What is the political potentiality of artistic research? What are the discerning differences in the currency of care in artistic practices and in collaborative strategies of sharing when artistic research is reoriented from the perspectives of colonial histories and from the global south? What are the measures of dare in the relationship between praxis and poiesis? Could propositions from decolonial theories offer a revitalisation of artistic research that attends to epistemologies that have been neglected or repressed in western art practices.
In this keynote I described the connections between artistic research and decolonial strategies by proposing methods that facilitate epistemic disobedience, experimentation and counter-institutionalised artistic forms.
As a film practitioner and researcher, I am interested in making visible elided histories and exposing marginal or oppressed experiences. Working with archives is one of the tactical moves in a decolonial strategy – a political praxis-poesis to reclaim certain images and positions that would otherwise not be visible.
I grounded these propositions in my recent project developed as a trilogy on race, gender and sexuality; sourced from a single institutional archive to reflect processes of negotiating what Walter Mignolo describes as aesthesis – in a movement between representation and enunciation.
(Remark: because of copyright issues the video of this keynote cannot be included in this exhibition.)
Jyoti Mistry
Jyoti Mistry is Professor in Film at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg in Sweden. She works with film both as a research form and as a mode of artistic practice. She has made critically acclaimed films in multiple genres and her installation work draws from cinematic traditions but is often re-contextualized for galleries and museums that are outside of the linear cinematic experience.
Select works include: Cause of death (2020) When I grow up I want to be a black man (2017), Impunity (2014), 09: 21:25 (2011), Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit (2010), I mike what I like (2006) and We remember differently (2004). Her work has screened at numerous festivals including the Berlinale International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Kurzfilmtage in Winterthur, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Stockholm International Film Festival, Durban International Film Festival, Edinburgh Africa In Motion festival, African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York City and Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris.
Select publications include: we remember differently: Race, Memory, Imagination (2012) a collection of essays inspired by her film which explores the complexity of racial identity in South Africa. Gaze Regimes: Films and Feminisms in Africa (2015). Places to Play: practice, research, pedagogy (2017) explores the use of archive as an exemplar to rethink colonial images through “decolonised” film practices. She has edited special issues of the Journal of African Cinema: “Film as Research Tool: Practice and Pedagogy” (2018) and the International Journal of Film and Media Arts: “Mapping Artistic Research in Film” (2020).
She has taught at University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), New York University; University of Vienna; Arcada University of Applied Science Polytechnic in Helsinki, Nafti in Accra and Alle Arts School at University of Addis Ababa. Mistry was in the Whitney Museum Independent Artist programme and artist in residence at California College of Arts (San Francisco), Sacatar (Brazil), a DAAD Researcher at Babelsberg Konrad Wolf Film University (Berlin) and an artist in residence at Netherlands Film Academy. In 2020, she completed a residency at Västerbottens Museum in Sweden working with their indigenous Sami collection. In 2016 she was recipient of the Cilect (Association of International film schools) Teaching Award in recognition for innovation in practices in film research and pedagogy. From 2017-2020 she was the principal research investigator on a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) cross cultural project that explored image-making practices. Currently she is editor in chief of PARSE (Platform of Artistic Research in Sweden) and on the editorial board of L'Internationale Online.