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Article Articles -- 2025

Olivera Bucalović & Fleur van Suijdam, Traces of Solidarity in the Archive: Mapping Collaboration Between Palestine and Yugoslavia in the Non-Aligned News Agencies’ Pool, Kunstlicht Vol. 46 no. 3/4

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Article Articles -- 2025

Jelena Micić, VISUALISING FRIENDSHIP: LEDA, LABOUR, AND THE MATERIAL POLITICS OF THE NON-ALIGNED WORLD, Kunstlicht Vol. 46, no. 3/4

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Article Articles -- 2025

Denise Thwaites, FULL STACK FABULATOR (OR THE PROMETHEAN CURATOR), Kunstlicht VOL. 46 1/2

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Article Articles -- 2025

Lisa Marie Sneijder, The Disruptive Labour of the Designed Interactions of an Exhibition on the Web, Kunstlicht Vol. 46, no. 1/2

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tijdschriftkunstlicht

💭 Explore Kunstlicht, an academic journal for visual culture.
✨ Get “Aesthetics of Non-Alignment” in our shop now!

A VISUAL CONTRIBUTION FROM OUR AESTHETICS OF NON-A

A VISUAL CONTRIBUTION FROM OUR AESTHETICS OF NON-ALIGNMENT ISSUE🍉🇵🇸

Class Outside: A Tale of Complicity and Resilience
By Aylin Kuryel, Frat Yücel, Deniz Buga

"In 2024, Amsterdam became one of the cities where people rallied against the systematic destruction of Palestinian lives and livelihoods by the state of Israel. Numerous actions emerged in solidarity with Palestine, calling for the university to sever ties with Israeli institutions and entities, all while a genocide unfolded in Palestine. "Class Outside” is a collective video diary capturing everyday moments of resistance, solidarity, and clashes, following the student encampments in Amsterdam during May 2024 and the various subsequent actions. The video explores a landscape filled with bodies, slogans, cobblestones, and dreams, while engaging with questions such as: How do we link ‘here’ and ‘there’? How do we create a sense of shared space and time when remaining silent is not an option? How do we archive and mobilise images for ongoing collective action? How can we see non-aligning not as neutrality, but as active involvement in worldmaking through the creation of an international anti-fascist alliance?"

To access the full documentary you can purchase your copy of our issue 'The Aesthetics of Non-Alignment' on our website via the link in our bio! 📌
_____

Images by Mateo Steen & Pamfletten

FREE ARTICLE FROM OUR AESTHETICS OF NON-ALIGNMENT

FREE ARTICLE FROM OUR AESTHETICS OF NON-ALIGNMENT ISSUE 📖

Traces of Solidarity in the Archive: Mapping Collaboration Between Palestine and Yugoslavia in the Non-Aligned News Agencies' Pool.
By Olivera Bucalović & Fleur van Suijdam.

"In this paper, we explore the international and alternative representational structure of the NANAP in general, and particularly, we follow two different trajectories within the NANAP: that of the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug on one hand, and the Palestinian news agency WAFA on the other. In this way, we juxtapose how these agencies operated differently within the framework of NANAP and trace intersections between two news agencies: one that was the main proponent of the NANAP, operated from the heart of a founding member of the NAM, and was an established media institution; and a news agency that was established shortly before NANAP and operated between 1972-1994 as a news agency in exile."

Read more of this article on our website!
And shop our new issue via the link in our bio. 📌

FREE ARTICLE FROM OUR AESTHETICS OF NON-ALIGNMENT

FREE ARTICLE FROM OUR AESTHETICS OF NON-ALIGNMENT ISSUE 📖

Visualising Friendship: Leda, labour, and the material politics of the non-aligned world.
By Jelena Micić.

“Countless Yugoslav families carry the material memory of the Non-Aligned World through preserved objects and inherited stories, including my own family members who worked at the Leda shoe factory. Yet the factory’s history, deeply entwined with NAM networks, remains largely invisible in scholarship, revealing gaps in analyses of the material, labour and visual dimensions of the Movement. The family archive persists in a dispersed, fragmentary state-scattered across attics, suitcases, and drawers-emerging less through deliberate collection than the contingent afterlife or everyday work. Incomplete and provisional, it exemplifies a non-archival logic: only photographs, occasionally grouped in envelopes, gesture towards intentional ordering. Today, it comprises over 200 items, including photographs, promotional ceramics and textiles, printed matter, notes, and leather and plastic shoes, with materials ranging from cow, goat, and calf leather to aligator, lizard, and snake skins in vibrant hues.”

Read more of this article on our website!
And shop our new issue via the link in our bio. 📌

____ ____

Image 1 Jelena Micić, Sala Uzoraka/Sample Hall (Exhibition Detail): 30th Anniversary Leda catalogue, 1991/2022, digital photography, Museum of Yugoslavia, Belgrade, photo: Ivan Zupanc.

Image 2 Micić Archive, Vojislav Micić and the Trade Partners, 1980, analog photography, 9 x 13.2 cm.

LAST REMINDER: LESS THAN 1 WEEK UNTILL THE DEADLIN

LAST REMINDER: LESS THAN 1 WEEK UNTILL THE DEADLINE ‼️ 7 DECEMBER 👀

Are you ready to venture to outer space? 🚀Join Kunstlicht’s odyssey to outer space, and contribute to the first issue of 2026: (OUTER) SPACE(S), VOL. 47 1/2. 🪐

We invite contributions in the form of academic articles, reviews, interviews, visual essays, poems, and any other form that is fitting for the theme and the journal-form. We encourage contributors from all stages of their (research) practice to respond to the call for papers.

📅 Deadline: December 7, 2025.
👉🏻Read more in the link in bio!

—-
Both history and mainstream science fiction have formed our perspective on outer space. In a time where space travel and space tourism have become increasingly viable, how do contemporary artists imagine and engage with the concept of outer space? How does outer space function as an alternative solution for terrestrial issues? For this issue, we invite contributions that critically engage with the notion of outer space as an artistic, cultural, political, speculative and philosophical notion. We are interested in how outer space – in all its facets – is addressed, debated, and imagined outside and beyond the dominant narratives and hegemonic histories of science fiction, space travel, and other space-related entities. We are curious about how outer space, including viewing ourselves from the outside in, the longing for escape and the actualisation of alternative futures on other planets, and contemporary science fiction, has produced genres, tropes, artistic strategies and other forms of critical engagement with our earthly existence. And perhaps more importantly: what stories have been untold, unimagined, or even hidden away?

—-
Image Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968, film still

NEW NEW ISSUE! 👀🪩 A different size, an upgr

NEW NEW ISSUE! 👀🪩

A different size, an upgraded design, our newest issue ‘Aesthetics of Non-Alignment’ has arrived freshly from the printer, just in time for the holiday season. Grab your copy now from our shop!

👉🏻Link in bio.

This issue is dedicated to non-alignment: both as a movement that was formed at a specific historical moment and whose legacies—including its artistic and cultural ones—are still alive to this day, and as an aspirational and aesthetic concept that possibly exceeds the Non-Aligned Movement of the early 1960s and still speaks to the contemporary state of affairs. In this time of global political, social, and economic unrest, characterised by ongoing war, genocide, increasing social and environmental injustice, and escalating geopolitical tensions in which many of our nation-states and societal institutions are directly or indirectly implicated, we deemed it of utmost urgence to critically engage with the present by starting with revisiting historical alternatives to the long-standing divisions and global power relations, ones which proposed and enacted more solidary and emancipatory political, social, and economic structures.

The first edition in a while curated by the editorial collective rather than together with a guest editor, as we are accustomed to. You will also notice that the journal is dressed in a different outfit than usual, with the riso-printed poster having made way to a printed cover featuring a visual contribution by Olja Triaška Stefanović. This marks another divergence from the usual order of the day: our first collaboration with Alix Chauvet, who takes over from Corine van der Wal as Kunstlicht’s graphic designer.

@alix.chauvet
@olja_triaska_stefanovic
@alyciadanckaarts
@stijnterpstra
@fleura_
@okie_dokie_oki
@jelena.ljubomir.micic
@giulio3001
@p.8ein
@vervoz
@megan.hoetger
@senka.exe
@aylinkuryel
@firatyucels
Deniz Buga
Kevin Kenjar
@gabisownworld
Luka Svajda
Ana Luisa Cubas

REMINDER: LESS THAN 4 WEEKS UNTILL THE DEADLINE ‼️

Are you ready to venture to outer space? 🚀Join Kunstlicht’s odyssey to outer space, and contribute to the first issue of 2026: (OUTER) SPACE(S), VOL. 47 1/2. 🪐

We invite contributions in the form of academic articles, reviews, interviews, visual essays, poems, and any other form that is fitting for the theme and the journal-form. We encourage contributors from all stages of their (research) practice to respond to the call for papers.

📅 Deadline: December 7, 2025.
👉🏻Read more in the link in bio!

—-
Both history and mainstream science fiction have formed our perspective on outer space. In a time where space travel and space tourism have become increasingly viable, how do contemporary artists imagine and engage with the concept of outer space? How does outer space function as an alternative solution for terrestrial issues? For this issue, we invite contributions that critically engage with the notion of outer space as an artistic, cultural, political, speculative and philosophical notion. We are interested in how outer space – in all its facets – is addressed, debated, and imagined outside and beyond the dominant narratives and hegemonic histories of science fiction, space travel, and other space-related entities. We are curious about how outer space, including viewing ourselves from the outside in, the longing for escape and the actualisation of alternative futures on other planets, and contemporary science fiction, has produced genres, tropes, artistic strategies and other forms of critical engagement with our earthly existence. And perhaps more importantly: what stories have been untold, unimagined, or even hidden away?

—-
Image Larissa Sansour, A Space Exodus, 2008, short film. Installation view in the exhibition “While we Count our Earthquakes” at Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp, 2025.

No Storage Help Kunstlicht’s Online Curating

No Storage Help
Kunstlicht’s Online Curating – special online edition
On 7 November, 19:00 – 20:00 CET
Part of @distant.gallery festival
https://distant.gallery/festival

No Storage Help, foregrounds online exhibition projects and curatorial practices that engage with the instability and precarity of their environments. By exploring the potential of these digital environments processes of optimisation and commodification turn into spaces for experimentation, creativity and alternative modes of interaction. The selection of essays is based on the special issue “Online Curating” by kunstlicht journal for visual culture (ed. Annet Dekker). Taken together, these essays ask how memory can persist—and evolve—when both physical and digital realms are co-opted, collapsed, or rendered hyperreal. In an era of “no storage”, where infrastructures break down or become obsolete as quickly as they emerge, online curating becomes not only a mode of display but a practice of resistance and renewal—one that addresses how to continue to curate, care, and remember under intensifying socio-political and economic strain. At the same time, being inside fragile and interlinked worlds, these online curators “help” a move towards a more sustainable collective imagination.

Expanding on the written contributions in the print journal it brings back the online curating discourse to the web. Embracing the fleeting nature of the web, excerpts of the texts are accompanied with screenshots, images, video or still functioning embedded websites. Everything is held together by the sounds of The Library by soundpocket, the background of Tara Kelton’s No Storage Search Engine (2023), first presented at Unproductive Solutions, and from which this page borrows its title.

Want to know more? Check our link in bio! 🌐

Are you ready to venture to outer space? 🚀Join

Are you ready to venture to outer space? 🚀Join Kunstlicht’s odyssey to outer space, and contribute to the first issue of 2026: (OUTER) SPACE(S), VOL. 47 1/2. 🪐

We invite contributions in the form of academic articles, reviews, interviews, visual essays, poems, and any other form that is fitting for the theme and the journal-form. We encourage contributors from all stages of their (research) practice to respond to the call for papers.

📅 Deadline: December 7, 2025.
👉🏻Read more in the link in bio!
——

Both history and mainstream science fiction have formed our perspective on outer space. In a time where space travel and space tourism have become increasingly viable, how do contemporary artists imagine and engage with the concept of outer space? How does outer space function as an alternative solution for terrestrial issues? For this issue, we invite contributions that critically engage with the notion of outer space as an artistic, cultural, political, speculative and philosophical notion. We are interested in how outer space – in all its facets – is addressed, debated, and imagined outside and beyond the dominant narratives and hegemonic histories of science fiction, space travel, and other space-related entities. We are curious about how outer space, including viewing ourselves from the outside in, the longing for escape and the actualisation of alternative futures on other planets, and contemporary science fiction, has produced genres, tropes, artistic strategies and other forms of critical engagement with our earthly existence. And perhaps more importantly: what stories have been untold, unimagined, or even hidden away?

——

We invite scholars, writers, artists, and creative or cultural practitioners to submit contributions in the form of academic articles, reviews, interviews, visual works, hybrid essays, poems, and any other form that is fitting for the theme and the A5-format journal. We encourage contributors from all stages of their (research) practice to respond to the call for papers.

——

Image: Nonhuman Nonsense, Planetary Personhood: Mars Person, 2020, video still from artistic project, https://planetarypersonhood.com/.

ARTICLE FROM OUR ONLINE CURATING ISSUE 📖 The d

ARTICLE FROM OUR ONLINE CURATING ISSUE 📖

The disruptive labour of the designed interactions of an exhibition on the web.
By Lisa Marie Sneijder.

“How can an exhibition on the web draw in the user, capture their attention and possibly change their way of thinking while also being a part of the web’s networked everyday? In this article, I will take a speculative approach through ideas applied from design to navigate this question and theorise ways in which ‘exhibitions on the web’ might be a disruptive force stimulating a lasting level of engagement. I will dissect its three designed interactions: the located physical use, the technical features and the content to question their disruptive agency towards sustained labour of its user.”

——
Read more of this article on our website! And shop this issue via the link in our bio 🌐

FREE ARTICLE FROM OUR ONLINE CURATING ISSUE 📖

FREE ARTICLE FROM OUR ONLINE CURATING ISSUE 📖

FULL STACK FABULATOR (or the Promethean Curator)
By Denise Thwaites.

Curatorial practice is often associated with open processes of meaning-making (and -unmaking), as provisional relations between artworks are catalysed through artful exhibition design, writing and live programming (1). In the process, ‘curatorial fabulation’ may conjure speculative worlds, while also allowing us to reconsider persistent holes in official histories (2). Building on the thought of Ursula Le Guin, curators may be seen as stitching temporary ‘carrier bags’, for divergent histories and futures; a practice that is particularly pertinent to online curating. The work of online curating requires beguiling storytelling, where multi-layered fabulations of back- and front-end forms, are replete with gaps that invite recursive re-thinking.

FULL STACK FABULATOR is an experimental work of confessional fictocriticism that uses programmatic citation, free-association and readymade pop graphics to tell one of many possible stories of online curating. Drawing on source materials from seminal texts, Curating Digital Art (Dekker 2021), Patchwork Girl (Jackson 1995) and Frankenstein (Shelley 1818), the essay highlights how online curating engages in a process of narrating itself into existence, knitting itself a loose ‘carrier bag’ to gather visible and invisible forms. Through this work, FULL STACK FABULATOR invites readers to consider how online curating destabilises technological and cultural fictions, while weaving its own tales.

Read more of this article on our website! And shop this issue via the link in our bio 🌐

——

(1) See Terry Smith, Thinking Contemporary Curating (New York: Independent Curators International, 2012); and Jean-Paul Martinon, “Theses in the Philosophy of Curating” in: The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating, Jean-Paul Martinon (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).

(2) See Saidiya Hartman. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2019).

Image 2: Screenshot details of Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl (1995)
Image 3: Screenshot of my desktop disaster, 2021

NEW ISSUE 🪩 NEW ISSUE 🪩 NEW ISSUE We are ve

NEW ISSUE 🪩 NEW ISSUE 🪩 NEW ISSUE

We are very pleased to announce that our first issue of 2025, ‘Online Curating,’ with guest editor Annet Dekker, is out now!

‘Online Curating’ explores online exhibition formats and the role of the networked curator. This issue reflects on the state of art in the field of online curating, and speculates on the future of online curating, especially how online experiments might influence offline exhibition making and curatorial strategies more generally. Besides offering their theoretical explorations, the contributing researchers, artists, and curators have experimented with how to present the online space in a printed journal. It was a great pleasure working on this issue together with Annet and we want to thank her for the inspirational and engaging collaboration!

Get your copy through the shop link in our bio!🔗

#tijdschriftkunstlicht #onlinecurating #criticaltheory #contemporaryart #academicjournal

CONTRIBUTION FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE 🌳

CONTRIBUTION FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE 🌳

‘Under the Blanket Bog’
By Katerina Sidorova, Yulia Carolin Kothe, Max Brück

This play script is a fictionalised narrative based on a field trip in 2023 to Mount Gabriel, West Cork, Ireland. It merges scientific and local knowledge through the perspectives of fictional characters -a biologist, sound artist, writer, sculptor, and farmer - alongside the mountain’s environmental and mythical history. Drawing from conversations with local residents and biologist Martin Wren, the characters explore the ecology of blanket bogs and their cultural significance. The narrative blends folklore, geology, and biology, highlighting the human impact on wetlands. As the group explores Mount Gabriel, they engage with its biodiversity, peat-cutting history, and mythical figures like mermaids. The script reflects on human dominance over nature, ecological preservation, and the cultural memory embedded in landscapes, prompting a deeper investigation into how human actions shape and transform natural environments.

To read the full play you can purchase your copy of our issue ‘The Swamp Potential’ on our website via the link in bio! 🔗

Images: Digitally altered photo documentation by authors, Mont Gabriel, Ireland.

#kunstlicht #academicjournal #visualculture

❗️EXTENDED: Call for Papers New Deadline: Ma

❗️EXTENDED: Call for Papers

New Deadline: May 18

Established in 1961 at the Belgrade Conference, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) aimed to offer a decolonial and peaceful alternative to the polarised aftermath of WWII and the unfolding of the Cold War. While its political influence declined after the 1970s, its ideals of solidarity, cultural equality, and resistance to colonial dominance continue to inspire contemporary political and artistic practices. Initiatives like the 1985 Gallery for the Art of the Non-Aligned Countries in Montenegro and the 1995 Jakarta exhibition reflected NAM’s artistic and cultural diplomacy. This legacy continues in contemporary projects like documenta 15, with contributions like Borrowed Faces, or exhibitions like Past Disquiet in Amsterdam, each exemplifying distinct approaches to building international artistic solidarity beyond Western hegemonic models.

We invite scholars, writers, artists, and creative or cultural practitioners to submit ideas for articles, reviews, visual works, or other forms of contributions that are compatible with the printed form. We are interested in exploring questions of:
What are the living legacies of Non-Alignment? What does/could non-alignment mean in our current political climates? (How) Can non-alignment, both as a movement emerging from a specific historical context and as a concept that possibly exceeds it, help us conceive of alternative forms of political existence, resistance, and liberation rooted in solidarity and friendship, including those made possible through artistic and cultural praxis? And what are some examples of present-day aesthetic expressions and practices that can be considered activations of unfulfilled non-aligned visions and aspirations?

We look forward to receiving your submissions together with your CV or portfolio by no later than May 18.

For the full Call for Papers and submission details, please visit our website via the link in bio! 🌟

Image: Naeem Mohaimen, Two Meetings and a Funeral, 2017, installation view at Landesmuseum, Kassel, documenta 14, photo courtesy of the artist.

#callforpapers #academicjournal #visualculture #tijdschriftkunstlicht

💡REMINDER: CALL FOR PAPERS Aesthetics of Non-

💡REMINDER: CALL FOR PAPERS

Aesthetics of Non-Alignment, Vol.45, no.3-4

Deadline: May 4, 2025

Established in 1961 at the Belgrade Conference, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) aimed to offer a decolonial and peaceful alternative to the polarised aftermath of WWII and the unfolding of the Cold War. While its political influence declined after the 1970s, its ideals of solidarity, cultural equality, and resistance to colonial dominance continue to inspire contemporary political and artistic practices. Initiatives like the 1985 Gallery for the Art of the Non-Aligned Countries in Montenegro and the 1995 Jakarta exhibition reflected NAM’s artistic and cultural diplomacy. This legacy continues in contemporary projects like documenta 15, with contributions like Borrowed Faces, or exhibitions like Past Disquiet in Amsterdam, each exemplifying distinct approaches to building international artistic solidarity beyond Western hegemonic models

We are interested in exploring questions of:

What are the living legacies of Non-Alignment? What does/could non-alignment mean in our current political climates? (How) Can non-alignment, both as a movement emerging from a specific historical context and as a concept that possibly exceeds it, help us conceive of alternative forms of political existence, resistance, and liberation rooted in solidarity and friendship, including those made possible through artistic and cultural praxis? And what are some examples of present-day aesthetic expressions and practices that can be considered activations of unfulfilled non-aligned visions and aspirations?

We look forward to receiving your submissions together with your CV or portfolio by no later than May 4, 2025.

For the full Call for Papers and submission details, please visit our website via the link in bio! 🌟

Image: Antun Augustinčić, Yekatit 12: Monument to the Victims of Fascism, 1955, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, detail of bronze sculptures, photo: Abuti Engidashet

#callforpapers #tijdschriftkunstlicht #kunstlicht

ARTICLE FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE 📓 The S

ARTICLE FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE 📓

The Sun’s Storehouse: Wetlands Between Death Drive and Libidinal Excess.
By Andrey Shental

“This text explores the complex interplay of the human unconscious, sexuality, and ecology within swamp landscapes, as reflected in Mikhail Prishvin’s post-war short novel, The Sun’s Storehouse. Swamps, marked by the dialectic of life-giving resources and mortal dangers, evoke a paradoxical allure in human beings. Prishvin, an eco-activist avant la lettre, portrays swamps not merely as settings but as living entities with distinct agencies in his narrative. The novel, inspired by the writer’s actual observations of the Bludov marsh, features siblings Mitya and Nastya who navigate the swamp’s seductive, yet perilous terrain. Mitya’s dramatic descent into the quagmire parallels Freud’s death drive — nature’s intrinsic pull towards its original inorganic homeostatic state. In contrast, Nastya’s obsessive cranberry foraging underscores an unbounded desire, reflecting Lacanian excess and lack. Yet, Prishvin’s nuanced depiction transcends a binary choice between self-annihilation and reckless consumption, suggesting a potential for interspecies communication and ecological harmony.”

You can get The Swamp Potential issue via the link in our bio🌾

Image 1: Venus Jasper, Murky Medicine Swamp, installation at Rupert, Vilnius, 2023. Photography: Andrej Vasilenko. Drifting among the mire, the cultural debris mirrors the swamp’s power to consume and preserve all that enters.

Image 2: Venus Jasper, OAKBaLLZ and EELSkin, performance in installation at Rupert, Vilnius, 2023. Photography: Andrej Vasilenko. The human body becomes part of the wetlands, blurring the line between organic and mineral in a slow descent into the primordial state of being.

#kunstlicht #tijdschriftkunstlicht #academicjournal #visualculture

ARTICLE FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE 🪴 Hangi

ARTICLE FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE 🪴

Hanging Between Two Worlds at Once: Notes on Burnout, Swamps and the In-Between.
By Martine van Lubeek

“Inspired by Silvia Federici’s Beyond the Periphery of the Skin: Rethinking, Remaking and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism and personal testimonies of burnout, this essay explores the relationship between burnout, swamps, and the biopolitics of contemporary capitalism. By drawing parallels between the metaphor “being swamped” and real-life swamps, I argue that both my body and the body of the swamp are burnt out, after which I conceptualise the in-between as a site of resilience, relationality, regeneration, resistance, and imagination. I conclude my thoughts with the conception that the in-between paves the way for both resisting the identity politics of capitalism and imagining postcapitalist futures.“

Get your copy of The Swamp Potential issue through the link in our bio! 🔗

Image: Lie down in the woods and let the moss reclaim you..

#kunstlicht #tijdschriftkunstlicht #academicjournal #visualculture

ARTICLE FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE 🌿 Peatl

ARTICLE FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE 🌿

Peatlands as a Portal: Undoing Colonial Historicities from Tierra del Fuego to The Netherlands.
By Sofía Fernández Blanco

“The modern conception of time as a linear succession of discrete moments is inextricably linked to the western idea of inevitable progress. If everyone is put on the same clock, some people or cultures will inevitably be seen as running late. The expansion of Western empires during the XV and XVII centuries was justified by the idea of “civilising missions,” which dictated that a single race has the right to civilise, dominate, and impose its own values on other people or cultures. Thus, the idea of linear time became a useful conceptual tool that still aids colonisation and exploitation.

Peatlands are accumulations of partly decomposed matter that build up for thousands of years, holding within them multiple times and histories that coexist with each other. By travel hopping from the peatlands of Tierra del Fuego to the peatlands of the Netherlands, the text is an attempt at re-configuring the entangled historicities of the two seemingly unrelated landscapes.

The perceived emptiness or barrenness of peatland landscapes is yet another way for colonisers to legitimise their plunder. By conceptualising these types of landscapes as voids, they become ripe for exploitation and commodification. At the same time, by declaring a landscape empty, there is an erasure of the Indigenous people living in that land. But nothing can be truly erased: the act of erasure itself leaves its own marks.”

