SOMETHING ELSE
CRITICAL IMAGINATION AGAINST NARRATIVES OF CRISIS
Is it still a turning point or already a condition? Crisis fatigue, in crisis with crisis. The multiplicity of crises—climate, war, economics, food, health, care etc—mediated, narrated, framed in various ways. There is crisis everywhere, no doubt, we, as inhabitants of the planet, are in trouble and we are running out of time. There are crisis effects at a distance or close by, depending where we live and if we can afford to ignore it or not. How to respond to such an overwhelming, unjust crisis condition? Where to apply the leverage?
Following the etymological traces of the term crisis we arrive at ancient Greek term krinô (to separate, to choose, cut, to decide, to judge), which suggested a definitive decision. In this sense, Crisis, as a decision-making force, seems to contain an attention generating magnet that regulates what comes before and after as balanced or normal. But normal for whom? What if a situation that some would describe as a crisis is an every day condition for others? How to think and narrate crisis otherwise? In which way is the notion of crisis in crisis? Does the concept of crisis itself propels binarisms against linking options---because it prefers the either-or to the and? To be able to address the increasingly separating gaps that the crisis condition of our time is producing, we need to see the entanglement of the various factors producing a multiplicity of crises. Understanding these entanglements could be a first step to find unexpected connections, search for the non-obvious common grounds. Like a drawing exercise, creating a web between hidden dots.
If we think of the practice of film editing, a decision to make a cut is necessary to make a new connection between two images. In this sense, montage entails and counters a narrative of crisis at the same time. In fact, in a progression of cutting, dividing and assembling a narrative evolves in linear or non-linear ways, like working through a crisis-continuum as decision making.
We understand the set-up of the consortium in such a montage-way, with an artistic practice of editing and framework-building. To conceptualise narratives of crisis otherwise we will investigate with each project partner different constellations of separation from various angles and counter the logic of separation with an artistic approach.
By bringing world perspectives on crises narratives to the centre of attention, by starting to listen and learning how to learn, we aim to flip sides, build oscillating fields and floors, to strengthen capacities of imagination. Understanding Art and Culture, Industrial Design, Moving Image and Documentary Practices as bridge-making tools and methodologies for research, capable of linking analytical strengths and methodologies of Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, Political Theory and Economics instead of separating them. In this sense, artists, cultural workers, humanists and interpreters are seen as agents to offer narratives of entanglement against crises provoked by separation.
Entanglement
the work of research with the research of work
the question of research with a research for questions...
Ruth First in Mozambique 78-82
Behind all of this experimentation was Ruth's conviction that scientific intellectual work is indispensable in a revolutionary struggle, although the professional intellectual is perhaps less so. She herself reveled in intellectual life and adored a sharp critical discussion of a novel or film, enjoyed talking about ideas, but was increasingly impatient with and bored by the existential self-torture of many intellectuals. The Development Course recruited students of extremely varied educational backgrounds; some had attended only primary school but had a good deal of work experience. The course aimed not to turn them into professional researchers but, rather, to train revolutionary cadres, seeing social investigations as a necessary part of their work.
Aquino de Bragança and Bridget O'Laughlin, The Work of Ruth First in the Centre of Africa Studies — The Development Course, in Review VIII, 2, Fall 1984, 159-17.
Detachment
Galway, Centre of Creative Technology -- the fear of detachment through immersion -- the cut produced through virtual reality. + Internation Arts Festival, Galway.
Resonance
Memorial study, StreetArt in divided cities (Beirut), the concept of resonance
Street Art and the ‘Right to the City’ in a Fragmented Metropolis: The Case of Beirut
Cuts and Juxtapositions
Editing as methodology, Cut, Copy, Paste
to cut through time and geographical distance, not to separete but to show parallel strands, sound-image, connecting Nanterre & Maputo
Relative Proximity
Nanterre / laboratoire SOPHIAPOL,
Banlieu, separated from centre
history of the university, erasing traces, the presence of history, Lefebvre & argument in relation to proximity: students, migrants, workers on the way to university as starting point for '68 >> innovative potential from the peripheries
production of separation of scientific disciplines > higher education in crisis?