Research Network Global Re-Visions Axes of the South

Show video

so hello everyone and welcome to iniva's research  network event. I'm Tavian Hunter. I'm the Library   and Archive manager of the Stuart Hall Library  at iniva and I'm here with my colleagues Simina,   iniva's Programme Coordinator and Anahi Programme  Producer and our translator for today's talk.   To give some context the Research  Network is the library's public program   of monthly presentations and reading groups.  It acts as a testing ground for new ideas   by providing a meeting place for artists  curators and practitioners to discuss   aspects of their research-based practice with a  wider audience and to seek response from those   working in and around their field particularly  individuals who engage with iniva's work.  

It's an opportunity to critically discuss  discourse around specific themes and to   frame a deeper conversation utilizing the  Stuart Hall Library and archive collections.   This year's programme Global Revisions  launched during iniva's 25th year anniversary   looks to reignite debate and reflect on the  concept of globalization and new internationalism   expanding on our founding ideas which were  articulated in our first conference in 1994   and can be found in essays  printed in the accompanying   publication 'Global Visions: towards a  new internationalism in the visual arts'.   In this series of talks, we have examined  the legacy of the non-aligned movement   explored the iconography of the veil in the  works of contemporary female Iranian artists,   looked at Caribbean as a place of  emergence for so-called global societies   and challenged conventional notions of belonging  and difference in diasporic art and investigated   ways in which migration between mainland China,  Hong Kong and the West across generations has   been entangled with internationalism,  identity politics and globalization.  

Today's talk and selected film screening is the  final event in our Global Revisions programme.   It seeks to explore dialogue on  resistance and artistic practices   in Latin America and the Arab world.  As we partake in the conversation   about the expression of protests and artistic  production we would like to disclaim to everyone   that there may be imagery or discussion present  that could be distressing for some people.   We completely understand if some of you decide  to leave and for those who stay we hope this   will be an engaging conversation with mutual  respect and care. I'm excited today to have   our speakers Larissa Sansour and Regina  Galindo and Fortunata here with us today Larissa is a Palestinian-born artist  that works mainly with film and produces   installations photos and sculptures with the  interactions of myth and historical narrative   central to her work that has been shown  in film festivals and museums worldwide.

Regina is a visual artist and poet that lives  and works in Guatemala. Her use of performance   as her main medium to explore and denounce  the ethical implications of social violence   and injustices related to racial and gender  discrimination as well as human rights abuses. And Fortunata is an art historian curator  activist and art producer based in London.   Her research focuses on the interrelation between  contemporary artistic practices in Latin America   and the Arab countries where she addresses  transnational social and political issues. So thank you all for being here  um especially across different   time zones and I will now hand over to Fortunata Thank you thank you Tavian for this introduction  and before I start my reading I would like to   thank iniva for this for gathering us all together  today. It's very nice to have this kind of meeting  

nowadays and a big thanks to Larissa Sansour and  Regina Jose Galindo for being here with us and   sharing with us their knowledge and the art I'm  going to share with you a paper I've written on   Larissa and Regina in which I will talk briefly  about the video we are going to watch later on   and other few works of each of them so we'll  start with with Larissa. So Larissa Sansour   works developed mainly in the form of videos and  photographs respond to the Palestinian questions   through her work she redefines issue debated on  the subject of Palestine political negotiations   ideas of belonging and the Palestinian state  Larissa Sansour was born to a Palestinian father   and a Russian mother in Jerusalem and raised in  Bethlehem like many Palestinians born in the 70s   in the west bank she has experienced Palestine  under direct military compassion by Israel   she had then like many other students who wanted  to continue their education to leave Palestine   with the first uprising intifada of the 1988 a  small school in the west bank closed the idea of   one I have to share my presentation before sorry  otherwise I cannot show the work sorry let me slide show from the start  yeah okay here we are sorry   the idea of one of the best known works  national estate that she made in 2012   came from the need for an autonomous  Palestinian states sanctuary takes the ongoing   political situation with the story of Palestine as  a direct reference in a work in her words in fact   she said it is difficult to separate art  from its direct political and social context   art never operates in a vacuum it is difficult  for me to refer to my personal experience   without referring to the political reality  of the area in which I'm inserted in a way   my interest in Palestine stems largely from being  a native of palestine and having experienced first   hand one of the world's greatest injustice as I  firmly believe that the Palestinian question is   at the center of a series of global problems it  cannot be isolated as a mere local affliction what you see in