Dark Room:

THE UPSHOT OF TRANS-AFFECTIVE SOLIDARITY

Act 2: Stabilising consciousness
April 2 - May 14, 2022

Participating artists:  Mehraneh Atashi (Iran) | Evangelia Basdekis (Greece/UK) | Sarah El Hamed (Algeria) | Sabine Gruffat (USA) | Shon Kim (South Korea) | Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien (Ivory Coast) | Helina Metaferia (Ethiopia) | Muriel Paraboni (Brazil) | Jhafis Quintero (Panama) & Johanna Barilier (Switzerland) | David Uzochukwu (Nigeria) & Faraz Shariat (Germany) | Ali Tnani (Tunisia)

Curated by Kisito Assangni

Generally, solidarity is conceived as an element that is essential for social structuring, both on the interpersonal and intergroup levels. If, in line with Emile Durkheim, we consider solidarity to be the ‘totality of bonds that bind us to one another and to society, which shape the mass of individuals into a cohesive aggregate’, then solidarity appears to be the basic feature of human interaction and has to be discursively conceptualized accordingly.

THE UPSHOT OF TRANS-AFFECTIVE SOLIDARITY proposes to explore a new image of humanity capable of valorising solidarity and critical knowledge coming from different contexts and cultures. The program takes its title from what scholar Anne Garland Mahler calls “trans-affective solidarity" that relies on a metonymic color politics. An imagined transnational, transethnic, transracial, and translinguistic affective encounter in order to envision a more economically equitable, racially just, and human-centered world.

The project presents work by 13 artists of diverse nationalities who provide an opportunity to reconsider how one can imagine another collective experience that would be capable of renewing our intersubjective ties in these uncertain times. THE UPSHOT OF TRANS-AFFECTIVE SOLIDARITY approaches its subject from a variety of perspectives, one of which involves the irresistible pull of intercultural meeting points and dreams around which people converge. Most of the works embrace a sense of reinvention and agency with the aim to shape various interpretative environments.

THE UPSHOT OF TRANS-AFFECTIVE SOLIDARITY offers an expanded frame of reference that contributes to this heterogeneous engagement with video, film and the culture of solidarity these artists encapsulate.

About the curator

Kisito Assangni is a Togolese-French curator and consultant who studied museology at Ecole du Louvre in Paris. Currently living between UK, France and Togo, his research interests gravitate towards the cultural impact of globalization, psychogeography, and critical education. He investigates the modes of cultural production that combine theory and practice. He inherently aims at going beyond the usual relations between artist, curator, institution, audience, and artwork in order to engage audiences in encounters with art that are unexpected, transformative, and fun. Assangni is heavily involved in video, performance, and experimental sound.

His discursive public programs and exhibitions have been shown internationally, including the Venice Biennale, ZKM Museum, Karlsruhe; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Centre of Contemporary Art, Glasgow; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Malmo Konsthall, Sweden; Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles; Es Baluard Museum of Art, Palma, Spain; National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow; HANGAR, Lisbon; Marrakech Biennale among others.

Assangni has participated in talks, seminars, and symposia at numerous institutions such as the British Museum, London; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Ben Uri Museum, London; Pori Art Museum, Finland; Kunsthall 3.14, Bergen (Norway); Sala Rekalde Foundation, Bilbao; Depart Foundation, Malibu (USA); Cambridge School of Art, UK; Sint-Lukas University, Brussels; University of Plymouth, UK; University of Pretoria, South Africa; Motorenhalle Centre of Contemporary Art, Dresden (Germany); Kunsthalle Sao Paulo, Brazil; Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Ticino, Switzerland.

He is a contributing editor at ArtDependence Magazine and Arshake. Assangni is the founder of TIME is Love Screening (International video art program) and serves as curatorial advisor to Latrobe Regional Gallery in Morwell - Victoria, Australia.