Tidalektika a kurátorstvo vo vzťahu k oceánu

Online lecture by Stefanie Hessler combined with Q&A with Borbála Soós. The event will be held in English.

In his works, the poet and historian Kamau Brathwaite introduced the term “tidalectics” as an alternative to the dialectics of Western philosophy. His concept provokes reflection on what worldviews and imaginations might emerge from ways of thinking and being based on water and the constant movement of tides and tides, instead of land. This alternative cyclical understanding of history draws attention to stories of migration that take place across oceans, the roar of hurricanes in poetry, rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change, as well as the fluctuating rhythm of sea waves that dissolve notions of permanence, static possession, and appropriation in favor of more fluid, hybrid relationships. This lecture will propose tidalectics as a curatorial principle for exhibitions exploring the oceanic space, from ecology to geopolitical and cultural conditions, from sensorics to mythology, from the struggle for sovereignty to environmental justice.

Stefanie Hessler is a curator, writer and editor. It focuses on ecology and its various social intersections. She is the director of the Swiss Institute, an independent non-profit art center in New York. She previously served as director of Kunsthall Trondheim in Norway, where she co-curated the research-based exhibition Sex Ecologies and edited the companion volume on queer ecologies, sexuality and care in non-human worlds (published by The Seed Box and MIT Press, 2021) . Her other recent curatorial projects include the 17th Biennial Momenta under the title Sensing Nature in Tiohtià:ke-Mooniyang-Montreal; Rising Tides/Down to Earth at the Gropius Bau in Berlin (2020) and Joan Jonas: Moving Off the Land II at the Ocean Space Gallery in Venice (2019). Hessler’s author book Prospecting Ocean was published by MIT Press and TBA21-Academy in 2019, and she has edited a number of volumes including Tidalectics: Imagining an Oceanic Worldview through Art and Science (MIT Press and TBA21-Academy , 2018).

Borbála Soós (1984, Budapest) is a curator working in Great Britain and an active advocate, participant and organizer of artistic and ecological research. Her curatorial practice responds to, disrupts and enriches environmental thinking and related social and political emergencies. In 2009, she received a master’s degree in film science and art history from ELTE in Budapest, and in 2012 she received a master’s degree in the Curatorial Activity in Contemporary Art program at the Royal College of Art in London. In the years 2012-2019, she worked as the director and curator of the contemporary art gallery Tenderpixel in central London. Since 2022, she has been working as an administrator and curator of the gallery’s public program at Eastside Projects in Birningham. She is a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths College, the Royal College of Art, Central Saint Martins and Edinburgh College, among others. She curated exhibitions and projects in collaboration with ICA, London; Camden Arts Centre, London; CCA Derry-Londonderry; Rupert, Vilnius; Off-Biennale, Budapest; Transformer House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest; Karlin Studios/Futura, Prague; Kunsthalle Bratislava and transit, Bratislava…

The lecture is part of a series of discussions How to live together? curated by curators: Judit Angel, Alessandra Pomarico, Borbála Soós, Ovidia Ţichindeleana as part of the Art Connected 2022 – 2023 sub-programme tranzit.sk.

The Erste Foundation is the main partner of the transit initiative. It was supported by the Art Support Fund from public sources.