the national estate work is  a skate scraper where each floor houses a   different Palestinian city Jerusalem on the  third floor Bethlehem on the fourth floor   and so on the artists interpret the possibility of  a Palestinian state vertically ironizing about the   problem in question and the illegal confiscation  of Palestinian land by the Israeli state the   struggle is what defines us as a Palestinian say  some so if you take that distance what is left   individual sensor uses objects such as the kefia  and the key as visual references to traditional   iconography which are now associated with the idea  of the act of resistance a work is a comment on   identity politics and they complain about the lack  of space where to project the memory of identity   which despite the prolonged struggle may lose  its value and get trapped within a cliche   the symbols then have a formalist complicity  within our non-documentary strategy   a narrative challenge the value of the symbols  the challenge depending upon the context   as for example in another work space  exodus another video she made in 2009   where the Palestinian frag is decontextualized  and associated with progress of futurism by   landing on the moon the flag then begins to  look different and relates to a new utopia   the work referred to the nakba the exodus of seven  thousand seven hundred thousand Palestinians from   their land in 1948 and the consequence  of these events which prevail nowadays   the play reflect the fact that the Palestinians  are in a stateless limbo and their homeland is   reduced to a blur on the old zone landing  on the moon reflect the common anxiety of   the Palestinians once they leave the land they  run the risk of never being able to return home   a spice exodus is ultimately an examination of  power the blur between utopias and dystopias   is a recurring team in some sort of work which  she uses ironically behind which some optimism   and dot is concealed to address an issue as  complex and art as that of Palestine where   the law of colonization is still valid despite  critics of it elsewhere in the world by the un   and to talk about the present trumpet in  limbo Sansour plays with the concept of   time choosing to work with science fiction which  returns to the past and mingled with the future   because what we do in the future is the  result of what is happening in the present   when speaking of time inevitably Sansour  commemorates the memory which as such is tied   to a concept of space or place the same splat  space for which Palestine continue to fight   land confiscation order is that is the video we  are going to to watch tonight uh in the conception   of the Arab world oral language has historically  been greatest reservoir of culture identity   and pride begin meaning in the 7th century it  was the Quran that had the greatest influence   on our on Arab culture and literature indeed  more importance is given to the promised world   than to any promise put in writing the famous  expression a kalima sharaf word of honor in Arabic   carries the idea that a betrayed promise results  in immediate disgrace from these perspectives on   sur's land communication order 06 2014 made in  2006 aimed to explore the need to restore in the   image conceiving it as a word the substance  and the weight that it once embodied both   physically as well as metaphorically the video  explore the promises made in the context of   globalization and the underlying prospect of a  future free of geographic and national borders   it does so by investigating the increasingly  valuable individual and private space a space   that is ironically only obtained through  public and cognitive bargaining and to what   extent communication and social commitment  facilitate the rise of individual freedoms   land qualification is highly autobiographical  short that Sansour made in 2006. the Israeli   government sent the letter to her family  announcing that the land and the house their   inhabitation would be confiscated by the Israeli  state to build an exclusive road for settlers   to do this it was necessary to cross the property  navigated by them and therefore expropriate the   surrounding areas it was not just the factual tone  of the document that impacted the artist but also   the manner in which it was issued instead  of being mailed to them the letter was left   understood on the family's property  this is a common tactic that Israel   practices to communicate with the Palestinians  in the video Larissa explored territorially as   constituted not only of a national identity but  also of personal identity land confiscation order   is composed of a requiem of a small piece of land  and the house made of stone it becomes a terrible   to a dream of the viability of a national state  revealing the Palestinian identity as an entity   eroded day by day not only for political and  cultural reasons but also for geographical reasons   although it is in Arabic to appear on camera for  these works and searches to step aside and tell   the story of the dispossession of the family  property to her sister and brother through   covering the house completely with a black cloth  she achieves the effect of making lot the house   and the cloth fulfil in the ritual function of  the recognition of material and geographical laws   the situation of the Palestinian  people is crucial in Syria's anomalous   the Palestinians possess all the attribute of  a national state a common history a language   a set of traditions a cultural national culture  national institution an official representative   but the Israelis refused to recognize it while the  international community with its plethora of u.n   laws and resolution against Israel played the role  of the lucky without risking further measure other   than