Reframing Authority and Authorship in the Arts: Weaving Lines of Reparation

“If building a bridge does not enrich the consciousness of those who work on it, then the bridge should not be built.”

It’s from this premise by Franz Omar Fanon, extended as a conceptual territory, that we pave the way for the reflection that shapes this conference, on Black Consciousness Day (Dia da Consciência Negra). At a historical moment in which the concept of diversity tends to become meaningless in discourses about culture, we will address the dimensions of authority and authorship in order to facilitate (and perhaps accelerate) the thinking and implementation of radical and reparative insurrections in the cultural sector. The conference programme is built on a pedagogy of questions: what are anti-racist lines for the arts-education? And what/who are they for? How to repair what is repairable in the artistic sector in Portugal? What are the potential critics of our political-performative positions? How to operate the political categories of this time, without extending its duration?

Full curatorial text and participant bios here.

Full Programme

9:30am – 12:30pm
Theoretical-Practical Workshop
ANTI-RACIST LINES FOR ART/EDUCATION: WEAVING PASTS, PRESENTS, AND FUTURES
UNA – Black Union of Arts: Dori Nigro and Melissa Rodrigues
Room 2
Registration closed

Anti-Racist Lines for Art/Education. What are they? What is their purpose? And for whom? These are some of the opening questions that we come across in an attempt to materialise the desire to create an object that critically reflects reality, that questions and speculates more supportive, plural, and horizontal paths, and possibilities for the future in artistic and educational thinking-making. With art having the power to transform, create imageries, and expand to other realities and dimensions of feeling-thinking, these Anti-Racist Lines that are now woven by several hands - rooted in the knowledge, practices, and the listening of black artists, activists, thinkers, and educators, which presents itself as a dialogue and mediator-repairer-object for a pedagogy of the transgression that promotes effective changes in curricula, imageries, realities, and in their ways of thinking and doing. This is proposed as a theoretical-practical workshop.

12:30pm – 2:00pm
LUNCH

2:00pm – 3:30pm
Conversational Table
FANON PHARMACY - GRAMMARS OF THE BLUE
Vânia Gala and Participants
Small Auditorium
PT with simultaneous interpretation into EN
Free but ticketed event (tickets available at the box office from 1 pm)

This presentation takes the form of a conversational performance, based on a long table with the participants. Starting with the idea of tastes and smells as a sensorial opening to the world, revealing through them the intersections of human-non-human relations inscribed in them, and in particular, colonial history, to which I intend to jointly speculate alternative histories, knowledge, and performances. What are the potential critiques of these positions? We will experiment and look at black performances that refuse to update themselves in particular ways or even those that refuse certain calls to be made.

4:00pm – 6:00pm
Round Table
FROM THE AUTHORITY OF INERTIA TO THE RADICALITY OF THE REPAIRABLE
Anabela Rodrigues, Apolo de Carvalho, Cristina Roldão, Gessica Correia Borges e Kitty Furtado
Small Auditorium
PT with simultaneous interpretation into EN
Free but ticketed event (tickets available at the box office from 1 pm)

Social and associative movements, artists, and researchers from black communities, being historically subjected to precarious conditions, which they denounce, occupy a strategic position in the theoretical-practical formulation of reparation policies. However, they are still limited by the false idea of the unconstitutionality of affirmative action measures, a discourse that is promoted and reproduced through government bodies, conservative academia, the cultural sector, and civil society in a widespread way. This table focuses on debating how to repair what is repairable in the cultural sector, from a perspective that understands the diversity of individuals, groups, collectives, and associations that make it up. As well as to overcome the authority of established inertia, and identify radical paths towards social justice in the artistic world.

6:30pm – 8:00pm
LIMIT
Keynote speaker: Jota Mombaça
Small Auditorium
PT with simultaneous interpretation into EN
Free but ticketed event (tickets available at the box office from 1 pm)

How to practise thinking at the limit of things? How to operate the political categories of this time without extending its duration? How to think in the act of movement and transformation? This conference will be dedicated to a reflection on the notions of subject and author, as well as their constitutive limit. Thought from radical black, indigenous, and transfeminist traditions, such questions will be articulated based on the multiple temporalities of activism and social transformation, with a special focus on the here and now – that spiral dimension of time and space, in which past, present, and future converge in predictable and unpredictable ways.

Credits

Curated by Raquel Lima External Eyes Dori Nigro, Melissa Rodrigues Support União Negra das Artes Common Stories partners Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis, MC93 I Bobigny, Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, Alkantara, Culturgest, africologneFESTIVAL, Riksteatern, TR Warszawa Supported by Creative Europe