Parse Journal (Jun 2024)
The Art Space as a Site of Radical Love
Abstract
Within a European context, the reimagining of art spaces has recently become an urgent matter of concern. One obvious factor propelling the current changes of art institutional practices, is the growing social diversity of European nations and the heightened visibility of marginalized groups. Seeking to respond to these processes of transformation, art institutions have begun to explore how to collaborate with diversified local communities, how to address culturally mixed publics, and how to create caring and convivial sites of encounter in today’s migration-induced societies. Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin provides an interesting case when seeking to explore such attempts at reimagining the role of the art institution as a site of love. This article takes its point of departure in the festive re-opening of the institution in June 2023, which included blessings, concerts, performances, processions, readings and rituals as well as the launch of the exhibition project “O Quilombismo: Of Resisting and Insisting. Of Flight as Fight. Of Other Democratic Egalitarian Political Philosophies”. The article analyses and discusses how conviviality can be perceived as a friction-filled form of being-in-common, how curatorial modes of address can condition and produce alternative forms of commonality within today’s culturally entangled societies, as well as how an exhibition such as “O Quilombismo” can contribute to the creation of sites of love by engaging with other epistemic and philosophical traditions such as the ones practised by the quilombos in Brazil, palenques in Colombia, and maroon communities in Jamaica. Drawing on the concept curatorialization as marronage, it seeks to radicalize the notion of love within an art institutional context, arguing for the importance of viewing love not only as a state of harmonious coexistence but also as a form of protest and political resistance.