appeasement in a word in which the state of  exception has become the rule Palestine become the   exceptional new state synagogue the private of the  political and civil rights they used to rule their   lives since they become refugees Palestinian has  been governed by the united national convention   and in and the occasional arbitrary application  of international law a country deprived of its   culture exists only in an historical emptiness  without the sense of an anthology a degree of   introspection about our origin and the nature of  our being consequently there cannot be theology   nor can there exist a development projected  towards an end it consists instead of what   that end is in the long term without culture in  the best of cases peoples find themselves adrift   from the very coordinate of history necessary  to produce a coherent argument both social and   political in the present and even more decisively  towards the future both culture and institutions   presuppose form of social participation it is in  such moment of commitment that aesthetics is able   to open a space where plurality indifference merge  how to resist the territoriality imposed by the   state on the natural landscape as a violent  act animal kihano the renova author of the   theory of coloniality of power narrates how  the center periphery model was conceived to   embody global capitalism as a paradigm of power  of the second world war Sansour for example   in her works talk about the broken world contracts  between neighbours and the power play behind this   transaction of domination describing it as a  land without people for people without land so now let's let's go to Regina. Regina Jose  Galindo so despite the increasing democratic  

session they follow the long era of dictatorship  the Latin American continent continued to show the   highest indices of social inequality in the world  a true exponent of the loose art of repetition   Regina jose galindo repeats action repetition  never coincides with the return of the identical   but it restores the possibility of what has  been it does not return return the past as such   but makes it all possible again for this  is not a representation of but the kind of   theatre of repetition that is at the center of the  rituals gagalindo putsel's shade on stage strange   ceremonies direct performances and recitation  realizing the here and now and repeated in a real   action without conceiving of the repetition  her extreme actions where the artist puts   her body into play are not fully explicable  indeed the poetic character of all her works   which she calls a psychomagic acts acts a term  borrowed from alejandro jodorowsky emphasized the   tragic element consequently they possess a strong  emotional charge since her first performance in   1999 Galindo has conjurated the space of her body  with a social when unheard she recites her poetry   suspended the meter above the city square inside  Guatemala as we can see in this image her work   explore the universal ethical implications of  social injustice that are related to racial   gender and other abuses that are involved in the  inequal power relation that operate in our society   galindo's artistic strategy is entangled  with their identity and social politics   a work makes explicit the connection among social  and identity politics galindo performance can be   defined as being motivated by raditive belief  in the capacity of art to transform human life   as a vehicle for social change and as a radical  merging of life and art work like pere which in   English can be translated as a [ __ ] done in  2005 in which she cuts her tie with a knife   or immenoplastia made in 2004 in which she  underwent surgery to rebuild her eye men   as different reception in Guatemala and elsa  were these reflect the varying meanings of bodily   representation both in modern Latin American  culture and internationally galindo's childhood   and teenage years coincided with the most brutal  and violent episode of the guatemala civil war   especially with the regime of rios month of 1992  and 1993 a reaction to the historical context was   to turn a personal and political response to its  order into a bodily practice galindo's entire life   and artistic practice is linked to the violence  of the images of the war crimes of the montreux   regime and has a strong expressive formal  representation her work refers to a pleasant   situation and alarming signs of deep existential  discomfort with which our leader struggles   although our work always draws references from  the lower levels of society and from women   in particular it also refers to global issues  such as a repentant male violence marginalization   subordination and torture it deals with all of  those others who have been subjected to violence   in her work the body becomes the subject object  over performances often pushing her physical   and psychological limits toward the absolute  threshold she transformed the viewer the viewers   into aesthetic strategies that are designed to  accentuate the great emotional impact of fragility   and suffering on humankind galingo works recall  what eric guns define as a sacrificial aesthetics   where the aesthetic forms that are born from  bloody sacrificial practices have evolved   from a necessary future of social organization  into intra-psychic element of the human condition   as the performance campaign who in english is who  can erase the trace the traces which consist both   over 37 minutes video and photographic image they  were realized on the 23rd of july in 2003 in Sudan   guatemala to protest against the unchallenged  decision of the supreme court of justice to   authorize the candidacy again of general refrain  rios mont ex-political leader of the extreme right   who was responsible for a cop in 1992 and who  as dictator has promoted the civil war and that   a presidency that was marked by a campaign of  violence killings rapes torture and oppressive   tactics directed mainly against the indigenous  people of guatemala and on guatemala on that day   galindo dressed in black came out barefoot from  a laboratory carrying a white ball full of human   blood in her hands before going to her quarter  of the supreme court of justice from there she   progressed through the city at the end of the  performance she reached the earth quarter of the   national palace the seat of the presidency of the  country where she left the last two footprints and   the ball of blood in front of the court building  arranged was to ensure that the trace of bloody   footprints would remind at least for a short time  on the path from the branch of the executive power   to that of the branch of the judicial power  highlighting the complicity of both in covering   up an international policy of genocide with  the performance and the body as instrument over   artistic practices through a sort of reenactment  the artists impersonate the weak and the humble   the tortured and the oppressed highlighting  the limit of body and mind in this context a   regina is seen as a disturber who condemns the  shortcomings of the social and political system   offering a clear diagnosis of a sick society  investigating crimes and deviances that alter   policies and tackling controversial issues that  others prefer to avoid a personal revolution   silence is a conceptual approach immensely  poetic and of almost unbearable pain a reaction   represent the manifestation of a wooden soul in  her words el mundo morgiomi corazon and contagios the word beat my heart and infected me  with its anger negotiation in English   we can translate it as negotiation in  turn is a performance realized in 2013   by the body artist by regina in squaring medicine  in colombia and recorded for the 43 international   exhibition of artists of colombia one morning in  the center of the city a group of volunteers line   up to transport a coffin containing the artist  waiting for their turn to transfer a delivery   to the next participant from the coffin  the artists symbolize the sorrow of death   and the weight of peace that weights as does peace  mainly in a country like colombia although its   weight is always greater for some than it is  for others through such action and in silence   the volunteers transmit the idea of that of death  among those who take responsibility historically   in the certainty that if they bend their knees  the weight will be heavier for others say regina   behind this act there is a political reflection  related to the peace process in colombia as well   as a comparison with the negotiation the guatemala  carried out in 1996. every citizen should be aware   of the political and economic processes that take  place in their country it is a responsibility the   basement born and equally accepted by whole  highlight regina for galindo the idea of death   is much more intense inca in a country like  earth which have experienced very acute   conflict which are gradually breaking down  the coherences of social fabric that is why   her work focuses attention on sharing the burden  on the concept of equitable responsibility   although the act of transporting the coffee  containing a living person could be considered   macabre for the artist is either it is an  act of life and not of death life and that   are the most important things in your work or  rather they are two sides of the same coins   calindo representation are globally considered  both shocking and violent but they are not the   result of an empty provocation in all of them a  manifesto of social criticism is right thank you   thank you for tunata we can  watch the first video bye larissa   i will share my screen so  bear with me for a second uh um you um foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign my foreign be foreign hmm foreign do and then now we're gonna move on to  regina jose galindo's film negotiation foreign so okay so so hello so so bye hey so oh so so so thank you so uh so so i know uh so is oh so so so wow um so oh so so you so so foreign so uh okay hey great i'll pass it on to you fortunately thank  you thank you regina larissa these are very   very nice very nice work i would like  to start with a question to both of you and then slowly slowly you know to make singular  questions i would like to understand how is   contemporary visual culture  understood in a country with   you know civil war and political instability   we are all living in a time of political  instability but in the specific in a country like   guatemala and palestine now it is conceived  of this understood contemporary visual culture however or galindo first whatever whoever of you okay guatemala is uh yes so I can do a quick  translation of that um so regina says   it's actually shocking because um since guatemala  signed peace in 1996 there was found that there   was actually a lot of manifestations of art  throughout the time of conflict and art makers had   found different ways of protecting and concealing  the ways in which art has been made and was being   made um in fact it's quite common that curators or  art professionals are actually surprised when they   arrive in guatemala um only to find the artists  actually work in the campo which is like in   the fields or in um areas outside of cities and  they're working really well with quite uh kind of   established and um complex ways of working um so  it's clear that there's not been kind of a a pause   on intellectual development due to the political  situation in fact it's the opposite it seems that   they found different ways of working outside of