Talk: Neither Hope Nor Despair, or How to Be Together Otherwise with Maria Hlavajova

In the time of permacrisis—think the brutal forever war on Ukraine and many other wars the world over, including the war on the climate and thus on the very possibility of liveable life in common—what art, what subjects, what sort of being together must we create? Thinking through a number of concrete art projects and art practices, from Former West (2008-16) to Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2016-ongoing) to Trainings for the Not-Yet (2019-20), Maria Hlavajova ponders on the meaning of art vis-a-vis the conditions of today that resign themselves to neither false hope nor to paralysing despair. Hlavajova envisions a possibility of art as a radical, speculative, public pedagogy geared towards learning to be together otherwise: that is, a pedagogy of collective worldmaking that involves learning with one another what does not yet exist, and then living that new knowledge, that newly envisioned world, ‘as if it were possible’.

Coordinator and moderator: Christian Alonso