💡You can order your copy of The Swamp Potential via the link in our bio

Image: Peatlands in Bargerveen, the Netherlands. Photo courtesy of Sofía Fernández Blanco

#academicjournal #visualculture #kunstlicht

CALL FOR PAPERS 📝 Aesthetics of Non-Alignment,

CALL FOR PAPERS 📝

Aesthetics of Non-Alignment, Vol.45, no.3-4

Deadline: May 4, 2025

Established in 1961 at the Belgrade Conference, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) aimed to offer a decolonial and peaceful alternative to the polarised aftermath of WWII and the unfolding of the Cold War. While its political influence declined after the 1970s, its ideals of solidarity, cultural equality, and resistance to colonial dominance continue to inspire contemporary political and artistic practices. Initiatives like the 1985 Gallery for the Art of the Non-Aligned Countries in Montenegro and the 1995 Jakarta exhibition reflected NAM’s artistic and cultural diplomacy. This legacy continues in contemporary projects like documenta 15, with contributions like Borrowed Faces, or exhibitions like Past Disquiet in Amsterdam, each exemplifying distinct approaches to building international artistic solidarity beyond Western hegemonic models

We invite scholars, writers, artists, and creative or cultural practitioners to submit ideas for articles, reviews, visual works, or other forms of contributions that are compatible with the printed form. We are interested in exploring questions of:

What are the living legacies of Non-Alignment? What does/could non-alignment mean in our current political climates? (How) Can non-alignment, both as a movement emerging from a specific historical context and as a concept that possibly exceeds it, help us conceive of alternative forms of political existence, resistance, and liberation rooted in solidarity and friendship, including those made possible through artistic and cultural praxis? And what are some examples of present-day aesthetic expressions and practices that can be considered activations of unfulfilled non-aligned visions and aspirations?

We look forward to receiving your submissions together with your CV or portfolio by no later than May 4, 2025.

For the full Call for Papers and submission details, please visit our website via the link in bio! 🌟

Image: documenta fifteen, Fehras Publishing Practices, Borrowed Faces, 2022, photo: Maja Wirkus

VISUAL CONTRIBUTION FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE

VISUAL CONTRIBUTION FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE ⁠
⁠
A Feral Knot. Recording Presences at an Urban Swamp
by: ZAKOLE Collective

1. ⁠The sedges have sharp leaves, but once I sit down between them, I feel nestled and safe, settling down like a deer on its bed.
2. We sometimes think of slugs and snails as our kin spirits from Zakole Wawerskie.. 3. Stories of their moisty travels dry up as sparkling trails painted on wood, trash, rocks and plants.
4. During one of the summer walks we found a dried Iris tangled up with horsetails and sedges. The fruit was ripe and round seeds spilled out of it at every touch.
5. The alder forest is sliced by many old canals, which makes it difficult for us to enter it. But the water there is not flowing anymore, they are taken over by beavers.
6. Although it doesn't seem visible in winter, this is one of the paths to the broken poplar where we like to make stops.
7. During one of our walks, we tested how our skin would feel if it was wet and sticky. We then lubricate our hands with homemade linseed mucus.

You can order tijdschrift Kunstlicht online via the link in our bio!⁠

FREE ARTICLE FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE 📝

FREE ARTICLE FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE 📝

For a Future(s) Against Progress: Bog-Time and the Troubling of Ecological Grief.
By Moss Berke.

“For a Future(s) Against Progress: Bog-time and the Troubling of Ecological Grief presents a re-reading of the phenomenon of ecological grief as informed by the melancholic temporalities embodied in boglands. Providing an ecologically-generative reframing of melancholia that brings forward its disruptive potential, boglands offer an alternative to capitalist chrononormativity, referred to in this article as “bog-time.” This is a heterogenous temporality where the past and present combine and intertwine to co-constitute futures. This article argues that by thinking from the example of boglands, we may be able to approach the widespread phenomenon of ecological grief, and recognise it for its potential to disrupt the supposed ongoingness of capitalist temporalities by demonstrating that the dead are necessary players in the crafting of more equitable futures. While ecological grief is presently recognised in most scholarship for expanding the boundaries of what is a grievable subject, this article contends that if learning from the bog, ecological grief can also trouble the temporal constrictions left implied in current theorisations of ecological grief. Resisting a narrow vision of the future, boglands demonstrate that time itself is cumulative in nature, and that conviviality with the dead is a necessary project in the time of mass death and destruction that has come to define the Anthropocene.”

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