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VIRTUAL: Potential Agrarianisms
11 October 2021, 2:00 pm–3:30 pm
A discussion streamed from the exhibition Potential Agrarianisms at Kunsthalle Bratislava, with artists Anetta Mona Chişa, Annalee Davis, Oto Hudec and Ferenc Grof in conversation with curators Maja and Reuben Fowkes (PACT, IAS).
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
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Availability
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Cost
- Free
Organiser
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Post-socialist Art Centre (PACT)
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Potential Agrarianisms sets out to diversify agriculture and pluralise its histories, recovering suppressed peasant pasts and activating their unrealised possibilities, destabilising urban-rural dichotomies, repairing the disconnect with the natural world and restoring caring and reciprocal relationships to the soils and plants that nourish us. Uncovering its origins in colonial plantations and embeddedness in the operations of extractive capitalism, the exhibition explores alternatives to the globalised system of industrial agriculture with its patent formula of chemical additives, noxious pesticides and genetically modified seeds, vigorously cultivated with fossil fuel machinery. The rediscovery and reimagining of attentive relations to the land challenges the relentless expansion of intensive farming which promised a new age of abundance, but by depleting the natural vitality of the soil, endangering biodiversity and contributing to climate change now undermines its own aims. Drawing on feminist, postsocialist, black, indigenous and beyond-human perspectives, the artists in this exhibition propose reparative and future oriented land reforms for a just social and ecological transition.
For this online event, artists Anetta Mona Chişa, Annalee Davis, Oto Hudec and Ferenc Grof will present their ambitious new works that were especially realised for Potential Agrarianisms in a discussion with curators Maja and Reuben Fowkes that will be streamed from the exhibition space.
The exhibition is on show at Kunsthalle Bratislava until 31 October 2021. Participating artists: Melanie Bonajo, Gerard Ortin Castellví, Anetta Mona Chişa, Annalee Davis, Ferenc Gróf with Jean-Baptiste Naudy, Oto Hudec, Marzia Migliora, MyVillages, Ilona Németh, Uriel Orlow, Prabhakar Pachpute and Alicja Rogalska. For more information see: www.kunsthallebratislava.sk
All welcome. This is a virtual event that will run on Zoom; please register to receive a joining link: https://ias-potentialagrarianisms.eventbrite.co.uk. Please note that there may be recording at some events. Please follow this FAQ link for more information. All our events are free but you can support the IAS here.
If you missed the event you can watch the recording here:
Cover image: Potential Agrarianisms, installation view with Prabhakar Pachpute, The Song for an Assembly II (2021), Anetta Mona Chisa, One Are (2021) and Gerard Ortín Castellví, Agrologistics (2021), Kunsthalle Bratislava, 20 August – 31 October 2021. Photo: Adam Šakový.
About the Speakers
Anetta Mona Chişa
Born in Romania and based in Prague, Anetta Mona Chişa is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. She works across a variety of media including video, sculpture, photography, often employing performance and language. Her works and collaborative projects have been exhibited widely internationally. She is currently enrolled in a PhD program at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague. She has exhibited at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Manifesta X in St. Petersburg, Whitechapel Gallery, London, Museum Sztuki Łódź, MUMOK, Vienna and at the 29th Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts.
Annalee Davis
Annalee Davis is an artist who works at the intersection of biography and history, focusing on post-plantation economies. Her studio, located on a working dairy farm on Barbados, operated as a 17th century sugarcane plantation, offers a critical context for her practice which engages with the residue of the plantation. Her 2019 bilingual book, On Being Committed to a Small Place was published by TEOR-éTica and launched along with her solo exhibition Heartseed, also at TEOR-éTica, Costa Rica. Recent exhibitions include Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh, Kunsthalle Wien, Austria and the International Biennale of Casablanca, and solo shows at TEOR / éTica, San José, Costa Rica and Haarlem Artspace, Wirksworth, England.
Ferenc Gróf
Born in Hungary and based in Paris, Ferenc Gróf is a graduate of the Hungarian University of the Arts, Budapest and since 2012 he has taught at the École Nationale Supérieur d’Art (ENSA) in Bourges, France. His work considers ideological footprints, at the intersection of graphic design and spatial experiences. He is a founding member with Jean-Baptiste Naudy of the Parisian co-operative Société Réaliste (2004-2015), whose work considers questions of contemporary political representations and text-based interventions. Société Réaliste’s work has also been included in numerous exhibitions and biennials such as Shanghai, 2012; Lyon, 2009; and Istanbul, 2009, with recent solo presentations at Kiscelli Museum and OFF Biennale, Budapest.
Oto Hudec
Oto Hudec lives and works in Slovakia. He has an PhD from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava. His multimedia practice, encompassing paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, film and public art, is concerned with issues of ecology, the rights of refugees, social and environmental justice. He has had solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Bratislava and Gandy Gallery Bratislava, and also shown recently at Ludwig Museum Budapest, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Centre Pompidou, Paris and De Appel, Amsterdam. His community art projects include Project Karavan with Daniela Krajčová, video workshops with Roma children in Slovak villages, and Archipelago, participatory sculpture workshops in Lisbon and the Cabo Verde islands.
Maja and Reuben Fowkes
Maja and Reuben Fowkes are co-directors of the Postsocialist Art Centre (PACT) at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London and founders of the Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art. They are the authors of Art and Climate Change (Thames & Hudson, 2021), Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 (Thames & Hudson, 2020) and editors of Ilona Németh: Eastern Sugar (Sternberg Press, 2021). Maja is the author of The Green Bloc: Neo-Avant-Garde Art and Ecology under Socialism (CEU Press, 2015) and Reuben edited a special issue of Third Text on Actually Existing Artworlds of Socialism (2018). Their curatorial projects include the exhibition Potential Agrarianisms at Kunsthalle Bratislava, the Danube River School and a trilogy of exhibitions on the revolutions of 1956, 1968 and 1989. They lead the Getty Foundation Connecting Art Histories supported research project Confrontations: Sessions in East European Art History.