Whispers, Hubbub and Paradoxes. Attempts towards a politics of enunciation

Whispers, Hubbub and Paradoxes. Attempts towards a politics of enunciation continues a series of conversations, from the contexts in which we live, about the ways in which we inhabit the paradoxes of enunciation and representation.

Artists, writers, collaborating agents, spaces of activism and critical thinking, as well as the ecosystem of the Santa Mònica itself, come together to interpret texts and oralities, revisit existing works and strain the dominant narratives by sharing ways of doing and plots of complicity. The project gives rise to a certain rhythmic polyphony – sustained among many, always incomplete – crossed by the force of the questions and the stories that can mobilise us today.

To this end, we bring together a collective in which artistic practices, editorial methodologies, public activities and working groups focusing on the materiality of the enunciations converge. These areas find, in their meaningful exchange, imaginaries, experiences and knowledge to dispute the feeling of exhaustion, or of supposed impossibility.

The exhibition

Composed of works ranging from graphics to performance, through audiovisual, textile, genealogies or installation, the exhibition brings together artists who have been holding these conversations for a long time.

It includes a group of works that, for the most part, are not newly produced, thus prioritising an ecology of gestures and materials that seeks to distance itself from turning the new into spectacle and to give way to long forms of distribution for already existing artistic productions.

It also proposes that the works, understood as agents, treasure a political biography, a vital trajectory that sometimes overflows the curatorial description or the foundational explanation of the artists.

Publications

As part of the reflections that embrace the project, there arose the need to generate an interpretation/translation Group. Many of the references, readings and materials fundamental to the dialogue on representation are translated into dominant languages. For this reason, the interpretation/translation Group enables the ongoing exchange and circulation of diverse knowledge in languages such as arabic, filipino (baybayin, tagalog), amazigh and pretuguês. This exercise reactivates an epistemological bartering between the souths – territorial and conceptual – that has always been present and that is part of the genealogies made invisible in the global north.

The results of the group’s work will be collected in the first of the two publications Whispers, Hubbub and Paradoxes. Attempts towards a politics of enunciation we have planned for this project, which will include the interpreted/translated texts, as well as visual materials from the exhibition.

The second publication Prólogos a contratiempo (1848-2048), embraces a speculative gesture. Thinking about how our places of enunciation have been historically recovered and reinterpreted, we have proposed a game to imagine what the possible prologues to the Communist Manifesto would be today. We are interested in taking the Manifesto out of its condition of relic or fetish, and explore the power it has had as an emancipatory tool for many contexts. At a time characterised by the lack of horizons, we can think of fictional leaps that revitalise us and give continuity to significant questions.

Reflecting (imagining) among all of us

Another of the central areas of the project is its public programme, which brings together workshops, performances and talks with different agents who have been activating and thinking about this framework of reflections. The public programme, in collaboration with the Guilds of the Mòniques and research Groups at the centre, is conceived as another opportunity to open up to the audience, also offering the possibility of a relational space to discuss doubts and ideas that may arise throughout the work process.