ART, CRITICISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS 25-27 NOV
Registration is now open for the ABCA Journey, which will take place in an online format on the 25th, 26th and 27th of November.
In the 2020 edition, the theme “Poetic resistance: art, criticism and human rights” meets the need to achieve a transdisciplinary look at art, artists, works, as well as the relationship among new geographies in the art system. The event is sponsored by PAEP/CAPES public notice and will be held in partnership with the Federal University of Southern Bahia (UFSB), by the Pro-Rectory of Extension and Culture (Proex) and UFSB’s art courses. The ABCA Journey’s mission is to promote the approximation and exchange between its members and researchers working in the areas of history, art theory and criticism, encouraging interdisciplinary studies and contributing to the sphere of visual arts and to the fields of education, science and culture. In addition to the round tables bound by the Journey’s central theme, there will be an art exhibition of the digital residency “CARA” – Artistic Co-Creations – Resistances and Ancestries, organized by KOKIR collective and the NGO Thydêwá, and which will gather art and indigenous students from UFSB. PDF summaries of texts will also be available on the event website to be published in its proceedings.
The art courses at UFSB favor in their genesis and methodologies the prominence of voices excluded from the history of art, and the effects and issues arising from the construction of subalterization and the rejection of the non-Eurocentric. However, beyond the simplistic rupture of exchanging the colonial for the non-colonial, they mainly propose a continuous and dynamic movement to ensure the multiplicity and heterogeneity of knowledge and practices that inhabit the contemporary scene. The aim of the 2020 Journey is to treat this theme from a plural perspective, which promotes intercross between aesthetic and social expressions, and odds for the understanding of a “sharing of the common good”.
That is, just as the revision of human rights involves the reinvention of its universal character, the construction of a new artistic paradigm should be established from the spaces of subjectivities and their possible insertions in communities and daily life. Based upon the understanding of the bond between human rights and the arts set by everyday social relations, culture and local and autonomous sensibility, the journey’s nature is of a heterogeneous space for listening and dialogue.
Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic issue, the theme addressed in this journey becomes even more relevant since a possible reinvention of artistic practice is envisaged for the near future. Significant social changes are already being reflected in the field of arts. Therefore, this journey, despite the subjective limitations of virtual meetings, aims to contribute significantly to the discussions around art in this uncertain and complex period. It will function as a space for discussions, to foster creation and reflection, and contemporary art dissemination, especially from the perspective of artists, researchers, teachers and students involved in thinking about new epistemologies and centralities in the arts, revealing other ways of existing and practicing artistic knowledge.
In recent years, ABCA has remained steadfast in order to promote national and international journeys aiming to expand the space for debate and research dissemination. In 2015, the “ABCA Journey: Latin American Art” took place in Sao Paulo; in 2016 the “ABCA Journey: Institutions and Critics – Interfaces and Art Reflections”, gathered specialists in Florianópolis. In 2017, the Archive and Memory Journey, at USP. In 2018, the Concrete Art and Constructive Strands Journey, at UFMG. In 2019, the Synthesis of Arts: memory and actuality, at UnB. Other milestones are the publications resulting from these meetings, such as the Research on Balance and Perspectives magazine (2013), published sponsored by CAPES (Council for Higher Education) and the University of Sao Paulo Pro-Rectory of Postgraduate Studies; and the edition of the magazine Concrete Art and Constructive Aspects: Theory, Criticism and History of Artistic Technique.