Curating shadow knowledge
H09:30-18:00
Entrance: via Liguria 20
H09:30-18:00
Entrance: via Liguria 20
The event will take place in English from H09:30 at Istituto Svizzero, via Liguria 20, Rome.
Free entrance, register here.
Curating shadow knowledge
Memory loss is one of the endemic conditions of the administrative archive. Historian Arlette Farge talks about it through the trajectory of ‘leftovers’, in French ‘reliquat’, documents that cannot be catalogued because they are incomplete and lack a date, name or material integrity. Sociologist Yael Kreplak notes that the dossier informs and records but can at the same time handle secrets, commercial or medical for example, and thus help to organise the ‘orders of reality to which it refers’. In many cases, historical administrative dossiers, especially those containing sensitive information, are embargoed and remain inaccessible for years. But even when files are accessible, claims Daniela Agostinho, refusal and unreading may be a way ‘of reading that rejects colonial legibility and archival capture’.
In the context of historical and contemporary migration, administrative files represent one of the rare traces of the ‘recordable and the unrepresentable’. The theorist Mizuta Lippit’s formula, aimed at recounting the opacity and shadow knowledge implicit in every documentary project, recounts the substantial univocity of the administrative archive that records border crossings and contains, alongside validation forms and correspondences, unspeakable and inaudible stories of migrants. As the Iraqi writer Hassan Blasim recalls, «everyone staying in the refugee reception centre has two stories»: the story for the record, continues Blasim, is the one written down in the immigration department and preserved in their private files, whereas the real stories remain locked in the secrecy of migrants’ experiences.
In recent years, several approaches to archiving have emerged across art and historical practices, to partially preserve and present undocumented and invisible sides of migrations. In this context, the Summer School Documenting Shadow Knowledge aims exploring ways of collecting and recognising heritage value in migrating experiences between historical and aesthetic practices. By comparing different methodologies of enquiry, preservation and valorisation, the Summer School focuses on the implicit histories recorded by administrative traces of passage and interrogates the forms of recording ‘from below’ implemented in recent research.
Programme:
H09:30 ― Welcome Coffee
H10:00 ― Introduction
H10:30 ― Medical Borders Panel: Andrea Bagnato, Raphaël Cuomo & Maria Iorio, Jelena Martinovic, Laurence Rasti, with Lucia Bernini & Jonas Heller
Moderator: Federica Martini
H13:00 ― Break
H14:30 ― Panel discussion Curating Shadow Knowledge, with Emily Jacir, Gioia Dal Molin, Sara Alberani
Moderator: Silvia Simoncelli
Break
H16:00 ― Film Screening, Q&A (online), Unearthing Conversation with Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski
Moderator: Jelena Martinovic
Closing remarks
H17:00 ― Performance programme in collaboration with NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti
Aperitif
A collaboration between EDHEA – Ecole de design et haute école d’art du Valais, HEAD – Haute Ecole d’art et de design de Genève and NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti.
Biographies:
Sara Alberani is an art historian, independent curator and activist based in Rome. She expresses her curatorial research in socially engaged art practices concerning communities and public spaces, focusing on long-term projects. Since 2019, she has been part of the refugee justice community centre Trampoline House in Copenhagen, and she has been curator for the collective’s participation in documenta fifteen. She is co-founder of LOCALES, a curatorial platform for the production of site-specific interventions and decolonial practices within the public space of Rome. Since 2022 she has been working as an activist with the civil society platform Mediterranea Saving Humans, in Rome.
Andrea Bagnato has been researching the intersections of architecture, ecology, and epidemiology for a decade. His research has resulted in the curation of a public program me at MAAT, Lisbon (2021), a collective exhibition at La Casa Encendida, Madrid (May 2022), as well as the upcoming monograph Terra Infecta (2024). Andrea is also co-author of the book A Moving Border: Alpine Cartographies of Climate Change (Columbia/ZKM, 2019), and editor of Rights of Future Generations (Hatje Cantz, 2022). He holds an MA from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths.
Lucia Bernini and Jonas Heller have completed their MA architecture at ETH Zürich, working collaboratively on the theme of the Grenzsanität Brig (Prof. Adam Caruso). Jonas lives in Zürich and works for an architectural office in Brig as well as his own project for a house. Lucia lives in Zürich and in the Haut Valais and works also in an architectural firm.
Gioia Dal Molin is a curator and writer and responsible for the artistic programme at Istituto Svizzero, Rome/Milano/Palermo, since January 2020. She studied history and art history and holds a PhD from the University of Zurich. She has curated numerous exhibitions – including the first monographic exhibitions on Klodin Erb, Mai-Thu Perret or Hannah Villiger in Italy – and has written and edited various texts and publications on contemporary art.
