EMΣΤ would like to invite you to the performative symposium Other-Than-Statecraft which marks the closing of the exhibition Statecraft. The symposium gathers artists, curators, writers, lawyers, academics and activists to explore the intersections of art and emancipatory politics, technology and law to reimagine and reclaim the tools of statecraft to confront rising authoritarianism, global precarity and climate catastrophe.
The first panel, “Stateless States,” engages a critique of the state and its patriarchal and nationalist mentalities, bringing forth contemporary ecologies of stateless politics and its cultural imaginaries. The second panel, “Collectivizations,” analyzes the neo-feudal order of trillion dollar companies such as Google and Meta, and imagines forms of collectivist digital communes instead. The third panel, “Transnational Unions,” challenges isolationist politics and seeks to imagine how a Pan-European and transnational politics can act at the scale of the crises that we collectively face today.
In between the panels, two performances by VASKOS and Urok Shirhan will take place under the title “Other-Than-Anthem” that explore the narrative and sonic potentialities of an other-than-statecraft to come.
The composition of the symposium is based on a triptych of artworks by Jonas Staal – New World Summit, Collectivize Facebook and New Unions – that are interwoven across two floors in the exhibition Statecraft, curated by Katerina Gregos.
With contributions by: Athena Athanasiou; Hera Chan; Viviana Checchia; Jan Fermon; Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei; Kyriaki Goni; Paul Goodwin; Katerina Gregos; Kawa Nemir; Mihnea Mircan; Urok Shirhan; Jonas Staal; Theophilos Tramboulis; VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas and Kostis Tzimoulis).
Organized by: Jonas Staal, Katerina Gregos, Theophilos Tramboulis
PRAGRAMME
13:00-18:00
Other-Than-Statecraft #1: Stateless States
What is the role of art and cultural work in the struggle for self-determination in the 21st century? And in what ways can we imagine and practice self-determination beyond the construct of the nation-state?
13:00-13:15 Welcome and introduction by Katerina Gregos (Artistic Director of ΕΜΣΤ)
13:15-13:25 Welcome and Introduction, Jonas Staal and Theophilos Tramboulis
13:25-13:35 Kawa Nemir
13:35-13:45 Hera Chan
13:45-13:55 Mihnea Mircan
13:55-14:30 Conversation with chair and audience
14:30-15:00 Break
Other-Than-Statecraft #2: Collectivizations
What is the role of art and cultural work in imagining new forms of collectivization in the face of collapsing social infrastructures on one hand, and the rise of trillion-dollar companies that act beyond democratic scrutiny on the other?
15:00-15:10 Songs of our Homeland, performance by VASKOS
15:10-15:15 Introduction by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei (chair)
15:15-15:25 Jan Fermon
15:25-15:35 Kyriaki Goni
15:35-16:10 Conversation with chair and audience
16:10-16:40 Break
Other-Than-Statecraft #3: Transnational Unions
What is the role of art and cultural work in imagining and practicing new forms of transnational unionization? How to act against collective crisis planetarily, while acknowledging the specificity of place at the same time?
16:40-16:50 Just Songs, performance by Urok Shirhan
16:50-16:55 Introduction by Viviana Checchia (chair)
16:55-17:05 Paul Goodwin
17:05-17:15 Athena Athanasiou
17:15-17:50 Conversation with chair and audience
17:50-18:00 Closing summaries Staal/Gregos/Tramboulis
18:00-onwards Drinks at the EMST Café
Biographies
Kawa Nemir is a Kurdish writer and translator of English language works into the Kurdish language. His translations include Ulysses by James Joyce and the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. He was also the editor-in-chief of the Kurdish literary magazine Jiyana Rewşen.
Hera Chan is a cultural worker living in Amsterdam by way of Kowloon, and the Adjunct Curator of Greater China at Tate. Her civic practice is informed by political praxis and structured around complicity with colleagues and friendship with collaborators. Hera’s work is concerned with power and mobility.
Mihnea Mircan is a curator and a writer based in Bucharest. His most recent projects are the exhibition A Biography of Daphne, presented at ACCA Melbourne, and Landscape in a Convex Mirror, an exhibition for the 2021 edition of the Art Encounters Biennial in Timisoara, Romania.
Katerina Gregos is a curator, lecturer and writer, based in Athens and Brussels Since the summer of 2021 she is artistic director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens. Her curatorial practice explores the relationship between art, society and politics with a particular view on questions of democracy, human rights, economy, ecology, crisis and changing global production circuits.
VASKOS is the common art project of Vassilis Noulas and Kostas Tzimoulis, which began in Athens in 2014. It deals with hybridity, exploring playfully the notion of artistic, sexual and national identity using various media: performance, photography, drawing, video and ceramics.
Jan Fermon is a lawyer at the Bar of Brussels, Belgium, specialized in criminal law, international (humanitarian) law and human rights law. Together with artist Jonas Staal he initiated the collective action lawsuit Collectivize Facebook, against Meta Platforms, Inc.
Kyriaki Goni is an artist based and born in Athens. Through multimedia installations, she critically touches on questions of technology and society interaction, such as privacy and surveillance, control of information, networks and infrastructures, as well as human-machine relationships.
Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei is a philologist, publisher, and co-director of independent open-access publishing platform punctum books, based in Tirana. He is a specialist of the Old Nubian language and co-editor-in- chief of Dotawo, the imprint of the Union for Nubian Studies.
Urok Shirhan is an artist based in Athens working on the intersection of performance, visual arts and critical theory. Engaging sound, video, and writing, her projects are entangled with found materials and narratives, historic as well as current, often informed by her family’s history of political migrations.
Paul Goodwin is an independent curator, urban theorist, academic and researcher, based in London, whose projects particularly focus on black and diaspora artists and visual cultures. He is director at the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN), University of the Arts London.
Athena Athanasiou is a professor at the department of Social Anthropology and Dean of the School of Social Sciences at the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, in Athens, Greece. Her publications include Agonistic Mourning: Political Dissidence and the Women in Black (2017).
Viviana Checchia is a critic and lecturer, and Residency Curator at Delfina Foundation, London. She further co-directs ‘vessel’, a curatorial platform, based in Puglia, Italy, that facilitates critical discussion on the cultural, social, economic and political change created through community-based work.
ACCESS
Τhe symposium will be held in English in the -1 level inside the venue of the exhibition Statecraft.
