TENSTA KONSTHALL
Symposium The Eros Effect
Saturday 17.10, 10:00–18:00 Symposium The Eros Effect: Art, Solidarity Movements and the Struggle for Social Justice. The symposium forms the starting point of a multi-year inquiry into the relationship between art and solidarity movements, performed in a series of commissions, exhibitions, workshops, presentations, and film screenings. Faced with fascist parties gaining ground in Europe and an increasingly tough social climate, we see the necessity to return to the notion of solidarity in order to try its validity today. Will solidarity still be relevant in the future, or is it a historical concept? Do we need to find new ways to describe the political movements of today and their struggles, sympathies, and commitments? What does recognizing the urgency of a situation imply, and how do we act upon it?
The invited speakers are Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc (Metz), Filipa César (Berlin), Kodwo Eshun (London), Peo Hansen (Norrköping), Ingela Johansson (Stockholm), Stefan Jonsson (Norrköping), Kristine Khouri (Beirut), Doreen Mende (Berlin), Bojana Piskur (Ljubljana), Natascha Sadr Haghighian (Berlin/Tehran), Rasha Salti (Beirut), Rojda Sekersöz (Stockholm), Gulf Labor/Ashok Sukumaran (Mumbai), Håkan Thörn (Gothenburg), Dmitry Vilensky (S:t Petersburg), Marion von Osten (Berlin), Aleksandra Ålund (Norrköping), among others.
The Eros Effect project borrows its title from the researcher and activist George N. Katsiaficas’s essay by the same name from 1989. We will continue to build on the analytical tool “Eros Effect,”which is an attempt to acknowledge the emotional aspects of social movements. The concept thus aims to turn away from earlier theories that considered “mass movements” as primitive and impulsive, as emotional outbursts, or as exclusively rational efforts in order to change the norms and institutions of a society. With his notion the Eros Effect, Katsiaficas suggests that social movements always constitute both and that the struggle for liberation is equally an “erotic” act and a rational desire to break free from structural and psychological barriers. Franz Fanon made similar observations when he stated that resistance towards colonialism causes positive effects on the emotional life of individuals.
The symposium is a collaboration with REMESO: The Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society at Linköping University. The opening for Filipa César’s project Transmission From the Liberated Zones will be from 19:00 to 21:00. This is the first presentation within the project The Eros Effect: Art, Solidarity Movements and the Struggle for Social Justice.
RSVP to office@tenstakonsthall.se no later than Thursday, 15 October.
Program (changes might appear)
10:00 Introduction by Maria Lind, Stefan Jonsson, and Peo Hansen
10:30 Filipa César:
Notes on Luta Ca Caba Inda (The struggle is not over yet)
10:50 Marion von Osten: The Tricontinentale Net – Prospects
and Projects
11:10 Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc: A Continental Drift
11:30 Pause
11:50 Håkan Thörn:
The Meaning of Solidarity: The Case of the Global Anti-Apartheid Movement
12:10 Ingela Johansson: The Great Miners’ Strike 1969–70 in Sweden and its solidarity actions
12:30 Bojana Piškur:
The Museum of Solidarity in
Santiago 1971
12:50 Kodwo Eshun:
Forms of Discontent in Handsworth Songs by Black Audio Film Collective
13:10 Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti: In the Labyrinths of Exhibition Histories:
The International Art Exhibition for Palestine, Beirut 1978
13:45 Lunch
14:30 Stefan Jonsson:
The Question of Solidarity
14:45 Peo Hansen:
Solidarity Knows Only Borders:
Reflections on the Current Refugee Crisis in the European Union
15:10 Natascha Sadr Haghighian:
Left To Our Own Devices
15:30 Mathias Wåg:
The Politics of Self Organization
15:50 Pause
16:10 Aleksandra Ålund:
Swedish Urban Justice Movements – Options Ahead?
16:30 Ashok Sukumaran/Gulf Labor: The Museum and the Camp
16:50 Dmitry Vilensky:
Rosa’s House of Culture
17:10 Rojda Sekersöz:
The Story in Focus
17:30 Doreen Mende:
Solidarity in Struggle
18:00 Discussion
The symposium is free of charge.
A film program that includes some of the symposium’s guests will take place Sunday 18.10, 13:00–16:00
mesa de montagem 