Changing experiences with time and space formed the post-modern and postcolonial subject, which, according to Fredric Jameson, has been exposed to a loss of maps.
The changing experiences attach less importance to the geographical departure and arrival points than to interim stages, which are mostly perceived in passing. However, in producing significant visual, linguistic and cultural codes of interaction, the economic transition flow of the past decades necessitated an increased concentration on various forms of signification in mainly urban environments.
As mentioned in Deleuze and the contemporary artwork of O’Sullivan and Zepke, in exploring the new ways of thinking about the multiplicity of subject-positions “that begin from the critique of its present conditions (being) in order to embark upon the careful construction of mechanisms of engagement (becoming),” the exhibition is interested in how this might offer the possibility of a “new” space.
This is intended to produce relational entities in which an interrelation takes place as “an activity of an un-framing, which leads to a recreation and a reinvention of the subject itself,” according to Felix Guattari in his book Chaosmosis: An Ethicoaesthetic Paradigm.
This is where “identity-form” can be re-evaluated beyond the “I-other” dichotomy and beyond representational boundaries.
This brings up a question: How is all this manifested within the realm of creative practice and brought into the space of art?
Revealing the rapid transformation of several turning points in pursing a nexus that constitutes new forms of life within the framework of different topologies is the starting point for the exhibition “No Ifs, No Buts” focuses on the geopolitical implications of what governs the walls of the former East and West divide.
The questions of geopolitical topology find themselves addressed in specific cultural conditions.
The latter suggests that the sensitiveness of these issues marks the production of cultural spaces reflecting the respective representational politics. It is therefore necessary to engage or share an artistic platform of discussion as one of the remits of this multi-layered project.
By discussing radical modes of self-referentiality that allow No Ifs, No Buts, thereby forming counter strategies to globalized forces which restrict personal space, the exhibition raises questions about trans-cultural forms of geopolitical and economic conditions, which lead to a new mapping of terrains on a visual and discursive level.
The exhibition runs Dec. 1 to Jan. 9.