Lectures

 

Care is essential for life and survivance. The social and ecological fabric of existence is woven by care. But how is care being cared for in political and economic terms?  How is care understood as a specific way of knowing the planet and relating to the world? How does knowing change if the analysis of the condition of the planet and the world starts from relations of care? In the name of care, nation states have promoted the colonial supremacist project of patriarchy. In the name of freedom, so-called second wave feminism identified caring labors as burden hindering women’s creativity, intellectual productivity, and economic mobility. In the name of health, nation states and international organizations have called for a war against the virus in pandemic times and have turned care workers into Covid-warriors. Tracing how modern colonial ontologies of gender were linked to mammalian epistemologies and their political economy of care essentialism this lecture reflects on what kinds of analysis are needed for liberating care from patriarchal violence and capitalist extraction.Presenting the aims of feminist recovery plans, which were written by policy makers, care workers, activists and researchers during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, this lecture asks how feminist recovery against care violence can be imagined and put into practice.

https://gnamamidakisfoundation.org/en/feminist-recovery-against-care-violence/

 

Das moderne Museum verfügte machtvoll über die Dinge des Lebens und die Phänomene des Planeten, die es zu Dingen und Phänomenen des Museums machte. Das Museum entzog die Dinge den Lebenszusammenhängen. Das Museum entzog den Dingen das Leben. Diese Museumspraxis des Bestimmens und Herrschens über die Grenze zwischen Leben und Nicht/Leben wird Vortrag als kulturelle Artikulation der Politiken, Ökonomien und Technologien des Anthropozän analysiert. Ausgehend von der Befundung, dass das moderne Museum eine Anthropozän-Institution ist, wird epistemischen und ethischen Fragen des Kuratierens nachgegangen. Was bedeutet es für kuratorische Praxen, welche sich auf Sorge und Sorgetragens, hergeleitet von der etymologischen Wurzel von kuratieren, lateinisch curare, sorgen, berufen, das Museum als Anthropozän-Institution zu begreifen? Wie kann das Museum ein Ort werden, an dem für planetarische kulturelle Imaginarien Sorge getragen werden kann? Wie verhält sich Kuratieren als kritische feministische Sorgearbeit zum Erbe des modernen Museums und zur Zukunft? Wie kann feministische Sorgearbeit als Trauerarbeit praktiziert werden, die kollektiv um planetarische Wesen trauert, die wegen des Anthropozän ihr Leben verloren haben? Kuratieren als Sorgearbeit ist die insistente Arbeit am Wissen um und der Überwindung der Kultur des Anthropozän, welche die Grenze zwischen Leben und Nicht/Leben gewaltsam beherrscht.

https://www.radikaldemokratisches.museum

 

 

Lecture at Site and Place – Seminar of Mechtild Widrich, Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, March 19, 2024

The Anthropocene resulted from the ideas of the Enlightenment. The very same ideas were foundational for the modern institution of the museum, in which the history of planet Earth and the interrelationships of life in the world, as determined by the Anthropocene, can be seen and researched from today’s perspective.

 

 

The lecture was part of a panel at the CAA College Art Association Conference 2024. The panel was convened by Basia Sliwinska. 

What does contemporary transnational feminist resistance look like? What kind of visual and performative strategies are used to raise awareness of the war against the women (Silvia Federici), of which the murder of women is one acute expression? How is the “writing on the body of murdered women” (Rita Segato) articulated in the public visuality of resistance? How do physical and digital public spaces converge in new forms of feminist media activism that creates public awareness and puts pressure on transnational organizations, policy makers, and state legislators. Originating from the organizing around feminicides in Mexico during the 1990s, a large-scale NiUnaMenos movement formed in Argentina in 2015. Taking inspiration from the hashtag #VivasNosQueremos and from the widely shared videos of the 2019 performance Un Violador En Tu Camino by Las Tesis, led to the organization of of anti-feminicide activism taking to the streets in different European cities. This contribution places public manifestations, including in Berlin (2020, Gemeinsam Kämpfen, Women Defend Rojava), Paris (2021), Vienna (Aufstand der Schwestern, 2021) or Leipzig (#KeineMehrLeipzig) in conversation with manifestations in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile to explore the formation of transnational visual anti-femicide-activism.  

