Art Institute of Chicago Essay and Photos of Migration by Ilona Garrett

Nandita Kumar, The Unwanted Ecology, 2017, Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human being, Center Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Lisa Reihana, Papatuanuku, 2019, and Tane, 2019. Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human being, Centre Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #ii: rethinking the human, Center Pompidou, photograph by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the man, Eye Pompidou, photograph by Hervé Veronese.

Founder and Chief Curator of the ongoing project Cosmopolis, Kathryn Weir, and associated curator Zhang Hanlu share their reflections on the most contempo iteration held at Center Pompidou in Paris, introducing the works of Nandita Kumar and Lisa Reihana.

Entering Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human at Paris' Centre Pompidou in late 2019, viewers were immediately welcomed by Tāne and Papatūanuku. In multimedia creative person Lisa Reihana'south Māori culture, the story of cosmos describes how Tāne used his powerful legs to separate his mother, Papatūānuku, from his begetter, Ranginui, the Globe mother and Sky father respectively. Tāne'south parents were separated both from each other as well as from darkness and anarchy. Their children, previously held convict between them, were ready complimentary and the mythological family became the source of all life on world. These figures form function of Reihana's new digital work Ihi (2019), which gives flesh to immaterial cultural heritage, and also, through expressive performances enacted by contemporary dancers in a digitally composed landscape, re-imagines humans' relationships with each other and with our cosmological environment. The full moving epitome iteration of the piece of work was recently unveiled on 2 65 square metre screens at the Aotea Centre, Auckland.

Lisa Reihana, Tane, 2019, color photo, 122 cm x 122 cm, from the projection Ihi, courtesy of the artist and Artprojects, Auckland.

Lisa Reihana, Papatuanuku, 2019, color photograph, 122 cm x 122 cm, from the project Ihi, courtesy of the artist and Artprojects, Auckland.

Lisa Reihana, Tane, 2019, color photograph, 122 cm x 122 cm, from the project Ihi, courtesy of the artist and Artprojects, Auckland.

Lisa Reihana, Papatuanuku, 2019, color photograph, 122 cm x 122 cm, from the project Ihi, courtesy of the artist and Artprojects, Auckland.

Cosmopolis focuses on enquiry-based and collaborative art practices, constructing bridges between new forms of creative experimentation and critical thinking. Through residencies, exhibitions, discursive programs and publications, it engages with artists whose work is concerned with the production of relationships and the exchange of knowledge. Cosmopolis #1: Collective Intelligence (2017, Paris) focused on new forms of artistic collaboration, while Cosmopolis #1.5: Enlarged Intelligence (2018, Chengdu) saw artists envisioning how to draw on artificial and ecological intelligence towards collectively defined ends. Cosmopolis #2 brought together xl artists from a spectrum of geographies and presented eight weeks of programming, spanning from critical thinking and music, to workshops and reading groups.

Reihana'due south practice has long considered diverse forms of technological intelligence, tools that might otherwise be obscured by pervasive forms of cultural hegemony. This preoccupation also runs through the curatorial orientations of Cosmopolis. In the exhibition space, Reihana's two large-scale prints freeze Tāne and Papatūanuku in dramatic narrative moments, although the two portraits were also blithe in augmented reality, activated by staff members with iPads.

Reihana was born in Auckland, New Zealand / Aotearoa to a British mother and a Māori father. Her interest in the dialogue between history and visual story-telling fantastically challenges Eurocentric worldviews. Reihana represented New Zealand at the 2017 Venice Biennale with her video epic in Pursuit of Venus [infected] (2015-2017), which became the first joint acquisition past Fine Arts Museum San Francisco and Los Angeles County Museum of Art earlier this year. This boggling 64-minute digital scroll rewrites the history of British explorer James Cook's voyages in the Pacific Ocean in the late 18th century with a sensitivity ascribed to gender and colonial complexities that are usually effaced from mainstream historical narratives.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #two: rethinking the man, featuring Lisa Reihana, Ihi, 2019 (background); Benvenuto Chavajay Ixtetelá, 4'33'' (John Cage), Mixed media, 2014 (centre); and Sandra Monterrosa, Columna Vertebral Roja [Carmine Spinal Cord], 2017 (foreground), Centre Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the homo, Centre Pompidou, photo past Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human being, Middle Pompidou, photograph by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #two: rethinking the homo, Middle Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the man, featuring Lisa Reihana, Ihi, 2019 (background); Benvenuto Chavajay Ixtetelá, iv'33'' (John Cage), Mixed media, 2014 (middle); and Sandra Monterrosa, Columna Vertebral Roja [Red Spinal String], 2017 (foreground), Centre Pompidou, photo past Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the homo, Heart Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human, Centre Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the man, Heart Pompidou, photo past Hervé Veronese.

