until 21 May 2022
Symposium: No Linear Fucking Time
BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht proudly presents Symposium: No Linear Fucking Time. Coinciding with the exhibition closing of No Linear Fucking Time, this two-day symposium, taking place on-site at BAK and online, gathers several methods of thinking and practice geared toward equitable and sustainable socio-temporal models.
In keeping with the motivation of the overall project, which is grounded in understanding and challenging progressive, abstract, and “western” formulations of time, the symposium engages with the histories of linear time in concert with various alternative scales that manifest across different lived experiences. Temporal concepts like seed time, space-time, visionary fiction, anticolonial agencies, and ancestral presents mingle here with historical, industrial, and financial hauntings. The presentations also grapple with contemporary urgencies such as refugee and border time, debt, the blurred boundaries between labor time and rest, and ecological extraction.
With contributions by: Isshaq Al-Barbary (artist and researcher, Amsterdam), Clara Balaguer (community editor, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht), Merve Bedir (architect and researcher, Rotterdam), Sarafina Paulina Bonita (performance artist, Rotterdam), Olga Bryukhovetska (cultural theorist, Kyiv), Zoénie Liwen Deng (coordinator of civic praxis, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht), Anfisa Doroshenko (researcher, Goor), Andrea Elera (artist and curator, Amsterdam), Elvira Espejo Ayca (artist and poet, La Paz), Gabriel Fontana (artist and researcher, Rotterdam), Max Haiven (writer and educator, Lakehead Bay), Nicoline van Harskamp (artist, Amsterdam), Jeanne van Heeswijk (artist, Rotterdam), Femke Herregraven (artist, Amsterdam), Maria Hlavajova (general and artistic director, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht), Walidah Imarisha (educator, writer, and artist, Portland), Jerrau (DJ, Amsterdam), Wietske Maas (curator of research and publications, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht), Jumana Manna (artist, Berlin), Claudia Mártinez Garay (artist, Amsterdam), Natasha Matteson (curator and director, Afghan Refugee Resettlement at Uplift Afghanistan Fund, New York), Jason-Allen Paisant (poet, researcher, and educator, Leeds), Yuri Pattison (artist, Paris), Amanda Piña (artist, Vienna and Mexico City), Rachael Rakes (curator of public practice, BAK basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht), Susan Schuppli (artist and researcher, London), Timur Si-Qin (artist, New York), Rolando Vázquez (writer and educator, Utrecht), and Evelyn Wan (researcher, Utrecht), among others.
Book launch Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice
The symposium includes, on Friday 20 May, the public launch of Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice (2021, BAK/MIT Press). Edited by Jeanne van Heeswijk, Maria Hlavajova, and Rachael Rakes, the publication gathers artistic and cultural practices that are future-oriented, yet abandon a “universal” progressive route forward, instead enlivening a different chronopolitics: that of the not-yet.
No Linear Fucking Time
No Linear Fucking Time (3 December 2021–22 May 2022) is an exhibition with gatherings, an online publication, and a symposium. The project proposes to unsettle dominant temporalities and model alternate forms of livable time. Convened by BAK’s curator of public practice Rachael Rakes with artist-interlocutors Femke Herregraven, Jumana Manna, and Claudia Martínez Garay, as well as writer Amelia Groom, No Linear Fucking Time calls upon a wide range of practitioners who examine and embody alternate scales, rhythms, and conceptions of temporal experience in order to explore how looking and working beyond linear, progressive, and globally-synchronized time can contribute to a more plurally-determined and sustainable lives. The project posits that just as time has been a homogenizing imperial force, the rethinking of time can be a key function of anti-colonial presents.
Program
FRIDAY, 20 MAY 2022
16.30–17.00 hrs: DOORS OPEN
17.00–17.45 hrs: WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
Maria Hlavajova and Rachael Rakes
17.45–19.30 hrs: OPENING SESSION
Disjunctive Temporalities of Migration and Refuge
A roundtable discussion with Isshaq Al-Barbary (online), Merve Bedir, Olga Bruyukhovesta (online), and Anfisa Doroshenko, moderated by Natasha Matteson with Rachael Rakes
Forced displacement has been an endemic part of ongoing imperial violence through multiple generations—and flares up, especially, when that violence surges. The act of leaving or migrating is attended by multiple specific temporalities: the right to leave, when there is a right to leave, is disintegrated by being forced to wait. There is the scramble of fleeing from home, city, or country; the haze of living in hiding; and the limbo of the lily-pad country or the camp. Seemingly endless bureaucratic delays extend life into a daily impermanence: waiting for visas, for embassy interviews, and for biometrics collection. The intermittent relief of departing is matched with the incessant news of brutality and erasure close to home. A kind of time-dislocation occurs between family members at home and those abroad, over years, over decades, fueling a sense of separation. The contributors to this discussion bring their own experiences of and on displacement, doing so with the heavy weight of time in mind and with consideration for those who are left behind.
19.30–20.00 hrs: BREAK
Light catering provided
20.00–21.30 hrs: BOOK LAUNCH AND DISCUSSION
Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice
Lecture on ”visionary fiction and Black subversive time travel” by Walidah Imarisha (online), followed by reading and discussion with Towards the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice (2021) editors Jeanne van Heeswijk, Maria Hlavajova, and Rachael Rakes, and contributors Clara Balaguer, Merve Bedir, Gabriel Fontana, Nicoline van Harskamp, and Jun Saturay (for the basic activist kitchen)
This presentation includes a lecture by Walidah Imarisha titled Notes on Black Subversive Time Travel and Visionary Fictions, which is followed by a reading and discussion with editors and contributors to the book Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice. The publication combines handbook, dictionary, and anthology, and gathers artistic and cultural practices that are propositional, collective, and centered on the yearning for a just life-in-common. While future-oriented, these practices abandon a “universal” progressive route forward, instead enlivening a different chronopolitics: that of the not-yet. Powered by imagination-as-practice and the commitment to decolonial futurity, the contributors—among them artists, scholars, activists, poets, writers, and organizers—reflect on and propose forms of practicing equitable life in relation with one another, Earth, and time; models for safer spaces for humans and nonhumans; ways of radically shifting policies and planetary priorities; and tactics and methods of creating sanctuary. Catalyzed by the work of artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, which focuses on radicalizing situated civic processes, Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice imagines and enacts alternative ways of being together.
21.30 hrs: RECEPTION
SATURDAY, 21 MAY 2022
10.00–10.30 hrs: DOORS OPEN
10.30–11.00 hrs: WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
Maria Hlavajova, Rachael Rakes
11.00–12.30 hrs: PANEL
The Techno-Colonization of Time: On Clocks, Zones, and Regimes of Precision
Yuri Pattison and Evelyn Wan, Deng
12.30–14.00 hrs: PANEL
Debt as Future Haunting: Banks, Insurance, and the Unpayable
Femke Herregraven and Max Haiven, moderated by Rachael Rakes
14.00–15.00 hrs: LUNCH BREAK
Lunch available for purchase at BAK or in advance online (€5)
15.00–16.30 hrs: PANEL
Soil Times: Anti-extractive Life with Lands
Jason-Allen Paisant (online) and Timur Si-Qin (online), moderated by Jumana Manna with Wietske Maas
The contributors to this panel consider how human relations toward land and landscape and understandings of autonomies and temporalities of non-human beings relate to shaping the worlds. In artist and No Linear Fucking Time interlocutor Jumana Manna’s work, such as the recent films Wild Relatives (2018) and Foragers (2022), seeds, plants, and territories are understood in complex and politically motivated contestation that determines future claims to land, home, and traditions. Jason-Allen Paisant’s essays and poetry apprehend colonial history and antiblackness in terms of severed ties with the landscape and “the robbery of time from Black life.” He meanwhile posits how poetry can offer a practice of slowness and a deepening of time, through which new forms of connectedness—amongst and beyond humans—become possible. Artist Timur Si-Qin, in his ongoing series Heaven is Sick (2020–ongoing), writes about how Christian ideology and values have promoted an extractive attitude toward nature. Westerners are raised to regard nature as a soulless and limitless resource for humans to use and to hold in dominion, whereas several indigenous and native worldviews have recognized nature as not only alive and sentient, but a critical part of ecological time.
16.30–18.00 hrs: ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
Echoes and Presages: Ancestral Knowledges in Time
Elvira Espejo Ayca (online), Amanda Piña (online), and Rolando Vasquez, moderated by Claudia Mártinez Garay and Andrea Elera with Rachael Rakes
18.00–18.30 hrs: BREAK
Light catering provided
18.30–20.00 hrs: ILLUSTRATED LECTURE
Exposure Time
Susan Schuppli (online), followed by a conversation moderated by Maria Hlavajova
20.00–20.30 hrs: ECHOPHONIC ENDNOTES
Clara Balaguer, Jeanne van Heeswijk, and Sarafina Paulina Bonita
20.30–22.00 hrs: DJ SET AND RECEPTION
Music by Jerrau
16.30–17.00 hrs: DOORS OPEN
17.00–17.45 hrs: WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
Maria Hlavajova and Rachael Rakes
17.45–19.30 hrs: OPENING SESSION
Disjunctive Temporalities of Migration and Refuge
A roundtable discussion with Isshaq Al-Barbary (online), Merve Bedir, Olga Bruyukhovesta (online), and Anfisa Doroshenko, moderated by Natasha Matteson with Rachael Rakes
Forced displacement has been an endemic part of ongoing imperial violence through multiple generations—and flares up, especially, when that violence surges. The act of leaving or migrating is attended by multiple specific temporalities: the right to leave, when there is a right to leave, is disintegrated by being forced to wait. There is the scramble of fleeing from home, city, or country; the haze of living in hiding; and the limbo of the lily-pad country or the camp. Seemingly endless bureaucratic delays extend life into a daily impermanence: waiting for visas, for embassy interviews, and for biometrics collection. The intermittent relief of departing is matched with the incessant news of brutality and erasure close to home. A kind of time-dislocation occurs between family members at home and those abroad, over years, over decades, fueling a sense of separation. The contributors to this discussion bring their own experiences of and on displacement, doing so with the heavy weight of time in mind and with consideration for those who are left behind.
19.30–20.00 hrs: BREAK
Light catering provided
20.00–21.30 hrs: BOOK LAUNCH AND DISCUSSION
Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice
Lecture on ”visionary fiction and Black subversive time travel” by Walidah Imarisha (online), followed by reading and discussion with Towards the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice (2021) editors Jeanne van Heeswijk, Maria Hlavajova, and Rachael Rakes, and contributors Clara Balaguer, Merve Bedir, Gabriel Fontana, Nicoline van Harskamp, and Jun Saturay (for the basic activist kitchen)
This presentation includes a lecture by Walidah Imarisha titled Notes on Black Subversive Time Travel and Visionary Fictions, which is followed by a reading and discussion with editors and contributors to the book Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice. The publication combines handbook, dictionary, and anthology, and gathers artistic and cultural practices that are propositional, collective, and centered on the yearning for a just life-in-common. While future-oriented, these practices abandon a “universal” progressive route forward, instead enlivening a different chronopolitics: that of the not-yet. Powered by imagination-as-practice and the commitment to decolonial futurity, the contributors—among them artists, scholars, activists, poets, writers, and organizers—reflect on and propose forms of practicing equitable life in relation with one another, Earth, and time; models for safer spaces for humans and nonhumans; ways of radically shifting policies and planetary priorities; and tactics and methods of creating sanctuary. Catalyzed by the work of artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, which focuses on radicalizing situated civic processes, Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice imagines and enacts alternative ways of being together.
21.30 hrs: RECEPTION
SATURDAY, 21 MAY 2022
10.00–10.30 hrs: DOORS OPEN
10.30–11.00 hrs: WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
Maria Hlavajova, Rachael Rakes
11.00–12.30 hrs: PANEL
The Techno-Colonization of Time: On Clocks, Zones, and Regimes of Precision
Yuri Pattison and Evelyn Wan, Deng
12.30–14.00 hrs: PANEL
Debt as Future Haunting: Banks, Insurance, and the Unpayable
Femke Herregraven and Max Haiven, moderated by Rachael Rakes
14.00–15.00 hrs: LUNCH BREAK
Lunch available for purchase at BAK or in advance online (€5)
15.00–16.30 hrs: PANEL
Soil Times: Anti-extractive Life with Lands
Jason-Allen Paisant (online) and Timur Si-Qin (online), moderated by Jumana Manna with Wietske Maas
The contributors to this panel consider how human relations toward land and landscape and understandings of autonomies and temporalities of non-human beings relate to shaping the worlds. In artist and No Linear Fucking Time interlocutor Jumana Manna’s work, such as the recent films Wild Relatives (2018) and Foragers (2022), seeds, plants, and territories are understood in complex and politically motivated contestation that determines future claims to land, home, and traditions. Jason-Allen Paisant’s essays and poetry apprehend colonial history and antiblackness in terms of severed ties with the landscape and “the robbery of time from Black life.” He meanwhile posits how poetry can offer a practice of slowness and a deepening of time, through which new forms of connectedness—amongst and beyond humans—become possible. Artist Timur Si-Qin, in his ongoing series Heaven is Sick (2020–ongoing), writes about how Christian ideology and values have promoted an extractive attitude toward nature. Westerners are raised to regard nature as a soulless and limitless resource for humans to use and to hold in dominion, whereas several indigenous and native worldviews have recognized nature as not only alive and sentient, but a critical part of ecological time.
16.30–18.00 hrs: ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
Echoes and Presages: Ancestral Knowledges in Time
Elvira Espejo Ayca (online), Amanda Piña (online), and Rolando Vasquez, moderated by Claudia Mártinez Garay and Andrea Elera with Rachael Rakes
18.00–18.30 hrs: BREAK
Light catering provided
18.30–20.00 hrs: ILLUSTRATED LECTURE
Exposure Time
Susan Schuppli (online), followed by a conversation moderated by Maria Hlavajova
20.00–20.30 hrs: ECHOPHONIC ENDNOTES
Clara Balaguer, Jeanne van Heeswijk, and Sarafina Paulina Bonita
20.30–22.00 hrs: DJ SET AND RECEPTION
Music by Jerrau
with: Clara Balaguer, Merve Bedir, Gabriel Fontana, Nicoline van Harskamp, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Femke Herregraven, Maria Hlavajova, Walidah Imarisha, Wietske Maas, Jumana Manna, Claudia Martínez Garay, Natasha Matteson, Jason Allen-Paisant, Yuri Pattison, Rach
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