The Future Of The Past
Open Call
We cordially invite you to mur.at’s The Future Of The Past, a three days Work Lab with Tabita Rezaire. In the first half of December 2017, we are asking you to participate in the unique setting and situation of a Work Lab held in Graz, Austria.
The intention of the Work Lab is to create an environment to share ideas, knowledge, problems, dissent, solutions, utopia and future strategies on the guiding theme of the Archive. Stated by Markus Miessen and Yann Chateigné as a productive space of conflict, questions that will be asked are how do digital archives look like, what are their contributions, what are their limits, what are their threats as well as who decides what is to be archived and how is the information used. With those questions pending and at the centre of the Work Lab’s artistic and intellectual involvement, the outcome (an exhibition, a reading, a performance, a showing, a listening, etc.) is completely up to the dynamics of the Work Lab.
As a reference and starting point we invited Tabita Rezaire to take part in the Work Lab. The Guyanese/Danish new media artist challenges and confronts the dominant narratives that everything of value emerged from the West, as she explains in an interview with Unlabelled Magazine. Mainly through video installation, digital prints as well as her community based practices of healing (e.g. performances or yoga work, etc.) she describes her work as her contribution to a non western-centric history/herstory/ theirstory of knowledge, explaining it even more detailed as a practice of repositioning oneself within the narratives of the past: for instance looking at computing science in relation to divination systems; the internet in relation to the ocean and colonial shipping routes; mental health as a spiritual affair or understanding femme energy not as something to be afraid of but as a pathway to the divine.
Two to four artists_theorists_thinkers_scientists will be selected by this Open Call. What is asked of you, besides openness and joy, is not only to take part in the Work Lab itself, but also in the discussions, the dialogue (via E-Mail, Skype or whatever else format you find) and the research that lead up to it.
For your participation in The Future Of The Past, a three days Work Lab with Tabita Rezaire, please send in a short application letter (max. ½ page), stating what interests you on why you want to participate in the project as well as a short CV (max. 1 page) to .
Deadline for submissions: 11th September 2017, 11:59 pm
The following will be provided:
- 600 Euro fee
- covering of travel expenses
- covering of material expenses (if needed)
- food (at the venue)
- accomodation
For a closer look on Tabita’s work as well as reviews of and remarks on her work, see the following links:
http://www.contemporaryand.com/exhibition/tabita-rezaire-exotic-trade/
You might also want to take a look at two discussions held at Forum Stadtpark in in March 2017: