Yokohama Triennale 2020: Not an end, an Afterglow

In the word afterglow there is a conceit, a desire, a sense, and even an ability to emerge from, and merge into, spectral realities and spectrum conditions. An intuition of the contagion and the toxic, and of the imperative of care, came into the deliberative process of the Triennale from within manifold, manifest, and subterranean presences. There is therefore no summation or closure, only an anticipation of coming conversations and mutations.

The unequal distribution of toxicity is a phenomenon that is global in nature. Capital’s monstrous hunger and impatience have accelerated it. Indic civilization’s cruelty in creating “out-cast/e” is a mask for not thinking about the toxic, an incapacity that ought to be cautionary for the world. It is critical to find egalitarian principles for the measure of toxicity. This calling we have termed “care with toxicity”. The temporal horizon of this question of Afterglow is not bounded by the present moment.

The present pandemic challenged and transformed the way in which the Triennale had to attend to the question of “time”, “exhibition”, and “public”. The attention to an awareness of what we termed in July, at the onset of the exhibition, as “re-apprehending the world” has foregrounded the deliberative aspect of culture. If we are in a time that is un-apprehended, and which no one can claim to have a conception of or grasp over, it is an occasion to re-enter and re-make the world with everyone.

These few, long months have heralded the rise of millions of online assemblies and, with them, a breakdown of the hierarchy of established presences. Alongside, there is also recognition of the inhuman demands of the post-human production protocols of automated interactions. These online worlds precipitate a crisis of cartographic certainties and historical assurances, and bring a whole range of dis-obedient milieus and complexities into play.

Afterglow has tried to engage with this emerging generalized condition of an anarchic “now” to argue for biennales/triennales to become more trans-global conjunctions, as well as an assertion of multiple, plural, networked life-worlds surging with rage, wisdom, insight, resentment, revolt, and joy. The “episodic” temporal architecture of this Triennale could make for this possibility. We can, with some experience, argue that such forms of temporal inhabitations and improvised spatial practices may help alter the way in which such events move, more so now. This agility and flexibility provides an experimental, malleable, scalable, and intensive modality with which to “do” contemporary art.

The ease with which artists and curators have played with this form in the Yokohama Triennale 2020—transforming it, layering it, extending it—demonstrates that it already carries within itself a capacity for mutation and morphing in response to new conditions. It brings in a startling range of persons and personae, overlooked geographies, and minor histories to gather energies, enabling artists to confront a spectrum of conditions ranging from radiance to radiation.

This trail, this signal, this farewell-not-goodbye, is a confidence that the deliberative move of the Triennale has found some fellow travelers, and that the temporal frontier of the 11th of October need not be taken as a call to curtains, but as the crossing of a threshold into the exhibition’s afterlife—for a new thousand days, until the next edition of the Yokohama Triennial comes calling, as it must, in 2023.

Raqs Media Collective
October 10, 2020

For a virtual tour of the exhibition, visit our website.

New Episōdo at Yokohama Triennale
Episōdo 08
Chemistry/The Story of C
Tamura Yuichiro

The “Diamond Princess” left Yokohama Port on January 20, 2020. By the time it returned to Yokohama Port, there was a large-scale outbreak of infection amongst the passengers. On October 1, 2002, the vessels “Sapphire Princess” and “Diamond Princess” had actually been exchanged after a fire broke out at their shipyard.

Meanwhile, our encounter with the new coronavirus is still fresh; it seems we have started becoming estranged from our lower bodies. Over the course of a night, a cicada bends its upper body back in order to shed its skin, unfurl its wings, and fly away.

A tale of diamonds and sapphires unfolds in four parts.

October 10-11: Performances at Yokohama Museum of Art, with live elements online

Episōdo 10
Interstitium

What is the energy that flows between the discrete moment of a work, and the sentient presence of an artist? What is that “zone” of continuum, that “interstitium” that brings a work amidst us? We slip into the gap between art and its artists, and chase 13 senses. 

Anton Vidokle / Renu Savant / Marianne Fahmy / Russ Ligtas / Max De Esteban / Make or Break / Rosa Barba / Sarker Protick / Oscar Santillan / Nilbar Güreş / Kawakubo Yoi/ Ivana Franke / Ali Van 

Intervention from Episōdo 03
Deliberations on Discursive Justice: Chasing the Scent

Webinar with Kabelo Malatsie, Michelle Wong, and Lantian Xie, with calls to and responses from many protagonists.

Protagonists: Hashimoto Shino / Sumayya Vally / Ahmed & Rashid Bin Shabib/ Hala Ali /Christian Nyampeta/ Radio Tropiezo / Dineo Seshee Bopape / Kaushal Sapre & Aasma Tulika / Grace Samboh / Amiya Nagpal / Abhishek Hazra / Mark Chung / Santhosh S     

Episōdo X
Digital Ignition

With a timeline that began on July 3—co-producing an accretive temporal experience that acts as an additional tributary of acts, of views, of assemblies, of hangouts, notes of/from other spaces, of roaming, of contaminatory intents, of soliloquies, of conversations, of responses and of gatherings—with a blue carpet. The Episōdo will keep accreting impulses until we are all exhausted and exhilarated, at the same time. That time may never come, and Episōdo X may just become a way of living.

Episōdo 01
Afterparty

With Phastoki DJ-ing from Johannesburg and Fotan Laiki hyping from Hong Kong, get ready for a digital boogie. Wear your best clothes. BYOB.

October 17, 2020, 10pm (HKT)
Venue: Hong Kong, Johannesburg, and online
Live streaming: TBA, more information here