it  thank you and Larissa do you want to say something   yeah i always think that a kind of think of say   european and american arts development have kind  of reached it's kind of the most intense moment   after world war ii and i feel like uh in  um countries that are experiencing um um   war or uh uh or have been dislocated or um have  had um occupation as in palestine you can see that   there's a real uh need to actually create work  uh that comes out of that environment so can   you cannot really um kind of expect an artist  that comes from uh those kind of regions to   uh be working on something that is like you know  um unrelated to what's going on because that just   feels dishonest um so i think a lot of the work  that's coming out of palestine is uh quite potent   it's um it's very engaged with the political  dialogue and it's not because of you know a   uh that people need feel that or artists  feel forced in that position but that's   because it's kind of an organic  way of um developing the art scene   um the art scene is also very kind of fractured  in palestine because uh different cities are palestinian cities are hard to reach  so for example when i go to bethlehem i   have a hard time you know communicating with  people in uh in rawan lab because it's a very um   uh long way and you have to be interrogated and  stopped by israeli checkpoints so um so it is   fractured and in the end you end up talking to  people over email or you know on the phone so it   doesn't really matter where you are in in the end  and and like um of course palestinians are kind of   dispersed all over the world so it is just  very normal for palestinian artists to just   be speaking from very different countries i've  been living in many countries myself and i've been   living most of my life outside of palestine so  i think it's the story of so many palestinians thank you and about what you said larissa you  said it is almost almost a responsibility of   an artist to talk about it's natural no to talk  about the situation in palestine in palestine   um do you think somehow unconsciously  you feel forced to talk about it i mean it is something that limitates the  way you do art because you have mainly   no you have to but you choose  to no as an artist to talk about   what is happening um but do you think this  this can limitate your creation somehow um i i think it's it depends on how you kind of uh   proceed with um or how how kind of the process  develops i mean in the kind of in the very   beginning i felt uh when i i started working um  say in the early 2000s with um i had a very urgent   need to document what was going on there was the  siege of bethlehem you know israeli tanks invaded   palestinian towns they destroyed everything  there was a complete discrepancy between what was   going on on the news and what was what really was  happening on the ground um and so it felt like you   needed to kind of be like almost like a second  eye as an artist to document what's going on   and also for myself like i wanted to make sure  that you know my the town that i'm from didn't   get erased so i used a lot of my family my friends  as well that we were actually existed there   because that's a real threat for palestinians that  to be you know to be historically uh erased um so   um i think that was kind of how i was functioning  on this kind of you know guerrilla style you know   um filmmaking and trying to just get information  uh in in those tapes but um i think now i have   kind of stepped back and i have a distance from  it all and i just find that artists always develop   different strategies and revisions of how they  work so i feel that i'm not really limited by it   rather that it is um it has developed into a  much more elaborate way of working that it's not   uh where it actually my work kind of understands  how to frame itself not in a local dialogue but it   actually it is something that is focal to uh world  structure well actually it's something you always   underline and i agree with your work because  uh for example the video we just we just saw   is a kind of historical documental and then your  work and the change a big change because you you   started to use science fiction and i think you are  you are still using it so i think this is like a   result of what you you you are saying somehow now  that you you step aside and you you change the   way also of narrating something but this this  change was volunteer i mean did you choose to   change of being like historical and documentary  and perhaps also autobiographical um and to   to talk in a way in in a make in a made-up way  like using fiction was a choice you made or was   um because of the response you had to your  work i don't know if i got into the poem   um not really it was i wasn't um it wasn't  the response it was actually more of a um   i think that uh it's kind of a very  complicated problem to get into in a way it's a   a very um you know basic problem that you know  there are people there's an occupying power   and uh the palestinians are oppressed and uh  it's a continuation of colonialism and israel is   uh doing that uh so it's kind of you know pretty  straightforward but at the same time what happened   psychologically to the the oppressor and  the oppressed it's something that becomes   intertwined and and for me that became something  that's um very interesting to explore was part of   understanding what forms of palestinian psyche  that became much more interesting and i found   that working with sci-fi kind of allows me not to  be dictated by the current political dialogue and   uh to kind of create a a platform by which i can  kind of set up my own terminology and find a new   kind of value system and so it's um kind of  a natural development of how to um to find an   alternative way of not talking about a very heavy  uh political dialogue that already has a set of   uh of ways to talk about it and you actually  feel trapped in in that and i wanted to kind of   escape from it and actually talk about it on my  own terms yes of course without using the same   narrative that we are we are full of um regina  you said i have a few questions also for regina   and you said that every citizen should be aware  of the political you know of the political process   of the political and social and economic process  happening in their country actually the same you   were saying larissa and that we have to be  responsible for it i have a few questions   do you think we should be responsible  also for what is happening elsewhere   and you as an artist both of you actually you  have a tools you know you have the tools to   to respond to these to this fact to these  political economic and social uh events happening   and how a citizen should answer our  citizen should use is their conscious to   to be active you know and to do something as  you do with your work we don't we don't have   the same tools we are not so creative so how  we can be useful and um be responsible of it   and being in our country and as well elsewhere  i really wish if i can answer in english but   it's difficult to me so i will answer  in spanish in two or three phrases situation um i do not consider that anyone or anyone at  all is responsible for the politics of their   country or indeed internationally of the world  no one is responsible for for their own for those   politics um they are responsible for their  consciousness and for their awareness though   um we cannot be responsible for any of  the politics in any of our respective   countries those are not in our or my hands  but we can be aware and conscious of them we are talking about conflict countries that are  full of conflict in the case of palestine it's a   conflict that was brought about by external forces   and in the case of guatemala it is  a case of conflict brought about   by internal forces we cannot be  responsible for either of those conflicts h is i believe that uh we are responsible  for the historical memory um we are   responsible for the why asking the why of our  countries why they are in these situations   and i believe that we are responsible for  finding ways in which we can confront and   resist the forces of these countries  of these states and these dynamics um i do not consider that an artist has an innate  ability to be political or has any innate tools to   resist um some artists might be able to do this  and will be able to reproduce this in their in   their work however individuals are also able  to do this by channeling kind of creative means and i don't know if you want to open the question  to the audience first and then we can add new so if you want to answer there are two for you know in guatemala the question that  was asked was do you think that   latino art is being presented by latin critics and   artists or more by western voices and the  response is that in guatemala we are not   represented by anyone but ourselves in guatemala  it is a case that it is hard to leave and   in some ways we're somewhat obliged to stay in the  country um it's also true that the mayan artists   do not need actually other voices they can explain  and express their own art in their own voices   and as a mestiza uh mestiza is the term used for  people with mixed heritage um uh rohina also does   not need a voice um does not need a voice to  represent her in that way and actually there's   a lot of pride in the fact that in guatemala they  have managed to create a space for their art um   by using their own voice rather than that of  anyone in the west or any western platforms   um i would like to ask a very actual question to  both of you and we were talking about before with   larissa how did you what what was your reaction to  the time we are living you know it's more than one   year that our lives changed the art field actually  is in an impasse because all the institutions   around the world or almost in all around the  world are closed the galleries the the museums   that's why actually we are all here online  so um did it have an impact in your work in   your uh artistic process or on the contrary i  mean did it uh stop your creativity or was it   on the contrary and impulse you know to do more  because you have this this feeling of overcome   this this time and to use it somehow to to new  production and new creativity or you or you have   a crisis i don't know how did you do it yeah in my  case i just in the beginning obviously it was very   stupefying the whole process the whole uh pandemic  because you actually for me it became kind of a   um a materialization of everything  that i'm talking about in my own work   and if you um i i i finished a work that  i showed in venice called in vitro that's   um basically means life outside of its own of  its natural habitat and it was all about a group   of scientists that escaped a disaster and they  ran to a bunker under the city of bethlehem and   so for me uh with the with the pandemic it just  felt that this scenario is actually uh becoming   um is re-edified you know in this uh um in this  moment and so i got uh it became too real for me   to continue with a project that was actually  based on this project uh and so i completely   changed the film to something completely different  because i felt i needed to to free those people   from the bunker to go outside but the idea of  the bunker is basically this entrapment of um   that palestinians find themselves in uh of um of  being in a limbo where they constantly remember   1948 and the nakba and you know palestinian exodus  and constantly speaking of a future a