Dear Yervant, I hope this finds you well. I realized that I was somewhat vague in yesterday’s post when I wrote about what would constitute a more “nuanced understanding of audience” for your contributions to documenta 14, specifically the screening of Pays Barbare as part of the Public TV program KEIMENA. Allow me to spend […]
Dear Yervant Gianikian, I hope this finds you well and you don’t mind me writing out of the blue. I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy at Ohio State University and I write this blog, Minus Plato as part of my research into the 2017 exhibition documenta 14, […]
While waiting at the Dubai International Airport after three whirlwind days at the opening of Sharjah Biennial 14 (hereafter SB14), I found myself idly looking back over my Instagram posts from the exhibition. Even though I had taken hundreds of photographs, videos and audio recordings of my experience at the exhibition, I had only shared […]
It is official, the next Documenta, to be held in 2022, has a new Artistic Director (or directors): the Indonesian artistic collective ruangrupa. (See here for the reports from ART News, Artforum and The Art Newspaper). This exciting announcement has a transformative effect on my ongoing project to examine the legacies of documenta 14 and […]
This coming Friday, February 22nd 2019, the Artistic Director for Documenta 15 (scheduled for 2022) will be announced (for more details – in German – go here). In preparation, let us look back to November 22nd 2013, to the moment that Adam Szymczyk was appointed Artistic Director for documenta 14. You can read the official […]
A belated happy new year to all our Minus Plato readers! I have been busy putting together The Minus Plato Library as well as creating a series of teaching projects related to art and education after documenta 14 and I am now ready to share them with you all. Stretching across two courses (Art Education […]
As promised in Wednesday’s post, here is the first part of the Black Athena Reloaded session from the documenta 14 public program The Parliament of Bodies: While the second session focused on the brutal slavery document, Le code noir, this first discussion engages the theme of ‘Ideas as Migrants – Our Common Ghosts’, and is […]
How to counter racism? Sooth with a cool application of philosophical knowledge or inflame with the immediacy of emotional energy? Classicist Ellen Cole Lee’s abstract for her paper at the upcoming Theorizing Africana Receptions workshop (details here) on anger in the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca and the self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” Audre Lorde […]
How can we hold onto the tragedy of Soweto? The sacrifice of these children who carry an ideal for us? So asks Dakar-born Beninese artist Pélagie Gbaguidi in her interview for the special education issue of the magazine Contemporary And (C&) titled: “If you’re running from history, it will eventually catch up with you”. She […]
In his interview with Rahima Gambo in the education issue of the magazine C& (which you can read here), British-Nigerian photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi describes a basic tension within his approach to photographic education, both his own and that of a younger generation that he mentors. He explains his role in founding the Centers for Learning […]