(En)acting together, queering collectively.

"(T)he political seems to have as a characteristic the quality of arranging the relationship of things and of people within some form of society. It is an ordering principle, distinguishing the lawful or authorized order of things while itself being the origin of the regulation. We associate, then, the political with power, authority, order, law, the state, force, and violence— all of these are phenomena which restrict the outcome, deflect the extraneous, limit the relevant forces."

Cedric J. Robinson, The Terms of Order

"Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer. (…) Queerness is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the present. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing." José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity

It begins with desire. A desire to breathe in resonance, to search for other forms of collectivity and hospitality that could accommodate the strangeness, “extraneous” that some of us call home. This seminar offers a home that emerges from cultures of collaborative and collective practices as a refusal to bear the responsibility of a single author. To foreground syncretism is to position ourselves toward decentralized ways of (en)acting together.

What we might want to manifest time and again is “that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.” If queerness, as Muñoz indicates in his introduction to Cruising Utopia, must be theorized as collectivity, then mourning is, similarly, a mode of communicating or feeling-with that cannot make sense in isolation. That something is missing marks not only a radical disregard for solitary existence but also a fundamental disbelief in the metaphysics of completeness. Gone or not arrived yet, that which we mourn and makes us (home)sick, echoes our brokenness.

A (partial) selection of artist collectives:

Gugulective, Chto delat?, Keleketla! Library, Chimurenga Chronic, Ni Santas Collective, Ruangrupa, The Black Archives, MADEYOULOOK, The Bettys, Gutai Art Association, Center for Historical Reenactments, Raqs Media Collective, …

Reading List:

Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, José Esteban Muñoz

Zong!, M. Nourbese Philip

“Each One Teach One; Practice-Theory-Practice; Collective Support; Mutual Respect & Equal Participation” Judy Seidman with Medu Art Ensemble in Chimurenga 15 “The Curriculum is Everything” (2010)

“MEDU: Art and Resistance in Exile by Sergio-Albio González”, in Thami Mnyele + Medu Art Ensemble Retrospective, Jacana (2009)

“What, How and for Whom (WHW), Collaborations in curating, research and writing to create translocal knowledge and experience” by Maja and Reuben Fowkes in translocal.org

Liam Gillick “Maybe it will be better if we worked in groups of three” part 1& 2 in e-flux Journal

The Production of Social Space as Artwork: Protocols of Community in the Work of Le Groupe Amos and Huit Facettes by Okwui Enwezor in “Collectivism after Modernism”

Guest Artists:

Listening at PUNGWE, Nyabhinghi Lab, Sujatro Ghosh, Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective, Jamilah Sabur, Sara Sejin Chang, Hera Schan, Jeremy (de’jon) Guyton

Sprechstunden:

Tuesdays, 14–16 h (donna Kukama)

Wednesdays, 11–13 h (Ronald Rose-Antoinette)