[perspective] - curatorial reflection from edition 2021
Cyber Park is a platform for the post-truth creative intersection especially promoting a special concern in the context of South-Asian curatorial ist regarding new normal cultural needs. Cyber Park is dynamic and fluid by the principal nature that allows plural perspective, conceptual temporality,post-continuity, the culture of pixelations, the notion of cyber interruptions, and questioning the forms and traditional relationship with site and subjectivity.
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From the 'other public' toward "cyber park'
In this edition of the cyber park, we’re exploring the unborn resistance from the south & southeast Asian subversive initiatives especially in the context of the future heterotopian spaces. On one hand, we are wondering, what it means in terms of conceptualizing open-source public spaces in these new pros. & cons. and, on the other hand, how can we include intersectional interest within that other space more in argumentative mode.
As we shared before, We are constantly thinking about the pattern and the plurality of new normal obstacles that we've been facing in this enforced time-space. We as a curatorial platform come across this term heterotopias through the perspective of 'others', originally inspired from Michael Foucault's text of other spaces utopias and heterotopias written in 1967. Considering the current new normalization, we found the mundane limbo where we are unconditionally stuck without having any direction towards immunity. Choosing this proposed framework is more than curatorial curiosity but the urgency of our non-binary curatorial concern.
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We knew that exploring such ideas will never be an easy task for incorporation, especially observing the nature of late capitalism and glocal outbreak towards pro-singularity. From the first stage of the new normal propositions, we have noticed the purposes of making/arranging/ organizing the cultural events is continuously in the hyper evolving mode, especially if we concentrate on the transition of new-community practice, we will notice a bunch of new emerging signifier that is re-produced in the context of the future third spaces. These spaces are still fragile and something beyond tactility and at the same time contain neo-feelings about unborn desires for inclusive intercommunications.
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We would like to address this transition within the realm of cyber aesthetics - without moving further deep into our curatorial notation, let's begin with some fundamental conditions that might help us to understand the cyber park as a projection of non-binary spaces, especially for the decolonial future in collaboration with plural interdependency.
perspective -
- It is about the cross-linked spaces where reality is in work-in-process mode.
- More than structured mundane space, we felt this is a fluid arena where we can experience countless connections from the subversive viewpoints.
- It is a representation of an unborn social space that has no direct relationship with any existing comparison but still, we can relate the inter-personal crisis within the park through cyber-resistance, virtual-manifest, electronic-urge and digital symbiosis.
- Cyber Park is a collaborative space where we must become allies with mutual negotiating roots so that the new-normal time-space also can offer something hidden from its heterotopias.
- We completely accept that the projected reality will be extremely fragile inside the cyber-park, especially all the coordinates. We are rephrasing the title of the artist's work in the frame of metaphysical orbits where the nucleus of the work will be the principal domain for exploration but at the same time, visitors will also get access to the peripherals of the ideas so that they can relate in a more inclusive manner.
- The park is interested in encouraging cyber strategies but also likes to incorporate existing humxn intercultural struggles as the tool for navigating these future non-human sites.
Visitor’s Guide: It is like any other regular park where we can find durational 'mundane' perspectives, it would be inclusive if we intervene the initiative is just to browse the platform without any specific hetero-normative expectation. We will find multiple coordinates for public streaming along with cross-narratives. It is a combination of plural flexible spaces for the post-conceptual intellectual/creative resources, Around the cyber park, we have evolving pointers for mutual interactivity and of course interconnecting pathways that will guide us towards the various trans-disciplinary corners.
cyber park is conceptually designed in the mode of open-source mapping. We consider it is one of the transparent ways to develop a new set of knowledge by connecting fragmented information from the diverse cultural cluster. While exploring the data we have realized that new knowledge is easier to understand and to remember when they are interdependent with each other with plural attributes(interest/curiosity/ tendency). We created a complex algorithm during our concept mapping by applying 20 perpectives along with 100 unique keywords. In the end, we embedded arrows between the ideas that are related. You can also find several curiosity points where we tried to arise questions regarding the new-normal humxn cultural .
(feel free to download the guide book- visitor’s guide book-cyber park.pdf
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For our better understanding, we have 6 dedicated rooms - every single room is dedicated to a few artists/practitioners. We have distributed all the work into different rooms as per the nature of the perspective. All the room is dedicated to one mundane human quality/feelings/approach from the pre-new normal era. The Rooms are - 'Room for Solidarity, Room for Empathy, Room for Resistance, Room for Amnesia, Room for Reminiscence, Room for De-framing'.
