The Gulbenkian Foundation Delegation in France and KADIST invite 2018 AFIELD Fellow Filipa César for a residency in Paris

The residency on the theme of social engagement is tailor-made for each invited personality and is conceived as an opportunity to showcase their work and commitment to the largest possible audience. For this first edition, Filipa César and her collaborator Marinho de Pina have been invited to share their cinematographic work in the field, which manifested in the creation of a media library for film and literature that they co-founded with the filmmaker Sana na N’Hada, in the village of Malafo, Guinea Bissau. It is a community run platform for sharing mundializing and traditional knowledges through practices in the fields of performing arts, archival practices, agroecology, moving image and digital media.

Public Events:

28 October 2022 : Cinema Saint André des Arts, Paris
Screening of ‘Mangrove School (2022)’ and ‘Navigating the Pilot School (2016)’

03 November 2022 : Centre Pompidou, Paris
Public conference «Planetarium»

Filipa César is an artist and filmmaker interested in the porous relationship between the moving image and its reception by the public, the fictional aspects of documentary, and the politics and poetics inherent in the production of moving images. A large part of her films focus on the specters of resistance within the geopolitical history of Portugal. Through the creation of performative spaces, she proposes a subjective approach to knowledge and questions the mechanisms of production of the great national narratives as well as the erasure of events and gestures of minorities. 

Since 2011, she has made several films that take as their matrix the first hours of the cinema of struggle and liberation in Guinea-Bissau, like fragments of a lost heritage whose potential she seeks to reanimate through a collective research, Luta ca caba inda (The struggle is not yet over). In 2017, Spell Reel, her first feature film that traces this adventure, had its world premiere at the Berlinale (Forum) and then showed in festivals and museums around the world, where it received numerous awards.

César has also shown her work regularly in contemporary art venues such as SAAVY (Berlin), Khiasma (Paris), Tensta konsthall, e-flux, Mumok, MoMA, Harvard Museum of Cinema. She was granted the AFIELD fellowship for art and social engagement in support of the project Mediateca Onshore

Marinho Pina is currently pursuing a PhD at the University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL), focusing on city planning in Bissau, the capital of Guinea-Bissau. He researches Guinea-Bissauan architecture and has a masterʼs degree in vernacular architecture and clay building. He is also a performing artist and a writer. Since 2016 he has been working in the public management of AJASS, a social organization in Sonaco, which aims to improve the quality of local education, to fight against female genital mutilation and HIV/AIDS, and against ecological destruction such as deforestation. Marinho de Pina is part of the collective developing the space Abotcha – Mediateca Onshore in Guinea Bissau, and has been collaborating in the New Alphabet research project at HKW, Berlin. 

The Delegation in France is the European branch of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a Portuguese foundation for all mankind, dedicated to promote human knowledge and improving the quality of life of people through arts, science and education. Established by the will of Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, the Foundation has a perpetual character and develops its activities from its headquarters in Lisbon and its delegations in Paris and London. In France, its activities include the co-production of exhibitions, an annual project call for French art institutions to present Portuguese visual artists in their programming, a call for artists engaged in collaborative practices, the organisation of meetings and debates throughout the year, partnerships with civil society organisations, and the provision of an important Portuguese language library.

KADIST believes contemporary artists make an important contribution to a progressive society, their work often addressing key issues of our time. KADIST, a non-profit organization dedicated to exhibiting the work of artists represented in its collection, encourages this engagement and affirms contemporary art’s relevance within social discourse. KADIST’s local hubs in Paris and San Francisco present exhibitions and events, and organize residencies and educational initiatives, as well as producing projects online and via social media. Concurrently, KADIST is actively establishing networks across five areas—North America, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia and Latin America—inviting new artists into the collection and initiating collaborative programs, especially exhibitions with museums of each region. Together, they aim at facilitating new connections across cultures and creating vibrant conversations about contemporary art and ideas.

26.10.2022 | par martalanca | filipa césar, KADIST, marinho de pina, Mediateca Abotcha

Affective Utopia I Kadist Paris

Avec Sammy Baloji & Filip De Boeck, Luis Camnitzer, Ângela Ferreira, Alfredo Jaar, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Grada Kilomba, Reynier Leyva Novo et Paulo Nazareth*

KADIST invite Mónica de Miranda et Bruno Leitão, fondateurs et directeurs de Hangar, un centre de recherche artistique situé à Graça (Lisbonne) pour une résidence curatoriale et une exposition.

Développée sur trois chapitres, l’exposition Affective Utopia abordera les questions et les défis relatifs à la production de connaissances artistiques et de pratiques curatoriales en regard des tensions et conflits générés par les problématiques Sud/Nord, des divisions géographiques, de l’assimilation culturelle et du besoin urgent de décoloniser les pratiques curatoriales et artistiques. 

Les artistes de l’exposition abordent différentes façons de penser et d’interpréter la notion d’utopie dans l’art contemporain. Le concept d’utopie implique deux notions liées bien que contradictoires : d’une part l’aspiration à un monde meilleur,  d’autre part le fait qu’elle n’existe dans nos imaginaires seulement qu’à travers les fictions inventées par les artistes. Affective Utopia réfléchit à cette ambivalence et pose la question de comment l’art peut être un outil de réflexion critique sur ses propres processus de socialisation et ses liens avec les concepts géographiques affectifs d’appartenance, d’origine et de diaspora.

Inviter une structure artistique en résidence permet d’expérimenter le déplacement de pratiques contextuelles pour offrir de nouvelles perspectives à des discussions ayant lieu à Paris et à l’international.

A Lisbonne, Hangar conçoit ses expositions comme des espaces d’engagement avec le public afin de depasser sa condition de spectateur, à travers des stratégies génératrices de sociabilité. Les fondateurs de Hangar souhaitent délocaliser cette approche à Paris le temps de l’exposition, en proposant un programme de rencontres en dialogue avec le public dans un autre contexte. 

Hangar est à la fois un espace d’exposition, de recherche et de résidences d’artistes. C’est également un centre éducatif qui organise des temps de discussion dans le but d’unifier les lieux géographiques et de stimuler le développement de pratiques artistiques et théoriques. Hangar cherche à développer des projets artistiques interdisciplinaires qui se concentrent sur la ville de Lisbonne en tant que scène centrale pour la culture contemporaine. La programmation artistique est tournée vers les problématiques Sud/Nord prenant comme référence la position spécifique de cette ville, carrefour géographique ainsi qu’historique.

*Les artistes de l’exposition à KADIST ont tous travaillé avec Hangar à Lisbonne à travers des résidences, des conférences ou des expositions.

With: Sammy Baloji & Filip De Boeck, Luis Camnitzer, Ângela Ferreira, Alfredo Jaar, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Grada Kilomba, Reynier Leyva Novo
and Paulo Nazareth*

++

KADIST invites Mónica de Miranda and Bruno Leitão, founders and directors of Hangar, an artistic research center located in Graça, Lisbon, for an art-space residency and exhibition.

Developed over three chapters, the exhibition Affective Utopia will approach questions and challenges relative to the production of knowledge in the arts and curatorial practices: a reflection on the tensions and conflicts generated by South/North issues, geographic divisions, cultural assimilation and the urgent need for decolonization of thought in curatorial processes and artistic production.

The artists in this exhibition discuss the different ways of thinking and performing utopia in contemporary art from a broad range of angles. The concept of utopia entails two related but contradictory perceptions: the aspiration to a better world, and the acknowledgement that its form may only ever live in our imaginations through the artists’ fictional reconstructions of reality. Affective Utopia reflects this general ambivalence, but it also poses the question of how art can be a tool for critical reflection of one’s own socialization process and to one´s connections to affective geographic concepts of belonging, origin and diaspora.

The purpose of the art-space residency is to experiment with delocalizing context relevant practices in order to offer new perspectives on discussions happening in Paris, and internationally. 

Hangar in Lisbon produces exhibitions as spaces of action for public engagement beyond spectatorship and through strategies that produce sociality. 

Delocalized at KADIST during the time of this exhibition, Bruno Leitão and Mónica de Miranda’s project will reframe this approach towards public engagement in another context and towards another audience. 

Hangar is comprised of a center of exhibitions, artistic residencies, and artistic studies. It is also a center of education, talks and conversations that unify geographic locations and stimulate the development of artistic and theoretical practices. It seeks to organize and produce the development of artistic inter-disciplinary projects and visual arts projects that focus on Lisbon as a central backdrop for contemporary culture. Hangar’s artistic program is focused on South/North problematics, taking from the specific position that Lisbon occupies both geographically as well historically.

*The artists in the exhibition have all worked with Hangar in Lisbon through residencies, talks or exhibitions.

Vernissage : le vendredi 8 février 2019
Opening on Friday, February 8, 2019Les chapitres / chapters:
1 — Concrete Utopia 
09.02 — 03.03 Avec / with Sammy Baloji & Filip De Boeck, Ângela Ferreira, Kiluanji Kia Henda
2 —Art as a Critical Tool 07.03 — 24.03 Avec / with Luis Camnitzer, Alfredo Jaar,Reynier Leyva Novo
3 —The Body as a Political Tool
04.04 — 21.04 Avec / with Grada Kilomba andPaulo NazarethLes événements / events*:26.02 Conférence de / talk by Sammy Baloji & Filip De Boeck
07.03 Conférence de / talk by Luis Camnitzer
12.04 Grada Kilomba en conversation avec / in conversationwith Paul Goodwin
*Tous les événements liés à l’exposition auront lieu à 19h au bureau de KADIST. / All associated events will take place at 7 pm, at the KADIST office.

VISIT KADIST, PARIS 19bis/21 rue des Trois Frères 75018 +33 1 42 51 83 49

04.02.2019 | par martalanca | Affective Utopia, Alfredo Jaar, ângela ferreira, Bruno Leitão, Filip De Boeck, Grada kilomba, HANGAR, KADIST, kiluanji kia henda, Luis Camnitzer, Monica de Miranda, Paulo Nazareth, Reynier Leyva Novo, Sammy Baloji