Melanie Bonajo, František Demeter, Nicoline Van Harskamp, Satch Hoyt, Thomas Kilpper & Massimo Ricciardo, Khvay Samnang, Pilvi Takala
Curated by Mira Keratová, Caroline Krzyszton in the frame of the EASTERN SUGAR project
Centre for Contemporary Art FUTURA, Prague
Exhibition architect: Tomáš Džadoň
January 15 — April 18, 2021
The exhibition is part of a research project Eastern Sugar by the artist Ilona Németh, which examines the history of the sugar industry and its wider social and environmental impacts. The autonomous exhibition project LISTENING TO VOICES follows the discourse of the Eastern Sugar project developed on the platform of international cooperation.
The concept of the exhibition follows possible perspectives for the decolonization of the future from the deconstruction of the following colonial ideologies related to land and further capital, respectively wealth, through the decolonization of language, education, technology, etc. Through decentred positioning, the idea of the exhibition is to address inherited and unconsciously adapted, perpetuating oppressive systems of neoliberal post-growth era, characterized by grief from climate change and deepening inequalities, which remain the dominant and uninterrupted social concept even in times of global pandemic.
The aim of the exhibition project LISTENING TO VOICES is to contribute to the ongoing emancipation processes that anticipate the future of healing and justice through psychoanalytic and feminist approaches of: Radical Ethics with its psychology of contemporary trauma and using a relational perspective as an empathic projection towards ethical co-emergence with Others; and Ethics of Care, which, in contrast to the idea of so-called Universal Justice, instead of abstract principles of morality, deals with justice based framework through Relational Ethics, developed through the individual relational acts in a concrete real-life situations and through responsibility to Others, who are, however, specific individuals.
Visual representation and aesthetic reflection of social or political conflicts should aim at sensitizing the viewer, exploring the ethical dimension of political action and a liberating vision of the world of equality: from questioning fixed norms of behavior (P. Takala) to situational learning (S. Hoyt), through the involvement of digital ecofeminism (M. Bonajo) and traditional cultural rituals related to the environmental impacts of neocolonialism (K. Samnang) to the critique of the new (capitalist-consumer) ethics commodifying the needs (F. Demeter) – from solidarity and inclusive justice (T. Kilpper, M. Ricciardo) to dialogical engagement of dystopian feminism (N. Van Harskamp), to the act of the fictive language of social constructs and shared ideas.