Transnational / postnational artistic practices

What framework and tools do artists working transnationally need and how to provide them?

The notion of transnationality/postnationality offers a tempting perspective. Travel and working within an international setting still holds the promise of inspiration, a shift of mindset.

Imagining an art field ‘after the national’ implies getting rid of currently dominating patterns of thinking and operating, that most often represent the dominant structure of national states. However, we should question to which extend this promise is a misleading fantasy. The actual political map does affect our professional and private lives on an everyday basis; shaping our ways of thinking and enabling or interrupting relations. Where for some the national borders seem pretty symbolic, for others they are very real barriers, prohibiting any free mobility. It quickly becomes clear that a free exchange of thoughts, practices and experiences still remains a luxury for the privileged few. There is an inherent risk in the dream of the post-national. As working internationally it is becoming a practice that gets deeply intertwined with the market-logics of the art world and its definitions of success, the question of access to mobility and which thought and practices are being exchanged and reproduced gets more pertinent. Where is the way out?

As a group of art makers, thinkers and researchers we want to reflect and practice the possible and impossible modes of being-within the arts field from our respective diverse socio-political and economic contexts. Our aim is to look for ways out of the currently dominating patterns of art production and knowledge exchange, while readressing the notion of mobility itself. Is it a value we want to defend or rather an obstacle to overcome? What are the alternatives to the existing models of co-production, touring and artist-in-residencies programs? Why do the most prominent festivals always present always the same few names, thus reproducing the existing hierarchies and homogenous aesthetics?

What seems crucial in the current situation in Europe and beyond is to imagine anew the ways of gathering and instituting ourselves: out of dominating structures, but not neglecting its challenges.

News

Using Tarot to identify collective vision

During the weekend of 11th - 13th June, Reshaper Petr Dlouhy and his colleagues from Prague based Studio Alta went out of the town and settled in a small camp in the countryside to have a plenary meeting whose main aim was to identify the collective vision of the institution’s future.After sunset, Petr gathered the core team of Studio Alta counting 10 culture workers for a tarot session by the fire. He provided the team with a special reading which was focused on embracing the potential of collective imagination to deal with the current issue(s).

News

Transnational/Postnational Artistic Practices: Imaginary Marseille

The last week of April was supposed to be the time for a meeting of the trajectory Transnational/Postnational Artistic Practices in Marseille, but the lockdown that is in power in many countries due to the Corona virus outbreak conditioned us to deeply reshape our project that is largely based on travelling and physical meetings.

News

The first RESHAPE workshop will discuss transnational/postnational artistic practices

The notion of transnationality/postnationality offers a tempting perspective. It inspires to change the mindset for a while; to get rid of currently dominating patterns of thinking and operating, that most often represent the dominant structure of national states. However promising it may sound, to most of art workers it would be a misleading fantasy: for the actual political map does influence our professional and private lives on the every day basis, shaping our ways of thinking and enabling or interrupting relations.

News

The first RESHAPE workshop will discuss transnational/postnational artistic practices

The notion of transnationality/postnationality offers a tempting perspective. It inspires to change the mindset for a while; to get rid of currently dominating patterns of thinking and operating, that most often represent the dominant structure of national states. However promising it may sound, to most of art workers it would be a misleading fantasy: for the actual political map does influence our professional and private lives on the every day basis, shaping our ways of thinking and enabling or interrupting relations.

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