Dislocating the catastrophe: art, limbos and pulses
Posted on 2022-01-12
Dislocating the catastrophe: art, limbos and pulses
Volume 20- Number 1 :january-june 2025
Guest Editors: Camila Duque-Jamaica1 and Santiago Lemus2
DEADLINE CALL FOR PAPERS DATE : January 15, 2025
This dossier calls out for voices that, behind the image of disaster and the imminence of death, reverse the catastrophic paradigm. Voices which confront the fatalistic panoramas that do not let space be perceived as a niche of possibilities and that describe time as static and rigid, presenting death as the end. Is the life-death relationship a binary concept?
Therefore, this issue calls for stories that embody a fungal thinking and a viral attitude that, like art, survives, transforms, contaminates and thrives. Artistic practices (music, plastic and visual arts, performing arts and possible disciplinary mutations) that cross diverse knowledge and disciplines, those that seek to transduce with the other, to pass between bodies the vibration capable of inherently producing movement.
We invoke bodies that witness the pulsations of the world: latent lives or corpse forms, entities in persistent decomposition or germination, presences on the edge or at the crossroads of the lethal and the vital, struggles between life and death. Bodies which achieve creative processes due to the sighting, capable of assuming a thousand and one ways of reflecting, highlighting, listening, surrounding, replicating. observing or making visible these gestures in texts meant for reflection or research. Is it not there where it is possible to find horizons to reincorporate images of the past, to accompany births and burials and to imagine future times?
Some possible pulsations of the world
Fallen tree
If a tree falls and nobody is close by to hear it fall does it make any sound? Around this question several premises have filled possible solutions. The most common: if there is no ear to hear it, there is no sound. Nevertheless, when the tree falls, that which we call sound is the vibrational disturbance of waves in a medium. Given this disturbance, in the forest, other bodies resound with the din. The question then would be what does the sound of the fall produce in the other bodies present? What happens to that fallen body? What happens if, in the best case scenario, no one finds it?
The disturbance produces movement, wood becomes present, time passes and other organisms appropriate the fallen body. It becomes a new ecosystem. In the midst of a complex network of inter-species relations, this tree (between the line of death) is the might of life. This body is now space, is a nest for birds, insects and other forms of presence.
One, two, three, a thousand trees fall in the forests every day.
How can artistic languages rethink landscapes of ruin and disaster as potential avenues of desire and movement?
The corpse and the dead
When the body lies, lines of text on the death certificate tell of a cold and absent specimen, but how do we reconstruct years of life on this planet? In the face of the silence of the flesh, the encounter with the wound liberates possible narratives capable of bringing the dead into presence and clarifying the stories.
We dissect to find out what happened to a body when death comes for no apparent reason. We trace and spot relationships of parts to find a whole. We cut and inspect as someone who looks for a clue to understand the existence of the corpse. We chase the trail to know where it failed, in a row of linked mechanisms. We explore the body, layer by layer, fiber by fiber, to reconstruct the microsecond in which life becomes death. When does the corpse become dead and who dictates it?
Is it not the corpse a space to inhabit the explosive time of creation? Could the sculptural object, the sound composition, the cinematographic image, the choreography (the artistic creation itself) be a simile of forensic anatomy? Can art take the place of the corpse to face the story of the wound?
Virus
There are millions of microscopic entities moving through the landscapes of the planet, composed only of genetic material and a protein capsule. Because they are not complete cells, they lack metabolic capacity and functions such as cell division and protein synthesis. However, their main activity consists of infecting everything from tiny bacteria to multicellular organisms such as humans for reproduction. This entity uses the cellular mechanism to produce copies of itself, employing the host as a locomotion device and often causing its disintegration.
This small interaction has resulted in an estimated 40.4 million people dying from HIV (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) related illnesses or that the majority of the human population had to confine themselves home several months avoiding contact with their relatives, vacating streets and squares because of COVID 19.
Does not being alive imply the need to inhabit a niche that favors interaction and balance among all parties? If we consider life as an entity capable of reproducing, adapting and responding to stimuli, viruses partially fulfill this criteria, but they need another to perform these functions. In their inactive state outside a host, they are little more than complex molecules of proteins and nucleic acids. It is a viral attitude to need another for the creative act to happen. Could art be a space for “re-knowing” the other as a foundation of co-dependence? At what points are creative practices viral, mutualistic, predatory or parasitic interactions?
