Dis/Possession: Post-Participatory Aeshetics and the Pedagogy of Land

In cities as diverse as Addis Ababa, Istanbul, Mexico City and Berlin, the concept of dispossession currently provides a key point of reference for activist, academics and artists to engage with a wide scope of violent appropriations including colonial theft, corporate land grabbing, state facilitated resettlement, urban gentrification, etc. The proposed project starts off from the realities of the struggles of the dispossessed public revolts, activism, but also the more informal and ephemeral tactics of encroachment and epistemic interventions that provide the basis for subtle modes of contestation. The project contends that art-based research which aims to unify knowing, doing and feeling can grasp the complexity of dispossession, which here is understood as a state of violent appropriation of land, bodies and relations, and also as the result of the always tenuous process of subjection that constitutes subjectivity. With regards to this synthesis the project finds inspiration in epistemologies of the South, decolonizing methodologies and Black aesthetics, which trace the conditions of dis/possession to the fusion of the state of being and having in the 18th century that tied the self-possessed subject to the necessarily dis-possessed object in the colonies. With this heritage in mind the project looks at (1) the creative strategies of survival in the grand-scale resettlement orchestrated by authoritarian developmentalism in Addis Ababa (visual artist Berhanu Ashagrie Deribew), (2) womens struggles against state violence and enforced displacement in Mexico City (visual artist Naomi Rincon Gallardo), (3) Istanbul and its radical rescaling of the urban landscape in the melodramatic format (multimedia artist Ipek Hamzaoglu), (4) the imagination of land/scape in colonial narratives and their recounting in Berlin today (sound artist Janine Jembere), (5) the reenactment of an early 20th century anarchist commune in the countryside of Portugal (filmmaker Slvia das Fadas) and finally, (6) it turns its focus onto the study group itself, tracing its own negotiation of dis/possession and claims to property and individualism. With regards to the artistic research methods, the project wants to learn from participatory art and explore methods attributed to post- participatory aesthetics (e.g. initiating, listening, with/nessing, indignation, maintaining), which enable a coming together in friction. Supported by Anette Baldauf (social researcher) and Epifania Amoo-Adare (architect and educational theorist) from C3, an institute dedicated to critical pedagogy and spatial literacy in Accra, Ghana, the research group will finally use their insights to create a toolbox for a pedagogy of land. The toolkit will be a compact, easily accessible collection of hands-on material supporting the struggle against dispossession; it will travel to each of the sites of study, grow as it is informed by the encounters there, until it becomes the projects art-based contribution to unite knowing, acting and doing.

As transnational extractivism, neo-fascist politics, and economies of abandonment expand around the world, can we facilitate situated practices of storytelling and worldmaking that enliven multiple futures propelled by the forces of indignation, desire, and relationality? The project extended an invitation to restore and reinvent bonds of reciprocity with the land, humans, and non-humans, while envisioning transformative and shared horizons. This collaborative endeavor took as its point of departure the contested realities and public struggles of the dispossessed. Bringing together seven site-sensitive engagements, the contributors developed their artistic works, as well as speculative tools and activities, to conjure worlds to come in the ruins of dispossession. The result is a combination of subtle theoretical reflection, pluriversal modes of inquiry, and unruly epistemic intervention. Drawing its inspiration from decolonizing methodologies, Black aesthetics, and epistemologies of the South, the project gathers these influences for a novel experiment that demonstrates how arts-based researchers confront dispossession through itinerant practices of resistance.