2019: Empowerments 

 

Throughout 2019 we will be looking into the notions of "power" and "power relations". We will interrogate the contemporary concepts of power: that can be at once understood as a productive flow, and restraining controlling force; as something that reveals itself in the production of our subjectivity and knowledge, and enables the ongoing creative transformation of various agents that make the world. We will address power as residing in - and emerging from - our social structures, institutions, systems of beliefs, and orders of things: bringing about a particular knowledge about the world, and a limited number of "livable" subject positions in this world for us to enact. 

 

As we undo 'the powerful-vs-powerless dualism', we will go further and  redefine the notion of vulnerability: not as determining the passive receptive existence of an individual, but rather as enacting one’s capability to open up, expose herself and to be affected. As a state of being exposed to the possibility of being affected (either physically or emotionally), vulnerability, paradoxically, would entail a position of power: the one that relies on selflessness, response-ability and indeterminacy of a subject. 

 

In this way, the state of “being affected” would correspond to one's deliberate rejection of passivity and perceiving one’s vulnerabilities as disempowering — and instead, opening up to the possibilities of indeterminate alteration in response that what happens to oneself. In this sense, while the making of “victims”, “heroes” and “villains” is in itself a unidirectional process (characterised by specific anticipated effects for a subject’s configuration), it would always remain unclear what may becoming-affected imply. Namely, where the effects of this state begin or end, and what could these possibly be: for different individuals, in different situations. There would be no expectations or hopes attached; no borders and limitations established in advance; and consequently, there would be by definition no precedent to a subject’s capacities. To bring in the words of artist Maria Garcés, “[the] spectator can only condemn the bomb attack and feel the horror of that vision. The victim can only suffer pain and expect reparation. But what is an affected person capable of? What can the affected do?” (Garcés, 2014:113). We do not know; and there is the empowering knowledge in this uncertainty for us to explore.

 

Format-wise, Empowerments is a multilogue: a conversation of many to many, aimed at undoing the common roles, hierarchies and protocols that divide the (art) world today. It proceeds as a multiform discussion that brings together opposing views, different interpretations and conflicting perspectives; where each new statement begins with “yes, but...”, so that cons and pros of each perspective are honestly exposed and looked into. In this discussion, the antagonistic way of co-existence is at the very core. At the times like today, when vulnerability to the political and natural forces is sensed most vividly, it will be crucial to understand: "powerlessness" is not a given condition, but a deliberate self-positioning. How else can we regard our relation to power, if not through the 'victims-villains' dualism? The powerless versus the powerful? What shifts in self-perception would empower us? It is time to pose the right questions. 

 

 

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