At the Pompidou Heart, Reihana's work was exhibited in proximity with the installation and audio works 4'33'' (John Cage) (2014) by Benvenuto Chavajay Ixtetelá and Columna Vertebral Roja [Red Spinal Cord] (2017) and Rokeb' iq' / Viento / Wind (2014-2015) by Sandra Monterrosa, 2 artists from Mayan communities in Guatemala. This invites dialogue between the Māori narrative of cosmos that opens the exhibition and Chavajay Ixtetelá and Monterrosa's poetic and powerful work on the silenced histories of indigenous communities in South America. Together, these three works draw on diverse indigenous worldviews and set the tone for the 2d edition of Cosmopolis, with its concerns of scale, technology and alternative ontologies.

Today at that place is widespread discussion of the post-man, yet many artists and path-breaking interdisciplinary thinkers such as Sylvia Wynter and Silvia Federici remind united states of america that most humans have long been excluded from 'universal' formulations of the homo and the idea of humanity. The European Renaissance fashioned 'man' to the exclusion of women and non-Christians, the latter increasingly defined through the invented paradigm of 'bottom races'. By the time of the industrial revolution in the 18th century, these philosophical formulations of humanity went manus in hand with a 'civilising' credo that advocated for scientific rationality and technology'south ability to improve living conditions. European Enlightenment conceptions of the human were promoted inside regimes of expropriation of  resources, labour and reproductive capability. The technological, industrial and ecological transformations linked to the development of global capital in the modern era are inseparable from the racist and misogynist degradation of the horizon of humanity. This particular project of modernisation, widely presented with the force of teleological inevitability, is today brought into question equally ane history among many other possible paths not taken of the evolution of applied science and society. Artistic propositions such every bit those of Reihana, Chavajay and Monterosso, among others in the exhibition, allowed audiences to consider the plurality of history and to challenge established ideas of social progress.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human, Centre Pompidou, photo past Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #ii: rethinking the man including Munem Wasif's Seeds Shall Ready Us Free II, 2019 (in background), Centre Pompidou. Photo by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human, Middle Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #two: rethinking the human, Centre Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human being including Munem Wasif's Seeds Shall Ready Us Free II, 2019 (in background), Centre Pompidou. Photo by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the homo, Eye Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Cosmopolis #2 aimed to explore how other cosmologies, economical systems and geographic articulations form the bases of different social and technical configurations. Information technology brought to the fore the possibilities of technological diversity, as well as the question of how modest and differently configured social formations can generate other models and value systems—networking smaller units, de-industrialising and cultivating a fine attention to procedure and social rhythm. In his project Seeds Shall Prepare Us Free II (2019), artist Munem Wasif worked with the grain bank UBINIG, founded in 1984 by a grouping of activists in Bangladesh to support rice biodiversity and local agricultural noesis, in a context where these were concise by Indigo and Jute tillage imposed for the world market by the British colonial organisation. French artist Tabita Rezaire conducted research into angelic technologies—notably the stone circles of Senegambia that date back to between the 7th and 15th centuries—cartoon on astronomy, divination techniques, archeology and oral history to consider the implications today of effaced cosmological frameworks.

Nandita Kumar resides betwixt India and New Zealand, and is dedicated to creating sensory experiences through a wide spectrum of methods: images, installations, researches, technologies and community events. Her presentation for Cosmopolis #ii, titled The Unwanted Ecology (2017) exemplifies the artist'due south long-term interest in the crossroads of industrial and natural worlds. Placed on a plinth nearly the wall of windows that are the interface between the gallery space and the street, Kumar'southward glass biosphere of plants emitted sounds of buzzing and humming with changing rhythms, emitted from each private constitute. One only realised when getting closer to it that the biosphere is in fact made of pocket-sized metal panels in various found shapes and numerous electronic components.

The 'unwanted' environmental the work refers to are weeds, often deemed useless and unwelcome by their homo neighbours. The discussion 'weed' itself denotes a problem: it is a designation given carelessly to innumerable botanical species based on their unwanted condition in a mod and cultivated garden space. Weeds, nevertheless, reveal a whole neglected realm for Kumar. The plants seen in the terrarium are representations of wild weeds collected inside a xx-minute radius walking from Kumar's studio in Goa. They not only incorporate a formal environmental, simply also create a poetic analogy to the larger human relationship between human being and ecological surroundings every bit a sound frequency has been created from each institute and is emitted in the glass sphere. Designed to self-sustain with solar panels, the technologically reincarnated organisms reply to air humidity and the presence of humans around them, replicating living plants both in appearance and life-force. This interactive sculpture re-enacts missed encounters between plants and people.

Nandita Kumar, The Unwanted Environmental, 2017, Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the man, Eye Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Nandita Kumar, The Unwanted Environmental, 2017, Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human, Middle Pompidou, photo past Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human, with Sam Keogh's installation Untitled, 2019, in middle, Middle Pompidou. Photo by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human, Centre Pompidou, photograph past Hervé Veronese.

