Inter cultural exchange is both great and challenging at the same time. I come back from Graz (Austria) inspired but also exhausted. These lovely beings have mastered their lives through realities I could only grasp. I feel ignorant just being there, yet I tried reacting from my point of view and I realize after so many years of travelling and living abroad and coming from a mostly despicable broken and utterly egoistic Germanism and Nationalism that I have lost my identity. I am still trying to figure out if entanglement (commonly used trigger word amongst ai, crypto and inter cultural by billions of arts proposals to satisfy the inoffcial contemporary funding regulations) is still a thing for me. I feel more entangled into a Web that spans around the globe that I might have to consider what untangling all those strains would bring forward in my self. It is looking like a journey that many of us may also have ahead of us as the market system is appropriating anything into a singular global consumption cycle. We merely understand a tiny proportion of what cybernetics, the internet (as the Web of webs) and the decay of physical borders as the primary tool for separation and control are transforming inside of us mentally.
During the workshops we talked a lot about sugar trade and find out that almost no one on this planet escaped the consequences bloody and exploitative and addicting of the first conquistadores ” that brought sugar plants from the Canary Islands to Santo Domingo in 1493. I would even go as far as sugar being the fuel of human creed of the colonial age as cocain is to the digital. (sic. heavy ass thesis based on no grounds and most easily argueable for it leaves out other essential trade goods such as oil and gold. Both not for actual consumption, yet similarly addictive in a sense).
I feel overwhelmed. Once again powerless and not sure if those scares that Daniela, Peninale and Hyo Jin were identifying are ever able to heal.
In my art practise this was sort of the culmination of a self doubt and reflection process that started years ago, but is still to be manifested. First and hardest principal, shutting up, find myself, be honest but not harmful and use my influence to support. And I found that femine character trades and methods of consolidation are far more advanced and effective than what any of my male collegeous has in their repertoire. Ironically those skills fade with raising privilege as well. It’s the hardest to climb down the tree when we all believe we are cats. 🙀
Thanks for the time to reflect.
Daniela Brasil (http://koenigbrasil.net/about/)
Shin Hyo Jin (https://sounding.systems/portfolios/shin-hyo-jin/)
Peninal Lesorogol (https://www.samburu.at/)
Otto Oscar Hernandez (https://www.ottooscarhernandezruiz.com/)
Rotor — center for contemporary art (https://rotor.mur.at/)