Afterall/UNIA Seminar: Histor(ies) of the Present

We are pleased to announce the seminar ‘Historia(s) del Presente’ (‘Histor(ies) of the Present’) at UNIA arteypensamiento, Seville. On Tuesday 29 October 2013 artist Alejandra Riera will join curator Ruth Noack; philosophers Peter Pál Pelbart and Muriel Combes; and Afterall editors Nuria Enguita Mayo and Pablo Lafuente for three days of talks and discussion.

‘Historia(s) del Presente’ Seminar
29–31 October 2013

Universidad Internacional de Andalucía-UNIA arteypensamiento
c/ Américo Vespucio 2
Isla de la Cartuja
Seville
Spain

This seminar is part of an ongoing research collaboration between Afterall and UNIA arteypensamiento, Seville. For more information, please see the programme below or the UNIA arteypensamiento website. The seminar will be conducted in English, Spanish and French. The book Maquetas-sin-cualidad (Models-without-quality) (Barcelona: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 2005) was featured in the Summer 2009 issue of Afterall journal, with an essay by Angelika Bartl.

Programme

‘Thinking is not an innate faculty, it is always the result of an encounter, an encounter is always an encounter with the exterior, even if that exterior is not the reality of the exterior world, in its empirical configuration, but rather concerns the heterogeneous forces that affect thought, that force it to think, that force thought towards what is not yet thinking, prompting it to think otherwise.’

At a time when thought forms without an outside establish a world without exteriority as the dominant fiction, the proposal would be to engage in an enquiry as uncertain, initially, as the geography of ‘the/our outside’. To slowly engage with our experiences, their complexity, intensity and difficulties, and to stop in specific places, wherever our experiences may emerge and are still possible. We could begin with a series of materials: theoretical texts or not, photographs and captions, films-documents and narrations of the experiences initiated in 2003 with an Enquête sur le/notre dehors (Enquiry on The/Our Outside) and its three autonomous but interlinked parts. ‘Enquiry’ in the sense of ‘history’ as in ‘micro-history’ and not ‘information’, and ‘outside’ in the sense of care, of the attention deserved by all that, located in our borders, constitutes a motivating part of our history.

Tuesday 29 October

11:00–12:00 Presentation by Nuria Enguita Mayo and Pablo Lafuente

12:00–14:00 Session with Alejandra Riera, including a screening of film-document: < … – histoire(s) du présent – … > (documentation of an experience) (… –2007–2011– …)

16:00-17:30 Peter Pál Pelbart: ‘Schizo-scènie: A Trajectory’

17:30–20:30 Discussion with Peter Pál Pelbart, Alejandra Riera and the audience

Wednesday 30 October

11:00–14:00 Session with Alejandra Riera, including:

– Screening of an excerpt from Fiction poétique – heyala helbestane (Poetic Fiction)

– Non-audible and non-visible version of film-document: Enquête sur le/notre dehors (Valence- le-Haut) < 2007– … > (Enquiry on the/our outside (Valence-le-Haut) < 2007–… >), made in collaboration with Andreas Maria Fohr, and screened at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris as part of the exhibition ‘Intense proximité’ (‘Intense Proximity’), 3rd Palais de Tokyo Triennial, April–August 2012.

– Reading of Lettre au Palais (Letter to the Palace) by Alejandra Riera

– Screening of the film-document: Enquête sur le/notre dehors (Valence-le-Haut) < 2007– … >(Enquiry on the/our outside (Valence-le-Haut) < 2007– … >), (version dated 15 July 2012, with the inhabitants of the neighbourhood Fontbarlettes) 120mins, colour and black and white

16:00–17:30 Muriel Combes: ‘The Obession with Images’

17:30–20:30 Discussion with Alejandra Riera, Muriel Combes and the audience

Thursday 31 October

11:00–12:30 Ruth Noack: ‘On Survival’

12:30–14:30 Session with Alejandra Riera