TRANSNATIONALISMS / Bodies, Borders and Technology - Conference and exhibition curated by James Bridle

PROGRAMME

TUESDAY, 24 April 2018
17:00–17:45 James Bridle: The Real Name Game
17:45–18:15 Mojca Pajnik: Reclaiming Humanity: The Utopias of World Citizenship
18:30–19:00 Marco Ferrari: Italian Limes: Mapping the Shifting Border Across Alpine Glaciers
19:00–19:30 Q&A

20:30 Exhibition opening: Transnationalisms – Part I
+MSUM Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Maistrova 3, Ljubljana
Artists: Studio Folder

WEDNESDAY, 25 April 2018
17:00–17:45 Eleanor Saitta: Performing States
17:45–18:15 Denis Maksimov: steɪt əv nəʊlænd [State of Noland]: On Potent Futures Post-Sovereignty, Nationalism & Imperialism
18:30–19:00 Jean Peters (Peng! Collective): Hacking Politics with Subversion, Civil Disobedience and Law
19:00–19:30 Q&A

20:30 Exhibition opening: Transnationalisms – Part II
Aksioma | Project Space, Komenskega 18, Ljubljana
Artists: Raphael Fabre, Jeremy Hutchison, They Are Here, Julian Oliver, Daniela Ortiz, Jonas Staal

Free admission.
Please fill in the online registration form by 23 April 2018.

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We live in a time of stark and often violent paradoxes: the increasing liberalisation of social values in some parts of the world compared to increasing fundamentalism in others; the wealth of scientific discovery and technological advances in contrast to climate denialism, “post-factual” and conspiracy-driven politics; freedom of movement for goods and finance while individual movement is ever more constricted and subject to law; a drive towards agency, legibility and transparency of process while automation, computerisation and digitisation, render more of the world opaque and remote. At every level, mass movement of peoples and the rise of planetary-scale computation is changing the way we think and understand questions of geography, politics, and national identity.

These ever-increasing contradictions are seen most acutely at the border. Not merely the border between physical zones and between nation states, with their differing legal jurisdictions and requirements for entry and residency, but also the border between the physical and digital, when we apparently - but perhaps misleadingly and certainly temporarily - cross over into a different zone of possibility and expression.

This contradiction is also clear in the balkanisation of newly independent and fragmenting states, and in the rising current of nationalism across Europe, which seems to run in parallel to, and might even be accelerated by, digital connectivity. Some of the most outwardly regressive powers themselves employ what Kremlin theorist Vladislav Surkov has called “non-linear strategy”: a strategy of obfuscation and deliberate contradiction clearly indebted to the convolutions and confusions of the digital terrain - and of art. As ever more varied expressions of individual identity are encouraged, revealed, made possible and validated by online engagement, so at the same time a desperate rearguard action is being fought to codify and restrain those identities - online and off. These new emergent identities are, inevitably and by necessity, transient and contingent, slippery and subject to change and redefinition.

The artists featured in Transnationalisms address the effect of these pressures on our bodies, our environment, and our political practices. They register shifts in geography as disturbances in the blood and the electromagnetic spectrum. They draw new maps and propose new hybrid forms of expression and identity. In the exhibition and in associated lectures from artists, researchers and theorists, Transnationalisms acknowledges and even celebrates the contradictions of the present moment, while insisting on the transformative possibilities of digital tools and networks on historical forms of nationalism, citizenship, and human rights. While the nation state is not about to disappear, it is already pierced and entangled with other, radically different forms. Alternative models and protocols of citizenship, identity, and nationhood are being prototyped and distributed online and through new technologies. Transnationalisms examines the ways in which these new forms are brought into the physical world and used to disrupt and enfold existing systems. It does not assume the passing of old regimes, but proclaims the inevitability of new ones, and strives to make them legible, comprehensible, and accessible.



Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2018
Coproduction: Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture, Ljubljana and Drugo more, Rijeka
Partner: Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana
Supported by: the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Municipality of Ljubljana.


Transnationalisms is realized in the framework of State Machines, a joint project by Aksioma (SI), Drugo more (HR), Furtherfield (UK), Institute of Network Cultures (NL) and NeMe (CY).


This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.