Nandita Kumar, The Unwanted Environmental, 2017, Cosmopolis #two: rethinking the human, Centre Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Nandita Kumar, The Unwanted Ecology, 2017, Cosmopolis #two: rethinking the human, Middle Pompidou, photograph by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #two: rethinking the human being, with Sam Keogh'due south installation Untitled, 2019, in middle, Centre Pompidou. Photo by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human, Centre Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Transferring between data, media and viewer interaction has been a recurring methodology in Kumar's practice. Her ongoing project OsmoScape comes out of three years of research into water, especially, its usage, scarcity and pollution in human social club. After collecting relevant water data from authorities and NGO websites, she designed a notation system to turn this data into visual forms and sound compositions to be read, heard and interacted with through an app. In this way, noesis is non only shared, but also experienced and felt. Such quests for alternative models of learning are as well seen in the ongoing programs presented within the Cosmopolis exhibition. For example, Music every bit Knowledge was a curated program of concerts enjoyed and 'learned' by the audience in all iii editions of Cosmopolis. The Right to Research, a 2-day forum in collaboration with École nationale supérieure d'arts de Paris-Cergy, borrowed its bailiwick from scholar Arjun Appadurai'due south celebrated text with the same title pointing to the acquisition of strategic cognition as a basic human being right.^[01] 01. Arjun Appadurai "The Correct to Research" Globalisation, Societies and Didactics 42(2) (one July 2006): 167-177.  Appadurai was also nowadays in the Parisian forum and joined one of the five sessions of Commonage Thinking, a reading grouping program discussing some of the key theoretical ideas in Cosmopolis #2.

Kumar is among many artists in the exhibition who explore 'other ways' of gaining noesis, particularly ecological knowledge. Adjacent to Kumar's piece of work and hung from the ceiling was Irish creative person Sam Keogh'due south installation Untitled (2019). An ever-morphing 'root system', as termed by the creative person, consisting of a melange of objects—both organic and inorganic, collected well-nigh his studio—was unfurled in two lecture performances as props and items of reference. Elsewhere, Chen Jianjun and Cao Minghao, an artist duo from Chengdu, China, documented a farmer self-managing a reforestation project and a post-convulsion Qiang community creating a schoolhouse of cultural traditions and sustainable living. The two videos stalk from their long term projection H2o Arrangement Project, which examines environmental and historical complexities near the Dujiangyan River in Sichuan Province and which interweaves questions of mural, livelihood, climate change and the cosmos of culling futures through modest-scale actions with their collaborators.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #ii: rethinking the man, featuring Simón Vega'south, Archipiélago de Intercambio, mixed media, 2019, Eye Pompidou, photograph by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human, featuring Simón Vega's, Archipiélago de Intercambio, mixed media, 2019, Centre Pompidou, photograph by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human being, featuring Simón Vega's, Archipiélago de Intercambio, mixed media, 2019, Centre Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the homo, featuring Simón Vega's, Archipiélago de Intercambio, mixed media, 2019, Centre Pompidou, photograph by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #ii: rethinking the man, featuring Simón Vega's, Archipiélago de Intercambio, mixed media, 2019, Eye Pompidou, photograph by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #two: rethinking the human, featuring Simón Vega's, Archipiélago de Intercambio, mixed media, 2019, Centre Pompidou, photo past Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the man, featuring Simón Vega's, Archipiélago de Intercambio, mixed media, 2019, Centre Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Installation view of Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human, featuring Simón Vega'due south, Archipiélago de Intercambio, mixed media, 2019, Heart Pompidou, photo by Hervé Veronese.

Cosmopolis #ii continued questions of scale and technological departure to artistic explorations of the entanglement of the homo and the not-man and alternatives to neoliberal individualism, taking equally points of reference the critical propositions of cardinal contemporary artist theorists Denise Ferreira da Silva and Elizabeth Povinelli, who bring into resonance ideas stemming from quantum thinking and diverse cosmological systems. Povinelli, a fellow member of the Karrabing Motion-picture show Collective, participated in the program to talk over their recent cinematographic exploration of toxicity and indigenous bureau in The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland (2018), included in the exhibition. The centrepiece of the show, Ferreira de Silva and filmmaker artist Arjuna Newman's 4 Waters: Deep Implicancy (2019), was a video essay threading together bug of migratory displacements, colonial violence and resource extraction with images of menses and changes of state. The artists and disquisitional thinkers involved in Cosmopolis #2 speak to specific locations and geographies, but their concerns exceed national borders; together they formed constellations of discourses and critical practices across the exhibition space and its unfolding programs, generating future questions and collaborations.

01. Arjun Appadurai "The Right to Research" Globalisation, Societies and Education 42(2) (1 July 2006): 167-177.

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Source: https://contemporaryhum.com/writing/situated-practices/

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