Monday, 21/10/2024 at 7 pm
Youth Cultural Center “Ribnjak”, Park Ribnjak 1, Zagreb
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We are inaugurating the second part of the WHW Akademija 2024 program with a public lecture by Françoise Vergès, a political theorist, antiracist and decolonial feminist. In her lecture Françoise Vergès will share her critical observations on the relation between the museum and the colonial order explored in her latest book A Programme of Absolute Disorder: Decolonizing the Museum (English edition, Pluto Press, 2024.). If decolonization is, as Frantz Fanon wrote, “a program of absolute disorder”, then the decolonization of the universal museum cannot be accomplished. Reforms and changes, sure, would mean justice, but decolonization is a serious matter, it is the abolition of regimes of dispossesion, exploitation, extraction and exploitation. Justice in the museum means reflecting not only on the origins of the collection but on the social, racial, gendered hierarchy of the institution (who cleans, who cooks, who guards?), on what is conservation, its economy, its role in current ethno-nationalism and late fascism, in neolibreal antiracism and the power of private capital. Decolonization means imagining a “post-museum”, from its architecture to its place and role in the historical process of decolonization.

The lecture will be held in English.

Françoise Vergès will also lead a seminar for the participants of WHW Akademija titled What Is A Politics of Vital Needs? that will look at the questions raised by the state of permanent war waged by imperialism, authoritarian governments, libertarianism, militarism and neoliberal racial patriarchal capitalism and at the ways in which this war destroys what can be described as “vital needs” of the non-human species—water, air, land, food that are not contaminated—and the human specie—water, air, land, food that are not contaminated, and joy, peacefulness, and life.

Françoise Vergès (Reunion Island) is a political theorist, antiracist and decolonial feminist and independent curator. She has written extensively on the afterlives of slavery, South-South solidarities, the decolonization of the public space and of the museum, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, decolonial feminism, the circulation of textiles, ideas and tastes, neoliberalism and the economy of predation. A co-founder of the non-profit Decolonize the Arts (Paris,2015-2020), she has been convening L’Atelier, a workshop cum public performance with artists and activists of color, she contributes to The Nomad Colony created by artist Kader Attia and organizes decolonial visits in museums. Recent publications: Programme de désordre absolu. Décoloniser le musée (2023), A Feminist Theory of Violence. A Decolonial Perspective (2022), A Decolonial Feminism (2020), De la violence coloniale dans l’espace public (2021) Resolutely Black. Conversations with Aimé Césaire (2019), The Wombs of Women: Race, Capital, Feminism (2020).

WHW Akademija is funded by Kontakt Art Collection, ERSTE Foundation, Foundation for Arts Initiatives, Trust for Mutual Understanding

Additional funds for the program are granted by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, City Office for Culture and Civil Society, Foundation Kultura nova, Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.

The lecture is realized in conjunction with the collaborative project Care ecologies, organized between WHW, G&A Mamidakis Foundation, State of Concept Athens and Idensitat.

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