A public program realized in the framework of the multi-part project Fragments of Repair

Broadcast live from BAK, Utrecht and Paris

Taking place on 10 June 2021, the fourth gathering of Fragments of Repair/Gatherings, On Decolonial Aesthesis, features a talk by sociologist and decolonial thinker Rolando Vázquez (Utrecht), on the concept of decolonial aesthesis. Afterwards, Vázquez is joined in conversation by political theorist, feminist, and decolonial activist Françoise Vergès (Paris) and poet and art critic Chris Cyrille (Paris), convenor & participant, respectively, of the La Colonie Nomade study program, taking place in Paris as part of Fragments of Repair.

In his talk, Vázquez introduces the question of “decolonial aesthesis.” The talk explores why we need to decolonize aesthetics? While today it is well accepted that it is necessary to decolonize epistemologies, the question of decolonizing aesthetics has been underestimated. We then address the modern/colonial order of aesthetics, not just as something that concerns the arts, but most importantly as the field in which the control of the representation and our experience of the world is at stake. Overcoming the modern/colonial order of aesthetics has become an important concern for decoloniality. This process comes together with the challenge of attaining the end of the contemporary, that is of delinking from the politics of time that keeps on reproducing colonial difference. Instead of an endless search for radical innovation, decolonial aesthesis orients itself towards the task of healing, of justice, and of recovering relations with Earth, the communal, and time that have been severed by the logic of modernity.

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