[28.10.21]
Room for Solidarity : currently, we are crossing a new horizon with lots of dilemmas and uncertainty. As per our recent observation, this unexplored confusion will slowly become a stable pattern where we are going to observe a forced emptiness within our collective life. We are also concerned about our mutual ignorance that is rapidly growing within our mundane life. Possibly in the near future, we will have another 'new-now' situation where we will completely lose our motivation for collective solidarity. As a curatorial unit, we would like to introspect this obstacle in this room - our interest is to reflect a perspective on a positive note where our collective future is interactive. While studying, the multidimensionality of the future 'solidarity' - we have encountered the following 3 tangents from Nepal, UK, Bangladesh. They are plural but at the same time focused on the collective union in terms of making a safe space. In brief, all the following presentations are unintentionally fluid but also they are extremely passive in the context of unconditional reaching out.
Room For De-framing: This is one of those kinds of the room where we thought to put ourselves a bit into questioning mode. In this common space, we have shared 3 conceptual de-framed perspectives - as per our negotiation they emerged from a deep complex multifaceted socio-cultural durational oppression. Inside this room, we tried to re-explore the future of cultural identity and its colonial substances through 4 interpersonal narratives. From our curatorial understanding, all of those 4 works tried to express a hidden unspoken struggle but also hold lots of prospects, especially how to imagine decolonial framing from the south-Asian hybrid marginal political lense. We have a combination of 4 artist documentation - they are absolutely autonomous in terms of their objective, it helped us to experience the collective struggle beyond every single frame. This constant shift from one definition of coloniality is also allowing us to feel relaxed in terms of de-framing the existing false closures.
Room For Empathy: let's reconsider the need for our evolving cluster from the source of non-binary empathy - What do we do with what we understand about 'self'? What happens when we try to perceive what we uncovered about 'singularity'? What are the other ways we can imagine about the in-betweenness? In this room, we intentionally shared two long durational perspectives from two marginal entities. Formally, they are not connected in terms of geo-location or even conceptual timeline but in terms of subversive construction, they have a subtle connection at deep compassion. The purpose of prolonged empathy is to create an opportunity for the flow of both collective information and inclusive understanding. It also shared extended critical thinking and encourages us to take collective steps rather than those singular.
Room For Resistance: In this room, we have a series of identical perspectives from 3 unique space-time, all of them mutually holding strong non-linear narratives of their post-colonial durational injustices. If we managed to read their visual silence carefully then we might get the chance to experience the historical inequality. Within this room - we shared a collective focuses on the relationship between the future of interdependent freedom and individual justice that have been historically oppressed due to being on the margins of the political, economic, and social system. Therefore, we ask: How do the future commune can incorporate the alternative methods that help us to understand the internal strength? How do social, political, and cultural factors shape the new body for mutual resistance? How do othered bodies like conceptual aura /sonic persona can interact and even challenge the systems that have labeled them as other? How do our new normal fragile bodies, bodies of uneven margins form the consciousness of global transit?
Room For Amnesia: “You wake up feeling wonderful. But also, in some indefinable way, strange. . . . You have . . . Thomas M. Disch’s AMNESIA.” - In this room, we tried to share a prediction from our past perception regarding the role of our in-cognitive memory, it seems they are invisible present within our bodies like our untraced trauma, do we believe that a grey space over there is the main cause behind the development of durational dissociative disorders, we are curious!! It was not easy to choose and make sequence with these 4 isolated metaphors, especially they are coming from four different contrasting socio-political locations with multiple entry points in terms of making understanding of their perspective from individual to collective memory loss. While studying their perspective, we have noticed that they are eager to share an invisible complex model with us in terms of mapping the grand narratives around our shared durational amnesia. If we are curious to intervene in the proposed work then we would suggest to our visitor that please feel free to find the blind spot of our hyperactive visual memories and trace a fragile moment within from that corridor and allow our body to travel within and in between the fragments of the fragile events.
Room For Reminiscence: This room is comparatively a bit fragile because we tried to accommodate four artistic expressions that hold four intimate conflicts both in terms of collective helplessness also unknown anxiety that was always underestimated because of our surrounding social binaries. In this room, we have exchanged four tangents, starting with a performative sequence of dissociative memories - in this work, we primarily negotiate invisible suppression both in terms of the individual emotion towards our community memory and also state oppression in a larger context. Thereafter, we will enter into a different paradigm where we have two perspectives, one of them from the Scandinavian region, and the other one is a collective exchange between Asia-UK. In these two works, we will experience re-arranging cultural roots from the unsolved past to the new-normal future partition. Both of them have an unusual strain, we would suggest to our visitors to experience these two visuals when we are alone in our tranquil zone and then we can try to connect the dots according to our understanding of the politics of displacement. We summarise the room with absolutely contrasting emotion where we accommodate one nucleus perspective alongside two experimental exercises from the old normal era. In this series, we engaged with the lost and found memories from a classic nostalgic action.
(to be cont.)
text by kaur c.