[-empyre-] Borders and Migration research and Contemporary Art

Sun May 5 02:45:23 AEST 2019

Dear Renate and Junting,

I would like to join the conversation and draw your attention on the
antiatlas of borders, a group of researchers, artists and experts. As they
articulate research and artistic creation, they attempt to apprehend in a
unique way the mutations of borders and spaces of our contemporaneous
societies. Here is an abstract of its manifesto
<http://www.antiatlas.net/towards-an-antiatlas-of-borders/>:

"From scientific exploration to artistic experimentation: initially
conceived as an exploratory research project, the *antiAtlas of borders *has
become a performance in the artistic meaning of the word. The fact that
researchers, professionals of border control, and artists have met each
other for ten seminars between 2011 and 2013 has of course allowed them to
enrich their own approach. In addition, this has also led to uncommon
transdisciplinary experiences through which original works have reffered to
borders as they are lived: this has been the case when producing video
games and films on the basis of anthropoligical observations, when managing
participative cartography, etc. Moreover, artistic works have provided many
explorations and experiences of our ambivalent relation to borders – one
one side, what they make of us, of our identity, of our intimacy, of our
body, etc.; on the other side, what do we make of them, how we give them
material and immaterial visibility or invisibility, how we play with them,
either for freeing of them, or for surveying and denouncing our
contemporaries. Tactic media as diversions of surveillance are spectacular
manifestations of such an ambivalence. These pieces help us to keep some
distance with the domination/resistance alternative. They show that the
relations between the rationality of control initiatives and the practices
that evade them are perpetually replayed.

Favouring a dialogue between art, science, and practice, does not mean
promoting a new ‘doxa’ for border studies. We simply assume that
transdisciplinarity generates cognitive gains made of quotations, transfers
and exemplification. Any discipline at any time may function as a vehicle
for another one. None of each specific knowledge is confronted to the
collapse of its proper logic, but committed in new experiments,  with all
the limits and benefits this may induce. This is the way the *antiAtlas*
challenges our routines by pushing everyone for experimentation and taking
completely different backgrounds into account."

I curated 6 exhibitions <http://www.antiatlas.net/actions-en/exhibitions/>
as part of the antiatlas of borders collective and combining all these
different practices was a wonderful and exciting adventure. During one year
and a half, we worked very closely with the scientific and artistic
committee and tried to exchange as much as possible between different
visions and ways of working. I learned a lot from researchers and was
amazed by the deep understanding and knowledge they have on the subject of
borders. Thanks to their research and to their approaches to this issue, I
was able to get a very diverse understanding of this complex subject. From
me, they discovered the online communication and the power of the web and
social networks to diffuse and share the information. They also got a
better understanding of the tactical media field and we learned so much
from each other that this experience is already a beautiful success in
sharing and learning from passionate human beings. I come from media art
world and I tried to respond to a scenario that the committee conceived
with artists’ works, which is a very different way for me to work. This
time I had a script to follow; the way I did it was to try to find some
ludic interactive installations, as well as documentary projects or games,
in order to allow the experimentation of the subject by the audience.

The antiatlas of borders organises regularly sminars at the border of art
and research and also distribute a journal
<http://www.antiatlas.net/antiatlas-journal-02-fictions-at-the-border-2017/>
.

Isabelle Arvers
[image:
http://www.isabellearvers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/animLogo.gif]
<http://www.isabellearvers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/animLogo.gif>
Isabelle Arvers
Curator, art critic and artist
+33 661 998 386
http://www.isabellearvers.com
Director of Kareron www.kareron.com
twitter: @zabarvers
youtube.com/zabarvers
https://vimeo.com/isabellearvers
Skype ID: zabarvers

Le sam. 4 mai 2019 à 17:26, Renate Ferro <rferro at cornell.edu> a écrit :

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
> Dear Junting,
>
> Many thanks for sharing Michael Joo’s pieces, both the Salt Transfer Cycle
> and Migrated at the Smithsonian. I am so happy to be introduced to our
> Cornell alumni’s work.  What an uncanny juxtaposition to Robert Smithson’s
> salt sculptures that were exhibited at Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum
> of Art in the late 60’s.  Smithson’s sculptures were installations of piles
> of salt crystals that he mined about four miles from campus under Cayuga
> Lake’s Salt Mines, also a site for his art at the time.  He identified the
> relationship between the two as having a site/non-site relationship.
>
>
>
> The resonances between Joo’s three sites in his performance/installation
> video Salt Transfer Cycle begins in Chinatown in a pile of salt, continues
> to the Great Salt Lake in Utah (where to the north of the lake lies
> Smithson’s own creation, Spiral Jetty). The piece finally ends with his
> return to South Korea.  In the three segments Joo’s body accepts traces of
> salt onto his body; salt to represent the salt from sweat and labor.
>
>
>
> Thanks Junting for sharing your own research on spatial narrative and the
> contemporary works, Liquid Borders and Sonic Territories. Global
> geopolitical narrative and the potential were sound flows and oozes between
> the cultural and political spaces of borders is especially fascinating in
> relationship to propaganda. If you can share other work or specifics about
> your own research though out the month hope you will.  Also would love to
> hear from others in your network in Asia.
>
>
>
> I was just talking to a colleague of mine last night.  We were reminiscing
> about another exhibition here at Cornell at the Johnson Museum of Art
> curated by Iftikhar Dadi, Partition as a Productive Space.
> https://www.academia.edu/10615321/Lines_of_Control_Partition_as_a_Productive_Space_co-edited_
>
> The exhibition and conference that followed was an early discussion of the
> border.  Dadi’s catalog entry, Partition and Contemporary Art, discusses
> the relationship between space, political crisis, and contemporary art.
> That early exhibition and conference in 2012 was one of the first for me to
> collapse issues of space-borders- and the politics of culture.
>
> I am wondering if there are others whose research or art are resonating
> from these issues.
>
> Ricardo Dominguez and Amy Sara Carroll come to mind who both work on the
> site of the Mexican/ US Border.  Hoping I can poke them back channel to
> perhaps post about their recent work.
>
>
>
> Thanks again Junting.  Renate
>
>
>
> Renate Ferro
>
> Visiting Associate Professor
>
> Director of Undergraduate Studies
>
> Department of Art
>
> Tjaden Hall 306
>
> rferro at cornell.edu
>
>
>
> I have recently been thinking a lot about how artwork restructures space.
> Taking on Renate’s opening thread of this month, I want to share my recent
> experience and perhaps reflect on the global identity that -empyre- as a
> platform has instituted throughout the years.
>
>
>
> I was at a conference called “Global Asias” earlier this month. And for
> some, the title itself may already invite controversies. As paradoxical as
> it sounds, how could a geographical area called Asia be global?
>
>
>
> With that question in mind, I was fascinated by a presentation by Terry K
> Park, who analyzed the works of the Korean-American artist Michael Joo (who
> was born in Ithaca to a South Korean couple studying at Cornell!), from his
> earlier works like Salt Transfer Cycle (
> https://redflag.org/magazine/issue-8/salt-transfer-cycle-a-video-piece/ <
> https://redflag.org/magazine/issue-8/salt-transfer-cycle-a-video-piece/>)
> to more recent ones like Migrated at the Smithsonian (
> https://www.apollo-magazine.com/meditations-on-migration-michael-joo-at-the-smithsonian/
> <
> https://www.apollo-magazine.com/meditations-on-migration-michael-joo-at-the-smithsonian/>).
> As seen in both works, the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) becomes a
> recurring trope in Michael Joo’s oeuvre, not simply as an identifier of the
> physical space, but rather a constituent of a spatial narrative about
> movement and migration, whose ecological and/or humanitarian consequences
> demand a global identity.
>
>
>
> Some of my recent research on contemporary art in China/Hong Kong/ Taiwan
> also resolves around this restructuring of space as a global narrative. I
> have been writing about artworks like Liquid Borders (
> http://cargocollective.com/samsonyoung/Liquid-Borders/ <
> http://cargocollective.com/samsonyoung/Liquid-Borders/>) and Sonic
> Territories (
> https://news.artnet.com/art-world/taiwan-kinmen-island-sonic-territories-1332893/
> <
> https://news.artnet.com/art-world/taiwan-kinmen-island-sonic-territories-1332893/>),
> where the spatial narrative is exactly an integral part of the global
> geopolitical discourse. But in any case, I appreciate that -empyre-
> provides the space for discovering the connections we need towards that
> global identity.
>
>
>
> Junting
>
>
>
> Junting Huang
>
> Department of Comparative Literature
>
> 240 Goldwin Smith Hall
>
> Cornell University
>
> Ithaca, NY 14853
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
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