 

Lecture in the Moravian Gallery, Brno, February 28, 2024

Elke Krasny, who is based at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, is a leading European expert in curatorial theory, and in her research, curatorial and teaching practice she addresses the highly topical issues of care and the ecological and social sustainability of the operation of art, art making and curating. Krasny was a fellow at the CCA Canadian Centre for Architecture. Her curatorial work on hands-on urbanism was shown at the 2012 Venice Biennale for Architecture. Together with Angelika Fitz she edited Critical Care. Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet (MIT Press, 2019). Her book Living with an Infected Planet. Covid-19 Feminism and the Global Frontline of Care (transcript publishers, 2023) focuses on militarized care essentialism and feminist recovery plans in pandemic times.

https://www.favu.vut.cz/en/ffa-news-f26745/lecture-in-moravian-gallery-elke-krasny-(at)-wednesday-28-feb-2024-18-00-d252923

 

The lecture Interdependencies and Care in Pandemic Times was given at the Symposium EscReturn: Scripts for Degrowth, Buenvivir and Living Otherwise, part of the Panel Nets of Interdependence: practices of healing, recovery and repair

Together with Teresa Dillon, Kathleen Bomani, Cristina Flores Pescoran and Gilly Karjevski we will reflect on individual and collective practices relating to conditions that require healing, recovery, and repair. My contribution to the panel focuses on the pandemic, on pandemic lessons and on feminist recovery plans that were written in response to the crisis of care impacting the conditions of life and survivance. Care is needed by living and sentient beings and the environments they find themselves in. At the same time, care is provided by living and sentient beings and the environments they find themselves in. Withholding care is care violence. Care extractivism is care violence. Being forced to care is care violence. Care injustice is care violence Healing from care violence is recovery from colonial patriarchal capitalism resulting in pandemics and wars on humans. non-humans, natures, and the planet. Thank you Daphne Dragona for putting together an amazing group of speakers and for addressing in this symposium the urgent concerns of the global present.

https://www.panke.gallery/event/esc-return-scripts-for-degrowth-buen-vivir-and-living-otherwise-september/

 

 

Lecture in the Situating Architecture Lecture Series at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London, March 2024
curated by the Architectural History MA Programme Directors Professor Barbara Penner und Dr Robin Wilson  https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2024/mar/situating-architecture-lecture-series

 

In order to build the world otherwise we need to learn how to draw otherwise. In order to draw otherwise we need to learn how to imagine otherwise. The symposium DRAWING OTHERWISE imagines architectures, sites, places, infrastructures and landscapes by un/doing, un/learning, un/seeing and un/drawing against and beyond existing conditions and wants to explore other possible futures of living together. Bringing together practitioners, theorists and scholars from architecture, visual culture, and art education the symposium explores the potential of articulating imaginaries based on solidarity, reciprocity, generosity, and empathy. We navigate between what is and what could be: How forms of representation draw on, and thus reproduce, existing norms of inequity, extraction, and domination; and how the contributions work toward drawing otherwise into being transformative spaces, healing infrastructures, and new care-full imaginaries for digital and physical realms. Because it matters what stories tell stories.

CURATED BY  

BERNADETTE KREJS (VIENNA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY) and ELKE KRASNY (ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS VIENNA)

https://www.drawing-otherwise.com

Not Beyond Repair – Contribution to Field Notes on Repair: 4, 2024

If capitalism has taught people one thing, it is a specific understanding of made things’ lifespans: sell-by dates, use-by dates, and, I want to add here, repair-by dates. To be “beyond repair” means that this date has passed; fixing or reconstituting has become impossible, futile. The capitalist imperative is to relate to the world in such a way that being beyond repair marks the end of useful life for things and environments — and this means living in a world that cannot be saved. Things are thrown away; environments are abandoned. Care is no longer required. “Beyond repair” is a sentence of death. Beyond repair neatly articulates capitalism’s imperative to incorporate death-making into economic relations, which in turn penetrate deep into social and ecological relations. This leads to a belief that social and ecological relations are also beyond repair; that it does not matter to repair them; that capitalism will only usurp any energies expended toward repair. But social and ecological relations are not beyond repair; it does matter to repair them; and reparative energies can, I want to argue, be effective.

 

Contributing a lecture to the keynote panel of the gathering on pedagogies of disarmament at TU Braunschweig, September 12, 

A gathering about climate and politics, architecture and ethics, academia and activism, networks and futures, models and utopias, being critical and being naive, transformations and resistance, rebellion and hope.With Jeanne Astrup-Chauvaux, Markus Bader, Henriette Bertram, Camillo Boano, Cristina Cerulli, Burcu Daglayan, Simone De Iacobis, Suryagayathri Devi, Paula Erstmann, Manuel Falkenhahn, Lukas Feireiss, Rui Ferreira Do Santos, Kim Förster, Jan Gerits, Sabine Hansmann, Gabu Heindl, Beata Hemer, Jan-Holger Hennies, Arne Herbote, Jule Hillgärtner, Noor Khader, Valentina Karga, Florian Kossak, Elke Krasny, Bernadette Krejs, Franca Lopez Barbera, Diana Lucas-Drogan, María Mazzanti, Louise Nguyen, Hanna Noller, Ayscha Omar, Jasmine Parsley, Ben Pohl, Anthony Powis, Sebastian Quack, Anna Richter, Lara Roth, Rui Santos, Lisa Schwochow, Christina Serifi, Sumugan Sivanesan, Ulrike Steven, Yue Sun, Ayat Tarik, Jeremy Till, Renée Tribble, Henrike Wenzel.

https://gtas-braunschweig.de/interacting/detail/this-that