Modernity is grounded in a conception of time that understands historical progression and change to be derived from a series of particular events, particular places, particular people, and particular actions. This particular history projects an anticipation of the future. We can witness this in the collective anxieties surrounding contemporary geopolitical events, from referenda, elections and territorial contests to infrastructural developments, oil spills, and bombings. How does this affect the societal bonds that keep us together, or keep us apart? The panel Tipping Points reflects on how events are conceptualised and gain significance through networks of power. Tipping Points is curated and moderated by Nick Axel.
Natasha Ginwala
Planetary Records as Documents toward Addressing Justice
The upcoming Contour Biennale 8 Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium unfolds through artistic acts that challenge procedures of testimony, evidence production and witnessing, as well as the performative nature of the trial. As the neoliberal extractive imaginary conceives the earth as negative matter, we now face the unraveling of the limits of justice as a volatile crisis of ethics within the present.
John Palmesino
Anthropocene Tipping Points
Territories are the complex set of relations to things that keep us alive. They are bound spaces, where intersecting borders establish semi-stable relations between polities and their material base of operations. The Anthropocene marks an exit from modern forms of territorial organisation of humanity. Remote sensing and technologies of measuring and surveying lay out new territories cutting through pre-established ones, often in a violent way. These new territories reconfigure the transient relations between the institutionalised forms of cohabitation and their material spaces. No more figure/ground.
ARTISTS/SPEAKERS
Fri 24 Feb
De Brakke Grond
John Palmesino is an architect and urbanist. He has established Territorial Agency together with Ann-Sofi Rönnskog. Territorial Agency is an independent organisation that innovatively promotes and wo...
John Palmesino
Fri 24 Feb
De Brakke Grond
Natasha Ginwala is a curator, researcher, and writer. She is curator of Contour Biennale 8 and curatorial advisor for documenta 14 (2017).
Natasha Ginwala
Fri 24 Feb
De Brakke Grond
Nick Axel is an architectural critic, theorist, editor and researcher based in Rotterdam. He is currently Deputy Editor of e-flux Architecture, where his work focuses on experimenting with the media a...