In 4Waters/Deep Implicancy, Arjuna Neuman and I experiment with a possible, formal, rendering of what is named historical and ethical without centering the figure at the heart of modern representation.
Foregrounding time—the privileged modern context for any consideration of existence—the film explores an oceanic presentation of key historical events and their ethical signification: the Mediterranean Sea and the 2015 Refugees Crisis/Pre-Socratic Philosophy; the Atlantic Ocean and the Atlantic Slave Trade and Haitian Revolution; the Pacific Ocean and the Marshall Island Atomic Bomb test and the social and ecological catastrophes that followed; and the Indian Ocean and the early Human Migration from Africa, about 50,000 years ago. Key to this presentation is a collection of images and sounds as references and correspondences, which figure transition without the senses of separation and dislocation. In doing so, the film expounds a description of existence which fosters an image of implicancy, which means both entanglement and contradiction rather than unity.
This seminar will further explore the concept of implicancy through philosophical and scientific texts, as well as artworks that directly or indirectly challenge the notion of unity. The goal here is to expand on the film’s oceanic presentation as implicancy. Many possible meanings of implicancy, I find, become immediately apparent when Earth’s configuration is described in terms of its larger body of waters, which connect separate several landmasses at once and which have distinct characteristics at different points. We will review texts by Édouard Glissant, David Bohm, Karen Barad, and Denise Ferreira da Silva, as well as artworks that foreground coloniality and race as they comment on time, history, and justice. These works will guide our exploration of the various meanings invoked by the image of implicancy and the critical and creative venues opened by thinking, inspired by liquidity as in its oceanic presentation.
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Deep Implicancy: A Reflection on Time, History, and Justice
Mon, Aug 2, 20216:30 pm to 8:30 pm -
Tue, Aug 3, 20216:30 pm to 8:30 pm
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Wed, Aug 4, 20216:30 pm to 8:30 pm
An academic and practicing artist, Dr. Denise Ferreira da Silva’s work addresses the ethico-political challenges of the global present. She is the author of Toward a Global Idea of Race (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), A Dívida Impagavel (Oficina da Imaginaçāo Política and Living Commons, 2019), Unpayable Debt (Stenberg/MIT Press, forthcoming) and co-editor (with Paula Chakravartty) of Race, Empire, and the Crisis of the Subprime (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). Her several articles have been published in leading interdisciplinary journals, such as Social Text, Theory, Culture & Society, Social Identities, PhiloSOPHIA, Griffith Law Review, Theory & Event, The Black Scholar, to name a few. Her artistic works include the films Serpent Rain (2016) and 4Waters-Deep Implicancy (2018), in collaboration with Arjuna Neuman; and the relational art practices Poethical Readings and Sensing Salon, in collaboration with Valentina Desideri. She has exhibited and lectured at major art venues, such as the Pompidou Center (Paris), Whitechapel Gallery (London, MASP (Sāo Paulo), Guggenheim (New York), and MoMa (New York). She has also written for publications for major art events (Liverpool Biennale, 2017; Sao Paulo Biennale, 2016, Venice Biennale, 2017, and Documenta 14) and published in art venues, such as Canadian Art, Texte Zur Kunst, and E-Flux.
She is a member of several boards including Haus de Kulturen de Welt (Berlin), International Consortium for Critical Theory Programs and the journals Postmodern Culture, Social Identities, and Dark Matter.
Karen Barad, What is the Measure of Nothingness? Infinity, virtuality, justice (was ist wirklich das mass des Nichts? Undendlichkeit, Virtulität, Gerechitigkeit) (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012)
David Bohm, Wholeness and Implicate Order (London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981).
Denise Ferreira da Silva, “On Difference Without Separability.” (São Paulo: 32nd Bienal de São Paulo: Incerteza viva, 2016), pp.57-65.
Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), pp. 5-24.