Me, You, and Everyone We Know

With films and videos by Ariela Aïsha Azoulay, Yael Bartana, Cooper Battersby and Emily Vey Duke, Ursula Biemann, b.h. Yael, John Bock, Maja Borg, Noël Burch and Allan Sekula, Miguel Calderón, Sara Eliassen, John Greyson, Clarisse Hahn, Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, Nicholas Mangan, Juan Manuel Sepúlveda, and Miguel Ventura

And discussions with Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, b.h. Yael, Anita Chari, Pip Day, Dalaeja Foreman, Elena Comay del Junco, Suzanne Kite, Siobhan F. Guerrero Mc Manus, John Paul Ricco, Miguel Ventura, and Soyoung Yoon.

In the pre-history of globalization, modernity was promoted by international post-war agencies that prescribed epistemologies, means of economic organization and production methods, and even a cultural sensibility to the so-called third world countries. From a decolonial standpoint, modernity and colonialism are inextricable; indeed, they form the basis of our contemporary globalized socio-economic and political systems: market-based predatory relationships. In order to normalize these toxic forms of interdependency and interrelationships that are leading to civilizational and environmental collapse, human and non-human inhabitants of the world are differentiated by means of signifiers, for instance, of alterity, class, gender, ethnic origin, and religion. These differentiations affect how we relate to each other and how we become subjects. This series gathers audiovisual works from Canada, Europe, North and South America, and Australia, from inside or on the margins of western civilization. Beyond positing the question of whether decolonizing would mean undoing these differential categories and bringing justice to oppressed peoples, they provide pieces in a puzzle that could enable us to better see global capitalism not as a generalized, abstract whole, but as heterogeneous processes composed of beliefs, knowledges, relationships, daily practices, and the disassociation from our bodies and from social relationships that denigrate the reproduction of life in favor of production and consumption cycles. As such, they bring forth a pressing view on the contradictions and toxic interrelationships inherent to the subject of western modernity, who has sought to feel at home anywhere on the globe, yet now finds itself increasingly alien to the basic means to reproduce life. 

The series will run in four thematic parts from June 23 through August 18, 2021. Each part will include a two-week group screening, and a live discussion. The series concludes with a repeat of all films from parts one through four on August 18.