Saprophytes
Layers and layers of decomposing organic matter flooding the soil. In accumulation, proliferation of saprophytic fungi transforms waste into incubators. While matter transforms itself, colonies of insects, worms and other fungi invade, reproduce and disperse in space. But what other movements can set off this event? Mutating waste opens up space not only for new forms of life, but also for the possibility of creating alliances: a complex network of relationships.
In some strips of coastal rainforest in the lowlands of southern Cameroon, it is common to find a particular species of ants known for their close relationship with the Leonardoxa africana. On one hand, thanks to the plant’s hollow structures, ant colonies find the ideal place to inhabit. They do not only build space but also survive keeping a constant source of food through nectar and fruits produced by the plant’s body. Reciprocally, the ants help to protect it against herbivores, pathogenic fungi and competing plants.
However, recent observations add to this two-way exchange other beings: fungi. From the first beneficial factor another life process is triggered. In some of the plant’s leaves yeast patches, which are capable of transforming the waste produced by ants into nutrients available for the plant and even for themselves, grow. In addition, when the yeasts are large enough, the ants use them as a kind of trap that allows them to catch large prey. A cry of life, an echo of alliances. How can art spark complicity, weave affective experiences and create symbiotic provocations to weave together the tensions of the world?
Nepantleras
The space in between, known in nahuatl as nepantla, is inhabited by presences referred to as nepantleras. This entity is characterized by its qualities of transit, mediation and link between dissimilar and multiple worlds. It makes frictions evident, but also contact points.
Nepantleras are all those that transcend the intermediate points of planes, dimensions and territories and encourage mobilization. They arrange the body to intercede or interrupt the spaces between environments, navigate between local economies, shape the generations’ sense of belonging to the territory. They also acquire and transit biological and ecological knowledge, mediating in the struggles for environmental and social justice. Nepantleras find the pores in the barriers, cross a limbo and make it their own.
Thanks to them, water emerges again from dry places, ruderal plants grow in the cracks of bricks, in arid places it is already harvest time, there is a home where before there was not even a roof, there is a root in the midst of ruin. Dark water is now a mirror and mourning a wetland.
Can the artist adopt the role of the nepantlera? Can artistic practices open spaces in the world like the nepantla and navigate between limbos and cracks?
[1] Camila Duque-Jamaica es artista visual de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana y Magister en Artes plásticas, electrónicas y del tiempo de la Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia. Actualmente es docente del Departamento de Artes Visuales de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana y trabaja de manera independiente en proyectos de investigación creación. Su práctica artística se interesa por las relaciones que suceden en el territorio entre diferentes actores humanos y no humanos, especialmente en las marcas o indicios que se hacen presentes en el paisaje a raíz de estos cruces y tensiones. En ese marco, su práctica atraviesa puntos de referencia en la ecología, el arte y la pedagogía.
[2] Santiago Lemus vive en Bogotá y es Maestro en Artes Plásticas de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, con estudios adicionales suspendidos en Medicina Veterinaria. Actualmente, cursa la Maestría en Conservación y Uso de la Biodiversidad en la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, donde también es docente en el Departamento de Artes Visuales. Su experiencia como investigador se ha desarrollado en proyectos interdisciplinares que integran artes plásticas, ciencias naturales y humanas. Ha trabajado en el área de Museología del ICANH, realizando investigaciones y estrategias comunicativas para la articulación con comunidades y actores locales. También ha participado en los proyectos Trazas, Oficios y Territorios y Ciudad de Piedra de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Su obra artística se centra en la relación entre arte, naturocultura y paisaje, resultado de la observación de procesos socio ecológicos, especialmente la ganadería. A través de la investigación de la materia orgánica, la imagen y el sonido, crea dispositivos sensibles materializados en intervenciones in situ, objetos escultóricos, performances y videos.
To submit your article for the current call for papers 20-2 "Dislocating the catastrophe: art, limbos and pulses", the article must be sent by registering on the OJS platform*. The journal only accepts articles within the thematic dossier calls.
*In case of problems to submit your article through the OJS platform, please send your application through the mail cuadernosmavae@javeriana.edu.co, attaching the requested documents.