palestinian   state and and the protracted um uh pandemic felt  like uh very real in that sense so for me it was   kind of uh my uh a a universal lockdown that i  kind of actually speak about in in the film where   whatever um if we're left for the events to take  place and continue uh a natural disaster uh will   happen and um so um so so it kind of was a a  prediction or a you know reality became stranger   than fiction in that way um and and thinking about  uh how i usually talk about time and the fact that   with the erection of the state of israel  palestinians have been kind of catapulted into a   historical time they kind of exist in this bubble  that's outside of um homogeneous time and i just   felt that with uh the with the lockdown it felt  like we're all kind of experiencing this yeah yeah   and we think with the lockdown sorry regina  now i give you the the voice to answer do   you think when we look down people can perceive  better the palestinian situation uh as locked or yeah i think the claustrophobic yeah now it is  impossibility of moving or the impossibility   of moving the uh the claustrophobia of just kind  of being controlled by something bigger than you   i mean that's this is something that i was  born with you know so i escaped the lockdown   in palestine too and then this is coming this but  uh what happened uh with work is actually even   though a lot of shows got postponed or cancelled  some institutions actually will never reopen now   as it's very sad that some commissions were  withdrawn but um at the same time because um   i started the project i was just continuing with  the project and working on it and i'm currently   actually working on two so in in a way it actually  was a very intense working time for me as well   okay so you didn't lose your  karate and what about you regina um um i have had as so in the past 15 years i  have not been in guatemala for more than one   month at a time so actually this past time in the  pandemic has been a huge change um crisis ends up   motivate me and when i feel i am about to lose a  battle is when i am most able to find motivation   so i've actually had a quite a productive  period um given that circumstances currently is in some way uh being locked in guatemala  has locked me to my roots which is where i   originally come from and it has kind of re-shown  me the precarity and the situation of where i live   um i feel a lot of empathy with larissa because  during this time i feel like we felt very close   to palestine um and due to the precarity that the  countries both share in guatemala it's still one   of the few only countries that hasn't received  a vaccine and the only vaccines that we have   received have been um 5000 vaccines donated by  the israeli state which actually directly came   from them went to the military in guatemala this  is my country it's not something i'm particularly   proud of and i may not be particularly happy to  live here but being in guatemala has really shown   me what the country is it has brought me back  to my roots and it has motivated me to continue   to work here to continue to work with  people here and think about what this means thank you very touching what you're saying  and i share the same the same view because   also for me was a way of reconnecting with  myself and with my growth i think it's   some kind of process we all went through during  this this time i don't know if you want to   say something in particular larissa  regina if you want to talk about   something in particular about the video we show  i know it they are both old video all the work   but if you want to add something or want to say  something about the videos or about anything   of your work if you want to add something to this  conversation not just to step stuck on my question maybe we can answer um a question um about uh mourning and grief yeah oh that's  being in chat yes yes i'm i'm reading it and i   i think i would like to see how actually larissa  and regina saw it if they saw it and if they can   both see actually regina just said that she  felt empathy with larissa and probably also   with the work we just we just saw i would like  to know also if this question if larissa saw   you know parallels with the work of regina  on in general you know with guatemala with   latin american and guatemala in particular  because of course i see these parallels   that's why i am talking about all of them but  i would like to see if you see this as well guatemala um i would like to do like draw a basic uh  relationship between the two places that we've   been talking about of course whilst respecting all  of their differences all conflict is due to land   earth or earth whether it's been ransacked in the  case of guatemala or whether it's been occupied in   the case of palestine this act of stealing land  the process of stealing and occupying land is   what has resulted in precarity and in fact um both  of these places are currently um in the hands of   external international forces that do not belong  to the people that are currently living there yeah you larissa do you see any parallels  um yeah um maybe i see parallels and how   as an artist you kind of try to um speak  i mean find ways of talking about um   an emotion or a um what all these structures  kind of um end up doing to your psychology or   uh what what's the emotive aspect of that  and find different ways of um trying to   transgress the normal um way of talking  about these things and i think that's this   the similarity similarity i see in in the work  where um it's always this kind of trying to   find this um a very specific platform by which one  can speak of these things which is quite hard uh i   think in in land confiscation order for example  uh it was very difficult for me to just kind