Issue 54

We Burn Disbelief: Disability, Surveillance Infrastructures and Salvation Ecologies

Artist and writer Khairani Barokka takes apart the ‘infrastructure of disbelief’ that permeates the contemporary art world, or what she ironically dubs CAW. Looping together a violent chain of disbeliefs, Barokka shows how such infrastructure is a feature of both art institutions and increasingly privatised and over-stretched medical service providers.

POLITICS INC.

In a text appearing for the first time in English translation, Brazilian philosopher Vladimir Safatle describes the function of art as an opening that allows the (metaphorical) breaking of bodies, so that new circuits of affects might appear in place of fossilised formations. Building on Freud, Safatle sees in the production of new affective circuits the possibility of political emancipation.

Whatever the Future Will Be, It is Made Now

As an outcome of his commitment to Ukraine Bart De Baere noticed that the responses by both the Russian and the international art scene to the ethical questions raised by this ongoing disaster remain shallow. De Baere’s was written with the validity of the Ukrainian art scene as a core reference, reflecting from that perspective on the absence of an alternative ‘good Russia’ and of more consistent reflections in the international art scene.

Atmospheres Full of Information: A Conversation with Imogen Stidworthy

In conversation with Afterall editor Nav Haq, Imogen Stidworthy retraces the development of her artistic practice over a period of thirty years. Her projects dwell on the cusp between different modes of sense-making and perception, forging an emancipatory path beyond any reliance on normative categories of being.

Voicing: A Practice of Exodus

Eleni Ikoniadou focuses on Imogen Stidworthy’s work with Iris Johansson, a therapist and writer on the autistic spectrum who was non-verbal until the age of twelve. In Stidworthy’s filmic set-ups, Johansson becomes a mediator or translator between verbal and non-verbal modes of communication.

Access as Generative Site: in conversation with Christine Sun Kim

Over this conversation, Christine Sun Kim generously unpacks ‘access’ in its many iterations: the persisting ableism in art institutions, the multifaceted role of access riders, the richness and complexity of American Sign Language (ASL) and how to simultaneously engage deaf and non-deaf audiences.

‘Like Waves in my Body’: On Tarek Atoui’s Sonic Practice

Discussing artist Tarek Atoui’s sound-works developed with students from Al Amal School for the Deaf in Sharjah, UAE, Rayya Badran highlights the productive role of collaboration for the artist in his exploration of sound’s physical, haptic and material nature. Through this close attention to embodied differences in perception, an expansive and sensorial grammar of sound-as-vibration emerges.

Arthur Bispo do Rosário, an Emblematic Art Brut/Outsider Creator

Edward Gómez situates Arthur Bispo do Rosário’s vast body of objects – a replica of the universe meant to endure the end of times – within the context of work by other outsider artists who have created unique, highly personal art at the margins of society.

Representing the World, Weathering its End: Arthur Bispo do Rosário’s Ecology of the Ship

Marlon Miguel focuses on Arthur Bispo do Rosário’s many ship-shaped objects which, he suggests, function as symbolic markers of the transatlantic slave trade and the persistent climate of antiblackness in Brazilian society. Borrowing a neologism from poet Conceição Evaristo, Miguel names Bispo’s act of defiant self-inscription in a history that wanted to erase him an escrevivência, a writing to survive.

Silke Otto-Knapp (1970-2022)

Mark Lewis remembers artist and former Afterall journal Managing Editor Silke Otto-Knapp.

The Rise (and Fall?) of the Postcolonial Documenta

Sunil Shah reflects on the historical legacy of Documenta11 (2002), revisited in light of the recent edition of documenta fifteen (2022) and its critical reception. Locating in Okwui Enwezor’s paradigm-shifting exhibition the roots of a postcolonial turn that paved the way for ruangrupa’s appointment to the position of artistic directors, Shah wonders, however, whether postcolonial subjects working within a Western art context will ever be allowed to speak on their own terms.