We live in a hybrid society claiming the desire to establish, validate, and recognize social understanding as an authentic space of inter-subjective relations. South of Imagination, a symposium at Parsons, The New School, will ask how can the pedagogical dimension imagine learning that affects knowledge within such a space? How can we understand and translate the need for such interaction? What practices, paths, and reflections widen the social field to include multiplicity and otherness? How do we reconceptualize pedagogy to incorporate such informal and transversal processes? How can we stimulate and activate conditions of autonomous exchange between learners?

From the perspective of a collective, self-generative and self-reflective school, how do we facilitate an intergenerational caring relationship? How can the artist stimulate practices of self-organization? How do we construct a helpful practice to stimulate and welcome functional solutions that rethink how we inhabit a place? These are questions that direct South of the Imagination.

South of Imagination began with a series of workshops developed along with communities of practice composed of students, teachers, artists, activists, and institutions in Albania, Morocco, and Egypt, constituting a framework for neutralizing the concept of center and margin in favor of an inter-individual space of mutual learning. The research conducted through these workshops and the symposium at Parsons The New School will lay the groundwork for an independent art school founded by artist Valerio Rocco Orlando in the heart of UNESCO Heritage Sassi di Matera in the South of Italy. This project conceives of pedagogy as a process of re-signification, re-appropriation, and inhabitation. One in which the re-use of a territory will transform the meaning that citizens, communities, and institutions have imagined about the present and future.

Supported by the Italian Council (9th Edition 2020), a program that promotes Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

southofimagination.org

Featuring: 

Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Coimbra (Portugal), and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is Director Emeritus of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra and has written and published widely on the issues of globalization, sociology of law and the state, epistemology, social movements and the World Social Forum. His books have been published in Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian, French, German, Chinese, Danish, Romanian, Polish and Korean. Among his many books in English are: Decolonising the University: The Challenge of Deep Cognitive Justice. Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2021); Toward a New Legal Common Sense. Law, Globalization, and Emancipation (third edition). Cambridge University Press (2020); Demodiversity: Toward Post-Abyssal Democracies (Ed. with José Manuel Mendes) Routledge (2020); Knowledges Born in the Struggle. Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South (Ed. with Maria Paula Meneses). Routledge (2019); The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Duke University Press (2018); If God Were a Human Rights Activist. Stanford University Press (2015); Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Paradigm Publishers (2014).

Fernando Moral is an architect by University of Valladolid, Master "Architecture: criticism and project" by School of Architecture of Barcelona and Ph.D. by Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He obtained the International Research Fellowship "Jorge Oteiza" by Public University of Navarra. He is Director of the School of Architecture of the Nebrija University (Spain), member of the Consolidated Research Group "Art and City" of the Universidad Complutense of Madrid as well as Visiting Professor of Sapienza - Università di Roma (Italy). His papers have been published in renowned journal such as Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II, Arquitectura Viva, EGA, Abada and Springer publishing house, among other references. He is the author of Oteiza: disoccupied architecture and Alfredo Pirri. Espacio privado, arte público. His work as a curator is reflected in exhibitions such as 'Mecanoo architecten: the Dutch mountains', 'Abalos + Sentkiewicz: 6 verticalscapes' and 'Eduardo Souto de Moura: Projects and Competitions'. He has collaborated with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

H. Lan Thao Lam’s practice is at the intersection of research, object-making, installation, film, video, writing and performance. Since 2001, she has been active as part of an artist team Lin + Lam, producing projects about immigration, sites of residual trauma, national identity and historical memory. Lam holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, was a Whitney Museum Independent Study fellow, and considers her experiences in refugee camps and housing projects also part of her education. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally at venues, including The New Museum, The Kitchen, NY; Carpenter Center, Harvard University; 3rd Guangzhou Triennial; Arko Art Center, Korean Arts Council, Seoul, Korea; Taiwan International Documentary Festival, Taipei; rum46, Denmark; Cold City Gallery and Lennox Contemporary, Toronto. She has been awarded the Canada Council for the Arts – Media Art Grant, Vera List Center for Art and Politics Fellowship, H.L. Rous Sculpture Award, and James Robertson Environmental Design Award. Lam’s work has been reviewed in numerous publications, including Art Forum, the New York Times, Art Journal, The Huffington Post, Time Out Hong Kong and Art Asia Pacific.

Letteria G. Fassari is Professor of Sociology of culture and Cultures of Sustainability at the Department of Social Sciences and Economics, Sapienza, University of Rome. Her areas of research are performance studies and sociology of Space, social Aesthetics, post-colonial Studies and Sociology of Imaginary. She is Director of the transdisciplinary Research Unit, Social Aesthetics, (Sapienza University) and since 2018 collaborates with Nomas Foundation. In 2014 she had been visiting scholar at the Department of Global Studies and Languages at MIT in Boston and in the 2019 at the Collaborative Research Centre on Refiguration of Spaces SFB 1265, Technische-Universität Berlin. Among her latest publications: “Placing performance into a distressed space: the case of San Berillo” in D. Bartmanski, H. Füller, J. Hoerning, G. Weidenhaus (Eds.) Considering Space, Routledge Series The Refiguration of Space (forthcoming); with G. Pompili G., “Performing Muslimness. The case of the Italian Muslim women” in D. Llewellyn, S. Hawthorne, S. Sharma (Eds.) The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion, Gender, and Sexuality, Bloomsbury, London (forthcoming); Fassari L. G., “Teaching (and Affecting) Sociology through Social Aesthetics” in Scuola democratica, 2/2022; (with R. Frascarelli) “Embodying the Past: The Case of the Goddess on Lion at Hasanlu” in K. De Graef, A.

Garcia-Ventura, A. Goddeeris and B. Alpert Nakhai (Eds.) The Mummy Under the Bed. Essays on Gender and Methodology in the Ancient Near East (2022).

Marie Hélène Pereira is a Curator and cultural practitioner from Dakar, Senegal. She is Director of Programs at RAW Material Company where she has organized exhibitions and related discursive programs looking at the intersection between art, knowledge and society. She co-curated Scattered Seeds in Cali-Colombia (2015-2017) and curated Battling to normalize freedom at Clarkhouse Initiative in Mumbai, India (2017). Pereira was a co-curator of Canine Wisdom for the Barking Dog - The Dog Done Gone Deaf. Exploring The Sonic Cosmologies of Halim El-Dabh at the 13th edition of Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African art (2018), as well as Still Present! - the 12th edition of Berlin Biennale (2022).In 2021 she was selected as one of the recipients of the ICI Curatorial Research Fellowship – a Marian Goodman Gallery initiative conceived by artist Steve McQueen - in honor of the late Okwui Enwezor. Pereira has a strong interest in politics of identity and histories of migration.

Pablo Helguera is a New York based artist working with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art and performance. Helguera’s work incorporates pedagogy, sociology and theater and literary strategies. His project, “The School of Panamerican Unrest”, a nomadic think-tank that physically crossed the continent by car from Anchorage, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, making 40 stops in between and covering almost 20,000 miles, it is considered one of the most extensive public art projects on record as well as a pioneering work of socially engaged art. Helguera has worked since 1991 in a variety of contemporary art museums, most recently as head of public programs at the Education department of the Guggenheim Museum in New York (1998-2005). From 2007 until his appointment at the New School, he was the Director of Adult and Academic programs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has organized more than 1000 public events in conjunction with nearly 100 exhibitions. In 2010 he was appointed pedagogical curator of the 8th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which took place in September, 2011.Helguera is a Guggenheim Fellow and has received the Creative Capital, Art Matters, Franklin Furnace and Blade of Grass fellowships, as well as the First International Award of Participatory Art from the Region Emilia Romagna (Bologna). He holds a PhD from Kingston University, London, and an honorary PhD from the Kansas Art Institute. Pablo Helguera has exhibited and performed individually in many museums and biennials around the world. He is the author of several books including Education for Socially Engaged Art (2011), The Parable Conference (2014) and An Atlas of Commonplaces (2015).

Raffaella Frascarelli is a transdisciplinary scholar. Ph.D. at EPHE Paris and L’Orientale Naples, she is founder and Scientific Director of Nomas Foundation Rome and the Scientific Co-Director of the Research Unit’s Laboratory Social Aesthetics, DiSSE, Sapienza University of Rome. Among her current publications: (2022) Epistemologies of the South for Re-imagining Education through Artists’ Practices,, in Scuola democratica, Learning for Democracy 2/2022 ; (2022) Books are Made for Use, not to be Hidden Away’ Sefer Ḥasidim. The Case of the Jewish Library of Rome, in Eichhorn M.  (Ed.), Rose Valland Institute. Documenta 14, Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne (in press); (with L.G. Fassari, 2022) Embodying the Past: The Case of the Goddess on Lion at Hasanlu in De Graef K., Garcia-Ventura A., Goddeeris. A, Nakhai B.A. (Eds.) The Mummy Under the Bed. Essays on Gender and Methodology in the Ancient Near East, Zaphon, Münster; (with V.R. Orlando, 2022) Artists’ Initiatives in the Global South and Their New Economy, in Duarte A., Perez M. (Eds.), The Art Market and the Global South: New Perspectives and Plural Approaches, Brill, Leiden (in press); (2020) At the Fringe of Human Freedom: The Concept of Space and Time Within Urban Settlements and Among Nomads in Antiquity, in Macrì, E., Morea, V., Trimarchi, M. (Eds.) Cultural Commons and Urban Dynamics. Springer, Cham. She has been the editor of (2020) Art Market and Sociocultural Space, Economia della cultura XXX.2. Among public art projects she curated,  Par tibi, Roma, nihil (2016); Kizart Festival (2017, 2018, 2019); Meridiani/Meridians (2019); Hiaitsiihi (2019); One By One (2021); roma città aperta (2021);  South of Imagination (2021-2022).

Sreshta Rit Premnath is a Bangalore-born, Brooklyn-based artist, editor of Shifter, and faculty at Parsons School of Design, New York. His recent installations, paintings, and videos have focused on spaces of power and control that shape our occupation of space and relation to time. He has had solo exhibitions at venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art (San Diego), MIT List Center for the Arts (Cambridge), Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati), Contemporary Art Museum (St. Louis), Gallery SKE (Bangalore), Galerie Nordenhake (Berlin), Nomas Foundation (Rome), Rodríguez Gallery (Poznań) and Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), among others. He has participated in group exhibitions including The Matter Within: New Contemporary Art of India, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Common Space, The Kitchen, New York; After Midnight, The Queens Museum, New York; So-Called Utopias, Logan Center for the Arts, Chicago; L’Intrus Redux, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, and The Protest and the Recuperation, Wallach Gallery, New York.

Valerio Rocco Orlando is an artist, professor of Multimedia Dramaturgy at Accademia di Brera in Milan, and Ph.D. candidate in Engineering-based Architecture and Urban Planning at Sapienza Università di Roma. Through practices ranging from workshops to video installations, he conceives art as a process of mutual knowledge and understanding. The core of his research is the exploration of the osmosis among institutions, museums, academia, and the social sphere. Over the years he has activated fruitful collaborations with philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, composer Michael Nyman, artists Gilbert & George, Ugo Rondinone, and Liam Gillick, actors Saleh Bakri and Alba Rohrwacher, singer Amalia Grè, and psychoanalyst Luigi Zoja. In 2009 he won the ISCP New York prize, in 2014 he received an International Artist Fellowship at the MMCA National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and in 2016 he was awarded the Kunstpreis VAF Stiftung. Thanks to the Ministry of Culture’s support within the Italian Council program, in 2021 Valerio Rocco Orlando founded an independent and transdisciplinary school; he created a digital platform and started the restoration of a building granted to him by the city of Matera for thirty years. His works are held in public and private collections, including: A. M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, Havana; Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato; Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon; La Galleria Nazionale, Rome; MACRO, Rome; MAGA, Gallarate; Mart, Rovereto; Museo del Novecento, Milano; MUSMA, Matera; Nomas Foundation, Rome; VAF Stiftung, Frankfurt am Main; Villa e Collezione Panza, Varese.