of   um address what was going on  without using documentaries so   in a way this combination of the two was um  um a way for me to tell this story in an uh   in an emotional or emotive way um and  i can see that uh with uh regina's work   it's um it's also even though it's um kind  of you can call it a political reaction to   uh uh what's going on it's also it's very laden  with emotion i mean i mean what i for example from   the last film uh kind of kept on thinking is like  how is regina herself is uh doing in the coffin   uh and you can't help but notice the people  that are you know for a long time carrying   this coffin so you start thinking about it in a  in a very kind of personal way and i think that's   quite tricky and it's it's hard to get there in  new york i think it's also interesting to see   as a two different you know national  representation of uh of the national reality   can mingle no you know we are talking about  guatemala palestine palestine palestine and   uh actually they express in a different way the  same poetic as well no both works are very poetic   and they both express uh national problems but  you reflect in the other as well no um as i i   see myself in in both you know in both reality  and i'm not palestinian i'm not latin american   i'm italian so i see a piece of myself there so  perhaps it's as regina was saying before that   we when you have an a conscious towards the  problem that are from your country or from   outside diseases is expressed as well in your case  in in your work in my case in my words perhaps or   in this kind of of meetings but both both are very  very strong very strong work with a very strong   meaning and narrative to me i actually get  emotional when i when i see your work i'm   very fond of both of you so for me  it's very nice to be here with you   and really really thank you for giving me this  this chance you know to have both of you here   i think we reached the point in which we have to  close perhaps the meeting now davian is telling me   yeah we are we are coming coming to an end but if  there's any fine one final question that anyone   in the audience um would like to answer please go  ahead and um take yourself off me or um add to the   chat otherwise i have a final question to both of  them if i can in the case of of larissa it is more   more political question and perhaps i don't  know you choose what to say do you think the   political situation in palestine as richer than  empaths or do you think behind up because we all   hope we all have the same hope or do you think  something we can something can we ever change   that's it um i mean i think negotiations on   the ground have reached an impasse  but there are certain ways of how things are developing there that kind of cannot  stay like that any longer so in a way something   will happen i'm not really sure if it's going to  be for better or worse but i'm just speaking about   the latest development for example regina saying  that guatemala received 5 000 uh vaccinations from   israel uh to guatemala but they're refusing to  give palestinians any uh vaccinations so that so palestinians are held imprisoned by you know an  occupying power but israel israel the argument is   that well they have their own country so they're  not responsible yet they are the ones imprisoning   these people so in that sense i  think it because it's becoming much   uh kind of clear or blatant to the world that um  israel is actually uh breaking uh human rights   law um so i think it kind of you know public  opinion matters in that way uh and i hope uh   things will change for the better soon we always  we all hope thank you and and and in guatemala   regina do you think guatemala is changed do  you think the situation will get better or   or whatever is in an empath and  the situation will get stuck in guatemala we currently have one of  the most corrupt governments of all time   and uh actually the reason that guatemalan was  able to receive those vaccines from israel was   because guatemala has now for a long time  been under the training or the schooling of   the israeli military and the reason that they  sent us those vaccine was because of that and   those vaccines went to military only and that's  because israel has been training the guatemalan   military for a long time now so those vaccines  will never and did not see kind of the community   or serve the community of guatemala and  rahina also wants to share a poem um that   speaks i think a lot to the rel the relationship  also the situation both in palestine and guatemala multiplication i will not try my best to translate  this uh bear with so multiply yourselves   only if you want to multiply your tragedy  or be born to only immediately die   make of your hands of assassins make  up your hands of your own assassins   or give us reasons to be able to kill them it is  not anyone's fault that which happens in the world that the hunger is yours  and that the earth is ours   that we will always continue to be the ones of  forever and you will always continue to be more thank you thank you it's actually a great place  to um to end i want to thank everybody who's   present here with us tonight and um our speakers  larissa regina and fortinata um we're gonna put   um a feedback form in the in the  chat and we would like if anybody um   would like to fill that out and  just give some feedback on the event   um and this is obviously like i said at the  beginning our last event in our research network   um series global revisions and we'll be announcing  um the next programming in our newsletter so you   can sign up for um from without via our website so  thank you very much thank you thank you thank you bye thank you bye yes regina  thank you larissa italian bye bye

2021-07-15

Show video