Anna Daneri is an independent curator. Co-founder of Peep-Hole, an independent space active in Milan from 2009 to 2016, she has been responsible for the Meru Art*Science Research Program since 2013. She is part of the artistic research collective Corpi idrici and of the Atelier Pharaildis Van Den Broeck Archive Promoting Committee. Since 2021 she is co-director of Forevergreen.fm and Electropark festival.
Liryc Dela Cruz is an artist and filmmaker from Tupi, South Cotabato, in Mindanao, Philippines, based in Rome, Italy. His works have been performed and displayed internationally in film festivals and art institutions. Dela Cruz’s work and research focus on care, indigenous and decolonial practices, post-colonial Philippines, the transpacific slave trade, and hospitality.
Maria Iorio & Raphaël Cuomo are two artists and filmmakers. Favoring collaborative praxis and long-term research, their recent projects engage with past and present global mobilities and unfold the entangled histories shaped by those movements of life, (post)colonial encounters, migrating forms and sounds. Integrating curatorial methodologies in their work, they have also created film programmes, cinema situations and exhibitions that revisit the historiography of the expanded field of moving image practices and ‘minor cinemas’ – experimental, amateur, feminist, decolonial.
As poetic as it is political and biographical, Emily Jacir’s work investigates translation, transformation, resistance, and movement. Jacir has built a complex and compelling oeuvre through a diverse range of media and methodologies that include unearthing historical material, performative gestures, and in-depth research. She is the recipient of several awards, including a Golden Lion at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); a Prince Claus Award (2007); the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum (2008), among others. She exhibited in Dublin, London, Amman, Beirut, New York. She is the founder and Director of Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research in Bethlehem, Palestine. She teaches at NABA Rome campus and The Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation in Abu Dhabi and the Whitney Independent Study Program.
Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński is a Vienna based writer, artist, and researcher. Rooted in Black feminist theory, she has developed a research-based and process-oriented investigative practice that deals with the condition of Black life in the African diaspora. Her work has been shown, among others, at Liverpool Biennial, Coalmine Winterthur, Camera Austria Graz, Les Recontres d’Arles, Museum Ludwig Budapest, Kunsthalle Wien (2021).
Federica Martini, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Head of the Master CCC Critical Curatorial Cybermedia at HEAD – Geneva. Her research focuses on the history and geopolitics of exhibitions and (in)visibilities in contemporary art practices. She is co-editor of On Words (2023, with S. Burkhalter and J. Enckell), Feminist Exposure: Pratiques féministes de l’exposition et de l’archive (2023, with J. Taramarcaz).
Jelena Martinovic, PhD, is Full Professor UAS and Head of the Institute of Research in Fine Arts (IRAV) at EDHEA HES-SO Valais since 2021. A historian, writer, and educator, she is currently leading the project Medical Borders: Visibility and Shadow Knowledge at EDHEA (2022-2024). Before that, she was a researcher at University College London and Harvard University. She has taught internationally, most recently at Goldsmiths College London, and Casa Oswaldo Cruz Fiocruz, Rio de Janeiro.
Federico Rahola, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology of Cultural Processes (University of Genova). His research focuses on migrant practices, migration policies and border politics; global governance’s implications on the transformation of current conflicts and security policies, and urbanization processes. His publications include Underground Europe. Lungo le rotte migranti (2022, with L. Queirolo Palmas).
Laurence Rasti’s photographs seek to explore concepts of identity in a multifaceted way. Relying on the dual quality of her cultural background, she looks at cultural codes and conventions from a new angle to understand the influence of gender roles in society, but also the consequences of migration or the non-respect of fundamental rights.
Lorenzo Romito (Stalker) is Professor of Space and Design Strategies at KU Linz and Lecturer (with Giulia Fiocca) of Public Art at NABA Rome Campus and of the Stalker module at the Master in Enviromental Humanities at Roma Tre University (2016-23). Prix de Rome Architecte at the French Academy, Villa Medici, Rome (2000-01). Co-founder of Stalker (1995-), Osservatorio Nomade (2002-2009), PrimaveraRomana (2009 -2013), Biennale Urbana (2014-), NoWorking (2016-) and SUN, Scuola di Urbanesimo Nomade (2017-). In 2024 will be visiting professor at ETH Zurich, F. De Sanctis Chair for Italian culture.
Silvia Simoncelli is NABA Head of Education-Rome. She previously served as Course Leader of Academic Master in Contemporary Art Markets at NABA Milan campus and as lecturer at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg in Germany and at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. She was research assistant for the Master in Curating at Zürcher Hochschule der Kunste, where she got her Master of Advanced Studies after graduating in Art History from the Università degli Studi di Milano. Her research interests focus on art in public space, institutional critique, and the relationship between economy and artistic practices.