A Story within A Story: GIBCA 2015
- Submitting institution
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Goldsmiths' College
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 3181
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Gothenburg, Sweden
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- September
- Year of first exhibition
- 2015
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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V - Visual Cultures
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Informed by a decade of academic research into new forms of participatory history-making, and fifteen years of transcultural curatorial experience, Elvira Dyangani Ose's curation of the 2015 Göteborg International Biennial also involved two years of intensive preparatory fieldwork, curatorial and editorial work. To this end, Dyangani Ose collaborated with 32 artists and 113 collaborators, among them thinkers, cultural producers, members of public authority and civil society from Scandinavia and across the globe, as well as with 5 institutions which served as exhibition spaces in which hitherto suppressed voices could be heard and counter-histories disseminated.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This output comprises Elvira Dyangani Ose’s curation of the 8th edition of the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2 September-22 November 2015) — entitled ‘A Story Within A Story’ — and its 255-page catalogue, which she edited. GIBCA is one of the leading Nordic art biennials._x000D_
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Underpinning the biennial’s project was Dyangani Ose’s academic research into the political agencies of participatory history-making inspired by Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot (i.e. Silencing the Past: Power and the production of history, 1995). Also central was Umberto Eco’s 1962 notion of ‘open work’ wherein aesthetic practices expose audiences not to a single definitive order but to myriad possibilities — an “unfinished” work – with which to engage. Research questions included:_x000D_
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1. What are the implications for subjectivity and subject-hood when history-making is reconceptualised as open and indeterminate?_x000D_
2. How can subjects-as-history-tellers make relevant the collective memories, personal narratives and inner worlds located in the margins of history?_x000D_
3. Can such critical reconstructions challenge current historiography?_x000D_
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Dyangani Ose worked with 32 artists and 113 collaborators, among them thinkers, cultural producers, members of public authority and civil society—from Scandinavia and across the globe. Five institutions representing diverse historical paradigms and the sociopolitical processes underpinning them, hosted artworks that actively rescue events and their protagonists from oblivion to produce and publicise expansive, alternative histories. Due to Dyangani Ose’s expertise in modern and contemporary African art and her interest in overlooked narratives, highlighting such strategies gained particular attention in the international mainstream and arts press. Transnational and transhistorical perspectives, examined against a backdrop of discussions on biopower, queerness, and postcoloniality, were facilitated at ‘House of Words’, a storytelling platform, inviting the audience and contributors to imagine history as a participatory experience.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -