Beto Shwafaty
Resist to/against what?
Unfolding Strategies for Productive Resistances
Diagrams can be seen as spatializations of concepts and visualizations of systems. In order to explore the notion of ‘productive resistance’ we need to start by questioning: how can cultural production generate resistance? Resist to/against what? What are the meanings of these concepts when introduced in a linguistic codified environment such as the art field? And how to approach these aspects in contemporary practices?
If Art has a transformative potential, it seems necessary to explore its relations with cultural discourses, geographical places and historical narratives, to question the significance of cultural production within our societies. Thus, the redefinition and reevaluation of intention and function for Art – related to an ‘emerging new society’ –enable to explore the relations of visual spheres with public fields and non-artistic knowledge, situated between global and local domains.
Hence, a productive resistance can explore the ambivalences of Art production by setting a process that critically accounts Art as evidences and artifacts of a given time and place; as tools that can trigger changes in social cognition and behavior inside the actual regimes of visibility. Here, the potential of Art and its capacity to establish critical proposals related to specific contexts can lead to conceptual structures to be not just aesthetically admired, but also actively experienced.
