book. In Kampala, thanks to Margaret Nagawa, Lilian Mary Nabulime, Fred Batale, Teesa Bahana, Angelo Kakande and the supportive staff of the art history department at Makerere University and the artistic community of 32º East: Ugandan Arts Trust. Thanks also to Tatiana Neves and the Fundação Amílcar Cabral, to Ceri Dingle, Andrew Smith, Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, Mounira Souliman, Patrick Mudekereza, Alexandros Kioupkiolis, André Mesquita, Denisa Tomkova, Nomusa Makhubu, Jay Koh, Amanda Abi Khalil and the staff of Ashkal Alwan and the American University of Beirut. In Java, special thanks to Agung Jenong, Brigitta Isabella, Wok the Rock, Annie Sloman and the members of Taring Padi, ruangrupa, and the staff of Kunci Cultural Studies Center and the Indonesian Visual Art Archive. In Chile and beyond special thanks to Camila Marambio, Christy Gast and Carla Macchiavello. In the United States, thanks to the Field Journal editorial team, Diana Taylor, Suzanne Lacy, Claire Bishop, Brian Holmes, Michaeline Crichlow, Edward J. Sullivan, Terry Smith and all the staff of CUNY, NYU, Duke University and the University of California San Diego who were patient enough to welcome me and help in this research. Special thanks to Grant Kester and Greg Sholette for the feedback provided on specific chapters. This book would not exist without the continuous support of Pat Odber. Finally, my warmest gratitude goes as always to Leonor Oliveira for her infinite patience and support.
It goes without saying that I am the only responsible of all the possible mistakes and lacks of the book. Part of chapter 5 simultaneously appeared in 2018 in Field: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art of in California and Start Journal in Kampala under the title of “The Boda Moment: Positioning Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary Uganda.” Part of chapter 7 previoulsy appeared in 2020 in Studi Maghrebini Journal under the title of “Temporary Art Platform and the Reconfiguration of the Public Space in Beirut.” A much shorter version of chapter 8 was published in 2019 in Discipline Journal under the title of “Utility, Uselessness, and Speculative Study: On Ensayos.”
INTRODUCTION
T his work, Art Activism for an Anticolonial Future , sets out to identify socially engaged artists as active practitioners of decolonization. Conceiving of both socially engaged art and decolonial thought as potentially subversive, praxis-based tools for social transformation, the book argues that there is much to be gained from putting both traditions into dialogue. I believe that both share objectives and can complement and refine each other. Following Cedric Robinson’s incisive observation that capitalism is always racial capitalism, and that social inequalities are shaped by (and shape in turn) racial categorizations, Art Activism for an Anticolonial Future maintains that art activists and socially engaged artists are equipped with a decades-long experience of challenging the reasoning that lies behind neoliberal capitalism.
In this book, I argue that there exist multiple, alternative genealogies of socially engaged art. This means at least two things: first, that our histories of art and activism and our critical appreciation of those cultural phenomena are incomplete if they fail to explore the transnational articulations (both historical and contemporary) deployed by affirmative, resistant a